I am reading Wendell Berry stories
again,
still,
today.
And notice
over these past several weeks
he unfolds two bipolar themes.
Berry is,
was,
a cooperative Southern neighborhood farmer
of organic hospitality.
His protagonists grow on multigenerational farms
as Berry grows into writing while farming,
thereby farming readers
co-investing in cooperative
organic
ego-feeding
ecosystems.
But Berry’s NegativEnergy tension
emerges against nationalistic
anti-productive family
automated military ballistics
reaping death harvests.
All forms of death
are terror
in and outside Berry’s local farm community,
Yet death’s most absurd forms
are international and civil wars,
tariff warts and tumors
against short-handed family farmers.
As any farmer
worth her compost
knows,
Everyone losing opportunity for organic life
risks isolating
marginalizing
competing
de-commodifying death.
Similarly,
I hear an NPR commentator
this evening
remind us
Everyone loses empowering trade
in declaring wars.
Whether firing retributive ballistics
or tariffs
or both,
bleeding death and threat thereof
are the opposite of cooperatively farming
and feeding health
together.
Wars are LoseLose Games
unto violent absurdity
while cooperative farming,
planting and harvesting,
culling and replanting,
seed sharing and mutual cooperative composting,
multigenerationally,
is WinWin traditional healthy economics
and family politics,
secular democratic trust
and sacred faith
in PositivEnergy ZeroZone communities.
Similarly,
I hear another NPR commentator say,
of an iconic Jazz Master,
whose primary instrument
exploring high and low extremities
of piano-fortes:
He performed cooperative jazz
THE Right Way.
This seems to smirch the Master’s reputation.
Music performed THE Right Orthodox Way
is not jazz,
without capital-hoarding over-investments.
Jazz is not ballistically force-fed at people
Music sharing is about cooperative RightBrain planting
and harvesting invitations into resonant life.
Jazz performance
at its organic ensemble creolizing best
is about several right and left farming ways
inviting us to muse with
our right sharing amusing ways.
THE Right Ways
are about competitive performance wars–
who gets the biggest and baddest button
spotlight,
and not at all about jazz forms
of cooperative improvisational farming,
Recomposing stories
about healthy forest
and ocean
and breath
and light major 7th
and dualdark minor diminished
octave sharing.
I was dreaming Wendell Berry poetry
again resonant,
today.
gdill52 