Tiger work, p.6
Tiger Work, page 6
That night the mother had a dream that the house was becoming a tomb and that she was living not in a house but in a pharaonic coffin. She had been reading a book about ancient Egypt which spoke of the coffins not as places of death, but as the beginnings of the house of eternity. The dream had so troubled the mother that she decided the time really had come for her to leave.
A month later she and her remaining children hired a lorry. They had great trouble bringing out the bed and the centre table and the sofa. The door had somehow become too small for them. But eventually everything was out and they were set to leave. The mother took one last look at the house, just as her eldest son had done some time ago, and what she saw amazed her.
The house now seemed to be only the top floor. That was all that was visible. It did not seem possible to her that she had been living in a house that had been vanishing all this time. How is it that none of them had seen it? Was it the tyranny of daily perception, or had the house somehow conspired to envelop them in its fantasy?
The mother was on the verge of saying something about it to her sons but the lorry driver had a fit of Lagosian impatience and wanted to be off so he could get in a few more jobs before the day was over. The mother said nothing. But she retained in her mind the image of the shrunken house that had once been their home.
*
The mother moved onto her own land on which she built a house. She no longer thought about the house that had been left behind. But the house thought of her. The house missed her stories. She had thought she was telling stories to her children and receiving their stories in turn. But they had all been sharing their stories with the house. That was how the house had managed to delay its disappearance into the earth. All those stories had kept it buoyant, made it float, as it were, to the rhythms of other lands, other homes, other destinies.
When the mother left, the landlord rented her rooms to a large family of ten. They brought with them squabbles and noise. They had to crawl in through the gap at the top of the front door, which had been removed altogether. When they went out for the day, they had to crawl back through the tight space. They brought the weight of their troubles and their hunger. The young children cried all night in the unrelieved heat.
Then came the season of politicians who excelled in the art of taking without giving. They didn’t care very much about the earth or the fumes or the lungs of the people or the loss of the forests or the terror of the goats or the unfinished school building where the children carried on their incomplete education.
And the house, starved of stories, deprived of fine and far-fetched dreams, lost its levity and its humour.
Then one day, just before the big rains that swept in from the east, the house lost the will to go on existing, lost the will to maintain its coherence. The tenants went on living there, for years and years to come. They went on living there even when the house had sunk so completely into the earth that only the roof was visible.
The landlord provided ladders and ropes for the tenants who now lived below the earth. This way they could get out when they went to work or school. He was even kind enough to provide them with light extensions and free candles when the electricity failed, hour after hour, all through the night and through most of the day.
The family lived below the ground like moles. Out of their windows they saw only the earth. Sometimes water seeped up into the living room. The landlord showed his understanding by lowering the rent for the duration of the seepage. The family of ten lived down there enclosed all around by the dark and the heat. Sometimes huddled in their silence, in the blaze of their eyes as they stared with anxiety at one another, they heard scattered fragments of all the stories that the house had stored and played back to itself in the twilight of its existence.
Then one day the house disappeared and no one knew that it had ever been there.
SPAWN
By-product of the devil’s fuel.
Adapted itself to our deeds
Our carrying, our containers,
Our wrapping, our
Packaging. Has
Come from nature
But is itself unnatural.
Is undegradable.
Forever lingering.
Sticks in the guts
Of fishes and dolphins.
Will last a thousand years
And be there when
We have all gone to dust.
What is this thing
That we have made
So essential?
A film between
Us and the world.
Landfills are crammed
With its incarnations.
Curse of modern living.
They say now that
Its microfibres can
Be found
In our blood, in
Our cells.
Slowly we have
Become
Part human, part
Plastic.
FROM A SACRED PLACE
We say that there is a climate emergency. But it is truer to say that there is a humanity emergency. The climate crisis is caused by us human beings, because we have forgotten the intimate relationship we have with nature. We treat nature like a resource, a thing to use without end, for profit and for our ascendancy. In this way we treat nature like an enemy.
But when we contemplate the roots of the climate crisis we are led to the fact that the earliest cases of the abuse of nature coincided with imperialism, with the conquistadors, with the quest for other places to plunder. In short, the abuse of nature began with our abuse of our fellow human beings. Then the plunder of nature was exacerbated by colonial and capitalist expansion and the needs of what we call civilisation.
The climate crisis is not really about the climate. It’s about us.
The only possible solution is to re-sacralise our fellow human beings, and to re-sacralise nature. Since we stripped the divine from our fellow human beings we made it easier to dehumanise them. And when we tore the divine from nature we made it easier to treat her so outrageously.
The climate crisis cannot be solved in isolation. It is a problem for the whole of the human race. It seems that the future for us requires re-engaging all of humanity, and understanding that we are all on the same ship, and that we can only solve this crisis together.
We need a new vision of the human. Not one based on division and perceived exceptionalism but one based on the truth that we are inescapably part of one another.
The only way to heal the climate crisis is to heal ourselves.
We are the crisis, the emergency, and the catastrophe. And there will be no permanent solution to environmental disasters till we heal the disaster that is our divisive and selfish thinking.
In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the story is told of a land cursed with pestilence and famine. People send to the oracle to find the cause. The king intends to punish whoever is responsible. In the end, it turns out that the king himself is the guilty one. That’s how it is with us. We want to find the causes of environmental catastrophe. We point fingers and allocate blame. But, in the end, it turns out that we are the guilty ones. Our whole way of life is the greatest threat to our survival. We are daily, indirectly, committing the suicide of the human race.
But it is not just in our emissions, our poisoning of the air, our polluting of the seas. It is really in why we do it. We do it for industry, for electricity, for commerce. These are the reasons why the big nations are finally unable to implement the scale of change needed to pull us back from the brink of the apocalypse.
No country wants to lose its advantages. None wants to lose its position. The politicians know that most of their citizens will vote them out if living standards fall below an acceptable level. That is why leaders say one thing and do another.
We are in a different kind of cold war now. We are in a resources war. We are in an economic war. No one in the West wants to scale down their lifestyle. It is this same greed that led to conquests and colonies, the same need that fuelled the Industrial Revolution and the economic transformation of Europe and America, Russia and China.
The quest for power and resources means we pollute, we devastate, we rape the earth. Energy drives our economies, the very same energy that is polluting our world.
A thread runs from that early restless quest for power and resources to our contemporary environmental crisis.
A huge healing is called for. A new vision of the human future is needed. It ought to be one that respects nature and other human beings, one that finds a manageable way to be a civilisation.
THE SONGBIRD’S SILENCE
(a story for children)
Once upon a time, not that long ago, the forest was full of noises. You could hear the birds sing, or the faraway growl of a wolf, or the call of cats, or the constant trilling of insects. The forest was a busy place at night because all the creatures were claiming their space. They were saying, with the noises they made, that this was their home.
Then human beings began to capture the creatures of the forest. Some liked to have the butterflies as friends. Some wanted the tigers as pets. But the creature they wanted most was the songbird. It was not the most beautiful bird in the world but it had the most enchanting song. Its song was so wonderful that people wanted the songbird in their house so they could live always with the strange and charming music it made. Soon everybody wanted one.
There was once a little boy who lived near the forest. His name was Duba. He used to love going to sleep at night and listening to the many mysterious noises of the forest. As he went to sleep at night he would imagine all the things the animals were doing. It seemed to him that as he was going to sleep they were waking up. He imagined the monkeys chattering and telling one another stories. He imagined the birds in long singing competitions. And he imagined the wild dogs growling in their nightly attempts to talk to the moon. He loved these imaginings of his and they helped him sleep nicely at night.
Then one day it was Duba’s birthday and as a present his father and mother gave him a songbird. It came in a big cage. Duba was very happy with his present. He had never had a pet before and never come that close to a bird before either. And it was such a special thing to listen to the songbird’s melodies in the morning and at night. He was very grateful to his mother and father for giving him such a wonderful present. He grew very attached to the bird and wanted to be with it all the time. He was only really happy when the bird was singing.
Duba was so fascinated by the bird’s songs that he wanted to know what it was singing about and why its singing was so sweet. Sometimes when the songbird sang Duba would be so moved that he would begin crying. The beauty of the song was so haunting that Duba took to asking everyone if they knew what the bird was singing about. His mother and father couldn’t tell him. None of the elders could tell him either. Then one day Duba met a wise old man near the forest.
‘O wise man,’ he said, ‘do you know why the songbird’s song is so sweet? What is it saying?’
‘Why are you asking me?’ the wise man asked.
‘Because everyone says you are a wise man.’
‘I think the songbird is wiser than me.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because it is singing a song that has caused you to ask many questions, and yet you do not know what it is singing about.’
‘So how can I find out why its song is so sweet or what it is saying?’
‘I think you should ask the songbird itself.’
‘Ask the songbird? How? I don’t speak its language. I won’t understand what it says.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I have tried.’
‘Maybe you should ask the question in a different way.’
‘How?’
‘You will know when the time comes.’
‘I hope so.’
‘And you should listen in a different way too.’
‘How should I do that?’
‘You should listen with more than your ears.’
‘More than my ears? What else should I listen with then?’
‘Perhaps,’ said the wise man, ‘you should listen with your heart.’
Duba was so taken with this conversation with the old man that when he got home he forgot to listen to the bird’s song. He was thinking about how he could ask the question differently and how he could listen with his heart. That night he didn’t sleep very well and he didn’t know why. In fact, he slept very badly. He tossed and turned all night. He was aware that something was missing. Something that made his sleep lovely was gone. Then just before dawn he fell asleep. And in his sleep he had a dream. In his dream the songbird spoke to him.
‘Do you want to know why my song is so sweet?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you also want to know what I keep saying in my songs?’
‘Yes. I have been asking everyone those questions. No one could give me an answer.’
‘I was the only one who could give you an answer. But you had to ask the right question. And you had to listen with your heart.’
‘Did I ask you the right question?’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘But how?’
‘You asked it with your soul. You asked it from the part of you that really cared.’
‘What are the answers?’
‘Have you noticed something about the world?’
‘No. What should I have noticed?’
‘Did you notice that something is missing?’
‘Yes. But I don’t know what it is.’
‘No one does.’
‘What is it?’
‘The forest is silent.’
‘Is it? Why?’
‘Because people have been treating the animals and birds badly.’
‘Have they?’
‘Yes. Take me, for example. Do you think I am happy?’
‘You must be. Your songs are so beautiful.’
‘My songs are beautiful because I am unhappy. My songs are trying to tell you the terrible things you are doing to the forest, to the bears, the pangolins, the iguanas, the beautiful birds, the tigers. Because you are not protecting them the forest is silent.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. The forest is dying.’
‘What can I do?’
‘Listen with your heart.’
‘I like having you as a pet.’
‘I know. But I don’t like being a pet. I am made to be free. You say my song is beautiful in your cage. But you should hear me sing when I am free.’
‘What is it like?’
‘It is as if all of nature is singing, the sea, the sky, the trees, and all the majestic creatures. It is as if God is singing through me. My song when I am free is a million times richer than my song in a cage. The only song I sing in a cage is the song of tears, the song of the silent forest.’
‘I am so sorry.’
‘If you are really sorry you would do something for me.’
‘What is that?’
‘Wake up.’
Duba immediately awoke. It was still dark. He listened carefully. It was true. The forest was silent. He didn’t hear the wolf cough, or the trilling of insects. He hurried to the cage. The songbird was silent. Nothing he did would make the songbird sing. Then he understood why the songbird was no longer singing.
He went and woke up his mother and father. They were surprised to see him.
‘Mum and Dad,’ said the boy, ‘we have done the songbird a terrible wrong. We have taken it from the forest, its home, and now it will not sing. Because of the songbird the forest is silent. Have you not noticed?’
His mother and father listened.
‘You are right,’ they said. ‘The forest is silent. How is it we never noticed?’
‘We have to help the forest live again,’ said the boy. ‘First we must return the songbird to its home, but carefully. Then we have to protect the creatures of the forest, or one day we too will fall silent.’
‘But how do you know these things?’ asked the father.
‘I don’t know. I just started to listen,’ he said, ‘with my heart.’
LETTER TO THE EARTH
Dear Earth,
Give us the suffering we deserve. The pandemic you sent us is a beginning. Too often we have been saved by the benevolence of the universe. When salvation comes easily, we do not learn. We only learn through suffering. We have become too spoilt, too stupid, too self-regarding. We fancy ourselves as gods. But we are children of death and immortality. We are nothing but wonder woven into mortal flesh.
It is time for our flesh and our dreams to be tried. It is time for us to undergo the greatest initiation that we have undergone together as a species, an initiation of fire that brings us humility and illumination. We will not transform ourselves and be worthy of this fabled earth if we aren’t raised up in some way. The only way is to temper us with fire and with iron.
I do not wish suffering on anyone. But the human race has failed in that solemn responsibility to fructify and enrich you, Earth, to add to your beauty, and evolve with you towards the fullest human possibilities.
We are not rising up to the greatness of the wonder woven in us.
We think we are only flesh and so our dreams are only of profit and dust. We think that there is no force anywhere capable of chastising us for our cruelties to you and to one another, our wars, our racism, our sexism, our injustices, our proliferation of poverty, our tormenting of the environment.
But there is a force which science does not understand. It is threaded into life itself, into the laws of physics and metaphysics. Some call it karma. I think of it as the natural tendency of the universe towards balance and harmony. This force is implicit in things. What we do will be done to us, the good and the bad.
We are receiving the fruits of the evils we have inflicted on you, Earth, and on one another. It all comes back to us. There is no need to have any emotion about this, for it happens as a condition of reality itself.
