Erik > Erik's Quotes

“And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Now I dream of the soft touch of women, the songs of birds, the smell of soil crumbling between my fingers, and the brilliant green of plants that I diligently nurture. I am looking for land to buy and I will sow it with deer and wild pigs and birds and cottonwoods and sycamores and build a pond and the ducks will come and fish will rise in the early evening light and take the insects into their jaws. There will be paths through this forest and you and I will lose ourselves in the soft curves and folds of the ground. We will come to the water’s edge and lie on the grass and there will be a small, unobtrusive sign that says, THIS IS THE REAL WORLD, MUCHACHOS, AND WE ARE ALL IN IT.—B. TRAVEN. . . .”
― Charles Bowden, Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America

“Being alive is gardening and cooking and birds and green and blue, at the very least.”
― Charles Bowden

“I am by nature a person suspicious of the economic machine that feeds me. And yet I am a captive of that economic machine, and my mind is structured by its lessons and demands. I consume its wealth with zest. I drive a truck, watch a color television, and write on a computer, but I cannot overcome the feeling that these objects and the industrial culture that produced them are temporary things, a kind of fat beast feeding on the bounty of the earth that will starve to death within the next century, or at least be severely diminished.”
― Charles Bowden

“I live in a time of fear and the fear is not of war or weather or death or poverty or terror. The fear is of life itself. The fear is of tomorrow, a time when things do not get better but become worse. This is the belief of my time. I do not share it. The numbers of people will rise, the pain of migration will grow, the seas will bark forth storms, the bombs will explode in the markets, and mouths fighting for a place at the table will grow, as will the shouting and shoving. That is a given. Once the given is accepted, fear is pointless. The fear comes from not accepting it, from turning aside one's head, from dreaming in the fort of one's home that such things cannot be. The fear comes from turning inward and seeking personal salvation. The bones must be properly buried, amends must be made. Also, the beasts must be acknowledged. And the weather faced, the winds and rains lashing the face, still, they must be faced. So too, the dry ground screaming for relief. There is an industry peddling solutions, and these solutions insist no one must really change, except perhaps a little, and without pain. This is the source of the fear, this refusal to accept the future that is already here. In the Old Testament, the laws insist we must not drink blood, that the flesh must be properly drained or we will be outcasts from the Lord. They say these rules were necessary for clean living in some earlier time. I swallow the blood, all the bloods. I am that outlaw, the one crossing borders. The earlier time is over.”
― Charles Bowden, Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing: Living in the Future

“Imagine the problem is not physical. Imagine the problem has never been physical, that it is not biodiversity, it is not the ozone layer, it is not the greenhouse effect, the whales, the old-growth forest, the loss of jobs, the crack in the ghetto, the abortions, the tongue in the mouth, the diseases stalking everywhere as love goes on unconcerned. Imagine the problem is not some syndrome of our society that can be solved by commissions or laws or a redistribution of what we call wealth. Imagine that it goes deeper, right to the core of what we call our civilization and that no one outside of ourselves can effect real change, that our civilization, our governments are sick and that we are mentally ill and spiritually dead and that all our issues and crises are symptoms of this deeper sickness. Imagine the problem is not physical and no amount of driving, no amount of road will deal with the problem. Imagine that the problem is not that we are powerless or that we are victims but that we have lost the fire and belief and courage to act. We hear whispers of the future but we slap our hands against our ears, we catch glimpses but turn our faces swiftly aside.”
― Charles Bowden, Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America

“We think velocity is new, change is new, and this vast tumult and wave of fear is new. And we are wrong. There has never been firm ground for our lives and our only balm has been a forgetfulness of the changes we have endured.”
― Charles Bowden, Dakotah: The Return of the Future

“FOR YEARS I have carried in my head a thought tossed out
by Aldo Leopold. In the early 20th century, he worked for
the U.S. Forest Service in Eastern Arizona, and he killed a
wolf to protect the cattle and increase the deer. He went
on to become a pioneer in wildlife management and a leading conservationist.
He wrote an essay about that killing. He’d decided
that when he’d pulled the trigger and helped remove the wolf from
the Southwest, he’d made the mountain a lesser place. He said we
had to learn to think like a mountain.
I stare into the gate of rock framing the entrance to Pima Canyon.
The mesquite leaves hang listless in the heat. Underfoot, a broken
field of granite spreads out. Past that stone gate, the freedom
of the Pusch Ridge Wilderness begins. The place feels wanting
without bighorns watching me. I can’t prove this. But I’ve known
it since I was a boy.
That’s why we look at the mountains and crave to be near them.
Maybe we can’t think like a mountain. But we can do better than
we have. We can bring the bighorns back where they belong.
Counting sheep, An Essay by”
― Charles Bowden

“Somehow the United States has become a nation with a permanent air of unreality and yet, by law, custom, or magic, has managed to severely restrict the choice of fantastic roles available to players in this unreality. Halloween is the last night left.”
― Charles Bowden, Blues for Cannibals: The Notes from Underground