Something I find especially annoying about the pace at which we are hastening to destroy ourselves is that things are just beginning to get SO interesting. For example, the fascinating tragic/comic irony of our rush to self-destruction and simultaneous surging self-awareness is quasi-contradictory grist for no end of stimulating churning in the gray matter.
At first glance I think it might seem reasonable to characterize self-destruction as bad and self-awareness as good. But it seems to me that self-awareness is not entirely rosy, and may even be a phenomenon that is, on balance, more dark than light. Specifically, I think self-centeredness, the prodigious malformed offspring of self-awareness, is the powerhouse driving our race to environmental and civilization collapse.
Along these lines I contend that the primary cause of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels like oil and natural gas. And global warming is the primary driver for the climate changes causing the devastation wrought by simultaneous monster hurricanes, life threatening heatwaves and unprecedented wild fires and flooding. At the same time the global markets, lots of politicians and millions of commuters enthusiastically await the resumption of the free passage of oil tankers through the Straight of Hormuz. I look at photos of the pre-hostilities armada of tankers transiting the Straight and think, “Are we out of our f***ing minds?” But then also I think, “No, we just like the way we live.” End of thought. And consequently, end of story.
I came across the tree pictured above in the median of a San Francisco boulevard. I liked the way the tree looked a lot and took a pic of it on my phone. I then thought of the tree often over the following eight weeks, considering how I might include it in a graphic. The image of an ouroboros serpent entwined in a figure eight around the tree became vivid in my thoughts.
As I worked on the tree and serpent a haiku-like verse I’d composed in early 2002 often crossed my mind.
deep gnarled roots entwine
what slumbers long forgotten
timeless in the earth
But it seemed to me that picturing whatever was slumbering would diminish its beauty. Rooting the tree in a star field then occurred to me. At that point I found myself interpreting the image that had emerged so far … something I try not to do … preferring to let the next “feels right” idea direct the composition.
The “self-destruction and simultaneous surging self-awareness” thoughts presented above pestered me. A blue sky with fluffy white clouds, which I’d briefly considered, came to feel grotesquely Pollyanna-ish. A foreboding sky felt right and I thought, “Life in the embrace of time, entering the twilight of eternal night.”