I am Angry

I arrive in the country to write and I am angry. Blackbirds have taken over my bird feeders. Gone are the chickadees, cardinals and finches.

I was here last week to be inspired, to plant things and write. And yes, I found myself angry. I was awakened from sleep one night by a raccoon attacking a cat, a cat that is not mine that someone dropped off I suspect. That people treat their pets like property makes me angry. One neighbor says she's fed it while another saw it hanging around my house. The raccoon like the blackbirds devours the bird seed. He or she takes down the feeders. oftentimes dragging parts about the yard. This makes me angry.

I am angry. The land just above the spring where I've recently starting getting drinking water has been cleared. A few token trees are left standing. Homes will be built I suspect where once stood neighboring trees now felled and hauled away. Not only are the trees, homes to animals, lost but now I am concerned as to toxins in the spring water. The timing of this is ironic since just the day prior the Tennessean carried an article relating the political back and forth as to water quality issues in the state. A Republican candidate for governor complains there are too many restrictions and too much red tape while the the State environmental department and local environmental council provide statistics to support their work.

I am angry. I want to tell Mr. Ramsey and all the folks who complain of government red tape that if people did the right thing there would be no need for tape of any color or over site. If people realized our interrelatedness with nature there would less dishonesty, less cutting corners. And yes, the building might still occur above the spring but the builders would honor and protect the spring. If they had to cut trees,they would ask permission and forgiveness for taking a life. I'm making assumptions the easy way is being taken in this development since it's in the middle of Nowhere. But Nowhere is somewhere to me and for now I do not take the easy way. I do not turn a blind eye. I place a call, leave a message and await word as to whether proper safety mechanisms have been put in place to protect this water from which I and others drink.

I am angry. I have had a headache all week from the yellow coating of pollen covering everything. The fact that I have not written in a long time does not help this matter and that is not the pollens fault. The so-called Good News Muse is in a stew, a stew of her and life's making.

I walk around my yard, stomping within but no one would ever know. I am "nice."

The God with whom I grew up never got angry except of course to send people to hell. And that really wasn't' attributed to his anger that was an individuals fault. I could never understand what happened to all those born thousands and thousands of years ago long, long before Jesus. Did they get a free pass to heaven or "Do not pass go. Go straight to hell" card?

The Creator I consider today has to get angry. When She/He/It who created Earth or set in motion this chain of events that birthed this beautiful world looks at what we have done thus far to Eden I've no doubt He stomps around heaven and butts his head against heaven's walls while shouting, "What in my name was I thinking???"

We have been gifted with such natural beauty and what do we do? We concretize and asphalt over it with continued new skyscrapers, entertainment complexes, malls and condos so developers can make money, money, money. We drain Earth, dig in it and use it for materials, power and resources to build our homes and run all our stuff. Like a good mother, Earth has given and given to us for eons and what do we do, what do we give it in return? We give Earth our trash, our junk goes to landfills and is dumped in oceans, our co2 goes to the air and our toxins and chemicals to Earth's streams, oceans and rivers.

I can't imagine a God or Being that would create this beauty not being a little more than pissed and pissed a lot lately.

God has to be really angry when he sees trophy hunters placing the hides and heads of his endangered animals on the walls of their homes and hunting lodges. They weren't endangered when he created them. They are endangered because of mankind. God has to be angry as he overhears corporate conversations related to the continued destroying of the rainforest, the raping of Appalachia's mountain tops and the siphoning of minerals and metals from the Hopi and Navajo lands out west. But we go about our lives, building and buying our stuff not connecting the dots since Appalachia, the Hopi Mesa's, the rainforest, they are all so far away.

We should be the endangered species.

Then as I sit writing, trying to empty all the thoughts crowding my headachey mind, I glimpse a bat flitting through the dusk sky. He or she swoops and darts. I smile. To my left, a fox trots through the neighbor's yard. Its little silhouette, reminds me of natures dogs, the one's untamed, not called man's best friend. (Speaking of angry, man's best friend should be angry over how he's treated, but that's another story.) This little fox is my friend. As for the birds, they may not be in my yard but they sing in the night from a neighbor's yard as a goose calls overhead. A tear comes to my eye. I am angry and I am disappointed. It is disappointing to see people miss Nature's beauty. I am disappointed when anger clouds my vision and I miss Nature's beauty.

Then I realize as God's stomping around on heaven's floors, She/He sees a couple stop to really appreciate the sunset. They smile. God smiles. He notices the sparkle in a child's eye as she is first inspired to write a poem about Nature. God smiles. He happens to hear of the Middle TN man giving away thousands of tree seedlings in honor of his father. He sees the man who helps heal a wounded animal instead of hunt one and a tear comes to God's eye.

Maybe we've not gotten it so wrong after all. As long as one person, one child, one man, one woman opens his or her heart to Nature, hope and possibility survive.

My head has stopped hurting. I smile.

-Dawn! The Sometimes Angry Good News Muse 04/16/10