Winds and Windows

This guest post is written by Kevin Buckland. Kevin is the Arts Ambassador with 350.org. He uses creative writing, animation, street theater and painting in an attempt to reach people on an emotional level about climate change. His creative energies span the breadth of the global climate justice movement, from conservative groups working inside the UNFCCC process, to public mobilizations, protests and civil disobedience.

Its not the type of quiet you feel comfortable in, the silences that befall the conference center. The whispers as the microphone is passed, or as a delegate clears his throat preparing to speak. Such are the deep silences of rooms with no windows. Long hours pass but the light never changes.

There are no windows, so the air is pushed around, bullied, and moved forcibly through expensive machines that make it all the same temperature. It gives people the chills. Time rolls by, like long years or long pages of text punctuating itself with minor victories and the quiet knowledge that inaction is itself a decision. The largest powers in the world hoping that nothing happens, devoting hours to doing nothing. The air is recycled, recirculated and respoken as long speeches meant specifically to say nothing. A filibuster of 17 years. The clock ticks on like a ceiling fan, but the air goes nowhere.

Why are there no windows in casinos? What do they not want us to see?

Put blinders on the horse and it will march on, unaware and unconnected, in a straight and orderly line. Take it from its context and you have it alone, lost from its story – an isolated phrase - Section 1.B.i – [in brackets]. All walls and no open windows. Wait your turn, and you will given two minutes to speak.

Outside those walls, the air is singing, it doesn’t sit in yawning rows waiting its turn to speak. It doesn’t grovel for a chance at a two-minute intervention. Outside, the wind is moving – dancing with the leaves like lovers. So we open the windows- not just to let the air in but to let ourselves out. [and this week has shown that voluntarily letting yourself out, is reason enough for them to not let you back in.]

We slip away from the cold florescent silence and into the street. There is sunlight there, and small children gazing at the birds that dig through the grass. There is color like ivy and the sky. The air seems to come from everywhere, breathing. The people aren’t in uniforms of ties and shined shoes, they are everywhere, and they are gathering in the streets. The cold silence becomes a memory you can’t understand.

In the streets the stories write themselves, like graffiti climbing up the walls. They are painted, they are drumming, they are almost naked and they are not biting their tongues to wait their turn to speak their pre-approved thoughts from their pre-approved minds. They are singing and they dance. The rebellion of living well. If we took away all the walls would all be windows?

Good stories are hard to govern, and the best ones never end up as you think they will. There is always a journey, and that is part of the adventure. A story does not wait until it is all written and bound to begin. It starts like a weaver and builds like a song, gathering numbers like a river gathers rain. The stories collide, hundreds of them, into the long march of a parade with a purpose – that the show might go on - indefinitely in its beauty. All stories end in silence, so let this circular story never end. They will not stop the rivers from flowing. If some dry up, others flood. And all the walls will never stop the winds of this world from uniting.

Lock the doors and pull the blinds, but then you are alone.

Its not the type of quiet you feel comfortable in, the silences that befall the conference center. The whispers as the microphone is passed, or as a delegate clears his throat preparing to speak. Such are the deep silences of rooms with no windows. Long hours pass but the light never changes.

There are no windows, so the air is pushed around, bullied, and moved forcibly through expensive machines that make it all the same temperature. It gives people the chills. Time rolls by, like long years or long pages of text punctuating itself with minor victories and the quiet knowledge that inaction is itself a decision. The largest powers in the world hoping that nothing happens, devoting hours to doing nothing. The air is recycled, recirculated and respoken as long speeches meant specifically to say nothing. A filibuster of 17 years. The clock ticks on like a ceiling fan, but the air goes nowhere.

Why are there no windows in casinos? What do they not want us to see?

Put blinders on the horse and it will march on, unaware and unconnected, in a straight and orderly line. Take it from its context and you have it alone, lost from its story – an isolated phrase - Section 1.B.i – [in brackets]. All walls and no open windows. Wait your turn, and you will given two minutes to speak.

Outside those walls, the air is singing, it doesn’t sit in yawning rows waiting its turn to speak. It doesn’t grovel for a chance at a two-minute intervention. Outside, the wind is moving – dancing with the leaves like lovers. So we open the windows- not just to let the air in but to let ourselves out. [and this week has shown that voluntarily letting yourself out, is reason enough for them to not let you back in.]

We slip away from the cold florescent silence and into the street. There is sunlight there, and small children gazing at the birds that dig through the grass. There is color like ivy and the sky. The air seems to come from everywhere, breathing. The people aren’t in uniforms of ties and shined shoes, they are everywhere, and they are gathering in the streets. The cold silence becomes a memory you can’t understand.

In the streets the stories write themselves, like graffiti climbing up the walls. They are painted, they are drumming, they are almost naked and they are not biting their tongues to wait their turn to speak their pre-approved thoughts from their pre-approved minds. They are singing and they dance. The rebellion of living well. If we took away all the walls would all be windows?

Good stories are hard to govern, and the best ones never end up as you think they will. There is always a journey, and that is part of the adventure. A story does not wait until it is all written and bound to begin. It starts like a weaver and builds like a song, gathering numbers like a river gathers rain. The stories collide, hundreds of them, into the long march of a parade with a purpose – that the show might go on - indefinitely in its beauty. All stories end in silence, so let this circular story never end. They will not stop the rivers from flowing. If some dry up, others flood. And all the walls will never stop the winds of this world from uniting.

Lock the doors and pull the blinds, but then you are alone.