“She could go further, and record the ways and sayings of the now-vanished God’s Gardeners for the future; for generations yet unborn, as politicians used to say when they were fishing for extra votes. If there is anyone in the future, that is; and if they’ll be able to read; which come to think of it, are two big ifs. And even if reading persists, will anyone in the future be interested . . . . Maybe acting as if she believes in such a future will help to create it, which is the kind of thing the Gardeners used to say.”
– Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood “Living in survival mode creates a sense of fatalism in which tomorrow has to look after itself.” – Antonio Matimbe, communications manager for World Vision Mozambique) If the “doomers” are right, and human extinction will happen w/in a generation or two (or a year or two, for the Guy McPhersons), then can one think of readers in a future? Or even a past? Because, as Déborah Danowski and Eduardo Vivieros de Castro put it, “it is history itself that will soon ‘be history.’” If a species falls in the forest . . . I’m very interested in history – and in preservation and archiving. This comes from having done archival research – and craving documents that didn’t survive, are lost, or never existed. So naturally I want everyone to record everything and keep it all. The problem is that, in the meantime, we are living. And it is often difficult to live one's life and write about it, too. On top of that, living is getting faster, communications more ephemeral (think texting), and – and, well who wants to think about the future, nowadays? But writing is largely about imagining a future, insofar as it postulates a reader (or recipient). And the point in writing history, it would seem, would be for the future to be cognizant of the past. So, unless maybe you’ve been charting the history of carbon-fueled industrialism or the natural history of extinction, facing our threatened and threatening future, it’s hard to feel like there’s much point in history, other than entertainment. The past is prologue . . . to what? We were missing the most important part of the story all along; it was odorless and colorless. And as for envisioning the future – well, as a premeditatio malorum, to prepare one’s mind for what’s ahead, it makes sense. But if you're using history to learn lessons for the future - well, making plans depends upon the future’s being largely the same as the past; the more circumstances change, the less chance your plans have of coming to fruition (at least by the method you planned). And the only things we know for sure about climate change – and about how humans react to it – is that (a.) it can’t be predicted with any confidence, and (b.) whatever the predictions are, it always seems to turn out to be worse. So I guess that leaves us with the present, which is all we ever had or have anyway. If you're focused on finding water, literature will seem like a pretty distant concern. Can poetry help one appreciate the moment, live more fully in the present? Many a one has made that claim. I think it’s true, to some extent, provided one's immediate needs are met. But wouldn't living fully in the moment be an argument for abandoning writing altogether? Writing is recording, not being. (Wordsworth: “Aw, man – you shoulda been there!”) Or: maybe the only authentic (or valuable) writing is that which enters your mind and will not leave, but demands to be written down; or the phrase (or style) that you remember when you encounter an experience similar to the one in which it first occurred to you. Life as allusion. Lots of people have written things down without knowing whether or not anyone would read them again – but there was always the wan hope that somebody would. Perhaps the literature of the Anthropocene will focus more narrowly and consistently on the present moment – or the idea of the present moment. “Documentary poetry” will document life as it happens, not to inform but simply to honor its happening. Perhaps we’ll write and read just to stay sane. And that’s a plenty good reason, as far as I’m concerned.
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i hear on the radio
we’re going to have more heat waves & droughts in kansas. see, the heat waves cause the droughts – and the droughts make everything hotter: it’s what you call a “feedback loop” (it is happening in europe this summer): noaa is quick to say this is separate from & in addition to global warming; & i want to ask: how the hell can you tell? o well, we’re normal: hi 91 (norm 90) lo 73 (norm 68 – close enough) (more heat also means more water evaporates so more humidity so temps don’t go down as far at night) good news – the longest mississippi flood in history has come to an end! hurrah! & elsewhere: 7.9 m acres “went up in flames” in siberia on monday (lightning strikes), which makes 29.6 m so far this summer, unleashing stifling smoke across most of russia, creating massive CO2 emissions; “majority of fires in remote areas; authorities make decision to extinguish them only if estimated damage exceeds cost of the operation” or, as one pensioner put it, “i am choking and dizzy.” passenger at bus stop: “i felt like i was inside a gas chamber.” i can’t breathe. elsewhere in siberia: flooding near lake baikal: flows of mud and muddy water washing toxic sludge from old paper mill into the “pristine” lake; that evaporation again (causes more intense rain, too); hang on – i’m starting to scare myself here – meanwhile: the u.k. joins the highest-ever-temperature club: 101.6 f / 38.7 c in cambridge; flooding in manchester; in lincolnshire thousands of chickens have perished from heat – “critics said the chickens would have suffered terribly before dying,” but workers at the facility: “the freak weather has done this to them. please don’t turn this into anything bad.” & i don’t think i have to. meanwhile, the long-awaited monsoons are drowning people in peshawar, nepal, & bihar where “100s of villages are marooned” & need “tarpaulins, mosquito nets, bedsheets, soap, drinking water.” but the monsoons always cause floods, no? (but still not enough to break the drought) deluge in china, drought further south; wildfires followed by flooding in croatia. 38.5 f in regina – coldest ever temp for date; highs in hi 80s this week – more of that wacky jet stream! (we’re not going to talk about the sinkholes in the permafrost, causing methane and nitrous e- missions, exponentially accelerating this, that, or the other) meanwhile: guatemala: “this isn’t poverty – or even extreme poverty: this is a famine, and people are dying,” even as the coffee crop sickens with fungus in the thickening haze “we’re desperate . . . there’s no money and no food . . . my children have gone to bed hungry for the past 3 yrs” – so he does what people do during eras of climate change – migrates – in this case, north & so do lots of others – to avoid seeing their kids die slowly * analysis: “our brain is a get-out-of-the-way machine,” sez the psychologist. “that’s why we can duck a baseball in milliseconds. some say climate change is happening too fast. no, it’s happening too slowly – not quick enough to get our attention.” my aim is to pick up the pace of perception: consider all the preceding a foul ball off the bat of albert almora, & it is heading into the stands right at your row. as the saying goes: think fast notice to reader: the following post deals (in part) with suicide
* * * * My wife takes the “cyanide pill” approach to potential societal collapse: that’s the time to “check out.” Or, as she puts it, “Take me to the attestup.”* I may feel that way if sociopaths with automatic weapons are breaking down my door. And my wife may feel differently. But the c.p. approach may be a way to push the whole issue away (psychologically) by referring it to a time that remains a distant hypothetical improbability. Hopefully it is. But, as Claudia Rankine puts it, we Americans believe, on some level, “that we will survive, no matter what.” So what is it that makes me think about life after civilization? Or fantasize about a period when it “won’t be all that bad” – when we can still “make a way”? Maybe it’s a guy thing: you gotta do something – you gotta go down fighting! Or an American thing: No matter how dark things look, we’ll find a way to overcome, because we are an Optimistic People. (Notice how dystopian novels by Americans often have a happy ending?) Then I think of Cato at Utica. Everybody talks about how he ran on his sword to prevent Caesar from taking him as a captive trophy to Rome. And surely that was politically significant. But the image that stays in my mind happens just before that: it’s of him on the docks, helping out the people who are bailing on him, making sure their ships are sound and that they have enough provisions before they flee. If I could hang on long enough to do some good, I would like to think I would, even if I couldn’t hang on long. Maybe help migrants coming to or fleeing from my town . . . Or is that the fantasy of the eternal persistence of the self, smuggled into an otherwise gloomy scenario? Dystopian novels have protagonists, after all. Somebody has to survive for at least 250 pages or so. The point is: what would you do now, if you believed a breakdown of social order and withdrawal of things like running water and electricity was going to happen in your lifetime? Live each day as though the shit were about to hit the fan in a big, big way at any moment, and it could be tomorrow or it could be in 20 years? That seems rather . . . stressful. If it really is out of our hands, as it is to a large extent, then perhaps the thing to do is to live each day as though it were your last and do what good you can now, while you’re alive. Even with the knowledge that, ultimately, it won’t make the overall picture much brighter. When I read that back, it sounds like self-aggrandizing existentialist bullshit – backing out of politics to tend your own garden. That can’t be morally acceptable. I mean, we gotta do something! . . . Right? ---------- * The ättestupa were supposedly precipices in Scandanavia in viking times from which older people jumped (or were thrown) to their deaths, as a form of senicide. As it happens, it’s a 17th c. invention: never happened. We found out about the legend by watching a series that parodies all the other series about vikings and barbarians. A very good interview with Susanne Moser about what constitutes a realistic response to the climate crisis.
They say "Nature bats last." Looks like She also sets the finishing line. The Tour de France comes to a screeching halt in the Alps due to a hailstorm followed by a mudslide. Zoot alors.
another editorial:
“we need to support disaster survivors, overwhelmingly in rural areas, as they develop their own ways of adapting to the climate crisis. . . . unless we support the survivors in their communities, they will inevitably seek refuge in those giant conurbations, with their ‘safe’ infrastructures & technologies, sending the cost of those adaptations soaring yet higher.” tiene razón. pero there ain’t a whole lot of razón apparent these days. but there is a whole lot of chaleur: like paris’ hitting all-time record hi temp: 42.6 c / 108.7 f en warmte: nederland notches all-time hottie at 41.7 / 107.1 en belgium: 40.7 / 105.3 (& some london tube stations lose a/c) und hitze: 42.6 / 108.7 broke the record in germany you may have even heard this on the news . . . but when did i think i’d say “thank god i’m not in europe”? temps étrange, non? – in more ways than 1 le jet stream, gone all wonky (but: the hottest ever day in topeka ks was july 24, 1936, when the temp hit 114 f. we must remember: everything is relative.) so, 113k acres incinerated in two days at the idaho natl. laboratory, w/its nuke reactors & all, but more importantly: “this is how a heat wave in california is affecting your guacamole . . .” meanwhile: “two years ago it seemed rain would never return to cape town. now it doesn’t seem like it will stop.” in quandu quandu water rises in sheet metal shacks: “it is risky because the stove could fall into the water, but it is cold and my two-year-old needs to keep warm.” (that everything is relative) rising water deaths, evac’s, mass disruption all over: recife, brazil, n.w. turkey, e. india even as mekong delta lowest level in 100 yrs & drought threatens indonesia’s rice: govt. “conisders artificial rain” & harare, where half the people have no water, the drought has whacked production of hydopower, so “we have to do our work during the middle of the night, because that is the only time we are guaranteed electricity” (i jump from place to place, b/c, as its un- acknowledged legislator, i am trying to represent the world. to itself. can you see it now, where you are?) I’m not sure these are the same question. By “write for,” I mean Who are you trying to impress? Who do you picture as being out there in the darkened seats of the audience? Your peers? Critics? Friends and family? Committee members? Editors? By “write to,” I mean Is your writing directed at other human beings, some of whom may not be involved in the literary-industrial complex? If not, you’re probably writing for someone. “For,” in the sense that the court poet was writing for the king; if he addressed the king in writing or song, the address was designed to enhance the king’s prestige – to be heard by the court – and to publicly ingratiate the poet with the king. But ones writes a letter or email to someone – it is a communication delivered to a private address, to a particular person or group, rather than a set-piece designed for public broadcast. Writing For is essentially writing for institutions – and institutional rewards and awards. In the poetry world, in particular, since there is no audience or royalties to speak of, gatekeepers are of primary importance. If you are trying to “make it” as a poet, in terms of institutional acceptance (including getting a tenured professorship), you have to Write For the institution. In a weird way, Emily Dickinson was Writing For – for posterity, in her case. She tied up her poems like letters, but they were letters “to the world,” not letters to Rev. Higginson or to her sister-in-law (though she certainly sought their approbation, too – sent them poems with her letters – and both helped to make D’s posthumous reputation). Is it possible “to Write To” someone, qua literature? I mean, intentionally? There are certainly exchanges of correspondence that qualify. But often correspondence is private in name only (Seneca’s letters to Lucilius, e.g.); and if they really are private, then any public approbation would be fortuitous. What does all this have to do with climate change and societal collapse? Well, if publishing and higher education keep going the way they’re going, and if CO2 & methane emissions keep going the way they’re going, then there’s not going to be much reason “to write for.” The audience will have been dispersed, so to say. Do you keep on writing (or composing) poetry anyway? If so, your reader is likely to be more local – somebody you know already, for instance in your family and friends, your migrant group, your compound. And this is indeed the readership many poets write for already – in numerous Poetry Societies and Writer’s Clubs across the U.S., for instance. But it means foregoing the need for FAME. A name, Marcus Aurelius says, is an empty sound and an echo, one that never satisfies the living and means nothing to the dead. And those who remember one’s name will themselves pass away. Maybe it’s best to write in an epistolary mode, no matter what one writes – and actually give the text to the addressee. Perhaps the addressee should decide whether to publish it or not (it’s their property now, after all). In any case, I suspect that, in future, writing will be a lot more immediate, ephemeral, and local than “literary” writing is today. Writing that one can take seriously, anyway. save the cucumbers!
* editorial today: “climate change isn’t a single issue; it frames all” – i guess cause we’re all “in” the climate – “the widening wealth gap . . . limits the bandwidth many have available to wrap their heads around this. they’re focused on meeting basic needs” & don’t have resources to advocate or shrink their footprints. but now for the good news: it’s raining in chennai! (1-7 cm – enough to stop the need for 50-tank-car trains to ship h2o 215 km daily?) the water board congratulated the space agency on its rocket launch, saying: “if you find any water on the moon, you know whom to call first.” “desilting” of reservoirs continues. meanwhile, a friend sends more good news: artificial wetlands work; sea cucumber fisheries protected in indonesia; shellfish farms can filter seawater; urban leopards eat rabid feral dogs; congress “permanently” reauthorized the land & water conservation fund; seagrass meadows are being restored; trees are being planted – another friend sends news from australian think-tank: “detrimental impacts of climate breakdown, such as increasing scarcity of food and water, will act as a catalyst on extant socio-political instabilities to accelerate disorder & conflict over the next three decades”; instability of jet stream, gulf stream, no streams, wildfires, heatwaves, blah blah blah; adding that: “even for 2c of warming, more than a billion people may need to be relocated, & in high-end scenarios, the scale of destruction is beyond our capacity to model, with a high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end” which doesn’t mean we can’t save sea cucumbers, or grow real cucumbers, save leopards or one another for as long as may be but what do them aussies know about the cloimate, anyway? they think it’s winter right now! well, actually . . . they’re having “the most severe drought on record,” some towns “on the brink of running out of water,” w/”daily temperatures @ a record high” – the last “wet year” was 2016 we’re all in the climate – but are we “all in”? well, alls i know is what’s in front of my face, & the weather here is gorgeous! hi of 83 f, lo humidity, slept with windows open last nite, &c what me worry? (who killed alfred e. newman?) meanwhile elsewhere another european heat wave: the bike riders zip through 104 f in s. france; all-time hottie for bordeaux; nuclear power plants shut off: river water too hot to cool them; "our ponds are empty & the meadows withered"; rhine impassible to shipping for first time ever – its source, meltwater from alpine glaciers, slowing to a trickle: “we get 30 million tons of raw materials shipped from rotterdam . . . for thyssenkrupp steel, the rhine is a question of survival.” in u.s., potomac river, running past d.c., measured record 94 f; 2 m acres burned in alaska (so far – “arctic circle wildfires are now at unprecedented levels”); & “44,000 people signed a petition calling for authorities to declare an emergency in the siberian federal district due to wildfires”; meanwhile again more floods in india, pakistan, nepal, bangladesh: 100s killed and millions displaced; while in laos, crops crinkle up: “my rice seedlings are about to die due to a lack of water. i don’t know what has happened this year & why the rains are so late.” & we don’t know what has happened, & what will happen, which may be the best cause for hope we have Here is an interesting list of people’s responses to climate catastrophe, observed and compiled by Jem Bendell. Following each, I will try to respond by relating them to the situation of the writer (esp. the present writer). 1.) “Reading and talking much more about societal collapse, and all the issues it brings up, but without significantly changing behaviour.” (Well, that hits pretty close to home) 2.) “Survivalism; self-sufficiency off-grid.” (I wouldn’t have a clue how to begin. And why would you do it, if you have to survive in a world where only survivalists can survive?) 3.) “Pursuing spiritual fulfillment; putting things in cosmic perspective” (Nice work if you can get it. But do you have an ethical obligation toward all those other people you’re sharing the planet with? Or would trying to resist the unravelling of physical human society constitute resisting the cosmic plan?) 4.) “Talking about societal collapse in one’s professional circles, to explore what could be done within one’s profession and beyond.” (This, I’m trying to think through. My profession is at least as deeply in denial as any. Some are writing climate-change poetry or fiction. But the means of delivery and role of literature – and the culture of publishing – the institutions – remain unchanged. But they won’t indefinitely. What will replace them, if anything?) 5.) Speaking out – “about purpose and values and not accepting the dominant assumptions about growth, profit and conformity.” (It’s been done – and without much effect. Which doesn’t mean one shouldn’t. In the meantime, all our solid assumptions melt into air.) 6.) “Reducing workload to create more time for exploring the issue of climate chaos or societal collapse, in anticipation of making a major decision about changing one’s life.” (Hopefully that’s what I’ve been doing – but I’m not feeling the anticipated breakthrough – or the decisiveness.) 7.) “Developing skills that will be useful, in your free time.” (If you have any. But a good idea for everybody, if you do. We have to be prepared for the unpredictable. Seneca: “Reckon on everything. Expect everything.”) 8.) “Cultivating more compassion and kindness.” (This is perhaps at the heart of the ethical challenge of climactic and societal chaos. Certainly a lot has been written about this topic. Maybe not enough. Writers themselves, in their interactions with each other, could certainly use more of it.) 9.) Trying to deal with the affective responses to climate chaos and societal collapse and helping others to do so. (This option might have the most “juice” for writers, esp. poets, provided they’re willing to be honest – for instance, by admitting they have affective responses to this mess. But real honesty is often bad for one’s career. Affective upset in the customer = low sales. Keep it positive – don’t mention climate chaos.) 10.) “Looking for networks of people who are creating self-reliant ‘Arks.’” (Like the “Ararats” of the God’s Gardeners in Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood, I guess. Couldn’t hurt to stock up on canned goods. Or books, paper, pens. This approach would be especially useful in the case of sudden natural disasters. But self-reliance can only go so far if the climate is not conducive to life.) 11.) Trying to appreciate the moment and developing inner peace, but carrying on as always (That is, until you can’t anymore. But in the meantime, this is an excellent idea, provided it’s not promoting denial. Or capitulation. (see # 12).) 12.) Consciously-chosen denial. Carpe diem, for tomorrow we die. (An approach with a distinguished literary pedigree.) 13.) Trying to get politicians to prepare for climate chaos (Good luck with that one). 14.) Geoengineering. (Yeah, right. Whatever.) 15.) Nonviolent direct action to curb practices that are making things worse (Like driving to direct action actions, maybe. In any case, writing ≠ direct action – it does not disrupt the functioning of Capital. Quite the contrary, in most cases.) 16.) “[P]ractical grassroots initiatives to develop capabilities for deep adaptation.” (In civil society, I take it (as opposed to #13). This one sounds like the most practical and likely of success – and the one that would leave you the least time to write. The Deep Adaptation Forums initiated by Bendell are a good start. But how to get your municipality, township, or neighborhood on board? Like I say, better put that novel on hold.) 17.) Developing “the cultural concepts that will help us to find and express meaning after societal-collapse. It involves looking for beauty and meaning in a new context.” (At first blush, this sounds like a no-brainer for writers and artists of all kinds. But it could also mean “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Collapse.” Or maybe that’s just my way of saying that I can’t imagine “meaning” that doesn’t include taking active measures to ameliorate the situation, at least for a few people. Which in itself could be an art.) 18.) “Evangelising about one’s views on life, the cosmos and human organisation.” (Again, like the God’s Gardeners – or Jem Bendell, perhaps. Or those who can evangelize about literature with a straight face, maybe . . . . But can you attract followers, or even listeners, if you don’t promise them eternal life? What’s in it for them?) 19.) Anger, anxiety, depression, suicide. (All of which have produced some great literature but aren’t very attractive alternatives to pursue deliberately.) 20.) Violent direct action. (In terms of political/social change, sadly, this approach – or at least the perceived threat of violence or property destruction – seems to be the only thing that, historically, has produced concessions from the powers that be, in the U.S. But most of us can’t countenance such things. And would it really produce significant change, under the present circumstances, or an excuse for a fascist takeover? But then, there is a lot of great prison writing.) 21. Surely somebody has some comment about some of this . . . Fun with photos, Russian-style: empiricism
@ lat: 39.01° n, lon: 95.21° w, elev: 830 ft.: sat hi temp = 101 f (norm 90) sun hi temp = 85 f (norm 90); but this morning i felt chilly: only w/difficulty will you convince people who live where the weather has always seemed extreme that it has gotten extremely extreme (recent meme: “the 12 seasons of kansas” – haha lol – currently we’re in “on the doorstep of hell” – visions of clint eastwood painting the town red), global heating a conceptual con- struct one merely assents to until yr city runs out of H2O, & then you’re living in a sci-fi film that’s neither “fi” nor filmed. french farmers seek e.u. bailouts for crop losses: “people are thirsty & the cows are hungry”; & in u.s., drought after deluge: “there are farmers who are the 1st in their family for 3 generations to not grow crops on their fields” & “we’ve never planted this late in the year” & “heat wave causes wet soil to crust & compact, stunting root development & ruining crops,” & remember those cyclones in mozambique? . . . . . . right – didn’t think so. anyway, now 1.6 m folks suffer “extreme food insecurity” as a result: “the upcoming lean season [oct. – march] will be very difficult”; “climate change increases the probability of heat waves, but it’s still difficult to link any one event to climate change,” say the scientists, even when they are so depressed they can’t get out of bed.* weather is not climate weather is not climate weather is not climate . . . meanwhile, in uttar pradesh lightening kills 33 in massive t’storm, (& i can’t keep up w/ who’s in deluge & who’s in drought over yonder: crops shrivelled in some places, tigers and rhinos running from rising water in others); 700k bangladeshis displaced by floods: what do you do in bangladesh when it floods?; & jiangxi still inundated; & “10s of 1000s” (more) evac’d from kyushu. meanwhile, siberia still burning, background blotted w/smoke, & temps on its n. coast = 8 c + normal (“as wildfires increase in intensity, how can farmers safeguard their animals – and their way of life?” – those pictures from spain of sheep roasted alive in their pens) but every shrinking ice sheet has a silver lining: “fears over melting glaciers are also fueling a tourism boom in alaska” – 2 m visitors expected (“go while you can”) – “tour companies report a huge increase in demand for glacier- related activities, while cruise ships experienced a record season last year, up 33 % compared to 2010” heraklitos leans over the gunwale, vomiting & weeping, while demokritos plays shuffleboard & chuckles -------- * Listen to the second segment of the July 12th show. |
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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. |