I have begun a new year tidy up of my home environment to help me transition back to working life after the summer break. What treasures I have found hidden in drawers and boxes untouched for months! So, I will blogging those and new works over the coming weeks.
There is advice that we should not be making new year’s resolutions, they are not helpful in a pandemic. The only resolution I make is to make different mistakes (that is, avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and give new things a try…and thus perhaps making new mistakes in the process of growth). That is my take on the whole resolutions business.
So, time for some poetry.
The poem below was inspired by the notion of transformation and what feeds that process. There is a saying “you are what you eat”. That is a bit of worry when you consider the average human now consumes about 5 grams of plastic per week and 97% of Americans* have forever chemicals in their blood that they have absorbed through everyday items like food wrappers, nonstick cookware and cosmetics. If you are worried about a mRNA vaccine you won’t be eating fish, worrying about wrinkle prevention or growing food in your backyard without conducting soil tests first. And then of course we have the zero nutrition cheap fillers in our food like corn syrup, which could be why critical thinking seems to be so lacking in many conspiracy theorists.
But what does plastic in our food or mercury in breastmilk mean? What is it going to lead us to, what are we to become? Transformed – but will that change be for the better? Probably not. Life in a meta social media (meta meaning after/beyond in Latin) world exists, we just have to be brave enough to live it, and demand action of chemical regulation, climate change and environmental pollution.
*I am not selecting Americans unfairly, I think 97* of citizens of so-called developed countries would have the same levels. ‘Forever chemicals’: the hidden threat from the toxic PFAS on your shelf | Pollution | The Guardian
I have become My flesh has been made new my bones transform'd wired with steel fibered sinew. My body is now cloaked in gold. Bow down before my feet and behold: A band of metal weighs heavily as my crown with its twisted thorns through petal. Mercury flows through my veins an iron heart pumps on, no plastic thoughts remain. I have become my destiny. I have eaten the mountains and all life on land and sea This is what you aspired to be, this destruction, and I have become my destiny.
Angele Toomey Poetry 