The fIrst storm of the year arrived last night in Bellingham. The temperature is still in the low sixties, but the wind billowed out the curtains at the open bedroom windows all night long, and this morning the rain is . . . light but heavy. I'm not sure how to say that better. The drops fall softly, but there are a lot of them?
Our neighborhood park is well on its way to becoming a swamp, as my dog, Alice, would testify if she could speak. (I think she's learned English but is still keeping it a secret.) Poet Carol Guess and her two dogs were at the park, too, but about the time we spotted each other, the sky opened, so we trudged in opposite directions, leaving the dogs on leash.
I'm coming out, I hope, of a depression that has lasted about a year. It did me good to see 300,000 people march in New York on Sunday. It's hard to believe that the ecosystem destruction already in progress can be stopped or even significantly mitigated, hard to imagine life here in 20 years as anything other than hot, wet, and ruled by overwhelming scarcity. But it was still good to see so many people addressing that reality, those fears, and even better to see the diehards show up and sit in at Broadway and Morris on Monday. I feel communal anger building. I sense the beginning of a truly oppositional culture. I feel less alone.
I'm about to start Naomi Klein's new book, This Changes Everything. If you're reading it too, let me know what you think.
Our neighborhood park is well on its way to becoming a swamp, as my dog, Alice, would testify if she could speak. (I think she's learned English but is still keeping it a secret.) Poet Carol Guess and her two dogs were at the park, too, but about the time we spotted each other, the sky opened, so we trudged in opposite directions, leaving the dogs on leash.
I'm about to start Naomi Klein's new book, This Changes Everything. If you're reading it too, let me know what you think.
good to see u're writing again. perhaps u should write more about being depressed, as therapy? or maybe not.
ReplyDeletei'm not particularly interested in what naomi klein has to say on climate change, after reading some negative reviews of her work recently at NATURE BATS LAST. she was derided as overly optimistic. i feel the same can be said of liberal activists who participate in mass marches. they're not changing anything. nothing significant shall be done to prevent climate catastrophe by tptb. only industrial collapse shall bring the madness to a halt, far too late, i'm afraid. civilization is doomed. it's only a question of if and when it shall lead to our extinction.
I'm not optimistic either, but Klein's book is interesting even if you read it only to understand what we might have done if we'd started early enough, what precisely has been in the way since the 80s (a lot of information on this topic was new to me), and what kind of world our work might have resulted in.
ReplyDeletei guess i've been around too long, read too much, grown too cynical. i suppose there's a bright side to it, in that i no longer guilt trip myself or other (non) activists for not doing enough. over 7 billion sheeple in our world overwhelm the paltry efforts of one. it's fate. humans aren't homo sapiens, the wise ape. a better name is homo callidus, clever ape, or my favorite, homo inanis, foolish ape. collectively, we're no smarter than any other 'lower' species, prone to population overshoot, resource depletion, and the inevitable collapse.
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