The Line Break

You can visit this facebook page and see wind turbines painted into the landscapes of old paintings.

The energy cooperative group Andel advocates:

In recent years, wind turbine projects have met massive local opposition, which has resulted in several being stopped. One of the dominant arguments often used against wind turbine projects is that they destroy the Danish idyll. But if we continue as we are now, our beautiful landscape will be threatened by warmer summers, wilder weather and violent water rises. We have therefore reached the point where our image of the Danish landscape must and must change if we want to preserve the Danish idyll that we know and love.

What happens when technology–particularly-energy conserving technology–is dropped into an idyllic landscape? Particularly when that technology affects something we view as worthy of preservation and conservation: a beach scene, a forest, a wilderness, a cave painting? Doesn’t it pull against our hearts? Shouldn’t it? Consider the below scene, and how it is unsettled by the anachronism (anachronism: a person or a thing that is chronologically out of place) of the wind turbines.

Writing Prompt: Write about a landscape with an intrusion, with something else dropped in, with something that should not be there, with something that your heart wants to reject or eject or push or pull out. Landscape with Weeds. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Landscape with Oil Spill. Landscape with a Field of Energy-Saving Wind Turbines. Landscape with Cell Phone Towers Shaped Like Trees. This could be a story or a poem or an essay or a journal entry, or whatever you want it to be. Let the animals loose.