On Political Correctness

My writing returned to tangled thoughts. I’d never faced that before. Time tangled what I had left unattended. It began to tell its version. My story is not time’s story to tell. This is a story of self. No relation to those who came before me or those who will follow. I’m setting myself free. I am not beholden to the past mistakes of men. I have a notion.

The human world suffers the consequences of its disconnect from the earth world. Hierarchy. Patriarchy. Authority. Ideology. I will sever my thoughts from these manmade constructs. I can take this thought. I can perch on top of it to watch the waves crash onto the giant rocks and foam on the mustard seaweed. I can soar on top of it ten thousand feet in the sky like on eagle’s wings. Man will have disappeared below me. So far down they walk I wouldn’t know they were there. Beholden no more. Why should I allow the mistakes of past men to keep me from soaring thoughts? My blood has been divided by the generations. But it runs deep enough in this land to call it my home. I am not claiming it as my own. The land belongs to Mama. But it is my home. My thoughts belong to me like the land belongs to the earth. Men hold no domain over them, nor will they. Black. White. Man. Woman. Human. When thoughts soar high enough above humankind they do not conform to its categories. I endeavor to keep mine there.

My writing returned to tangled thoughts. They had become beheld by Black and White and Man and Woman and Human. I was angry trying to pull them loose. Caught within hierarchy and patriarchy and authority and ideology. My blood splattered onto the page. I was pulling my hand out of the clenched jaw of the American ideologues.

“What I want to say is

the past is the past,

and the present is what your life is,

and you are capable

of choosing what that will be,

darling citizen.”

(Mary Oliver, from Mornings at Blackwater)

Contentedly I walk within my body because my thoughts hold a higher allegiance, like water flowing down brooks and creeks and streams and rivers on its way to its greatest expanse. Water does not attempt to flow backward and neither shall I. Yet it seems a certain type of person would have me believe my thoughts are always headed upstream. No. Rapids form when water flows around immovable obstruction. It is the land that drives my thoughts, and man no more. Through the land thoughts must speak. There will always be mud to make metaphor, and sunrises, and white caps on the brewing sea. Men control words. Mustn’t say this and mustn’t say that. They kill ideas in their attempt to funnel them through their ideologies. They sully my lofty disposition. As if I shouldn’t be carried aloft by crisp morning air on ocean’s dawn. As if something were more important than spirit and soul. As if anything could be more important than a conference with one’s God. As if sitting on a rock wasn’t a formal event held by nature. As if the din of the crashing waves weren’t the most astute oratory given by Time itself. As if the Great Cormorant, sitting low in the water, didn’t run on it to take flight before my eyes.

The laws of man are for man alone and in them I see no conference with cosmology. Euclid’s discovery of the golden ratio pales in comparison to the orb-weaver outside my window who builds its web effortlessly to catch its breakfast. It was the spider who gave Euclid his discovery. And how many laws of man have been made to control my breakfast? How many laws of man have prohibited the symbiosis between predator and prey? If man could they would illegalize the sun and rain to keep us safe from fire and flood. And would then inquire about the disappearance of food. And I expect them to. I have already eaten many a meal of plants grown indoors. Another pale comparison to the dandelion greens who speak their bitter truth with every mouthful. The bitterness of their voice is their truth. We cannot remove it no matter how hard it boils. Man would do better by remembering this. Have you ever walked through a field of wildflowers? The thick stalks pierce one’s feet. Have you ever walked through a golden meadow? The deer ticks seize the occasion of our brushing by. Have you ever picked raspberries beneath the summer sun? Their thorns have a way of keeping man at bay to let them seed. Man is bitter like the dandelion. Man is strong like the wildflower. Man is parasitic like the tick. Man defends himself when one takes from him. Nature does not cancel the harvest to avoid a drop of blood. Nature encourages us with the sweetness of her raspberries. She simultaneously draws our blood with her thorns. Man would do better to accept the dichotomy of the raspberry bramble’s high notions. They are his own.