The purple = 3x normal rainfall. Turquoise = 2x normal. See the full map and companion story here.
“Today, one could say that the intrusion of Gaia produces a questioning situation [. . .] calling into question all our stories, our positions, those that reassure, those that promise, those that criticize.”
– Isabelle Stengers, In Catastrophic Times (2015) Americans, in particular, don’t handle uncertainty very well. There’s a solution to every problem – or by god we go out and find it! The future is going to turn out to be the one we always wanted and expected – and if you don’t believe it, you need to get a new belief. Because if we believe it, it must be true. And we believe there are the good guys and the bad guys, and it’s easy to tell them apart by their hats. We want the future we paid for, dammit! We expect it. This aspect of the American character helps explain why so many elected officials in this country deny the reality of anthropogenic climate disruption. Many people don’t want to believe it’s true, therefore it’s a hoax. And the rest of them know all too well that it’s true, therefore they don’t want to think about it. None of which necessarily helps the American writer decide what (or whether) to write, at a time when the social fabric appears to be fraying and starting to rip, people’s illusions are being shattered, and they’re facing an increasingly grim future. Speculative fiction? Satire? Documentary poetry? Nonfiction accounts of climate-induced suffering? In the twentieth century U.S., writers increasingly saw themselves as critics – as marginal figures in a quasi-literate society, throwing brickbats from the sidelines – or as sequestered creators whose work had value precisely because it served no social function (this latter group, ironically, were some of the most assiduous in theorizing the role of the writer in society). The writer-as-critic wants to be efficacious; the writer-as-isolato wants to feel justified; and so we’re squoze between fears that we are powerless or that we are craven. So: how to proceed? [to be continued – Tues. 11 June] & now i hear that MAY 2019
ranks as wettest month on record here in n.e. kansas, u.s., n.america & natl. guard trucking in water for people who live next to a lake; a flooded lake: water well pumps under water – perry lake releasing more water than niagra to relieve dam: downstream also flooded . . . & “muck . . . fouls [farmers’] equipment and strangles their seeds” – corn prices ↑20% in 3 wks. (this next to ad: “hi-volume water pumps”) insurance rates for everyone ↑ how bout some of that good ol global warming to dry things out (haw haw haw) but for the record – i write it out in a verse: 6/5 hi: 91f / norm: 83 lo: 72 / norm: 60 more rain today meanwhile dead, missing, stranded people from floods: libya, uganda, guatemala, s.africa, houston tornadoes in canada, germany, new zealand in india it hasn’t cooled: they’re hosing the streets w/water; s. part of country hottest may days ever; fodder is running out: emergency “cattle camps” edmonton, alberta sky: “looked like we were on mars” what with all the smoke – which now drifts as far as the u.k. visible from space (850k acres and counting) in middle east worst drought in 900 yrs (sez nasa) changed utterly - (not mars but venus) “. . . at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement [sic], especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason . . .”
-- John Keats This blog is supposed to be about uncertainty and how the writer handles it (or not). Most North American writers, like most people in the global north, operate on the assumption that the world will be more or less recognizable 20 years from now (“Cli-fi” is a possible exception; but it’s fictional, after all). The rich may be richer and the poor, poorer; summers may be hotter; politicians may be more corrupt; crime may rise; but it will be basically the same as now, only moreso: there is still a middle class; there is still a university; books continue to be published and careers made. “It’s too bad about the Australian fruit bat; it’s too bad about all those people over there in Mozambique.” There’s a palpable sense that it can’t happen here – and definitely can’t happen to our species. I’m not convinced of any of that. The rich countries are like bubbles (esp. the US, where we have an especially rich fantasy life); we’re sheltered, and that shelter is about to pop. How many superstorms how close together – how low must the aquifer go – how many displaced persons must there be, before we stop acting like everything will be fine? How much will it take before governments cease to be able to provide basic services to people? But this vision of the world in less than a generation is an extrapolation based on what’s happening now and what has happened in the past. As such, it’s only a possibility. It is also possible that the climatologists have miscalculated and that hydrogen-fuel-cell cars, wind power, and carbon sequestration will be here soon to avert total collapse. And it’s also possible that there will be a total collapse. Caesar said that people willingly believe what they want to believe, and this may be a case in point. If you like the way things are going, or if you’re by disposition an optimist, you’ll probably assume it will be more of the same. If you are discontented with contemporary capitalist society, or if you’re by disposition a pessimist (or millenarian), you might go for the latter. There is cli-fi and there is fi: which do you prefer. Still, it seems to me that what Keats is talking about is a more appropriate attitude toward the present (his masculinist attitude to literature notwithstanding). We simply don’t know what’s going to happen. It may be something very dramatic. It may not. How to be Schrodinger’s writer, for whom both things are true at once? If we write with the object of publication, we’re assuming that there will be publication as we have known it. Both writer and reader will be affected by climate disruption – but we don’t know to what extent. The only thing that seems relatively certain is that the preconditions for human culture – including literature – are under threat (due to lack of water to make paper, for instance.) How to write in a way that does not ignore or dismiss that possibility at the same time that it does not take it for granted? Can we “be in” not-knowing without immediately trying to get out of it – esp. when “fact and reason” can only take us so far, given the billions of variables involved? If we dwell in the cloud of unknowing, if we possess Negative Capability, we will be able to see both possibilities at once. Then maybe we will have redefined what it means to be a writer in the era of climate disruption. all the data pretty
normal here but what does that signify? everybody thought this winter especially cold; no, it’s the last three that were unnaturally mild. Define the norm by wild arcs & troughs then “normal” doesn’t tell you much “as our planet warms at different rates, frequency of these long abnormal stretches could increase.” but you can get used to anything if it becomes normal enough. meanwhile another downpour last night; massive dam releases à river flooding & dozens of levees breaking along arkansas river; state of ark. losing $20 mil/day; “turning farms into inland seas” machinery swamped; soil supersaturated farmers can’t plant; aussie farmers can’t either – record dry soil there, even as “snow fell in sub- tropical queensland” “the weather seems to be more unusual every year to me,” he said. “something’s changing. i don’t know what it is.” which is what the papa says in the turin horse, just before the well goes dry & lights go out & the family cannot continue their daily routine meanwhile “47,434 people affected” by paraguay r. floods; afghan drought, crop failure (other side of country underwater); n. korea record drought (on top of previous famine); donor countries give less than half what mozambique needs to rebuild after cyclones; deadly flooding in somalia, serbia; polar jet pushes rain northward of alberta & b.c. so they burn (this is an oversimplification but not by much) 122 f along pakistan/india border lake ontario at record water level meanwhile 215 largest companies predict $1 trillion loss from chaotic weather, mostly in next 5 yrs (this is going to cost the petty bourgeoise a pretty penny.) you’re sick of the latest predictions i get it tired of all the apocalypses but what i’m writing is happening now signified unto joseph who bare record of all the things that he saw “. . . some of us may find it easier to believe in a certain than an uncertain story, especially when the uncertain future would be so different to today that it is difficult to comprehend” - Jem Bendell
This issue of predictability is important to a writer. Even Emily Dickinson had to have known someone would find her fascicles in her drawer sooner rather than later. We say we write for ourselves, but we really write to be read – by someone in the future (including our future selves). So, the current climate of uncertainty (if I may express myself thus) is both deflating and intriguing. Deflating, because if civilization is going to collapse, we’ll have to hope some future archaeologist or antiquarian finds what we’ve written. That’s a lot to hope for. What percentage of texts from the ancient world survive today? Would the Epic of Gilgamesh be such a bestseller, if it had much competition from other late-second or mid-third millennia B.C.E. poetry? It’s all about supply and demand. And if humans go extinct, as some predict . . . well, what we write will not be read. Writing will not be read. It will be as though we had never been, but we won’t be there to see what that looks like. As Bendell puts it, the death of civilization “involves not only oneself but all of what one could contribute to” (17). In other words, you will not be immortalized by your work – it will not “live on after you” if it does not exist, or if there is no one reading it. Yet this is an intriguing situation, too. For one thing, focusing too much on audience or readership is the kiss of death for a writer – much better to write a note in sand than to write in stone. Or, said another way, one always writes as if someone else will read what one has written. Sometimes, the only someone else is the writer.* More importantly, we are witnessing (potentially) the most important historical event in . . . well, in history. Civilizations have collapsed, been reduced to rubble and buried. Peoples have dispersed or been assimilated to others. But nowadays, it’s not too much of an overstatement to say that there is only one, big, global (post)industrial civilization. Many live on its margins, many more just barely maintain a toehold. But we are all interpolated and interpellated, like it or not. Surely it will be very interesting – as water supplies melt, evaporate, or become salinized; as the coastlines retreat; as hurricanes and cyclones hit more major population centers. Sad, yes; excruciating; appalling, even. Sad and appalling times have a way of galvanizing writers. We want to witness; we want to record; we want to satirize and scramble bullshit verbiage and evil deeds. In On the Beach, the people in Australia (the only part of the earth the post-nuclear-war radioactive cloud has not enveloped) desperately send out messages in the hope of finding other people still alive in the rest of the world. Humans have been sending messages into the distant reaches of outer space for years. Do you read me? Do you copy? Do you read? Me, I’m writing as if someone will read what I’ve written. You are, anyhow. And maybe a couple of others now and . . . who knows, after that. After us. But really, you can try to put your MS in a bottle, or your computer in a waterproof, nukeproof vault – but that’s no guarantee. You can’t take these things too literally. Just know that you’re writing language that others can and will be able to read after this moment, at least for a while. And you’re writing at the beginning of something big. _____ * I’m talking about desire here, which is different than intentionality, it seems to me. Intentionality is about meaning; and while writers imagine themselves being read, they can’t control how others understand their works. Taken from the highest point in Lawrence, Kansas (top floor of Fraser Hall on Univ. of Kansas campus), looking south. The tornado is sheathed in rain, so it's not quite as big as it appears. But big enough. (Photo credit: John Hoopes)
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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. |