The melody of the birds erased by the mechanical chaos

This trip violently tramples on my militant beliefs, it provokes them, tests their anchoring and stimulates their resistance. It was not anger that took hold of me, but a deep sadness that took hold of me. I realized the extent of the damage, the magnitude of the massacre, but I was doing it over 35,000 km, I was doing it across the hundred cities and the ten countries I went to. Each city was an affront. This trip was losing its meaning, we were not there to visit the masterpieces of techno-industrial culture. So what did we have left? Paradisical places transformed into a seaside resort? Valleys disfigured by bridges? Mountains by cities? The ocean through ports? And beaches by roads? An island transformed into a shopping center and an old theater into a supermarket? What did we have left, or rather what did he have left? Where was she?

We realized how difficult it was to find it. Even at the top of the mountains, there was always a power line or an ice store to violate Nature. The omnipresence of the industrial world overwhelmed us. To make this observation was more than troubling. What I mean is that everyone knows that wild nature is being completely massacred and replaced by artificial landscapes. But seeing its extent, its scope with your own eyes, it puts you on the ground.

Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, shot me dead. I was wandering the streets as a model tourist. I ended up running into a wild cat. He too felt alone, lost, and abandoned. We caressed each other a lot, there, on the edge of the sidewalk. We were like two beings outside the set watching people wander through the techno-world show, asking ourselves “where was she? ”.

The cold left us no choice but to take refuge in cities. We have sometimes spent several nights without sleep because of the cold. The shiver that went from the lower back to the neck kept us awake. The cold kept us in the cities, but the cities made us sick. It was as if we were stuck in a brutal and nauseating charade. The city is violent, whatever it is, because of what it reflects and because of what it supposes.

Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, particularly impressed me. In the middle of the city, I found a park and meditated there. I closed my eyes and then my other senses went on alert, I no longer captured only the framework of the landscape, but everything that emerged from it; the spirit of the landscape, would say the Taoist in me. I also try to capture how my body reacts to atmospheric parameters. The sun was soft, the noise: atrocious. This noise was not the sound of the regular passage of individual cars passing by second, nor the noise of machines or construction machines. No, it was a global noise, the sound of nothing. As if the technological system had become a real entity that rubbed its hands together, with a smile in its mouth, contemplating its spectacle. But where was she?

The city, the agglomerated expression of industrialization par excellence, imposes on us its temporality, its luminosity, its sonority. It shakes up our intuitive and wild bearings. She walks us around as she pleases like vulgar puppets. But the impact of cities on natural beings is much more violent.

In the city, our body no longer belongs to us, it is an entire industrial organization that decides for it. It must move according to rules, priorities, so-called safety instructions. Only in a dangerous system do we talk so much about security. It is controlled and subject to a lot of conventions and codes. Its space is limited and should correspond to the space you are given. The city directs our steps and compartmentalizes our thoughts. Our thoughts collide against the walls of the buildings, trying to fly away, they vanish at the impact of the shock, and bubble up in an immense grid of obstacles in order to find the way out of this labyrinth that imprisons them. Unfortunately, they run out of steam first. They can't fly off, so they stay on my hems—should I do them or not? — or on my hair — is it cared for or not?

In Nature, my only concern was how I would find water again tomorrow. And my hair was never cared for. My fears are not the same either. In bed I have the ridiculous fear of not being able to fall asleep, consumed by anxiety. For the wild women we became, our only fear was being attacked by an animal that wanted our food. In Nature, emotions are raw and intuitive, they focus on reality. And our whole body is useful, our thoughts are about our sustenance and wander freely. Contemplation was part of more than half of our days: watching the butterfly frolic, counting the yellow flowers, watching the curve of the birds, then ending up contemplating the sun and enjoying its most beautiful colors before going to bed. What is there to see in the city, besides death?

We are now more afraid of the cry of a deer than of driving a car, and yet the car kills every day. We are more afraid of a dark forest than of having a lot of potentially lethal electrical objects around us. The melody of the birds has been erased by the mechanical chaos.

We also realized, based on the first observation, that this system is not made for us, the pedestrians. This system is not adapted to humans after all. It requires humans to always be dressed, surrounded, improved, or rather kept locked up by a lot of gadgets, objects that are each more complex and technologically advanced than the last. The naked, raw, simple human no longer exists.

I will not end this text with a note of hope. As Derrick Jensen said before me, Hope smells like shit. I prefer to tell you that I saw a baby turtle ride on the back of his mother turtle in turquoise water, that I bathed in a river at 35°C under the stars and the moon, that I tasted the best oranges of my life, and I never liked that, it's a childhood trauma, so to tell you... We who aspire to life, we freedom fighters, we have no other option than to succeed. And the truth is that we are not only resisting a system, but we are also resisting the discomfort that it spreads. Beating hope, now we have a goal.