(Co)existence

Conservation and conflicting conscience.

Earlier this week, I returned to Florida to meet with a client I traveled to see last year - a real estate developer of beautiful condominiums, in this case, situated by a conservation area.

The contrast of luxury, state of the art human residences set amid what would otherwise be the wild, natural home of birds and other untamed creatures is not lost on me at all. 

That this swampy land and water is so accessible adds invaluably to the appeal of the development - for me, anyway.

The buildings are done; if not by this client, other construction would rise on this site. We humans will want to live in pretty little palaces close to nature (or the "lite" version of nature that most of us crave). I feel some conflict. But I would not let the conservation area be lost for all the world; I enjoy it so. And I suppose that's always been the point of conservation - to highlight the treasures so we treasure them more, in hopes we leave the rest free.

Would it be compatible with human nature to just let it all be if we didn't already know firsthand the consequences of our darker inclinations toward greed and control and possession and subjugation? I don't know. Because the manifestation and consequences of all of those traits preceded all of us here today; I don't know that we could ever know if we could just BE and let be with what is around us. To some degree, our survival and progress depended on our not letting anything be, right?

But now that we know better, hopefully we will endeavor to do better.

International Women's Day 2024

Far, but not far enough. Yet.

Lena Horne Theater, venue of "Six."

On this day and celebration of women and spotlight on our progress, but also conversely on our traditional place and plight in the world, a throwback to images taken a few weeks ago, on the evening Sis and I saw "Six" - about the six wives of Henry VIII - during Broadway Week. Creative telling of the events of the reign from the queens' perspective, which, of course, is not how we learned it in school... herstory, rather than history. These six women who were political pawns, who were both passive and active participants in the most powerful courts of their time, whose value and power was both elevated and reduced by their ability to bear children who could and would be heirs to the throne held by a man.

Lena Horne Theater, venue of "Six."

And today, centuries later, we continue to wrestle with essentially that. Power struggles and wars instigated by men who use sex as a tool and weapon, with women as the involuntary subjugants, the children they bear and nurture as the collateral unto whom to perpetrate damage, still mere pawns too often.

Even as we begin to gain agency, so frequently that causes fear and insecurity among men, and a backlash is unleashed - the eggs and embryos that we carry overvalued when expedient, while our bodily autonomy and rights are discounted when convenient for others.

And as if collateralization and commodification of our and our children's personhoods weren't enough, heavily male-dominated governments politicize the availability of sustenance to boot - food and water as means to maintain control and dependence. Today, air-dropped pallets of food aid fell too fast under faulty parachutes and killed hungry people.

The Fantastic World of the Portuguese Sardine at Times Square.

An oft-used proverb is "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." 

The Fantastic World of the Portuguese Sardine at Times Square.

I suspect that if women were taught to fish, they would feed themselves and their own children, share with other women and their children, and likely with many men, too, for all their lives.

The Fantastic World of the Portuguese Sardine at Times Square.

 

 

Seen

One doesn't always realize an omission, until shown how things COULD look. And it's one thing to see a people as depicted by others, entirely different to see self-depictions and participation in art movements (that I previously assumed were limited to white artists).