July 21 - Beacon Books
For $18, Derrick Jensen's A Language Older Than Words, with the following inscription:
To Raffi,Raffi?!? Really?!?
With gratitude and admiration for your voice, your singing, and especially your heart.
In the spirit of remembering that which we already know,
Derrick Jensen
5/11/01
Occupied Miwok Homeland
Comments
Raffi: "All I really need is a song in my heart, food in my belly, love in my family...."
Jensen: "We need to bring down civilization now. We need not hesitate any longer. The planet is collapsing before our eyes, and we do nothing. We hold our little protests, we make our little signs, we write our little letters and our big books, and the world burns" (excerpts at endgamethebook.org).
But he's a compelling, engaging writer, and the personality that comes through is very warm. Surprising, perhaps, since his own website describes him as an "anarcho-primitivist writer"? But his desire is to take out civilization in such a way that we can continue to speak gently and richly to each other and to maintain local communities in harmony with local landbases. We just shouldn't all be enslaved to the machine of war, industry, and the generation of wealth for the few.
And that doesn't sound all that bad, does it?