...more recent posts
A Bug in the Bugs
Back from a brief vacation.Five nights, bits of Long Island.
It’s good to get away,
but the Return
is always more to the point.
Back in the City,
it’s not so different from the marshland,
or the coastline.
A density of opportunities.
Every niche is occupied.
The Park is something different.
Not escape from, but restraint of,
the City.
An act of restraint,
undertaken by the City.
An Ascesis of the City.
Or so it pleases me to think of it, in deference to what I like to call my own Asceticism, though that may be a euphemism.
Asceticism may appear as withdrawal, or as refusal, but its essence is resistance.
Resistance to temptation.
That the momentum of the City was stayed, at the very center of Manhattan, was an act of great restraint, a temptation resisted, for which I remain thankful.
These thoughts surface as I ponder my recent post on the parade assaults, the inadequacy of which response still troubles me. Perhaps that’s a proper position to be in, with respect to such an event. I wonder on my need both to address the matter, and to ignore it. And now I find myself in a similar position regarding the West Nile Virus, and pesticide spraying.
Actually, the mosquito-borne virus is a concern closer to my heart, but I would likely be unaware of it, if not for the human-borne mania surrounding it. I’m not immune to public health concerns, and certainly we have the right to defend ourselves, but from my perspective, the general poisoning of the environment is not an appropriate response to a relatively minor threat from a specific organism.
But I’m practicing a mode of thought which will lead me to actually support the virus, as an entity with as much right to existence as any other. It’s just doing what comes naturally. If I had a strong enough magnifier, I could go out looking for it. Of course, I don’t really want to get it. I’m not at high risk, despite being bitten by mosquitoes in the park. The mortality is generally at the far ends of the actuarial table: most people exposed don’t become symptomatic. From a statistical viewpoint, we might be better off letting the “epidemic” run its course, and building our own resistance. It would be one thing if we could attack the virus itself, but our current strategy is likely to succeed only in breeding a hardier carrier for it. The real problem is the afflicted birds. Their plight is harder for us to address, and it’s likely that their ability to deal with the disease will be a key factor in determining its ultimate threat to us.
Mosquitoes you will always have with you,
to paraphrase another sometime ascetic.
So the temptation is to be noble, and reasoned, about my resistance to the spraying.
But the real asceticism is in admitting that my interests are purely selfish.
I’m not likely to get sick, but lots of innocent insects could die, and looking at bugs is one of the best things going, this time of year. Butterflies and Dragonflies are great through the binocular. I even got a look at a Cicada on the wing, it’s slow, wavering flight, bulbous form, and metallic sheen reminiscent of a 1950s movie space ship. Some small insects will allow magnified viewing through a hand lens. You’d be surprised at the tiny monsters lurking in the pretty blossoms.
My turning away is really a turning toward their level of reality.
My faith is that their reality represents our birthplace, and remains our birthright, no matter what we have erected in-between us. Immersion in that world is salutary, and, moreover, a necessity for maintaining our perspective amid the myriad realities of this splintered Creation.
If our senses had no limit, if we could see in all directions at once, we would never turn away from anything.
As it is, we must ignore one thing, in order to see another. To keep the Whole in view, when all attention is drawn in one direction, someone must look the other way.
Such is the direction of the Ascetic gaze.
To justify myself then, or to say how it is that responsibilities are distributed among us, and how, though I try to care about some things, I really care about others, but that I do care...
A Triad:
Three Sorts of Things to be Done
There are some things which everyone must do;
There are some things which must be done, but not everyone will do them;
There is something which must be done, that only you can do.
I’m looking closely, in order to discover, and thereby accomplish, the third necessity. To do so may entail looking the other way, but somebody has to do it.