Nature confuses me. And then the way that people talk about Nature confuses me even more. People say: “Nature is good. Let’s get back to a state of Nature.” — OK, I understand the attractiveness of a quiet meadow, or a landscape of green trees; also flowers are pretty. But an alligator is just as natural as a lamb. In fact, is there anything in the world that cannot be called a part of Nature? Even synthetic toxins are natural, and the scientist who concocted them is natural. The most diabolical compounds are arrived at by natural means. There is no way to “defy nature”. If something were unnatural, it simply wouldn’t exist.
So Nature is the class of “all that is”, both the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly — palm trees are natural; computers are natural. Now I’m all for judging, parsing, changing, and framing one’s favorites; so I’m totally in sympathy with the person who wants a way to reference exclusively healthy, pristine, innocent things — my only point is that people who employ the word Nature for this communicative labor are being lazily unclear: “Plastic is clogging our oceans, and Nature is getting angry, therefore beware, O ye polluters, for Nature will take her revenge.” — If we say this, we’re conveniently forgetting that plastic is natural, and that polluters are not something outside of or aside from Nature; they’re yet another aspect of Nature — so if Nature wreaks vengeance upon polluters, it is Nature versus Nature. To see how this would be “good”, I liken it to trimming diseased leaves from a plant: if a plant could grasp the shears and do this itself, then it might say “I value health over sickness, and, even tho both are within me, my artistic inclination is to increase the former and eliminate the latter.” The plant is judging itself, in accord with its vision for a superior future.
I am all for vision and will and desire and the impulse to change or edit, when these things are in alignment with general harmony. If a revisionary action injures no one, while it improves life for certain keen beings, I will label it anything from permissible to praiseworthy. But if you’re in a laboratory attempting to manipulate viruses so that they become more deadly and contagious, I judge your action to be bad, because you’re expending creative energy to mar the general harmony. Go do something else: If you enjoy sporting a safety-suit, maybe labor to clean up radioactive leakage at a poorly made power plant. Or just retire early and take up the hobby of canoeing.
Perhaps, one day, when you’re floating there in your canoe, admiring the way that the light breeze causes the sunrays to glitter over the surface of the water, your attention will be drawn to the reflection of a fawn that has emerged from the nearby forest. While gesturing to this creature to enter the sea and draw nigh, you might stand up in your canoe and shout “I’ll meet you halfway”; then plunge into the deep and swim forth about twenty meters, where the fawn will be treading water and waiting for you. The two of you might discover that you have much in common: you’re both beasts who harbor a preference for leafy green salads topped with ranch dressing and croutons. You both favor the color orange, when shopping for outfits to wear during the hunting season. You both dislike living too close to rude neighbors. You both believe that subatomic particles possess neither hue nor scent, but that they do share the personality and hairstyle of whatever organism they find themselves serving as senators of.
You teach the fawn how to drive a schoolbus. The two of you travel around the desert, looking for passengers. Whenever you find children waiting, you stop and open the door just a crack — not wide enough for the kids to enter — and the fawn apologizes while explaining the situation, saying: “Sorry, but we’re only allowing full-grown adult humans to ride with us, because my friend and I tire of always having to consider whether the conversation and activities that transpire on our adventures are appropriate for children.” And the kids reply: “But you are driving a big yellow bus — it’s the same type of vehicle that normally picks us up and brings us to school.” — “Sorry,” the fawn repeats, while closing the door upon their sad, confused faces. (At this point, I myself descend from above and join you on the bus, because I like where this is going.) Then, we find various adults at different locations in the desert, and we welcome them aboard. They are mostly women, and they are all either paralegals, social workers, or comedy writers. The few males that enlist to accompany us are from the latter category exclusively, and they are sensitive and gentle; so we do not jettison them. We then begin to play music in the bus (some of the women brought instruments, and we all sing along), while we travel to the icier regions of the earth. The fawn prefers to drive on slippery roads. Adult beverages are served, as well as trays of choice meats and cheeses.
The fawn visits all the earth’s jungles at once. “Stop killing the trees,” the fawn yells out of the window at the multitudes of lumberjacks. (He is not angry but assertive — the fawn must speak loudly in order to be heard over the roar of all the motorized wood-chopping equipment.) The leader of the lumberjacks answers: “I didn’t catch what you said — these spinning blades that we employ to cut down all the trees of this world are noisy. Could you repeat yourself?” — “I said,” shouts the fawn, “please stop wasting wood. Instead of using paper napkins or disposable tissues to dry my highball glass, a regular dish-towel works just as well. Plus a towel can be washed and reused zillions of times.” — “Well, we appreciate your advice, Senhor,” says the leader of the lumberjacks; “I can tell that you’re just trying to help our business grow. But, before you condemn us as immoral, you should know that the trees we’re slaughtering here are used solely to make poetic books.” The fawn then replies: “Ah, I see. Pardon the interruption, then. Would you care for a cocktail?” And the leader of the lumberjacks smiles and nods deeply, as he accepts the highball glass from the hoof of the fawn. “This is a potent mix!” the man exclaims after swallowing the entire contents in one gulp. Then, after distributing drinks to the rest of the logging crew, we wave goodbye and speed away.
“I can’t believe how well this schoolbus handles on these ice-bridges,” says the fawn, as we continue in the direction of Hyperborea. “I keep thinking that I’ll lose control and plunge us over the side, but, miraculously, I don’t.”
“I built these bridges long ago, when the global temperature was much cooler,” I explain to the fawn. “I’m surprised that they haven’t all melted by now. They’re extremely brittle.”
“Yes, the ice comprising them is pretty thin,” says the fawn. “I’m glad that there’s nothing but ocean beneath us, so that, if we do fall thru, we’ll simply land in the water.”
“Yeah, but, it’ll be hard to evacuate all the passengers from the bus, if that happens,” I sigh. “We might all drown.”
“Even you and I?” asks the fawn, turning his snout away from the road to make eye-contact with me while our vehicle veers toward the side of the bridge, causing the oncoming traffic to swerve in either direction and plummet oceanward.
“Even you and I,” I answer somberly.
The fawn stares at the floor of the bus for a while, deep in thought; then he looks back out the windshield and corrects our course, just as the left-front tire was about to go offroad. Now, while steering with one foreleg, the fawn grabs the intercom microphone with his free hoof and asks our passengers: “Does everyone like Mexican food?”
A great cheer goes up from our fellow-travelers.
“I’m going to stop at the next Mexican restaurant that we come to,” says the fawn.
So after passing a couple of Chinese restaurants and an American Italian restaurant, the fawn parallel-parks our bus between two Russian army tanks outside of a building that has a giant taco for a sign.
We all sit at a very large round table and enjoy sharing “The Rosebud Special”, which is a party-sized order of nacho chips with melted cheese and sundry toppings, all of which is served NOT on a dish or in a basket but rather atop a childhood sled — and there is flavored snow underneath.
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