Thursday, December 6, 2007

Never Look Back

Yesterday, the man who discovered oil in Alaska died. Robert O. Anderson was 90 years old.

“Never look back in this business,” Mr. Anderson said. “If you do, you’ll lose your nerve.”

I suppose that's how one lives with one's self... never looking back; Another thing I'm not very good at. One of my favorite plays in high school was "In The Matter of Robert J. Oppenheimer," which details the demise of Oppenheimer after he invented the A-bomb. He said he really thought he was going to end war with his discovery -- that no one would ever actually use it because it was such a destructive force.

I believed him in high school. I've always been a fan of the conflicted genius... but now I just think people need to change their own realities after they get swept up in power. It's awful when you have to look at yourself of that moment. In what furnace was thy brain? Responsibility is hard enough to face in a lunch box or in a bedroom -- I can only imagine staring in the hurt morning at all of humanity.

Anderson warned about global warming, and along with buying and selling half of Aspen and at one point Brazil he founded and supported much environmental research and philanthropy. His ranch comprised more than a million acres.

The oil well Anderson found "has produced billions of barrels of crude and accounts for a fifth of domestic oil production" His company was eventually sold to BP. That's the company that shut down for a while last year after major pipeline leaks lead to a big spill. This morning at 3 a.m. a Times reporter filed a story that Alaska is suing BP in civil court for damages over that spill.

Roughly 85 percent of the state's general fund comes directly from oil company income taxes.

Does it work that way? The risk -- don't we take that on ourselves when we choose this life, this proximity to toxicity... I don't know what it takes or who is strong enough not to take what they see -- what they want -- what they know is wrong to take. And most people I know will want it to be clean in the end -- sanitized without leaks and mistakes and greed.

THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience)

By William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?


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