Aqua-cultures and consumptions

The floodgates amass

as soon as the idea is submerged

but only Long Enough, 
so you need to come up for air
The trickle-down becomes a stream-of-consciousness

“The World is a Flood 
Soon I will become One with the Mud”

Oddly as soon as I get lyrical about the basic compound of water, good ol' H-two-O, Biblical themes emerge. And it seems appropriate, as David Suzuki lambasted Shell Petroleum Executive V-P, water is not a resource for this misnomer conceals its sacredness like air, earth and fire. Rather water--which we use for oil/tar-sand tailing ponds, to wash our cars, and to make our stuff--is a source of life, a life-source.

To ackwardly quote a one-hit-wonder rock-band in my free verse is to draw attention to the ever-present flood motif.

Contrary to the loss of life and breadbasket terrain like currently ongoing in Northern Pakistan, floods speak to the archetypal yearning for starting over like the Torah's Noah's Ark (or more recently Margaret Atwood's bioengineering dystopia Oryx and Crake ).

While natural disasters shake up notions of fragility, human-induced climate change and skyrocketing settlement patterns speak to the inability of the biosphere to absorb carbon and short-sighted notions of sustainability. An unconsciousness of humanity's connection to the bio-sphere exacerbates cycles of flood/drought, landslide/earthquake, pestilence/disease. 

If there were a sardonic "punch line" regarding ecological illiteracy it would be:


we have no clue what are the outcomes 


This is no knock against the bio-sciences for it is their data that reinforces humility in the manner we interact, extract and dispose.  Nor for that matter do I hearken to romanticized notions of pre-industrial lifeways.  We need not only cross-disciplinary answers, but rather "two-eyed seeing"--integrating modes of knowledge from indigenous, traditional and bio-scientific sources.

Perhaps like how Deep Ecology suggests, the stakeholders are every “person” across lines of species (this is “pan-species person-hood” that Colin Scott coined in Naked Science).


In a concerted manner, I feel collectively we need the BP (big picture) spelled out simply without causing a disservice to interconnected complexity.  (Check out the other BP--British Petroleum, whose oil plume will stay in the Gulf for a generation.)

As an educator my concern is re-presenting various sources of information with co-learners. However as an organizer for civic responsibility I feel discussion and research barely breaks the surface.

In the following meditations called Eau [pronounced Oh, water in French]-me, H20 My  my focus is

to traverse with lowly droplets in their pathways through sentient beings and landscapes, production loops & flows, and spilling through consumers' hands. 

I argue in the following action/research posts that water needs to be re-conceptualized as one of the Earth's greatest luxuries and thereby respected.


Environmental justice is inseparable from the social: the manner we alter our aqua-cultures must be seeped in empowerment.


The following blog entries will 

1. articulate possibilities with classroom learners;
2. hyperlink to a variety of approaches, articles and actions ;
3. trace my stream of reflection and praxis

so to embody respect and understanding around water as a life-source.

Enjoy,

Monsieur B.