biggest drop in its ice mass since records began in
compared the pre-industrial period to the current record cold temperature for this day in hungary was awoke to rows of driverless cars washed down streets on wed. in separate incidents of roof collapse inflicted considerable damage to some historical sites as thailand has been experiencing the worst forest fire enso-neutral conditions prevail, rainfall has been in- catastrophic destruction after category 5 cyclone har- covid-19 & deforestation in the amazon could be linked, spreading wildfires, the state of oaxaca is asking the 104° to 113°: chiapas, guerrero, jalisco, south of morelos, peach crops after a potentially devastating freeze struck found that its path was “at least” two miles wide at one calling the heat “ridiculous,” “brutal” and “a cruel joke,” the island nation of cuba set its hottest all-time temp- stay indoors, which means that the demand for water was an all-time record-warm low for the month of april, 40% of the U.S. population are at some risk of seasonal wreaked havoc on the province monday, bringing snow, turn-about as the weather slipped from floods to drought, a new breed of insects has developed adaptations such & winds with some were left stranded in flooded tunnels away & many factories and stores filled with muddy water up to 6,255 villages have been declared drought-affected record-high national average temperatures & record low reservoirs are on the brink of tipping below the half-full ideal breeding ground conducive to virus modification &
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“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, / Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit / Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, / Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.” So sayeth the poet, writing of writing: a temporal, fleeting act that leaves indelible traces. Meaning the past is fated and writing underlines it, until the tablet and toilet paper run out. The dead stay dead, and a lot of unemployed people stay that way, too; what happens to you stays in your physical frame, and it’s always something.
Always something happening by happenstance: where and when the next tornado hits, how high the toll or rate or level rise. But odds are they will. And that a lot of other people will be born, grow up, and become writers. Does the rate of writing rise proportionately to panic? To cover the earth with the world or the word? That’s what Sherwin Williams used to do, and maybe Wallace Stevens and a few others. The poem of the mind in the act of finding a life-raft. Meaning: time and tide wait for no man or woman or others. Nor do swarms of locusts, calving glaciers, rising rivers, dengue fever, desertifying cropland, dead forests or fish. My moving fingers can’t hardly keep up. The president declares the bee to be, and the keepers just breed more of them, hide plexiglas bubbles in refugia with all the secret species. The little Dutch boy better stand there forever — if his finger moves, we’re cancelled before the next season. Instead, let us write about a vision of coronaviruses absorbing all the CO2, settling to the ground, burying themselves, and dying, perhaps encouraged by giant outdoor air conditioners. And add a mantra, if you like, or an A/C humming. “No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up” (Lily Tomlin). Like our visions of the future scramble into the past, write ahead of you. The Undertowed. “for those who’ve spent our lives
in crisis response, a scenario you don’t want to imagine, but must: a cat 5 hurricane hits a city in the midst of a pandemic” -- no hospital beds or personnel available to help; but only ~30 people killed by 70+ tornadoes yesterday — pales compared to coronavirus toll; “social distance as best as possible while in the safe room,” mississippi emergency mgmt spokes sez; 95 m under tornado watches last night: “do not let the virus prevent you from seeking refuge from a tornado,” the american meteorological association sez; “don’t worry!” sez i pandemic + hurricane + earth- quake = social breakdown & chaos (ask the puerto ricans) pandemic + wildfire smoke: chernobyl exclusion zone still burning, closer to reactor; forest fires in herzegovina; forest fires in venezuela; & remember calif. patients’ being whisked from fire zone? & can you imagine the smoke in s.f. or sydney + pandemic? pandemic + billions of locusts = “millions of ethiopians in need of food aid” (but ah, for u.s.americans, africa is forever-over-yonder); pandemic + flooding in n. dakota: interstate highway submerged, houses, islands; basements full; red r. 1 ft ↑ flood stage; all on soil supersaturated from last yr’s floods; tho luckily fargo filled ½ of sandbag needs, prior to lockdown (+ several inches of snow on april 1 + wind chills around 0) coronavirus + cyclone = delayed aid to wind-scraped vanuatu from australia (while beachgoers in perth social-distance like crazy on its hottest april day ever) but: it was only the second-hottest march on record on earth! maybe we're flattening the curve! which is to say: be grateful: it could be worse (may, in fact) Not “poetry,” not “literature,” but the aesthetic phenomenon, the particular linguistic act: that happens in time — this happens in time. If we keep the pen moving, the process will lead us through our lives. Nouns slow it down; nouns got us into this mess. Instead, to see the words written in sparkler, fading out, discarnate sonograms. I’m writing these posts to get to the point where I no longer need to. When you climb the ladder, you pull it up after you: Wittgenstein called it “the American way.”
“Pan-demic” should mean “of or pertaining to half a loaf.” Since it doesn’t, we’ll have to settle for what we have, settle in place. We cast all our anxieties (creeping or sudden authoritarianism, climate crisis, joblessness and hunger, pregnancy scares) onto the King of the Viruses, the all-around pox, for now, a displacement of something even worse. If you keep in motion, you won’t feel a thing. If you dwell in the moment forever, you’ll never have to act. Olson said “Art does not seek to describe but to inhabit”; but just because you stay-at-home doesn’t mean it does. An emergency is something that emerges, the latest creature rising from the black lagoon or popping out of the wall like a freak-show haint. Or just what happens next, the next clause in the chain of syntax changes everything. The work of art is an emergency. The president can veto a virus or whip the ocean for not obeying orders, for not sheltering in place, but it doesn’t make the earth any bigger a pinprick of light, just the president a bigger prick. Melting, spreading, evaporating, bubbling up: it’s always something. Writing tries to keep up, to join the acts of nature. If the poem seeks to inhabit, it’s not inhabiting, merely trying to hide. What will it do when it gets the all-clear? A sign is never. “behavioural economists have shown
that even when we know we would benefit from worrying a bit more about our long-term future, humans are wired for short-term thinking,” the econ analyst sez. “brain scans have shown when we think about ourselves in the distant future, our sense of self fades”; evolutionary tic for short-term survival thus endangers the species’ existence. nonetheless, economists believe “if a potential future plague could lead to complete societal and economic breakdown, it is worth spending a lot to prevent it from happening, even if we cannot be sure if or when it will occur.” the point being it will occur — so will climate breakdown, so it will have to be spent upon . . . if anyone wants to spend & can: e.g., to help tonga & other small island nations getting lashed and swamped by cyclone harold’s wreaking havoc in the s. pacific; or breadbaskets of argentina & brazil basking under deadening heat & up to 65% less rain; or prolonged drought in aukland, where reservoirs fall to 53% capacity; or melbourne, having its wettest 1st Q since 1911, after driest year ever; or sattahip dist., thailand, where water trucks bring 2k L each, 24 hrs/day, 60 km r.t., since the taps ran dry; or somali women, suffering effects of drought after drought: “according to experts, men unable to provide for their families often become more prone to domestic violence. . . . her husband began to abuse her, slamming her against a wall, punching and slapping her”; so now, she goes tent-to-tent, through the dust, at displaced-persons camps: “i tell them to gather in groups when they go out: most of the men are your enemies, so don’t go out alone so you can be safe from the violence and the rape, especially at night.” the catastrophes climate catastrophe causes . . . expert data indicates the phenomena may be evitable, that homo sapiens may prove to be a rational animal yet Teen Vogue has been on the climate beat for some time now, running interesting articles about the youth-strike movement, climate science, personal consumer choices, etc. This month, “in honor of Earth Day 2020,” they are “rolling out stories on how climate change impacts mental health.” I just read one of these articles, by playwright Rozina Kanchwala. She points out that while “we’re weathering an earth-shattering pandemic,” we’ve been deep deep into the climate crisis for much longer. “In fact,” she writes:
the destruction of natural habitats has even been linked to disease outbreak. That’s why I wrote the play “Love in the Time of Climate Change,” following the life of a millennial woman navigating modern dating while dealing with climate anxiety. Her self-described “sobcom” deals with “the psychological pain of climate change.” Now, that’s nothing to sneeze at, esp. for people under 30, due to the “overwhelming fear that it is too late to act on climate change” — i.e., that they have no future. Johnny Rotten told my generation that, but it was all in good fun. Now it ain’t. And “if we are heading towards a climate apocalypse, then why would I want to bring children into this world anyway?” This is an excellent question. And yet, she “can’t seem to tune out two ticking clocks: The planet’s and my own” biological clock.* Now, I haven’t read or seen the play, and I’d like to, next time it comes to Kansas [*snork*]. But Kanchwala gives us this plot synopsis: the protagonist becomes “frustrated with online dating . . . until she ultimately finds comfort in a community that understands her climate anxiety.” She calls the problem “solastalgia.” But it’s hard to read this and not reflexively think of the word “solipsism,” as well. I mean it really doesn’t take much to see that the problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Mother Gaia really doesn’t give a shit whether you’re anxious or not — the geophysical processes will continue, either way. And politicians and CEOs won’t care, unless you can convert your anxiety to anger — and take it into the streets. So, there is a possible danger in regarding climate chaos as an internalized syndrome or psychological condition. And if the solution is to find a support group online, well . . . let’s just say that it could easily become a cocoon that never breaks open with a butterfly. But, Kanchwala believes that “as young people, we also have complex lives and the ability to care both about the world and ourselves all at the same time.” Hers is the multi-tasker generation, after all, so maybe they really will get the Green New Deal passed while they’re between swipes. And to her credit, she does provide a list of things you can do — which includes “Work toward a larger cause” and “Put pressure on your elected officials.” Still, her piece left me with a mix of despair and hope — despair of humans’ capacity to look beyond our immediate personal concerns (e.g., feeding, reproducing, flogging our books) to attempt to save the human race; but also hope that at least some young people have the good sense to feel anxious about the future. And perhaps that anxiety will lead them out of their (seemingly) safe space and into the rough-and-tumble public sphere, to do something about it. _______________________ * BTW, every new American brought into the world will consume as much as 16 Eritreans. FWIW. Check out the Global Footprint Network for 2019 stats. “disaster readiness is like exercise,”
the editorialist sez, “it’s so boring- ly uncontroversial, it’s all too easy to agree that it’s important & then fail to act.” i guess we know that now. or know we wonder why the people in charge didn’t; or that they didn’t ‘cause nobody made them this summer it will seem as tho there’s no more c-virus; but we may have another record-hot summer . . . at our local wetlands this morning, i could hear the roar of traffic on the hiway -- the wheels of industry may be idled, but the wheels of vehicles turn — lots of them, their tailpipes still exhale . . . but it’s full-on springtime in n.e. ks. already! — redbuds, forsythia, violets, tulips; yesterday hi 81 f lo 62 (norm hi 65 lo 40) — up around 90 today, but hey, i’m sitting outside in shorts -- beautiful weather we’ve been having, huh? weird, but beautiful . . . jan. 2020 turned out to be the warmest jan. ever in the world, btw. they tell us not to feel guilty about what you are or are not doing: driving, flying, &c b/c it’s really a political issue; but what if you’re not doing politics? ready or not, meanwhile, death toll from inundations in s.e. tanzania rises to 24 this yr; "more floods: how terribly dreary!"; s. central iran flooding consumes $325 m (& 2 k head of livestock): “farmers who suffered from floods last year are once again facing a new catastrophe”; standing water after yemen floods birthed mosquitoes, which birthed dengue, which killed 59 & sickened 7400 (+ c-virus, natch); zambia had rainiest rainy season; & in papua new guinea, 60k folk lost houses, gardens to floods & the coral bleaches faster, the arctic ocean becomes the atlantic ocean, permafrost melts, releasing more carbon (+ microbes); highest methane releases in 5 yrs, blahdey blah blah, & rest assured that none of the catastrophes cataloged in this here verse chronicle have been cleaned up after or recovered from (guilt, arguably, deters us from doing evil or harmful deeds & impels us to do their opposite. i know it does me, but i was raised catholic, so . . .) it’s a weird feeling, seeing water seep in from under the walls of your house, esp. if it’s never flooded before, & see it rise to the bottom shelf as you scramble to put everything on the top shelf or tables, or clean up the stinking mildewy mess afterward; i’m talking about the us of a, where we have plenty of toxic mildew remover but seriously, what is your town going to do for you if yr house burns or floods or the tapwater starts to taste salty? or for the people from the gulf coast sitting homeless on your street? it can’t happen here they say & doremus sez the hell it can’t I just got back from the grocery store. I wore a mask that a friend had made for my wife. It fit OK, but the straps were too wide: my glasses kept slipping off my ears (and, hence, face). Tragedy and comedy. I didn’t wipe every article when I got home, but I washed the bags and washed myself.
While at the store (our local coop), I couldn’t help but notice that there were slightly fewer items on the shelves than there were two weeks ago. Walking down the aisles, you might not notice (our superfluity here is so great a shortage can be hard to spot) — except for toilet paper, of course. Some of the shortages (or delays in supply) is probably due to hoarding; some of it due to short-staffed producers and distributors. It’s easy to imagine a spec-fic-type worst-case scenario, where your local grocery store runs out of food. T.C. Boyle has said “that day is coming.” As probable pandemics multiply the effect of inevitable multiplying weather disasters, as the water runs out and the weather gets weirder, that day is indeed coming. The novelist Arundhati Roy puts it this way, in a recent opinion piece in the Financial Times: As the lockdown enters its second week, supply chains have broken, medicines and essential supplies are running low. Thousands of truck drivers are still marooned on the highways, with little food and water. Standing crops, ready to be harvested, are slowly rotting. She’s not describing a futuristic post-apocalypse. She is describing India in April 2020 — which is only at the beginning of its own “curve” — but it could apply to the USA soon, too. It could also describe the effects of climate change, in India and in many other places. Certainly climate catastrophes disrupt transportation and limit that most important medicine of all, clean water. And we’ve seen much of the corn crop rot in waterlogged fields in the Upper Midwest and Plains states. What are the psychological and cultural effects of all this? A lot has been written recently, in both journalism and literature, about “climate anxiety” or “solastalgia.” If there’s enough anxiety in the air, it becomes a societal phenomenon. But what effect will it have on the history of the future? Is it already writing that history for us? Roy frames the problem this way: Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. I’m reminded of sad-sack Henry Adams, who, on his own account, “found himself lying in the Gallery of Machines at the Great Exposition of 1900, his historical neck broken by the sudden irruption of forces totally new.” There have always been famines and floods, but never as many in as many places. There have been pandemics, but never at the same time as massive climatological shifts (at least since humans have been around). And this is not the last of it. Both Roy’s and Adams’ responses raise the question of how one is to deal with it. Adams, as an historian, scrambles to “stitch our future to our past” via what he calls “the sequence of force,” but it doesn’t seem to satisfy him. Roy, as a novelist, knows narrative. Realist fiction tends to foreground temporal ruptures, climaxes, epiphanies, etc. What novel worth its salt ends where it began (other than a satirical one)? No good storyteller ever lets a crisis go to waste. The challenge she puts before us is to use this turning-point in the story, this turn in the poem, to write something radically new but still believable. And that’s a consummation devoutly to be wished, in both literature and the rest of life. “no amount of hunkering down
in this #alonetogether period will ward off storm systems or the chaos they rain down,” the reporter sagely opines; “hopefully we don’t have any storms or major disasters that we have to deal with right away,” the red cross man sez. that’d mean more dis- aster shelters, beds farther apart, staggered meal times; the corps is doing virtual emergency training, prepping for levee-busting rainfall, snowmelt; & there’s a lot of snow left to melt, in land already waterlogged: the james r. in s. dakota stays flooded, a yr after the last spate of torrential rains; meanwhile, in topeka ks, wed. it was hi 74 f, norm 62 fri. it was hi 38 f, norm 63 -- hopefully that change-of-season thing won’t wollop us like it did last year . . . while out west, firefighters prep for prime fire conditions, w/many colleagues sick & emergency services stressed due to the strain of c-virus florida finally locksdown, as c-virus toll mounts & state braces for another “active” hurricane season; the gov. sez he’s worried about how “the social fabric holds up” under multiple emergencies; meanwhile, dry heat ravages the peninsula: wildfire torches 3500 rental cars @ ft. myers (& if states are fighting for resources now, what’ll it be like in multi-disaster mode? kinda makes you think, don’t it?) & vanuatu already has a cat 5: 148 mph wind levels buildings; cyclone washed 28 off a ferry in the solomon islands in ukraine, not your garden- variety forest fire: this one burns near the chernobyl nuke plant, & radiation levels spike; while 1.5 m chileans live on trucked-in water (50 l./day/ family: how many hand- washings is that? once you subtract stuff like drinking); rainfall last yr ↓ 80% from previous record low in santiago & valparaiso; while 1.14 m in hunan “have difficulty accessing drinking water” during these droughty times floods & locusts add to iran’s c-virus plague; floods kill 12 in afghanistan, dis- place almost 5k in yemen; & o btw, april is national stress awareness month: celebrate! (alonetogether) but you know how a tornado can’t cross rivers or hit cities? well, the same is true of natural disasters: only one can hit you at a time, at least if you’re american: that’s why all the really bad stuff happens to somebody else in some place that’s not here You feel depressed, so you don’t write. As though everything you write will be something you want to share. As though whatever you want to share must be Great Literature. Well, a lot of us are like John Berryman’s Henry, right now:
. . . I am heavily bored. Peoples bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature . . . I got no inner resources. But I do know that actions — even small and meaningless — are the only remedy for boredom I’ve ever come across. Also for depression. As with every crisis, we stay afloat using what we have from the past, which may not equip us with what we need in the present. What served us well as a cooler now perhaps has relevance only as a life-preserver: it’s insulation is insignificant, even as its ability to float, which didn’t keep our beer cold, maybe now is keeping us from drowning. So, maybe now, when we can’t do things the way we were doing them, is a good time to figure out new ways of doing. (A bad analogy, but serviceable, as a boogie board.) I’ve been putting off posting (and everything else) — this morning. All the lovely prematurely-blooming sprung flowers are blasted by an icy, sleety cold front, the unnatural warmth nipped in the bud. The sky is gray and the air is cold. The world is ugly, and all the people are sad. Ten million+ of my co-countrypersons are out of work. We’re in a deadly epidemic that shows no sign of abating. And I haven’t even mentioned the far more devastating and long-lasting effects of a global atmosphere going haywire. So, instead of writing on a post, I just start writing on a pad (lying down, at that). Student: “I’m finding it hard to concentrate enough to write. Anybody have advice?” The bored leading the bored. Well, all I can say is that writing is a great way of focusing your mind enough to write. And a situation like this — not to mention what things will be like 2 or 20 years from now — takes some of the pressure off. I mean, who really gives a fuck? Write what you want to, as much as you want or can, when you can. If the virus don’t get you, the flood, fire, famine, or any number of other things will. In the meantime, do the dishes, grade a quiz or grate some cheese, write some lines, then do whatever comes after that. |
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |