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(By Laurinne Fiorentino ~Published in the Santa Fe New Mexican Sunday Newspaper.)

Q: Hello Earth! How are you today?

 

EARTH: I’m ok…actually, I’m feeling a little under the weather…let’s just say, I’ve felt better. And then again, I’ve felt worse…or maybe I always have a lot of emotions and activity within…it’s constantly changing.  I’m actually in a very slow-motion boil…bubbling out and falling back towards my center.

 

Q: Well, I hope you’re ok with a few questions…? I was wondering what your thoughts were concerning things like deforestation, nuclear power and other toxic-waste producing activities that we humans are struggling with including “wild-life management” and “land management”…you know, stuff like that?

 

EARTH: It’s funny…I’ve been wondering if anyone was ever going to ask me…and if they did, would they have the courage to really listen?

 

Q: Go ahead, give it a shot. I think it’s time you set the record straight.

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EARTH: OK. In reality, humans are a part of me, they grew out of me. I am part of their creative process. We are inseparable in this process. It’s ultimately a mystery; an unknowable thing. My intention is to keep revolving, keep evolving until such time that I don’t. To even begin this conversation is to admit that even a unit is able to communicate with different parts of itself. Like a finger talking to a brain. There’s not necessarily a conflict of motives but simply a sharing of information. After that, the immediately contacted unit can move with intention because it’s been informed. Fire burns me, do what you want, for example.

 

Q: All right. I’m with you so far.

 

EARTH: You see, those are very personal issues for me. It’s been frustrating, I’ve been patient…you know how it feels to be misunderstood? Beside yourself? Walked on? Not trusted? Ignored? Pushed around? Controlled and manipulated? Violated and abused? Lied to? Poked at?

 

Q: Who doesn’t?

 

EARTH: Exactly. I’ve been in the creative/evolutionary mode for these billions of years and only relatively recently has anyone or anything tried to doubt my evolution so intently…and out of fear, at that!  If I’m not mistaken, there’s been an emotional rift growing between me and a large portion of what you might call “modern man”. The group that lives on top of me, not within or consciously involved and beholden to my designs. As if they know something I don’t. I could be hurt, wounded, and insulted…but I do believe that people, as perhaps, let’s say, the “location” where I am growing the fastest, are beginning to realize, with some resistance, where their priorities lie. You see, I serve all life forms, not just humans. I’ve cherished life-and-death cycles as a unit, a give and take, a web, a balance of opposites whether it happens daily, yearly or over thousands or millions of years. I’m forever encouraging innovative variations including human experimentation leading to wisdom through experience. Because of human “progress”, so much is not a mystery anymore. I’m losing my homeostasis. I’m losing my balance, as it shifts into a newer stranger relatedness. I have my limitations. I’m like you in that I, too, have forgotten what it’s like to die and won’t know till I do, but I surely will, someday. I’m a concrete little planet, not some ideal of immortal bedrock.

 

Q: Can you elaborate on that?

 

EARTH: Sure, I mean, if planets were the shape of human bodies, and you were a planet, where would you put nuclear waste and other toxins? Where the sun doesn’t shine? I don’t think so. Would you, in all your intuitive senses, be willing to make something so deadly in the first place? Do what you must with the poisons you’ve made, but don’t make any more of it if you want to continue in the human form. Though, I always liked it when I could feel the part of me that is wind, or a tree, or a cliff. Ah, yes…

 

Q: Interesting perspective.

 

EARTH: Try this: if a bunch of other beings decided that you were to have your head shaved, burned, or to under-go plastic surgery and went ahead and did those things to you without even asking, how would you feel?

 

Q: I’d be outraged! I wouldn’t allow it!

 

EARTH: Me, too! And to think, you’ve done these horrors to yourselves, not just me. Humans know how the sun makes power now, so why not harness that power cleanly and safely as other life forms have learned to do? Why continue, in a linear fashion, to jeopardize my body and everything it contains for the sake of your abstract notion of economy? Is it a matter of ultimate human nature? If economics is the issue, then why not produce solar-powered parts that wear out and need replacing? Without a planet, Me, you would have nowhere to exist in the human form you all cherish so much, never mind be financially successful. This is what puzzles me. Always has. Oh…I didn’t mean to rant on so long…I get emotional sometimes. Sometimes I wish I were just a pile of rocks.

 

Q: Me too…I mean, it’s quite all right. I can see your point. Actually, I can feel your point. I guess I’ve been sensing something way back in the recesses of my psyche but have never been able to articulate it…I think you’ve struck a chord in me. Maybe we do have a connection, after all! Wow…thanks!

 

EARTH: Ah, music! The stuff of the universe! Glad you mentioned it! The Chord, that is. Can you hear it?

 

Q: Oh yeah, all the time.  You are so cool to talk with! Thanks for your time and thoughts. I feel honored to be in your company. Just a few more things. What about earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, and droughts? Knowing that you have the power to destroy me in a second is scary.

 

EARTH: Well…I’m not without my faults.

 

Q: Ha, ha, ha…

 

EARTH: Come on…You’re a human, I’m a planet. We’re much a like in more ways than you may be willing to comprehend. We are mirrors of one another. I feel the same way towards humans. I could be destroyed in any given moment without warning, too! You already know about my structural make-up and where it’s more accommodating to live. The other things due to weather and evolution are just part of being a planet…not unlike human emotions, actually.

 

Q: You’ve got me there, too. So, do you think that humans have a distorted sense of the meaning of “intelligence” and it’s boundaries and applications? Much of what you have said today seems so logical and common-sensical.

 

EARTH: Yes…yet I have faith that humans will come to perceive and appreciate the incredible intelligence of the universe and everything in it. No one is alone…everything is all one. If humans have an intelligence, then so does everything else! And so do I. Nothing and no one is separate from anything or anyone else.

 

Q: Whoa, Oh Mighty Planet We Call Home! Give me five!

 

EARTH: Sure…I’ve already given you forever…no problem! And a simple response to your initial concerns, if someone would have asked me first before they went ahead with any of it, I would have said “Well, if you feel you must do these things, go ahead, but I really wish you found another way, for your own sake.” I guess it’s a matter of radical trust…it’s a tough concept but, actually, very simple. On a molecular level, anyway. Has your body ever said “Hey, I can’t eat another bite” but you order desert anyway?

 

Q: Yeah, but I recovered from it.

 

EARTH: So you did. So might I, as a “life sustaining” environment. But are we talking about apple pie or noxious fumes and radiation? Are we talking about a stomachache or nuclear holocaust? Actually, I ‘m not concerned for myself; I’ll be just fine as the eons pass. Yet if humans want to continue as an extension of me, they’ll need to own me as their source and someday they will return to me in some form or another. What’s so bad about that, anyway?

I don’t know. Curiously enough, I’m still an optimist. The entire universe and even humans may be more intelligent than even I could imagine. Thank you for letting me speak my heart. Who knows? Maybe the future will teach us all something new!

 

Q: Thank you, my Beautiful, Inhabitable Planet! The least I can do is ask…the most, to listen!