Nature Bats Last

July 1, 2017

by Serena Marie Raphael

Further reading, I learn its late 16th century Latin divagat- ‘wandered about’. When I think of the two together, I see the wrong turns, missed signs, poor judgment our morals digressed to accommodate mutated ideals. The wandering, aimless steps we take in pursuit of an endless walk to nowhere important. The stray wishful thinking fools, floating down the dreamer’s drool with no awareness of the cliffs edge. As we plummet over, now hurtling to the rocky, jagged floor below. Impact is imminent. There will be blood.

We’re the lost Western youth of Imperial civilisation. We’ve been abused, monetised, sacrificed, jailed, left for dead as economic road kill. I see once wild animals balancing on balls for applause, whipped into cultural submission for the industrial cause.

Afraid of the consequences, wandering outside the lines terrifies us. They keep us under spot light, obsessively searching for youth willing to test the electric fence. Keeping us dumb, or we will learn how to turn a door latch with our posable thumbs. Civilised expectations, the mental barricade from physical freedom. Revolutionary organisations with merchandise made by factory slaves in far away, imaginary lands where iPhones grow on trees.

Try to run, they will see you. Try to think, they will hear you. They will kill you. We’ve seen it happen to our elders. We’ve witnessed social executions of professors who dare to teach us our radical capacity as anarchists .

They dangle “hope snares”, traps perfectly set for catching frustrated and questioning youth. They set them up at indoctrinating facilities such as universities. Glossy print, celebrity endorsements and feel good bubbly words as the tasty bait.

They corral the strays in green graffiti pens. Force-feeding them bullshit. Fattening them up, milking them of spirit, money and energy.

How well they did, too! Impressive puppet masters.

We have all the environemtal™ organisations spouting the economically modified rhetoric, yet they dillusionally promote mining for solar panels as solutions to a predicament. I’ll repeat, predicament. They have beliefs of planetary conservation, while advocating for the very set of living arrangements driving two hundred species to extinction per day.

I now question everything I’ve ever learnt, and I’m continuously let down by my educators and mentors. They are self centred and drunk on personal importance and usually overdosing on arrogance once they’re told more than once they’re right. My culture led me so far away from mother. I miss her, I want to know her before I die.

Edward Abbey wrote, “May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.”.

A teacher had done the once-assumed impossible, taught me. Finding a way to leave civilisations talons. It’s inside, it’s with love and living. I will venture out into her wild, her free, her nowhere.

Where I will find myself lost in her majesty. My queen.

Divagating back to the wild, wandering my own trail, venturing as wild as I can possibly go. I want to feel the blood in my feet leak out through my nails, my boots to shred the skin away from my heals. Rain to soak me to my marrow, clothes to bleach under the sun. Salty air to dread my hair, cold nights to bite my toes. The bugs to play on my back and hitch a ride with me, the gumnuts to break my fall. A mosquitoes symphony as the birds sing the chorus line. Until I collapse from exhaustion, I walk on. I want her to punish me. I want her to teach me by subjecting me to all the torture she’s suffered.

Can I take it? Could I withstand the abuse my species has given her? Is not fair. Should I be accepted by her?

Will she see my being as one of her oppressors, will she see me as her threat or see my wander as my attempt at finding way through the nightmare that is civilisation. Divagate my madness with wandering wonderful.

I cringe at the idea she sees me as one of them, I never meant to be. I do what I can to stay alive. In my captive cage, I educate myself.

I ask questions. I stay open-minded and crack the windows.

Now, I divagate with excellence rather than privileged mindlessness.

Wandering fantastically with love and compassion until the end.