Composing a worthwhile Earth Day post takes more energy than I have today, so instead I’ll link to Jeremy’s Earth post at Struggle Forever! It articulates a thought I often feel on this day (surrounded as I get by students eager to maternalize the planet) but in a way that resonates with the weirdness of the last week, with its bombs, explosions, and highly mediated manhunts.
A few snippets:
The Earth is not your mother . . . S/h/it is a monstrous assemblage . . . Earth Day is a dark holiday. It is a reminder, not of the beauty of nature or the miracle of life, but of the horrors that we have wrought upon the rocky surface of this planet . . .
And the picture says a great deal:
(That sun seems so close, yet so far away, so… cold.)
Read the whole piece here.
[And somehow laterally related:] For a glimpse into one kind of weird darkness circulating within last week’s messiness, see Charles Cameron’s series of analytical posts at zenpundit, beginning with this one on the “end times videos” liked by Tamerlan Tsarnaev. End times beliefs are a dime a dozen — I have my favorites among them — but the ones circulating at the outer edges of the monotheistic solar/belief system can be among the more deadly kinds, and anything that helps understand their allure is useful.
