God's Big Acre When I travel, I encounter new plants and animals happily thriving in their particular places. But everywhere I go, I see new people more or less trapped in the old, old pursuit of security, stability, and money. OK. We have to eat. Then, we have to eat well. Then, we have to see to it that our children will also eat well. I see the children grow up and repeat the lives of their parents. In Beijing, Tangiers, Nuevo Laredo, Berlin, I compare plants and people, and I mourn. How many Mozarts do we lose to the (necessary) pursuit of security, stability, and money? Among the billions of us, how many seeds of unimaginable fecundity are cast on unfallow ground. At both ends of the economic scale, in poverty and in affluence, how many da Vinci's do we lose every day? Standing at the killing fields of Cambodia, Auschwitz, Rwanda, the observer knows that's an easy question, an easy, inevitable reaction. Such loss. Such loss. But our capitalist pride blinds us to the loss in our own well-appointed, well-larded houses. I take and put a small ivy in a pot and place it on a shelf in my room. With just a bit of attention (a taste of water this week, my little green friend?), it thrives in its best ivy fashion. Take and put a small human in an Urban House from Heaven and what happens. The small human learns the value of emulation of its elders and becomes a large human pursuing its Bigger and Better Urban House from Heaven. Such loss. Such loss. Now comes the Internet, and its train of analysts and critics with their endless catchwords (global village, infobahn, etc.). They are the blind people describing different parts of the elephant. Each is right, but nobody gets the elephant. What is the Internet? It is the first fertile soil for creativity to which all human children may have access. You're a kid and you've got a crazy word-gene, something drives you to the world of words? Click, click. There are the world's words, right in front of you. Click, click, and voilą, you add your own words to the infinite sum of cosmic co-creation. You're a kid and you have a crazy music-gene? Click, click. Click, click. The world sings old songs in new ways. You're a kid and you have a crazy art-gene? Click, and you help my retinas re-program themselves. God's big, extremely fertile acre ready for a billion children to come play, plant, tend, and harvest. Good for us. END
Illus: Aguarini Indians (Argentina), New York Times. |
