Which (all this rain), coupled with Earth Day and my impromtu gender thing theme last week, got me thinking--why is it Mother Earth/Mother Nature and not Father? Not that I'm the kind of chauvinist who's going to launch a campaign for a more equal masculine presence in representations/personifications of Nature/Earth, just that I'm curious, what if? Sure there's Father Time, but really, what does that entail, winding some kind of cosmic watch every eon or so? Time is tedious, relentless, and unchanging (spare me the Einstein dope I never I understood, please), which, fine, fits a paternalistic view of things, but still--the woman gets domain over Nature/Earth and the man gets what, a golden watch?
Now I'm not advocating a Father Nature/Father Earth pardigm, believe me. The more I've contemplated the idea these last few soggy days of non-blogging, the more I end up whimpering "Mommy," even despite her (Mother Nature/Earth's) rather severe moodiness lately. Because, trust me, I've envisioned a world of Father Nature/Earth, and I'll modestly speak for the human race and say, fine, give us your monsoons and quakes and twisters and hot flashes (for you global warming believers) and everything else, dear mother, just keep father occupied by his tick-tock and far away from the winds, the waters, and the heavens.
First of all, if you do indeed believe in man-caused (and let's not just blame men, here; I gotta believe all that hairspray, predominantly used by women, has some effect) global warming, try this on for size: Father Nature/Earth always leaves the lid up on the ozone layer whenever he's through piddling about in earthly affairs. And he likes plenty of ice with his pre-prandial cocktails, so one way or another, the polar ice caps would have been long kaput. And of course the Old Man is a bit confrontational, even impulsively violent at times. You think he could abide, let alone live in harmony with, the moon? Especially with all its pull? Hell no. The moon would have been blasted out of the cosmos millennia ago. And whereas Mother N/E adopts the "oh, don't mind us, we'll just keep on spinning here, nice to see you, have a pleasant trip" attitude towards asteroids and comets and such, Father N/E is a wee bit more combative in the No Trespassing sign/"hey kids, get off my lawn" mode. Star Wars indeed.
And despite all the carping about her we do (oh, there's just two here: winter and road repair) regarding the seasons, Mother N/E does indeed provide us with four semi-regular and -distinct ones. But Father? Look at it this way: mom's orderly magnetic family activity calendar on the refrigerator vs. dad's garage. We'd have dozens and dozens of seasons, employed in an erratic, quite random pattern (sic) that would make our daily lives an ADD's/OCD's/neurotic's nightmare. The good old Five Day Forecast (with due apologies to A.J. Colby, the last vestige of some alchemical/oracle/seer pagan hope ritual we have left in this modern world) would be totally (as opposed to semi-dependently) superfluous and worthless. Talk about mood swings: "thanks for the tropical weather, Fath-- ur, where are my snowshoes, honey?"
Has anyone else had the same weird introduction to the French Quarter in New Orleans that I did, arriving by boat? You get about halfway down the three or four flights of steps before reason hits you (probably for the last time until you get way beyond the French Quarter's boundaries) and you think, wait a minute, I'm walking one hundred or so steps down from the river to dry (?) land, that's crazy (or, that's counter-intuitive, if you're one of those people). The non-sensical juxtaposition that is New Orleans (and thank God for it) would be the norm, not the quaint exception. Because in his natural inclination to tinker with things, gerryrig everything, not follow directions ("I know what it says, but this way's going to be much better, believe me"), let's just see what happens if we do this, hey, wouldn't it be cool if...Father N/E, being at heart a man, wouldn't abide by the "rules of nature"; hell, being Father Nature, he wouldn't even have written them in the first place, and if he did, they'd have gotten lost, "somewhere around here; look under that old toolbox, will you, son." Some waterfalls would fall up, stretches of desert would be found at the poles, the river would hardly ever run to the sea, and sure as hell, day wouldn't always follow night, necessarily. Oh, the tinkering that man's man would do: let's see what happens if we spin this planet the other way, or, better yet, roll it, pole over pole; I'm kinda tired of this blue, a bit too wimpy for me, let's paint the sky a sorta mahogany, give it a den-like feel; go ahead son, squirt some of that lighter fluid on the sun there, goose the old bastard a bit. And so on.
And let's face it, with a man in charge, volcanoes would be erupting everywhere at anytime.
Chaos, I tell you, sheer chaos with a man at nature's helm. Let the cantankerous, why don't we see what a little rubbing alcohol, duct tape, ammonia, and this new torch I just picked up at Ace will do to this rickety old hot water heater, old man fuss with his watch. Mother Nature/Earth, despite your tough love at times, we're sticking with you.
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