Environ Mental

“Logic and Sermons never Convince.”
(W. Whitman)

The 2 Environments:

Polar bears & light bulbs on one hand.
Frames of mind & attitude on the other.

Energy concerns of the one hand.
In-formation (if not trans) on the
other.

The first chapter of Walden is called
ECONOMY. The title at least is
relevant for these “turbulent
troubling times.”

“Law of the house.”
L ecos (Gk oikos)
is what the word
means. Home economics;
Ecology: same deal. All
about house keeping.
Outside and in.

Henry spent a couple years being
economical, doing better, maybe,
than the mass of men leading
lives of quiet desperation.

He and Donald Trump.

Both environmentalists: living in
accord with their environment.
Don’t have to be in the woods, true?

Might be living in tune with the WWC
environment and that would make me
an environmentalist and economist.

Might even strive to live
“environmentally” at HOME
in my own house. That would
make me a miracle worker and
liberal artist—know what I’m
saying?

It’s not easy being green..

What if I don’t like the environment
I’m living in? Run away to climb
Pike’s Peak? Off to India to wash
in the Ganges? Find a better
environment for my environ
mentalism?

Is it a matter of fields and forests?
Clean air and green cars? Organic
local food and free range chickens?
Smoke-free restaurants? Bicycle
lanes to Asheville? What are the
prerequisites for my environ
mentality—so I can be an
environmentalist?

Education on the one hand.
Edification on the other.
Individual genius on the one hand.
Collaborative on the other.

Hazel says we don't know how to think.
Years ago a student on a task force studying
our ways & means of education educating
told us: ”Your job is to teach us how to think.”

So I asked my classes:
“Who here don't know how and
wants to learn? Raise your hand.
No, seriously: raise your hand:
this is “school mode: it’s ok.,”

Thought I’d try to teach my
own self. It’s made me an idiot,
my internal environmental
studies: blind man in the valley
of the perceptive & mindful.

Slow learner: playing cerebral
ping pong covering both sides
of the table. Solitary dialectic.
No Bob Eckstein to bounce
notions off walls or Dong Ping
& his pen holding paddling
ways & disorientation tactics.

“On the one hand,”
I tell myself—
“but on the other,”
I butt in.

Self educating auto-didactic beep beep:
doubt doubling doubtfully, sealed-in &
solipsistic unilateral onanism so to speak
in a manner of squeaking as it were.