Sunny Maine in February

Today is sunny and calm after a brutal rain storm yesterday. The grasses at the shore are golden in the light and at low tide, the rocky sea bottom and shore of the far island is a full panorama of browns and olives from the algaes and mosses. If global warming weren’t a nagging issue, I would just glory in this Spring-like weather in February here in Maine.

My spiritual antidote to despair over environmental problems these days are all the little stories I’ve heard from Indigenous Peoples around the world. I repeat Wengari Maathi’s story of the hummingbird who tried to put out a forest fire, carrying one drop of water at a time in her beak, like a mantra. In her story, all the large animals are fleeing and laughing at her but she replies, "it is all I can do".

Having a blog is like looking into a mirror in public. In my first two day of posts, I see how much fear, anger, confusion & grief I have about the environment. I do. As an ecological artist, my task is to create art out of that. What is the purpose of art? To share feelings, passions, insight, communicate, entertain inspire awe, courage, serenity. I don’t resonate to any of those things when I see a dead harbor seal alongside the Winter garden near my Summer studio. But it’s likely the seal died of starvation. One in four pups die even without global warming, no matter what happens in Washington, DC. Meanwhile, the carcass has been whisked away to be reduced to an educational skeleton which will no doubt be very beautiful and useful. I have taken some polaroids and done some drawings that may or may not result in something more of whatever degree of beauty & pertinence may come.

Death is a frustrating part of life we must all live with. I don’t suppose my difficulties with this basic fact of life are any different than any other creatures and I shouldn’t elevate it beyond that, pointing fingers and venting my feelings over dead seals and dying dogs. It does no good to conflate general angst over life with the real issues we need to dissect and examine with calm dispassion, as the dead seal must be studied.

When I read grist <grist@grist.org>, as I do daily or listen to the news and see all the depredations of the corporate kingdom, it is hard not to connect the dots and harder to contain my frustration. But it has been said that courage is something we do in spite of fear. So perhaps one function of this blog is going to be to elevate my own courage every day, as spiritual exercize, come what may.