Inspired by Haiti, January 2010
You cannot argue with the earth.
You can lie back on the earth in the light or sleep there in the dark, waking to find it light again.
You can sleep with others on the earth, wrapping yourselves together and finding new peace and strength in each others' closeness.
You can light fires on the earth.
You can gather with others around those fires and huddle together for warmth and company.
You can tell stories around those fires -- stories of people you've met and things you've done, and you can retell stories you've heard from old people or those who have traveled far away.
You can sing around those fires and learn the songs others sing ... and stand, join hands, and dance.
In the daytime you can go off on your own and gather fruits and nuts and other food you found on the earth and bring it back to the fire and cook it and share it.
You can collect other materials on the earth -- sticks and rocks, reeds and sand and clay -- and use them to build shelters on the earth, near the fires where you gather.
You can bury seeds in the earth and watch them grow into plants that, in time, will provide new seeds.
You can pick fruit and nuts and other food from the plants that have grown from the seeds you placed in the earth, and trade that food with those who have gathered their own food that grew from seeds they placed in the earth or from plants they found there.
You can carry some of the food that's too plentiful to eat yourself or to share around the fire, taking it to others who are gathered together elsewhere on the earth, and you can bring back with you things you never dreamed of before -- and new stories, of course.
You can give your place on the earth a name, different from all the other names of places on the earth, a name that people elsewhere can remember, along with the people and the stories that come from there.
You can build new shelters on the earth for the young, when they grow and leave your shelter.
You can come together to help others, especially the frail and elderly, to build or improve their shelters so that they can continue to live easily on the earth.
You can build bigger shelters on the earth when others come from afar to join you, and you can teach them how you learned to build your shelter.
You can tell your stories around those fires on the earth to those who have joined you from afar, and they can tell you stories you haven't heard before.
Sometimes, with the help of others who have learned to do things you can't, you can build big buildings on the earth where no one lives, places big enough to dance, to sing, to tell many stories to each other, places big enough to trade your extra things with others who have things they no longer need to survive on the earth.
Sometimes those bigger buildings will fall down on the earth, but you will learn together how to build them better, and soon you will be building together great structures where no one lives, where you can teach the young how to build such buildings on the earth and where you can tell them the stories you know.
You can build buildings on the earth where people gather to find ways to help each other do complicated things that no one can do by themselves, the things the old people have learned.
When some of those who have gathered with you around the fires and in those buildings die, you can bury them in the earth, and build markers to remind others that they were here and what they have done.
In time, as more and more of you gather near your place on the earth, some will feel compelled to move elsewhere, perhaps to find the people who first told those stories that someone repeated in your own place on the earth, around the fire.
Those people who have moved elsewhere on the earth can send back to you new stories from other places on the earth where they have gone -- and perhaps things they have made or bartered there.
Those people who have moved elsewhere on the earth can return to visit where they came from and to gather with those they left behind, perhaps around that fire on the earth, and they can laugh and remember old stories and songs, and maybe they will dance together around that fire.
Some of those people who have gone elsewhere can come back, years later, to resettle on the earth they left, accompanied now by husbands, wives, children and friends they met elsewhere, and they can build their own shelters on the earth -- bigger than those in which they grew up, sometimes made from materials you never heard of before -- and they can fill those shelters with unfamiliar things brought back from afar.
Sometimes the earth where you live can become too dry from lack of rain to grow food, or the earth itself may seem to rebel in other, unspeakable ways, ways you've heard about in old stories, and your fires can be extinguished and your shelters can fall back down onto the earth, along with the bigger buildings you have built on the earth with each others' help.
After you have had time to bury your dead in the earth and grieve for them, you can lie down together on the earth once again and draw new strength and comfort from each other.
Where shelters have fallen down on the earth, as they will, you can relight old fires and join together around those fires to mourn those whose own stories have ended and to plan how to build new shelters on the earth, drawing strength from the stories you remember that were passed down from those who first built the shelters on the earth and are now buried in it.
When rains return to parched earth, you can replant where once before you had buried seeds in the earth.
Other people on the earth, in places where it is not too dry or where buildings did not fall down -- perhaps people who once lived in your place and gathered around your fire, or people who have learned from others the name of your place and heard its stories -- can join you in your time of grief or send you something to help you survive until your place on the earth has had time to recover and you can rebuild your shelters and gather together again in the warmth and light of new fires to tell new stories about your ordeals and the people who did not survive them, stories that will be retold later to children and to people elsewhere long after you have died and been buried in the earth.
You can do all these things on the earth -- and more -- but
You cannot argue with the earth.