WOR 784 – A Cabinet of Curiosities
I’m Peter Neill, Founder of the World Ocean Observatory.
My office is my workplace, my library, and my locus of dreams. The shelves encase, embrace me, in a rictus of spines and ideas. I spend more time there than any other space, although it is but a condensation of whatever may be called my consciousness, whatever that means that one does not really want to know. It is organized by interests, times, and figments of my imagination; there is no catalogue of reference, other than a lifetime of exploration by words. It is my cabinet of curiosities
Today, I was thinking of the eradication of things: the destruction of natural places, the dismissal of decades of science, policy, and reasonable thinking, the abandonment of a rational future in favor of an ignorant past – beautiful things, once established, not gone. Some of the books in my library quietly evoke the emotion, and the paradox, of things lost. Here are three: “An Exaltation of Larks”, by James Lipton; “A Calendar of Saints for Unbelievers”, by Glenway Wescott; and “The Atlas of Remote Islands” by Judith Shalansky – sharing a love of the history, values, and geography of human language, behavior, and transitory place. These books sit light in the hand, the mind, and the heart. I go to them often when I just need a think, and today, with a blinding blizzard outside my window, was such a moment when I had no frame of reference and needed one.
I went to “The Atlas [of Remote Islands]”, and opened to Takuu, part of Papua New Guinea, visualized as a circle of reef and coral cropping, a ring of sand, where the few residents live caught in an process of disappearance, apart from the civilized world, beyond communication and connection, where few things grow, life is brackish, and isolated by the ocean rising, the island sinking, and the uncertainty of past and future. It seems like a place you would go when there was nowhere else, when time was running out and disappearing into the sea.
I cannot imagine not having a future. And yet there are millions of us facing just that: the loss of place, family, health, and hope – in faraway lands yes, but now just down the street where now a life can be taken without justification, adjudication, or accountability – just disappeared like Takuu from family, friends, and community, one there, remembered, and then, sadly, forgotten.
The ocean compares: a vast place from where things are swept away, often without reason, without remembrance. I recall a graveyard visit in Ireland, the stones of unrecovered fishers lost at sea, all facing outward away from land and home, canted mossy memories, of loss. Those moments, those readings from a library of dreams, are for realization and resolve, for context and meaning, for epiphany, understanding, and dedication.
When I talk with friends, even strangers, these days, no matter where, we seem to share the insubstantially of it all, the betrayal of belief and principle, and the fear of what follows darkly when the whiteout storm exhausts outside our windows and moves on. Will we keep on sinking? Or will we regain the courage from our experience, collected in our individual cabinets of curiosity, to shape a forward passage, as if we are all saints for unbelievers, all exaltations of larks, all remote islands resilient, living, lasting, exploring, inventing, and keeping on through this moment to realize that we are still here, and vital, and essential to a world of our making to come.
We will discuss these things, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
WORLD OCEAN RADIO IS DISTRIBUTED BY THE PUBLIC RADIO EXCHANGE AND THE PACIFICA NETWORK, FOR USE BY COLLEGE AND COMMUNITY RADIO STATIONS WORLDWIDE. FIND US WHEREVER YOU LISTEN TO PODCASTS, AND AT WORLD OCEAN OBSERVATORY DOT ORG WHERE THE FULL CATALOG OF MORE THAN 780 EPISODES IS SEARCHABLE BY THEME.
[Outro music, ocean sounds]
