April 1, 2021

When the moon
hits your eye
like a big pizza pie
in the Suez…

When the ground becomes saturated and houses start sliding down the tall clay cliffs that overlook Puget Sound, we blame the rain. When houses built at sea level flood, we blame the tides. Of course the real cause is people building in places that are historically proven to be vulnerable. But somehow we continue assume and assert our will and in that we name Mother Nature as adversarial. She just won’t cooperate. She just does what she does.

Last week the adversarial narrative shifted for a moment. I was intrigued to read the following the the New York Times. After almost a week of dredging, drigging and tugging — and with some help from the moon — salvage teams yesterday freed the giant container ship that had been stuck in the Suez Canal. The crews working to dig out the ship were largely dependent on forces beyond their control: the moon and the tides.

Forces beyond their control. When will we learn that the forces of nature, the terrestrial and cosmological seasons and cycles, are always beyond our control? Yes. Our ancestors knew how to work with these energies, a knowing we have largely lost. But it was an alliance of harmonic coexistence never a relationship of control. Rescue is only an illusion.

Beannacht,
Judith – judith@stonefires.com