A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [65]
I have my poison; you have yours. Name it. Walk away from it. But it's terrifying. There are landmines. I can see them, having grown up with them. There is barbed wire. I do not like this concentration camp, but I believe the world is no different.
....
Having passed through trauma, we have a choice we must revisit for the rest of our lives: attempt to denormalize the trauma, or try to make the trauma feel normal. If the barriers are too frightening, the landmines too real, we can try to rationalize, to normalize what happened to us. This also helps rationalize what we're doing to others. This process of normalizing is central to the fabrication of claims to virtue. It is also central to the way Western science and religion manifest themselves.
Examples of this normalization are as near as todays paper. A local couple is on trial for animal abuse. After receiving complaints for a number of years, sheriffs raided their puppy mill. The officers found a dog with exposed bone where a fractured jaw had healed, several with protruding intestines, and several more with neck lacerations from constricting collars. There was one mother trying to feed nearly forty puppies. Thirty-five of the adult dogs had to be killed. The couples defense in court? They owned those dogs. They cited Psalms 8: "Thou madest him [man] to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passes through the paths of the seas." The emphasis—that beasts of the field are things—is in the original.
The judge evidently had no choice but to find them guilty of some of the charges. He then delivered an attack which the newspaper called blistering. He did not attack the defendants but instead "overzealous animal rights activists" who called for justice in the first place.
What do you do, how tired do you get, when each day you struggle against an entire culture based on the normalization of trauma-inducing behavior? There is no sanctuary.
Last winter, ice came in a rain that froze the instant it touched any solid surface. Then more rain, more ice, until the night shone, every blade of grass, every needle on every pine tree a prism for the moonlight that eventually poked through the clouds.
A crust covered the snow and an inch-thick sheath of ice dressed trees, wires, and rocks. Branches fell. Entire trees snapped under the weight, cracking like rifle reports in the deathly-still night. Cars couldn't negotiate the black-ice. Power failed all over town. When clouds returned, the night was as dark as dark can be, as night was before the dawn of our culture. Then the moon reemerged, its light refracting through the thousands of tiny spears.
It was cold. I sat near the fire until something—someone— called me outside. I felt the same urgency I'd felt the day I first looked out to see the coyote sneaking up. I knew this call was not from the coyotes, though I didn't know who it was.
I began to walk toward the mailbox, but my feet carried me in the opposite direction, into the forest. I was walking toward the coyote tree. I walked faster, each step making two sounds as first I broke through the ice, then packed the snow underneath. Doubled grasses swayed or snapped as I brushed against them, and trees were breaking, perhaps four to the minute, like a desultory firefight. I began to run.
I got to the coyote tree. The break was jagged and fresh, no ice. I kissed and stroked the wound, then put my arms around the standing trunk, pressing my face into its smooth coldness. I kissed it. I didn't know what else to do. Stroking the ice-covered bark, I said, "It will be all right. You'll be okay." I didn't know if this was true. I also said, "I love you."
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