The plane is a fallow tear,
auto-drought to its carcass
in a graveyard of silhouettes;
mink whales wait for the burden
of a transplanted heaven.
This is an airport poem,
unmoored to the archaeology
of its destination:
Yeadon, or the native whitewash
of Misi-zaagiing,
It is not enough to acknowledge,
we pour faces into the commedia;
nature’s whiplash…
The physical process of carbon offsetting, the paying for some questionable subcontractor to plant ecosystemically inappropriate trees, is not enough, by any stretch; we have to also invent spiritual and aesthetic means of carbon offsetting. To truly, when we are on board a plane, picture the microdot in the landscape we breeze past, even while we are diverted by onboard entertainment facilities, and raze, or help to raze, with our trip; fully Ignatian-visualise the forest we have unearthed with our selfish aviation activities.
I make these pretentious statements because I myself am guilty. I have fasted from flying for ten years, despite really wanting to travel; wanting to do ecotourism in Costa Rica, wanting to travel to the wider Francophone world like Haiti and Martinique to encounter (always selfishly, always westernly) reality, wanting to visit friends in Romania. Wanting desperately to go to the US to discover the ‘heart’ of the Catholic Worker movement I am involved in (past tense? Involved?) Wanting to see biodiversity, to have a vision of why saving the world on a micro-scale in the UK in our woefully agro-businessified and bird-of-paradise-lacking island might matter. Maybe just wanting a holiday!
But I flew this month for the first time in ten years. Given my son lives in Canada, far away from the UK, it was my only way as not a rich man and not an experienced sailor or swimmer to visit him. The extent to which this was a big deal has been met by apathy, consternation, and patience by whoever I’ve happened to tell…
…Tethered to old Britannia
a single air traffic controller
waylays into mystery…
But I remember the odd liturgies of flying from family holidays, which I was fortunate enough to go on, the sacramental strip tease, the unnuding, the odd clangorous clawing sociability of a mystery, the nudging and jabbering as we machine-learn Icarus. But perhaps that’s what the myth means; human flight is always costed. We may have seamless, even quotidian flying, but it costs the earth, weighs down upon it.
Everyone I’ve spoken to assures me I’m relentlessly justified in getting a long-haul flight to see my son. Even so, even after having paid the ‘carbon offsetting’, I feel guilty. The airplane itself, marauding with the Southern English and English-speaking Canadians, becomes confessional.
One moment of odd mystical synthesis was reading that France have moved to ban short-haul flights for journeys that are under two and a half hours. This was accompanied by the realisation that Canada, unlike the UK, lacks a really substantial railway network. From what it seems, rail transport from one big Canadian city to another is modern and high-speed, but many big towns of 10,000 people lack a railway station. This is true in the UK (Heywood – St. Andrews – two examples that have touched me -) but these are minorities, and are always supported by an extensive bus network.
I am a supporter of XR and Just Stop Oil. But this plane journey and this reading material made me reflect a lot on my trip on environmentalist action. Maybe the apocalyptic imagery won’t wash, and in line with disruption, activists need to be more precise.
I don’t know. But one thing I imagined would be that specifically disrupting flights from Manchester to London, for example, would be a precise and effective strategy. These are planes that categorically shouldn’t run – who in their right mind is flying a trip that such a high-speed rail link exists for? But people constantly are – there are two flights a day. This seems less of an economic necessity and more the need for a seamless journey. Disrupting short-haul flights would encourage a precise debate like this.
Equally, should we ban private jets? Or restrict their use for the rich and powerful? These are all measures that, one supposes, would make sense, would begin to trigger a wider movement towards climate equity.
Or is it in nuance that we fall? Should we be doggedly emotional, and insist on the sentimental and spiritual dimension of what we’re losing? Or should we both?
…A million screens
discourse
the procession
of an earing
Squidditas 