Bomb
Artists
Across the world, near the cradle of civilization, we are bombing
our enemies back to the Stone Age, creating a season of rubble.
But
the ground in this Northern California region is confettied with
red and yellow leaves. The dusk burns with trees. Bach plays on
the radio—"Jesus Joy of Man's Desiring." Having
passed through generations, our wish for transcendence floats
on the air.
Humans
have always been awed by the magnificence around us and paid homage
through the arts. Music like Bach's proves that we are capable,
at times, of feeling our connection to all that is.
Ironically,
scientists and philosophers suggest that it is a tension between
being and nothingness that holds atoms and solar systems together;
enables storms and birdsong; allows the ocean and the leaf and
the human to bear witness. All of creation asks Hamlet's question,
and, as creatures, we answer with unique patterns of existence.
Within the abiding whole is the requirement to separate from it,
to form a singular identity. It is natural law and a dilemma.
Obeying
the rule of identity, our cells are armed and barricaded, ready
to destroy anything on the other side of the bunker. The rule
reverberates in our lives and cultures. We define our differences
in detail, drawing boundaries everywhere and defending them.
I worry
that we are trapped inside this structure, stunted and doomed;
we’ve surrendered again to an art form practiced since the
first caveman raised a club against another, seeing him as separate.
Some humans were moved to dance by the arc of the jetliner mirrored
in the World Trade Center's wall. There were cheers in parts of
the globe at the spray of color and debris as it hit. Now, the
patterns dust and fire create on night's black canvas enthrall
newsmen and bombardiers, grandmothers and school children. And
somewhere, a Golom-minded biochemist smiles at red spirals of
bacteria swirling in his petri dish like galaxies, like paints
on a palette.
I've
heard that there are artists who paint images on the bombs we
are dropping in Afghanistan. I see them in my mind's eye applying
color. Someone told me that after the bombs explode, bits of shell
casings remain for the enlightenment of survivors, as they clear
away their dead.
While
we perfect the craft of destruction, what will happen to our capacity
for transformation?
In
his recent book, Genome, Matt Ridley discusses a gene technically
named TP53. It is also called the "Guardian Angel of the
Genome" because, without it, cells multiply endlessly, disregarding
their effect on the rest of the body and finally causing its demise.
TP53 seems to "...encode for the greater good..." by
inducing cells to stop before they go too far. The process is
called apoptosis, a word from the Greek expression for the fall
of autumn leaves. We all carry its wisdom within us.
On
these November streets, the trees are the color of flame, of agent
orange, of napalm. Their leaves fly like embers, fall to asphalt.
Walnuts and acorns lie among them, shell casings open, waiting.
Instead of death, they hold the coding for a new generation, and
the lessons learned by all those preceding it.
I want
to believe in the potential these represent, in a genome with
a guardian angel. I want to believe that Bach's music echoes a
code we are learning to follow; that bomb art is nowhere near
the best my species can do.
Jill
Singleton