History

We came from the sea.

Our ancient selves were aquatic. Life on land only began with a valiant crawl by fin upward. Sea and land were always family.

Family may scatter, but all honored sea womb. Remember salt-lick snot of mothers and mothers’ mothers?

We maintained ties. Family was family was family.

Those who moved to land kept the sea inside alive. Ancient ancestors painted shells and wave forms; they carved fish shapes and dolphin profiles in bas-relief. Ocean gods were equal to other deities. Water prayers were pounded out with hooves, and villages were built in spirals, like shells. Communities grew like coral.

This relationship between wet and dry went on for millennia.

Gradually, though, those on land began to deny their sea roots. They grew arrogant and thought they were the creators of all. They forgot the sea mothers, as if a sky father alone could birth you.

The landed decided the sea was foreign space. They forgot the means of communication and wondered if our sea others even knew how to speak or think. They threw letters in bottles into the sea. They gave speeches and sang. Then another land war began.

In war, land creatures had to entrust themselves to ships they’d built. They spent months sailing and came down with scurvy and mange. Plague traveled in fleas. When the sailor warriors got to shore they jumped into the business of biting and scratching, mauling and kicking, all the while spreading their diseases. Wars are a dirty business.

In that time of war and plunder, many filled ships were lost. Seafarers who survived told ghastly tales of storms and drowning.

Thinkers and politicians developed new anti-sea ideas. It became easier to blame whatever lay unknown beneath the waves than to look hard at what they were creating.

Philosophers began to argue for a hierarchy of existence, with the sea at the bottom. “Who has rightful dominion?” asked those who presumed that dominion was already theirs. “What does it mean to breathe? Who has feelings?” Scholars taught classes on classification and standardization.

Then came yet another age, yet another spirit.

There was gold to be mined, and silver, diamonds, copper, and tin. Oil to drill for. Coffee, nuts, and fruits to be harvested. Wood to be cut. Kings, slave drivers, capitalists, and militaries ground animals into nothing, into bone piles.

The ancient excretions of the sea were no longer sacred. The land animals grabbed all the guano they could carry. Ancient waste was mined and spread, killing the living in the process. But this shit-gold turned deserts into new Edens of blossom, fruit, and nuts. So, they thought all the blood was worth it. We wouldn’t have modernity without artificial seabird shit.

Invasive populations exploded with a great squealing sound in clouds of feather and fur. Then came general disorder. Everyone was effulgent except the workers, who coughed with black, brown, with guano lung and coal lung, with wet lung and silica lung. The workers’ life expectations were kept low.

Ancient History

So much has changed and yet so little too.

Land society has undergone massive transformations. Packs of determined creatures have clawed rights from the ruling classes. Whole societies and small groups have argued and gnawed innovations into existence. We made life better and came to believe democracy was possible.

But the struggle has been fierce, and some might say we have fallen backward, even as the good that surrounds us has become ever shinier and ever more chewable, ever softer and ever more transfixing.

Everyone is making, buying, and using plastic and oil. Industry is visible in the exploded view. See the guts of the machine and rejoice. We breathe particles and eat micro flecks. Now we sit in cramped cat cafés eating tuna from cans. We are post-industry now, they crow, yet so many of us are still busy making industries run.

Lead pipes still carry our water. Styrofoam bowls that held our kibble fly free from dump trucks. Dye baths in clothing factories flow toward the oceans, turn rivers foamy red, pink, and green in the process. Tanks, cars, trucks, and boats, septic ranches and sepsis farms, leak themselves into the sea. Imagine millions of motor engines dripping a drop of oil each day onto roads and parking lots. All that mixes and flows into the sea. Chemicals travel great distances and accumulate in marine life. All this waste finds its way back to us.

While the most visible forms of our destruction are catastrophic spills, avalanches, fires, and explosions, those are minor in comparison and serve as spectacles to obscure the greater violence of the unspectacular. Shards, flecks, dribbles, and specks are what we wish to forget. What’s really destroying us is this slow carcinogenic drip. It comes from everywhere. What you can’t see is more dangerous than what you can.

We have long since forgotten our link to the sea.

Near Future

We are a coalition started in the seaside city of industry and money. Now we span the globe in an invisible web. We are linked by boats and belief. From our vantage, we have seen the ups and downs of the system and the tides. The clearheaded among us see a connection.

We have been treating the ocean like a garbage dump, and it has been taking it for a long time. But there are so many signs that this cannot continue.

Storms are coming, and they threaten all of us. Yet the captains of industry do not care. They are busy fashioning mountaintops into bunkers in which they will retreat while the rest of us drown.

The problems are tidal waves coming one after another.

So, what do we do?

Bury our heads in the wet sand?

Curl into a ball so that our tails cover our eyes as the waves break?

NO!

We, the creatures of today, the Friends of SERF, will act.

We are rising up and spreading truth!

We ask you to join this survival struggle. When the time comes to act out, you will know. You will know when you know the sea inside your soul!

In the meantime, forward with the struggle for clean water, strong nature, and a unified animalism! Be open and friendly to your friends. Listen for the water to communicate its truths. To you.

Let us rise with the tides and move with the SERF!