The Future of Sharks = The Future of Our Oceans = The Future of Us

Watson and the Shark by J.S. Copley 

The stigma of sharks has been with me since I can remember, having my first memories only a driveway away from the Atlantic coast. I lived under the shadow of Martha's Vineyard and Spielberg's Jaws. The above painting shows the old, now antiquated, adage that sharks are killers and need to be killed. As shown in my previous post (Reflection on "Save the Humans" lecture by Rob Stewart), sharks are not killers, and indeed their threatened survival on Earth due to illegal shark fin harvesting is as crucial an issue as climate change in the continued survival of the human species.

Read my story of activism for a shark fin free world on Media Co-op

Also see related groups Shark Fin Free Calgary & WildAid

________

Innumerable anemones, dim at the ocean floor, float and dance in the scintillating deep, a whirlwind of ocean currents spinning tendrils in the wondrous underworld of subconscious, inner space. The beauty of the sea is a palpable silence, a prenatal yearning within the sky’s reflective murder of inanimate light, into the shattered eye of a submerged mountain of a seemingly infinite myriad of species, blooming in the breathable space of instinctual lowering.

Samudramantham (Churning of the Ocean of Milk) by Anonymous 

The eye craves the strength of mammalian fear in the world beyond worlds. Octopi, shark and jellyfish sweep the wobbling invertebrate mind with a bodiless air of unlit terror. A shark darts and flees past in a show of wise defense, and the octopi bleed ink in a haze of warring tests far enough to provoke the mirage-lust end of human sight, and jellyfish, unnervingly absent as the mind’s eye sleeps in a soporific atrophy of inhuman might.

Still Life with Flowers, Shells, a Shark's Head, and Petrifications by Antoine Berjon

Memory entangles my feet with the concrete ingenuity of familial presence. At the opposite stance from my underwater lung, I breathe the damp air of a midsummer day’s stretch aside my grandfather’s elder chair. His sitting comforts me into a warm bottom, a deathless life of generative following, to stare back into the eyes of immortal sight, the human heights of belonging, and I am content, a mind at rest, awake, conscious, and filled with reverberating speech. 

_________

A dripping hunger instills those following to go beyond sleep and be
       In conscious wonderment, in the living dance
Dream today in a new and timeless breath,
       To stave off the mindless, parasitic asp
Climbing inside mind through dreamless eye-shutters
       Blocked by old-fashioned stone, brick and wooden carved hands

Holding my dancer, lover and beauty
      To the song of my dreams
Woman of my life
      Who holds no passion in sleep, and dreams awake
...
On the pedestal of a forlorn warning
      That no shore is safe in this dreamless state without dance,
Yet to sing and become a new dance and dream anew
      Before naked freedom announces song’s ending

excerpt "Impassioned Road to Being"

The Achuar Remind Us Not All Dreams Are Visions

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak directly with a Oscar Gutierrez and Jiyukama Irar Milk (the actual narrator of the video linked, not the name incorrectly attributed in the film) about dream interpretation in the Amazon. They told me that all the indigenous people of the Amazon interpret dreams regularly, however, there are two different kinds of dream. The first is the common dream, the second is the vision. Dream are important as they may carry a vision. The dream vision is prophetic and speaks of what will occur. Such a dream is a message from without, while the common dream is simply an internal component of one's personality. 

We also spoke on many other subjects including the use of Ayahuasca, which is a fundamental tradition in Achuar territory. In the old days, the use of Ayahuasca was preceded by three months of fasting (restricted diet), no sexual relations or any negative thoughts, and followed by the same. Nowadays, it is often a simple drink. This is another facet of disrespect for the Achuar and Amazonian culture. We are quickly drinking the sacred fluid of our Mother without thought to vision. 

Oscar, who quickly spoke to me as a good friend, told me that in life we have different food, we have the food we take as an infant, as an adolescent as an adult and as an elder. Just as in life, our spiritual food changes throughout life. I think this is mirrored in society. We need to move on from the food of fossil fuels to a new source of sustenance. 

Hear the Achuar speaking to Calgary in a full presentation VISIT MEDIA CO-OP

__________

With my stepsister and cousins, we traverse a riverine flood. The rich jungle environment encases us in a dense canopy. The sky is revealed through a slim corridor directly above. The river craft glides easily through a welcoming glade. As the river opens up, a mass of white fog blows with violent extremes into our unprotected bow. We careen at the edge of the river, where spindly trees and submerged bushes angle us awkwardly over the final brink of this newfound overflowing mass of storm-drowned winds. The impenetrable beyond, throws us sideways, with escalating velocity as we hold on to a mass of ant-festered branches. Others wildly match our weight on the other side in a chaos of organized adrenaline, concentrated at the core of our one human-bound vessel against the raw throat of nature, howling with supernatural emotion. The sight of the open river, where three massive tributaries open into the glory of the Amazon is a wicked sight to behold on this late morning of disastrous weather, an impasse into the lone being of nature, an uninvited resting place for her untamable heart, calling for the incendiary flood of the world to cry with her. We finally reach out beyond the swamplands. My sister exits from the boat first, muddy and soaked, yet unscathed. We find rest in the scintillating folds of a day passed under the thumb of her gorgeous rage. 

__________

Step-sister

"To dream of a step-sister, denotes you will have unavoidable care and annoyance upon you."

__________

This night, this life,
I have too many things.

In this society, that brings the free to seek
again
the wizardry of greed and foul upbringings of nameless increase.

Our lands, that strove for a scintillating hate
against the enemies of needless suffering.

Believing the want and designed haunts
of spells
of advertised gore.

Shaven religion
perfectly watching

Into the embittered ear
the strange gods of money.

Bastards from wars of holy judgment,
burning at the feet of a character flaw,
bleeding profusely from a nail

Shot, bridges hollow in the tooth of a filthy savior
trapped with anger and speed.

The rats of knives speak in the trunks of battered forests
flee into the naked feeding,
avenues of the poor
treating the flies to an ambush of praise
in the flat, rusted movie of dead order

Morbidity, for a war that drew earth into a mild farce
for the wicked and insane

- excerpt from "Of Sex and Intellect"

Dogmatic Mysteries from the French Poetics of Jules Huret

The Revolt in Cairo, detail by Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson

"To name an object is to take three-quarters from the enjoyment of the poem, which consists in the happiness of guessing little by little; to suggest, that is the dream."

This quote is taken from Chapter 10 of Leo Tolstoy's book, "What is Art?" wherein he bluntly critiques such French poetics of romantic obscurity. I highly recommend everyone read this book.

For some thoughts on art and money on related subjects read my article!