Derrick's thinking has influenced the overall matrix of the book I'm writing, which is based on a model that stems from the patriarchy and the Industrial Age, into how we as humans have lost touch with ourselves and touch with nature, leading to a culture that sanctions abuse and is inthrall to violence. Each of my stories is a stop along this route.
In A Language Older Than Words, Derrick correlates the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father and correlates it with our culture's overall acceptance of violence. He looks very deeply at our relationship with animals and how it serves as a revealing example of our seemingly boundless desire to control and dominate all life forms (especially our own). The book is not an environmentalist screed but a very personal look at the topic framed predominantly from Jensen's own experience and consciousness.
In one of my favorite passages, Jensen is attending a debate of two people running for Manager of the WA State Dept. of Natural Resources. Both are equally matched in their oblivion, treating nature as a big-business portfolio to be managed and controlled in the best interests of only the bottom line. Their blatantly profit-centric positions greatly frustrate Jensen.
When the moderator opened the evening to the public, I raised my hand. I said, '...I have to say that if bobcats, wolves, trees, and salmon could vote, they wouldn't vote for either one of you.' Everyone gasped, as though I had pulled a gun. 'Now a question: Pretend we're children two generations hence, and defend your actions to us. Tell us why we shouldn't hate you for destroying our world.' Another gasp, as though I had fired it through their hearts....
Notwithstanding the knowledge that every creature--except for the more wounded among us--tries to move in the direction of life; and not withstanding the white-haired and wizened woman who approached me--after the politicians addressed neither comment nor question--to thank me and say she wished she would have said the same; and notwithstanding the knowledge that there can be no more important comment to make nor question to ask, I felt intensely alone. I had broken the most basic commandment of our culture: Thou shalt pretend there is nothing wrong. I had rolled a grenade across the dance floor.
I drove home alone, crying. When I got there, I walked into the frosty October night and found my feet carrying me to the coyote tree. Wrapping my arms around it, I sobbed into its cobblestone bark, feeling the grooves and rough corners with my outstretched fingers. Soon I stopped holding it, and it held me. I walked home; no longer crying yet chest heaving still. I needed more. I stepped to the huge ponderosa that stands outside this window, the ponderosa where each spring magpies add to their tumbled nest, and removed my clothes. I folded myself into the arms of this grandfather tree, this fatherly tree, and it held me as my own father never had. I cried again, into its bark, and never felt the cold. Comforted and safe now, I put on my clothes, and went inside; strengthened and emboldened by the huge beating hearts of these trees, I was ready to continue the fight, to nevermore accept only the two proffered choices, but to seek out a third, and follow it to the end.
Here's to grenades rolling across the dance floor...
