Who are our influencers?

The image shows a bonsai tree, shaped by human hands, contained in a pot. Is nature then, just a plaything designed to amuse us?

I’d like to share a poem I wrote last year that won a small prize in a competition. It’s called About Nature” (The first two lines I have used in my website wheel logo:)

(About a Chinese fishing village reclaimed by nature)

The last remaining human

A poet, defiant in isolation

Watched Nature’s inexorable descent

Shroud the village in wanton entropy.

Watched through one window intractable

The slow ivy crawl

Swallow buildings in monochrome green carpet.

At night, plastic tides lap and comfort him

The fish, they have abandoned him

Light, his only companion, returns as promised to blot away darkness

That lurks in grand palaces, little red books and ignorance.

The poet, now in a dusty cell, behind bars

For telling the truth

About Nature.

Source: irishmirror

      The story is about the last remaining person living in an abandoned fishing village that is slowly returning to nature. The ivy, moss, and creeping vines are swallowing the buildings. Left alone, this will happen everywhere if humans disappeared.

       I’ve read two books lately that deal with nature disappearing, by human intervention and habitat loss. The first book by the Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, tells the story of an interior designer woman named Anna who experiences parts of her body disappearing—fingers, hands, knees. Then her reclusive son disappears, piece by piece. What Flanagan is showing, via human loss, is the loss of species in nature, caused by us.  It’s very thought provoking.

      The second book I’m reading is called Bewilderment by the American author Richard Powers. It tells the story through the eyes of his nine-year-old autistic son. He sees and feels deeply the loss of wildlife and  protests by painting the endangered species. It’s also a fascinating book.

Other authors who have deeply affected me and shaped my novel have been Robert M. Pirsig: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Anthony Doerr: All the Light we Cannot See, and Andy Weir: The Martian.  (I’m currently reading his follow-up novel called Project Hail Mary which I will review next time)

    

Barack Obama once said: “The reason I’m running for president is because I can’t be Bruce Springsteen.” (2008 US Presidential campaign). In an article for the Good Weekend in 2020, journalist David Leser quoted Bruce Springsteen: “On good days, a blessing falls over you. It wraps its arms around you and you’re free and deeply in—and of—this world. That’s your reward. Being here.”

     Bruce Springsteen: a powerful influencer through music and words.

      I started this website and posts because I wanted to share my ideas and make a mark before I go. How many of us have family and friends who vanish from our lives and don’t leave their mark? My dad left his mark, a very visible one. Left for work one day and never came home. Died on the job. What mark did he leave? Every time I drive across the Hawkesbury River at Mooney Mooney and look east to the railway bridge, I can say My Dad built that. He built stuff: bridges, tunnels, left his legacy.  His way of connecting people together.

    

  I try and connect people with my writing, because isn’t that what self-help therapy is about?—you troll through your memories and cling onto the ones that affect you the most, then you write about them. 

      These days, with social media, it has never been easier.

      Thanks for reading Wordwheelwrites!