quiet trickster

There are no fish in the canal.
Water lilies tangle the lines they cast to catch the fish that are not there.
He sees her walking (the dog barks at him).
He helps her pull the dog from the water lilies. The dog snaps at him, and she smiles.
She walks every day, and he smiles as she passes (thinks of water lilies).
The anglers curse their broken lines
He gives her water lilies (binds them in her hair).
They dredge the canal.
The girls are tangled together (water lilies in their hair).
There are fish in the canal.

This was always going to be the story of how we failed to save the world.

That’s not the funny part. The funny part is, we weren’t even trying to, and we did better than most.

Where does it start? We’ve heard all the theories, we each nurture our favourite. It commonly falls between the military-industrial [The axis of counter-terror and oil, oil, oil.], and the ecological [Ice melt, water rise, wind blow. And oil, oil, oil…]

The city being what she is, we hear a lot of weight placed on local politics. But the world was ending long before we took those first faltering, Bambi-legged steps into independence. [Independence? You mean when they cut us loose?]

I place the start of the end somewhere about the 5th century BC. But then, I’m a romantic. I still don’t want to think that it was our fault. [Hah]

Because when you saw it happening, there was never any one moment, any one cause, any one instigator. There wasn’t a tipping point. And if there wasn’t a point of no return, how could we have stopped it? [No, you’re right, you couldn’t have stopped it. Doesn’t mean it’s not your fault.]

Where do I start? Not when we realised that the world was ending. And not when we just thought the world was falling apart, and that wiser souls could put it back together.

It’s like watching the controlled demolition of a building you once loved. You’re pretty sure the building could be saved, but you’re also pretty sure they should know what they’re doing. So you keep an eye on it, watch them strip out the wiring and the plumbing and the insulation, until only the shell is left. It makes you uneasy in a way you can’t define, and you think it might just be sentimentality.

It’s not until they’ve laid the charges and withdrawn to a safe distance that you realise you’re watching a live video feed, and you’re still inside the god-damned building.

I have to go back to before we started living in fear.

Her mother was a radical. Second wave feminist and a half. A career woman, an innovator, raised her daughters to do the same. Her mother said they had to change. Said that if they didn’t, who else would? Inevitable, then, that she rebelled, stormed back to more traditional values.

Read the rest of this entry »