Dark Mountain

My poem "Remainders" is in the fourth volume of Dark Mountain, which is now out. I have not held a copy in my hands yet, but if past issues are to go by it is likely to be very handsomely printed. I mentioned a bit ago that it's going to look like I've suddenly been very productive as a writer, but this is an illusion created by staggered publication delays. In this case, the poem is almost exactly 6 years old. (I procrastinate, you know?) It's the poem that includes the lines "Ciro has asked for my right index finger / to keep in a reliquary like old saints' bones".

The Dark Mountain project and I are somewhat strange bedfellows, in that our philosophies are intersecting but askew. The areas where we agree could be summarized: Technology has profoundly reshaped the environment around us, in ways that place us in some danger. We should be aware of these dangers and remember that the technology is superimposed on top of the biological environment, which will sometimes resist technology or be destroyed inadvertently by technology. These interactions are complex and difficult to predict. It can all feel ominous. Best for everyone if at least some of us make a point of observing what is instead of what is advertised to us, so we can respond to the reality of the present instead of past predictions of the future.

However, this is where we split, because at this point (assuming I understand their manifesto), they get a bit "the present is dystopian, and we should look to pre-technological solutions." Whereas I feel the present which is neither dystopian or utopian, but real, and I see neither technology nor rejection of technology as inherently util or inherently dangerous. More often, I see that technology amplifies human nature - both the good and bad sides. And I see that the ability to reject technology is something of a luxury of the wealthy, akin to buying one's own island, and that technology is a significant avenue of feminist progress.

But then we align again in thinking that for practical reasons, it's good to have a group of people devoted to remembering older technologies. In their case, it may come from a belief in an imminent technological collapse (and there are periodic small technological collapses, such as power outages), and in my case from the similar but not identical recognition that you don't always want to bring in a hydraulic lift, and sometimes can't, and in these cases it's nice to remember that winches can be set up.

And on down the line: I like to know how meat gets to the supermarket in an industrialized system not so much because of Fast Food Nation, but because of Richard Scarry books and the general sense that everyone should disassemble a clock at least once. After all, how are you going to invent things without knowing about the things we currently use, and how it is we decided on those things? What other decisions have we made based on them? Where does the money go? Essentially, even if one isn't a historian or scientist, one must know enough history and science to recognize marketing, and the times when we are being sold something impossible, or more often something we already have at a different price. Infrastructure is a good place to start.

So: Strange bedfellows, but at least on the same floor of the apartment building, and friendly about loaning cups of sugar.

Not that "Remainders" touches on these things in a large sense. It is about funerary practices over a timespan of thousands of years.