Thursday, November 19, 2009

glass airplanes & jacaranda trees

oliver's brief elegy to a cape cod dump and weisman's paean to gaviotas in colombia tell stories of landscapes lost and found, and humanity's role, embraced or denied, in the complex and often redemptive processes of healing.

the waste land elegy is an ominously quiet portent of the effects of human overpopulation, every day more clearly a matter for nature, not engineering, to resolve.

the story of gaviotas' pines, on the other hand, extols simple human effort and generosity bringing to mind jean giono's tale of elzéard bouffier in the man who planted trees (l'homme qui plantait des arbres) and the far reaching effects that unselfish stewardship of earth's resources can still have.

we will always need such stories, and i'm glad to have these.

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