"ASK THE QUESTIONS THAT HAVE NO ANSWERS. INVEST IN THE MILLENNIUM. PLANT SEQUOIAS. SAY THAT YOUR MAIN CROP IS THE FOREST THAT YOU DID NOT PLANT, THAT YOU WILL NOT LIVE TO HARVEST. SAY THAT THE LEAVES ARE HARVESTED WHEN THEY HAVE ROTTED INTO THE MOLD. CALL THAT PROFIT. PROPHESY SUCH RETURNS."
Sometimes, I just want to sit and listen to the carrion. Can we not expect the end of the world and still laugh? Still go to the field with our love and pledge allegiance to that which is around us in the moment. And not alliance to some far away idea, something created by others to stimulate a certain response in each of us.
Sometimes things feel so politicized. And yet, when I hear the carrion whisper, all that stuff becomes so small. So sterile. So ‘dead’.
We are literally surfing on a ball that is moving 67,000 miles per hour. We are barely hanging on as we whiz through the universe on some unknown journey.
Maybe we really are the biological substrate that will launch the hive-mind super computer. How does it feel to be human. Enjoy it now. It may not last much longer. Do you think the chimp went kicking and screaming into the evolutionary pressure chamber. Did he really want to leave the trees for an uber? Do we really want to leave the uber for a self-driving car guided by an app that thinks it knows where we want to go? Maybe. Just maybe.
Momentum is serious. And weve got it. Sometimes I just have to sit back and remind myself that if I dont hold on, I will peel off from this ball and float into space as the earth moves away from me at a ripping speed, hurtling into the great unknown. In the end, I want to see it all.
We are the newcomers to this stage. The trees know something and so does the carrion. What can I learn from roadkill? Maybe it starts with the confrontation of death. Maybe understanding death will revitalize the life of our zombie culture. Keep running from death and you may just die without ever living.
Here is the full poem in all its glroy. Thanks Wendell!
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
“Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” from The Country of Marriage, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1973.
