The Court of the Crimson King (Pt. 1)
Apr. 3rd, 2007 04:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greygirlbeastThe Final Cut. Children of Men. Global warming. Polar bears. My head goes round and round in these circles.
For the most part, Planet Earth seems to be keeping mentions of humanity's impact to a minimum, but the polar-bear sequences stand out in stark contrast, an exception to the rule. This appears to have resulted from the camera men encountering so many drowning and starving polar bears. As global warming leads to shorter Arctic winters, ever-thinner pack ice, and earlier spring thaws, polar bears are quickly losing ground. Some biologists think they may be extinct by the end of the century, these bears, the world's largest extant terrestrial carnivores. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) share a common ancestor with the brown bear (Ursus arctos spp.), from which they likely diverged in the Middle Pleistocene, becoming a distinct species over the last 100,000 years*. But humans can wipe them out in only two or three centuries.
It would be a mercy, I suppose, in a purely selfish psychological sense, to ascribe to a religion that gives humanity dominance over "lower" lifeforms, that draws a distinction between Homo sapiens sapiens and all other animals, that says there's Man and then there's dumb, soulless nature (lowercase), which was only placed here to provide for Man's needs until some God or gods come/return to give mankind His just reward.
Anyway, because, one way or another, everything is connected, the polar-bear sequences in the "Ice Worlds" episode of Planet Earth last night brought me back around to Children of Men, and that got me thinking about these lines from Pink Floyd's The Final Cut (1983):
A place to stay.
Enough to eat.
Somewhere old heroes shuffle safely down the street.
Where you can speak out loud
About your doubts and fears,
And what's more, no-one ever disappears,
You never hear their standard issue kicking in your door.
You can relax on both sides of the tracks,
And maniacs don't blow holes in bandsmen by remote control.
And everyone has recourse to the law,
And no-one kills the children anymore.
And no-one kills the children anymore.
— Pink Floyd
Today, I'm trying not to think about drowning polar bears, trying to wander elsewhere and elsewhen in my mind, trying to find a story for Sirenia Digest 17.
*Kurten, B. 1964. The evolution of the polar bear, Ursus maritimus (Phipps). Acta Zoologica Fennica 108:1-26.
For the most part, Planet Earth seems to be keeping mentions of humanity's impact to a minimum, but the polar-bear sequences stand out in stark contrast, an exception to the rule. This appears to have resulted from the camera men encountering so many drowning and starving polar bears. As global warming leads to shorter Arctic winters, ever-thinner pack ice, and earlier spring thaws, polar bears are quickly losing ground. Some biologists think they may be extinct by the end of the century, these bears, the world's largest extant terrestrial carnivores. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) share a common ancestor with the brown bear (Ursus arctos spp.), from which they likely diverged in the Middle Pleistocene, becoming a distinct species over the last 100,000 years*. But humans can wipe them out in only two or three centuries.
It would be a mercy, I suppose, in a purely selfish psychological sense, to ascribe to a religion that gives humanity dominance over "lower" lifeforms, that draws a distinction between Homo sapiens sapiens and all other animals, that says there's Man and then there's dumb, soulless nature (lowercase), which was only placed here to provide for Man's needs until some God or gods come/return to give mankind His just reward.
Anyway, because, one way or another, everything is connected, the polar-bear sequences in the "Ice Worlds" episode of Planet Earth last night brought me back around to Children of Men, and that got me thinking about these lines from Pink Floyd's The Final Cut (1983):
A place to stay.
Enough to eat.
Somewhere old heroes shuffle safely down the street.
Where you can speak out loud
About your doubts and fears,
And what's more, no-one ever disappears,
You never hear their standard issue kicking in your door.
You can relax on both sides of the tracks,
And maniacs don't blow holes in bandsmen by remote control.
And everyone has recourse to the law,
And no-one kills the children anymore.
And no-one kills the children anymore.
— Pink Floyd
Today, I'm trying not to think about drowning polar bears, trying to wander elsewhere and elsewhen in my mind, trying to find a story for Sirenia Digest 17.
*Kurten, B. 1964. The evolution of the polar bear, Ursus maritimus (Phipps). Acta Zoologica Fennica 108:1-26.
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Date: 2007-04-04 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-04 04:40 am (UTC)Honestly, I don't really have a take on the situation with the bees. I simply haven't had time to read much about the problem. However, there is a great Albert Einstein quote that applies:
"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
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Date: 2007-04-04 03:20 am (UTC)~Jacob
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Date: 2007-04-04 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-04 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-04 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-04 08:08 pm (UTC)~Jacob
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Date: 2007-04-04 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-04 04:26 pm (UTC)The mind can only take so much of this. I also avoid at times. There are times when it is simply unbearable to see. There is no need to be ashamed, unless one is also denying that these things are occurring.
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Date: 2007-04-04 09:33 am (UTC)(Nice link between Children of Man and PF, it would have been a great soundtrack)
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Date: 2007-04-04 10:42 am (UTC)I finished reading the latest Sirenia Digest a couple nights ago, by the way. I loved the sort of disconnected quality of "In View of Nothing", the hazy but somehow natural mingling of danger and sensual comfort. It had the sort of dense, multi-tentacled appeal that distinguishes short fiction from longer fiction--the scarcity of the images with the protagonists struggle to make meaning from is interesting and illuminates the images for a nice aesthetic arrangement. It's also a nice spy story--it sort of reminded me of a still life from a James Bond movie, maybe mixed a little with Amelie (the scrapbook of photos reminded me of that movie).
"Untitled 26" reminded me of the Anne Sexton line you mention now and then--"Need is not quite belief." Your work at times reflects that sentiment as a component of atmosphere, but I think this is the closest I've seen one of your stories get to being a concerted argument for the idea. It occurred to me while reading it that there's something truly alien about faith--it's rarely something that readers seem to identify with, yet we're expected to recognise it as a viable option. Good story.
I also finished Daughter of Hounds recently--I posted my thoughts about it on my live journal.
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Date: 2007-04-04 04:37 pm (UTC)I reed your comments. Thank you very much. I'm very pleased that you enjoyed the book so much. I agree that it's the most fun to read. Really, it's the only one that I willingly go back to.
"Untitled 26" reminded me of the Anne Sexton line you mention now and then--"Need is not quite belief." Your work at times reflects that sentiment as a component of atmosphere, but I think this is the closest I've seen one of your stories get to being a concerted argument for the idea. It occurred to me while reading it that there's something truly alien about faith--it's rarely something that readers seem to identify with, yet we're expected to recognise it as a viable option. Good story.
That's interesting, the Sexton thing.
it sort of reminded me of a still life from a James Bond movie, maybe mixed a little with Amelie (the scrapbook of photos reminded me of that movie).
Nice. :-)