On the final night of our wonderful Permaculture Design Course in Cuba, Alex Rogowski, a young man from Brandon Manitoba, shared this poem as part of the Passion Show. He wrote it during our time in Cuba and it is as powerful for me now as it was when he read it that night. Alex is happy to share this. Enjoy! Postcard From 2019 We didnt see it coming because we got so used to looking at it. Our skin didnt separate us from the world like we liked to think it did, so when the world came to an end, so did we, as we knew us. Voices raised in studies and shouts sounded the alarm for years, but we liked too much to have our truth in a glass box, because there it couldnt touch us and we couldnt touch it. They said that what did us in was The Gaze, and nothing else. We were very good at looking but not seeing. If you were smart, or lucky enough, you snapped out of it early on. Some never woke up. But most people were awakened by a chorus in the streets of this is it! But it was too late. Its hard to tell where one world ends and another begins. It might have been when our mighty cities on those beautiful coasts were washed away like sand castles on a beach at high tide. It might have been when the skyscrapers we built to bring us closer to heaven came crashing down like all those ancient trees we felled, one after another. They say that even the moon swayed to and fro when the earth trembled under our weight. They said the stars got shuffled up there. Let me tell you, it was a long time before we started naming those new constellations. It was long after the last fires died, set on those adrenaline nights when the restless kids of the old days made their riots. Then came what we called the season of the wild dog. We wandered through empty streets that stretched on and on. We foraged through endless piles of garbage with empty stomachs. We huddled around the light and warmth of bonfires and flashlights loaded with dying batteries. We slept wherever we could keep out of sight. We killed time in rusty playgrounds. We got lost in forests and fields that were quieter than we remembered. When the last person finally gave up the art of keeping track of time, the season of the wild dog gave way to a new age. One night while we slept, there came a soft whisper in our ear: in the land of sand, she said aslahin. In the land of snow, she said perestraivat. In the land of mountains and rivers, she said chongjian. In the land of sun, she said reconstruir. And in the land of grass, she said rebuild. That morning we all woke up to a great eastern sun with an idea. We began a search for home; at the edges of rivers, seas, forests, mountains, hills, and caves. We let our hearts and minds tell us where to stop, and then we went to work. Our new homes give as much as they take. We dont waste anything, especially space. Were building a new world out of the ashes and rubble of the old one. We plant young trees because well need to eat tomorrow as much as we do today. Its easy to get lonely these days so we make room for our friends of feathers and fur too. We wait to see where water goes, and if we cant master it, we bow to it. We know the world works in karma. Were learning the ways of those who lived here hundreds of years before us. Now there isnt enough glass intact in the world to keep us from the truth, and weve all forgotten what its like to look without seeing. Now our skin is what connects us to the rest of everything. Were finally making like trees and growing tall together. We survived the end of a world, and learned an important lesson the hard way: that the past and future are always appearing right here in the present. The world is always beginning and ending at the same time. Were all always in the middle of a slow apocalypse and a slow revolution. As for how it all ends, well, thats up to us.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 23:51:07 +0000
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