Letter to my Children: Day Drinking, The Overstory, Self Judgement

My dearest beloveds,

I have gone back and forth about this missive several times. What started as a poem (see below*) is now a whole lot more.

To summarize, on the last full day of our magical vacation I felt so confronted by the situation I self-medicated with two White Russians, an Aperol Spritz, and a Mojito. Not surprisingly, I passed out on the beach after lunch.

What situation? I hear you both ask. You sailed everyday, ate passionfruit and mango, gazed at the ocean while doing yoga, and swung on a trapeze for the first time in your life.

Yes, that is all true, it was truly divine.

AND every morning BIPOC bodies of former European colonies collected cigarette butts, empty champagne glasses, errant volleyballs, straightened beach chairs, and prepared food for 98% White European bodies. The child tenders, bartenders, beach tenders, food tenders, all spoke two or three languages - long term gifts from colonists ravaging their islands. Leggy trunks of palm trees shot up from the manicured kelly green lawn deliberately planted slightly akimbo from straight - clearly planned.

AND your mother brought Richard Powers’ The Overstory to read. I started reading Powers book a few years ago. I stopped reading because I felt so heart sick reading of the demise of the American Chestnut. The Universe nudged me to try again - so I brought it on the plane. What a powerhouse of a book. Powers is something else.

Here I am in the pinnacle, the apex, the well oiled machine of consumerism, convenience, and capitalism reading these lines from Powers’s piercing novel:

“Saws and engines… Every falling giant brings the crew closer. Trees ten feet thick and nine hundred years old go down in twenty minutes and are bucked within another hour.”

“Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse. But people don’t see it.”

Every morning men with trash bags dug into snake plant hedges for paper napkins, the beach comber machine shifted the dead coral from the seaweed, and piles of half filled glasses waited to be collected from the night before.

“If you want to maximize the net present value of a forest for its current owners and deliver the most wood in the shortest time, then yes: cut the old growth and plant straight-rowed replacement plantations, which you’ll be able to harvest a few more times. But if you want next century’s soil, if you want pure water, if you variety and health, if you want stabilizers and services we can’t even measure, then be patient and let the forest give slowly.”

Workers removed coconut fronds, raked seaweed from pristine tidelines, even utilized a machine to flatten foot formed depressions in the sand expanses.

“The product here is not so much books as that goal of ten thousand years of history, the thing the human brain craves above all else and nature will die refusing to give: convenience. Ease is the disease…”

Uniformed servers wandered between oiled bodies donned in Vilebrequin under individual thatched roof palapas.

“We have a Midas problem. There’s no endgame, just a stagnant pyramiding scheme. Endless, pointless prosperity… The only thing that really counts is hoarding a little bit more.”

Going back into the book to collect these quotes makes me weep. Outside there is snow to witness my gushing tears and heart pain - before it was the ocean.

Several friends have used the word “deserve” in response to my BothAnd description and starkness.

Why? Why do I deserve it more than anyone else? Yes fine, I spent new time in the oncology world these past 18 months and have scars where my nipples used to be. That justifies greed and taking more than my fair share of the planet’s resources? Doesn’t feel right.**

Torn between sadness and self loathing one morning, I jumped into a trimmed and waiting sailboat, and headed away from shore.

Corinna, self loathing is not going to get you anywhere. Capitalism is beyond your ability to fix and it is a burden too big for you to carry. Enjoy yourself while you are here - now you know where to vote with your dollars if there is a next time. Contrast.

Dragon, you were curious why I was so sleepy that one afternoon lying on the beach, this is my long answer to your adult self. Your mother chose to numb my discomfort with alcohol - one of the myriad shiny distractions available to us.

I am going to close with Amma’s song

Everyone in the world should sleep without fear,
at least for one night, sleep without fear.

Everyone in the world should eat to their fill,
at least for one day, eat to their fill.

There should be one day when there is no violence, no one is injured, no one is harmed.

All people young and old should serve the poor
and needy, at least for one day, serve selflessly.

This is my dream.
This is my prayer.
Love is the answer, love is the way.
Love is the answer, love is the way.

I love you my dearest children.

* Poem: Day Drinking in Paradise

The wee wake froths

Next to the line of slimy buoys

Tack time

Every morning the sand raked

Machines and men

Errant seaweed mounded

For removal

A foam party?

Weekly, yes.

Distractions abound

Adrenaline on the trapeze

Day drinking clear booze,

Added to all things.

Pineapple, coconut, synthetic strawberry, mint, lime, pineapple

Ceviche

Omelette

Cheese/Pate

Dessert

Stations

Stations

Stations

The palm trees watch, listen, witness

Tanned skin play volleyball and

Petanque

Before heading back to the

Pizza/Pasta

Station

**Robin Wall Kimmerer would say it is all Windigo thinking. “The legendary monster of the Anishinaabe people,” as described in Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Windigo was once a human who has become a cannibal, whose bite will transform “victims into cannibals too.”

Indulgent self-interest that our people once held to be monstrous is now celebrated as success. We are asked to admire what our people viewed as unforgivable. The consumption-driven mind-set masquerades as “quality of life” but eats us from within… We continue to embrace economic systems that prescribe infinite growth on a finite planet, as if somehow the universe had repealed the laws of thermodynamics on our behalf.