Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Keystone XL, the 114th Congress and the Question of Life

The new Republican-majority Congress has taken office and announced as their top priority the approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast of the US. Why? After all, the project is a demonstrated Life destroyer. The tar sands extraction site in Alberta resembles a bombed and desolate moon. It is devastating the local communities of First Nations peoples who have for 12,000+ years depended on the neighboring forests, rivers and lakes.* The carbon released through burning the fuel extracted in Alberta would bring a concentration in the Earth's atmosphere that would result in "game over for the climate," in the words of retired NASA physicist James Hansen.

And so again, why? The answer, I believe, is more fundamental than an issue of greed or Ayn Randian ideology. The answer lies in a fear of Life. Life – in its abundance, its dizzying diversity, its unpredictability and its beauty -- is something that terrifies them and that they loathe. They seek to kill it. They are more demented and dangerous than we imagine in our naïveté. They pursue the Sixth Great Planetary extinction with great alacrity. They may not fulminate their loathing with the eloquence of Captain Ahab, but make no mistake: they are his kin and they seek to take us down with them to the briny depths.


Monday, January 5, 2015

Broderick

Verse – Am/E/Ab/A
The future’s doing tricks in my yard
The ocean’s puking broken toys
Monster legions float above me
I found a snake in a broken clock
Clocks don’t tell me what my name is
My name’s a thing I can’t recall
All the things I said before
Make no sense when I awake

Chorus– Am/E/F#m/E
When I awake

Verse
I confess, I did the right thing
I admit, you’re in the wrong
My shoulders ache like armadillos
Armadillos walk at dawn
Dawn’s a time that smells like flowers
Flowers aching in the dawn
Dawn’s a time that smells like flowers
Flowers aching in the dawn

 Chorus
Aching in the dawn