What do you see in this photograph? Go to the bottom of the post for some background. (Credit: Courtesy Bill Atkinson)[UPDATED 5/3 at bottom.] I’ve posted on the role of art in biological conservation and efforts to use cartoons to convey the ironies, inconsistencies and uncomfortable realities surrounding global warming. Now it’s time for poetry, and photography, dealing with the human-altered atmosphere and earth. I stumbled on a new collection of climate poems (and scientific statements), available as a pdf download online from the British Council, an international organization devoted to promoting British culture and ideas around the world. The group granted permission to reproduce a poem. You’ll find it below.
Munjina stone, West Australia (Credit: Courtesy Bill Atkinson)In that spirit, I thought I’d also post a little quasi-poem I wrote a few years ago for Bill Atkinson, an extraordinary man who was one of the founding software designers behind the first Macintosh computers and now, among other things, makes extraordinarily detailed digital photographs both of landscapes and what you might call mineral-scapes — the world revealed by slicing a stone.
My little essay accompanying this photograph was one of a collection of writings paired with Mr. Atkinson’s sliced-rock pictures in “Within the Stone,” a book from BrownTrout Publishers (I have
no financial interest in sales of the book). They were written Rorschach-style, drawing impressions out of the exposed shapes and colors. What do you see in the rock at right? Here’s what I saw:
Perhaps we tamed fire. Perhaps fire tamed us. Certainly we are still seduced by that glowing dance of a thousand roseate veils, whether in the shimmering heat of the hearth or the growl of the V-8.
While water soothes and nourishes, fire empowers. The astonishing magic of controlled combustion, facilitated by Earth’s just-right atmosphere and ample stores of fuels, has allowed humans to transform from scattered gatherers into a gathering global force.
Fire transports us, and in return we transport fire. Together, for better and worse, we have made the world our own.
Next is a poem from the British Council book, “Feeling the Pressure: Poetry and science of climate change,” edited by Paul Munden.
The Forecast
‘What’s the weather in Normal?’ I asked Dad
every time I called home.
Hometown as axis and norm –
I liked the sound of it.Every time I called home,
he’d relate, first, the usual stats.
I liked the sound of it,
the run of numbers: temp, precip, dew point.He’d relate, first, the usual stats
and move on to weather patterns
derived from the run of numbers –
El Niño, La Niña, climate change.Moving on to weather patterns,
he spent more and more time reading reports
about El Niño, La Niña, climate change,
and began to see to his daughters’ future.Spending more and more time on reports,
hometown as axis and norm,
he began to see his daughters’ future.
What’s the weather in Normal? I don’t ask.– Carrie Etter
“The Forecast,” by Carrie Etter — first published in “Feeling the Pressure,” edited by Paul Munden (British Council, 2008) — is copyright Carrie Etter 2008 and reprinted by permission of the publisher.
I’ve been told off and on that we’ll know society is really absorbing the idea that humans are influencing important Earth systems when the discussion spills out of the environmental niche and into the broader cultural discourse. Do you see signs this is happening?
P.S. The Bill Atkinson photograph opening this post is a cross-section through a sample of Dali stone (Dali referring not to the artist, but to a place in China’s Yunnan province where marble is quarried). I’ll post my little haiku giving my impressions of that image over the weekend. I’d love to hear yours. Give it a try. It feels a bit awkward, particularly for a reporter
so used to using words in a straightforward way, but it’s fun in the end.
UPDATE, 5/3: Here’s what I wrote to accompany the Dali stone image:
Humanity is etching its signature across its earthscape: diverting waterways, extracting essentials, transforming the air, scratching pathways. The advance is as inexorable, and natural, as that of rust on iron or microbes on a plate of agar. We till that which can be tilled, and therefore must be tilled, until our outward press meets sterile soils. But as we gain a global view, and regard our transformed sphere, we now ponder an unavoidable question: What next?
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