5. Time to Buckle Down
8/15-16/07:
I get the word from Vaughn that we’re leaving in a week. She’s got to get back to her department chair duties. I’d better get out to the shed and try to make something of my thoughts, before I have to go into town to the muffler shop. All trips to town take a minimum of three hours.
I have this start on an idea: this water stuff connects directly to the American dream, the original one, the agrarian one. The family making a decent living on its own land, a respectable, self-reliant life close to the rhythms of nature. The rationale for the massive irrigation projects in the West was the proverbial 160-acre farm, sufficient to support a family, where supposedly the wretched slum dwellers of the East would be able to find a new life. Reisner quotes a Reclamation commissioner as saying, “We weren’t even supposed to give them 160 acres if they could make a living on less. And in warm states like California you could make a living on a lot less. We were talking about subsistence – nothing more.” (337) Whether or not the upshot was an irrigated utopia for the family farmer – it mostly wasn’t – the interesting point is that this dream successfully sold gargantuan water projects for decades. Regardless of the fact that those projects principally benefitted the likes of Standard Oil, Getty, Shell, Prudential, and the Southern Pacific Railroad.
John Stilgoe, in Outside Lies Magic, writes that the typical suburban yard is
. . . a miniature farm, a sort of living mausoleum of 1840’s-style farming. A fruit tree or two recalls the orchard. The patch of vegetable garden reminds everyone of great fields once planted to tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, potatoes. The backyard, usually more or less fenced, is vestigial pasture, roamed by the substitute livestock, a dog and a cat. And the front yard . . . recalls the meadow, the source of hay. (126-127)
In not-suburban Cambridge, Vaughn proved that Stilgoe was right by waging a domestic campaign to convince me we could keep chickens in our yard, whether it was allowed by the city or not (Vaughn wasn’t interested in finding out). I finally gave in, built a coop with no one’s permission, fenced off part of the yard, and we had a couple of hens living there, diligently scratching for bugs, denuding their area of plant life, and laying damn good eggs. Nearly everyone who saw the hens was charmed by them at once. The mailman brought them treats. Friends who heard about them wanted to come visit them. The only exceptions were people who got pecked by chickens as kids. Plenty of neighbors must have heard them squawk, but no one ever complained. Then the hens got killed by a raccoon – speaking of relationship with nature – but again, all this was more evidence of the persistence of the agrarian dream, among Americans who never lived it firsthand.
Back in grad school I read a book called I’ll Take My Stand, a wouldbe-manifesto from 1930 by a bunch of Southern writers who called themselves Agrarians, and was totally unimpressed by it. I couldn’t figure out why it was anything but proof that some people in 1930 were busy looking forward to the past. Now I’m beginning to think again. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan talks about “supermarket pastoral,” the prose surrounding the produce at Whole Foods. Family farm, in harmony with the land, free range, organic, sustainable . . . we all know the drill. It sells; we’re buying. Damned if it isn’t the agrarian dream alive and well.
In 1999, I was finally finishing a novel called For Adam, the most difficult one I ever wrote, after four years of work. When I got to the end I somehow landed on the word “artisanal” as a kind of justification for the effort, a rationale for the four years spent writing what turned out to be quite a short book. Now it seems to me that “artisanal” is just supermarket pastoral. “Artisanal” is sausage: stick that word on it and you can raise the price twenty percent. As soon as you think of an artisan, you think of an older, now lost (to us) way of life, a traditional way, a way that takes its time, a way that still respects the individual worker and the quality and individuality of that person’s work, a way that’s close to the earth, a way that still preserves all that our civilization does not. So eat this sausage, and the old way will be part of you, in you. It’s the Whole Foods Eucharist. If you’re a believing Christian, when you take communion, you eat the body and blood of Christ. Now the Kingdom of God is within you, in the most literal sense. You’re cleansed, you’re closer to the divine. Upscale boutique food offers you the same deal minus religion: for a price, you can eat the agrarian dream. You don’t have the time, or the skills, to do something close to the earth and time-consuming, but you do have time to eat this and then magically, if you’re a believer – and the mad success of Whole Foods says there are plenty of believers – after eating this you are the dream; the blessed life is within you; you’re cleansed of the sin of artificial urban life.
We’re nuts if we think this works. I remember what Worster said, paraphrasing Horkheimer: “The private interior is invaded by hucksters and planners. Material life alone flourishes . . .”
Inadvertently, I seem to have gotten somewhere on the question of man’s relationship to nature. We 21st century Americans, like Americans long before us (and probably plenty of people elsewhere), like to imagine that relationship in the form of a self-sustaining family farm. A farm isn’t exactly nature but it sure is a relationship to it. In a sense my “grotto” is the same idea: collaboration with the natural world. And that presumably is close enough to what Worster had in mind when he said we needed to “become a river-adaptive people.”
All of which, by the way, turns out to be totally different from the Sierra Club version of nature, which is wilderness. That’s nature as the Other with a capital O; the agrarian nature is the other-but-not that we work with hand in glove. My sympathies lie with the latter, but then, this is no surprise considering I writes novels about who loves who. I’m all about relationships where the self and the other try to become one – if that’s even possible for more than an instant . . . but we’re not going to go there, because this is not one of my novels.
So there are at least two natures: the Other-elsewhere, and the nature we live with (or wish we lived with) right here where we are. So if we remember to distinguish between the two, then maybe this project becomes more understandable?
It appears that in a sense, Worster and Reisner are saying we – at least those of us who inhabit large parts of the American West – live in a world beyond nature, after nature, that in engineering a vast, mind-boggling landscape to get water where it isn’t, we have created a simulated nature. What happens to the human spirit in a simulated nature? Something dries up. Hence the attraction of the supermarket pastoral. We know something’s wrong with this picture, but we don’t know how to get outside the frame. So we resort to magical solutions, e.g., the secular Eucharist.
And all the while, burning diesel and jet fuel to get the “sustainable” produce to our local market is almost certainly causing the climate to warm and making the need for that engineered water ever greater.
I ride my bike over to the other house to set a squirrel trap for my mother-in-law, because a squirrel (unwanted nature) keeps getting into her cottage. On the way I suddenly think wait a minute, this notion that we’ve gone beyond nature – doesn’t global warming disprove that? There’s an enormous amount left that we don’t understand; nature is capable of things we can’t control or anticipate. So what’s more like it is that we tried to go beyond nature and now we’re getting our comeuppance.
This means there are two different kinds of danger in the attempt to dominate nature totally. One is the danger that when we succeed too well in creating “the world of the administered life” (Horkheimer & Adorno), our spirit is in danger of desiccation. The other is the danger of the unintended, unanticipated (or just plain wilfully ignored) consequences of our not knowing what we’re doing when we mess around with nature. That creates physical, survival-type danger. We’re facing them both, I think. We’ve engineered our way out onto a limb that’s about to break under the weight of our numbers, and made ourselves spiritually poorer in the process.
Another distinction. It makes me feel I’m getting someplace. I’m at a fork in the road. Or to put it another way, I can imagine two big stacks of books I might read. One would be about all the ways we’ve messed up by not knowing what we’re doing in a technical, scientific way, or by ignoring what we did know and going full steam ahead, damn the consequences. This would be the very tall stack of books like the de Villiers one (Water: the fate of our most precious resource), and The World’s Water 2006-2007, and Cadillac Desert, and the collection of newspaper clippings. The books about water shortages, water wars, water politics, water economics, geology, hydrology. The other stack is perhaps not so tall, not so factual or scientific. This stack of books is about values, ultimate goals, the well-being or sickness of the human spirit – somehow connected to water. What’s on that pile? Those sound like the books I really want to read.
Well, Worster is there, for one, and that’s why Rivers of Empire is far and away the best thing I’ve read yet. There must be other books, basically ecological, in which history, science and contemplative thought converge.
I look again at the beginning of Worster’s book, the philosophical underpinnings, and certain words and phrases jump out at me.
“Water in the capitalist state has no intrinsic value, no integrity that must be respected. Water is no longer valued as a divinely appointed means for survival, for producing and reproducing human life, as it was in local subsistence communities. Nor is water an awe-inspiring, animistic ally in a quest for political empire, as it was in the agrarian states. It has now become a commodity . . . All mystery disappears from its depths, all gods depart, all contemplation of its flow ceases.” (52, emphasis added)
“ . . . the peculiarity of instrumental thought is that it destroys traditional religion and value, denigrates all genuine philosophy, recognizes no transcending purpose, and consequently leaves a deep void in our relationship with nature.” (54, emphasis added)
“In an age ruled by instrumentalism, nature ceases to have any value in itself. It is no longer seen as the handiwork of God to be admired more than used, nor is it an organic being we are bound to woo and respect.” (55, emphasis added)
“When a man clears a field of trees and plows it up for crops, he has not embarked on a career of technological domination, though he may have given the land a new appearance. Domination, as Horkheimer and Adorno used the term, is a repressive act that is total in intention. It springs from a hostility and an alienation that cannot tolerate the otherness of nature, that can see no worth there or respect any right to exist separate from humans.” (56, emphasis added)
There you go. This is the bird I want to watch. Nature having a right to exist separate from us. Water that is what it is, not what we make it, having its own integrity. Nature as an other with which we have a relationship of contemplation, awe, admiration, respect. Water harboring a mystery in its depths. As Worster said in his conclusion, “In a sense [a river] is a sacred being, something we have not created, and therefore worthy of our respect and understanding.” (331, emphasis added) The “therefore” is crucial: the fact that the river is not our creation, but rather its own or that of a Creator, is what makes it worthy of respect and understanding. Nature as Other and nature as our collaborator come together: we can only collaborate with nature by always remembering to respect its integrity and its intrinsic value. Even its sacred being. By engineering too much of the world, we suck out too much of its otherness and then we have nothing to be in a relationship with, nothing to respect and understand, because we’re facing our own creation. We find ourselves alone in a hall of mirrors. Either we’re so narcissistic that we like this, or we start suffering from loneliness, or worse, find ourselves standing on the brink of a void. Perhaps in such a case we are what is left of nature for each other, we humans must look to another of our own kind to be our newfound land. Which is what I’ve spent thirty years writing novels about, so maybe it connects after all.
This begins to sound like a point of view.
i really like the force of the last paragraph. Sweeps along. Builds and builds. Good job Pro. Pei. Not only a point of view. Something bigger. (And now–after reading the entries so far–I definitely know why Matthew is a philosopher. It seeps out of you Pro. Pei. Own it.)
One more thought:
Remember what Lou Gorman said:
“The sun will come up, the sun will go down. Let’s have lunch.”
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this “supermarket pastoral” — haven’t read The Omnivore’s Dilemma (maybe because I’m not an omnivore? most likely because I have hundreds of Victorian novels to read) or Barbara Kingsolver’s book (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral), but I’m very intrigued by this attempt to “go back” to agrarian life, after centuries (?) of making “advances” for producing more food with less human effort. But you can only afford, as you say, to buy into the illusion of going back if you have the money; most of the world has to live with eating chicken mcnuggets, genetically-engineered tomatoes, and processed food.
Also, on a different note, I find it intriguing that we haven’t been able, yet at least, to come up with a way to manufacture natural resources. Like, we can’t make water. Is someone trying to? Maybe this is seriously obvious, but it’s very interesting to me that we can’t make water.
A lot of the philosophy sounds suspiciously like Romanticism. Escape from the Prison of Time. Reject the City, find Nature. Nostalgia. “Messing around with Nature is Dangerous” — Baron Frankenstein. Also I would remind Pro. Pei that he grew up around a channeled, exploited, polluted and desecrated river — which nevertheless was capable of snapping back from time to time — called the Mississippi. But you know I really hate philosophy. I’m more taken with the homely image of Pro. Pei riding his bike.
Oh that Pro. Pei. He’s on his own little planet. What can you do with a guy like that? It’s no use reminding him of anything.
I am in total agreement with “bolter’s” comment concerning the last paragraph. In the copy of your narrative that I printed out, looking back on that section, I found that I had nearly completely underlined that last paragraph in blue ink. One issue (or spot of contention) I’d like to point out: it seems as though, at times, the concepts of water and Nature intertwine, mingle, then separate again. In your writing, are you thinking of these two concepts as synonymous–or something akin to the Christian trinity (separate but one)? When reading that last paragraph, I wrote a little piece of marginalia that essentially consisted of “separation?–NATURE (big heading)–water/Man (under big heading.” To me, it seems that Man and water are under the larger umbrella of Nature. Though both water and Man were created by Nature, the question arises “have we (Man) moved beyond (or split off from) our creation from Nature?” It would seem from a westernized, ideological standpoint, yes, we have. Staunch, stiff-colored pilgrims helped create the mindset that Nature and Man are separate entities. But, of course, ideologies themselves are formed by Man so that, too, is corrupted and narcissistic.
Okay, I’m getting away from my main point again (always getting side-tracked). Back to Man and water being created by Nature. I love the idea that both Man and water are separate entities formed by something bigger. And, that, in our very distinctiveness (but sameness by coming from the same “source”), there needs to be respect of the other’s independent creation. This notion reminds me of Martin Buber’s philosophy. The idea of the importance in fostering encounters with and engaging in a true connection with another thing (be it human, tree, cat, etc.). Great philosopher. My favorite.
Those last few sentences of your final paragraph. The concept of living in a “hall of mirrors.” Facing a life of being utterly alone within the walls of this overly constructed world of our own creation. Having nothing unique left to respect and connect to. Yes, yes, yes! What you describe here is the exact feeling I have when walking through the paved streets of a metropolis. Steel and brick buildings soaring above you, cutting out the blue of the sky and light of the sun. A cold, dark maze of our own making from which there seems to be no exit–seeing few friendly faces since we all seem to hurry forward (to where exactly?) without a smile or hello or pause to offer up our inner selves which all too often become just as boxed in and confined as the foot-long spaces between high-rises. (Of course, on the flipside, there is also the excitement and euphoria that goes along with being in a city made up of millions of people, in an intricately complicated but breathtaking place created by other humans. I just tend to get that sinking, overwhelmed feeling when trapped in such a place for too long—i.e. a month or more.)
I think connection and respect is where it is at. Connection with water and the natural world around us. May sound a little frou-frou (if that’s even a word), but I honestly believe that’s what we need to return to. Not only re-connecting–or offering up our own willingness to connect with another person–but connecting to Nature again
Julianne! Your involvement is so helpful — I need dialogue to help move this thing along. What you point out is indeed something I keep wondering about. Part of this process, from the beginning, has been an effort to figure out what I’m writing about. Step 1 was to realize that it’s impossible to get away with just saying “I’m going to write about water.” That took no time. Step 2 may still be underway. Worster’s book led me to think I’m writing about man’s relationship with nature, and I still think that, but exactly what role does water play in this? Today my answer is, I’m writing about man’s relationship with nature using water as, so to speak, the focusing device. I am almost arbitrarily making a ground rule that says I have to be in the vicinity of water, physically or conceptually, no matter what else I’m up to here. This gives me at least a faint hope of making the subject more manageable. The stated subject of this blog is definitely a narrow and specific focus: water flowing through the interstices in the humanly constructed world. That’s something a person can get a handle on. I think I’m using these wanderings around obscure local waterways as a way of grounding myself and providing some balance, a counterweight to the abstract thinking found in much of the Pro. Pei stuff. If it were all epistemology and ideology, all the time, I’d get lost in abstractions and end up nowhere.
I am trying to get beyond the notion that we humans can only corrupt nature. It seems to me environmental writing often rests on a simplistic assumption of Nature good/Man bad and we should keep our hands off it. But my sense of things, more and more, is that this is only one more way of asserting that we are separate and distinct and of a different kind from the entire world around us, which I see as a fundamental mistake. It’s just the flip side of the belief that we are here to dominate nature and carry out God’s grand plan. If we are not separate from, but rather part of, if there really is no such option as keeping our hands off nature because /that isn’t even possible/, then what? I don’t mean in terms of, let’s say, public policy — certainly not my forte — I mean what can we think of, imagine, if we start from that position of inextricable connection?
I am totally in sympathy with what you say about how “we all seem to hurry forward.” Our culture seems bent on creating greater and greater hurry. One of the things I hope to do in all this is to link up water with time, our relationship with time. In some way I haven’t even started to grasp.