Last night i dreamed my tears weren`t futile

Last night I dreamed my tears weren`t futile

but started streaming down my cheeks

cooling on their way down, lost their salty quality

then sealed my lips, gently

no need for words

what could they possibly reveal now?

tears fell from my cheeks into an ocean

they ran down my neck and arms and chest

beckoned me to find the ground again

and follow my tears to their creations

the land they’ll nurture, my home

underground I found what I forgot I’d lost

the life and vibrancy, the wonder

my family

a mind as supple as can be

a love unbound and without name

everything lost its name that day

for something so intricately bound together

cannot possess a name

maybe

nature was never in need of a name

I had a dream about this image of my tears flowing into the ground to create a forest. I wrote this poem inspired by this dream, before I started working on Ephemeral Ecologies. I truly hope there lies a creative energy, not only artistically but literally speaking, in acknowledging and working with grief and despair. For to see nature being destroyed is incredibly hard to bear and sometimes I find it hard to believe there is anything I can do or say that might change anything. Maybe that is not the right question though. Maybe cause and effect are not always our allies for we need many different ways of thinking and sensing and feeling to stay in touch with this blurry vision of a world where nature is respected and cherished again and we find our peaceful, creative role within it. The powers that change us, and what we so easily call the world cannot always be seen or detected partly because we can never completely grasp the interconnectedness of everything with our cognitive abilities alone. Sometimes I find this quite discouraging a thought because I wish to see immediate effects or changes and yet, somehow, paradoxically, humility - a return to the ground - is also a crucial ingredient in changing our minds and this culture we built, a culture that tolerates this vast destruction, objectification and deluded domination over anything that promises profit. This culture is hurting us for we are indeed intricately bound to everything.

Maybe this poem is a kind of consolation… imagining for a little while that our tears will make trees grow.

I want to thank and warmly recommend this book of interviews with indigenous people from Turtle Island: We Are the Middle of Forever, comprised of interviews conducted and edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth.

The drawing above is only two days old. Time to share something new and in progress.