Tripoli, Libya (in the f*ing Sahara Desert!), last Tuesday: the future's an indifferent,
the past is an indifferent, & life is opinion (i’m not making this stuff up: it’s been around for a while) and this: people believe what they want to believe -- whoever you want to win really did win; whatever you want to happen really will unless and until you get hit in the head by a flying roof or swamped by a flying flood, as with typhoon goni, which (or who?) crashed down on phillipines (5th typhoon in 5 wks, another on the way), 190 mph winds, ≥ 20 dead; strongest hurricane this yr., so far, on planet earth; 1m evac’d, but electricity, water, phones cut off for 325k human beings, 100s of houses crushed by volcanic rock washing down hillsides (plus worst covid outbreaks in s.e. asia); or hurricane eta (7th of 24 letters in the greek alphabet, which they use after the english is exhausted), a cat 4, inundates central america (all of it) as i write, with “unrelenting rain” w/1000s evac’d, 10s of 1000s isolated, cut off by land- slides and floods and we’ve never gotten this far in the alphabet . . . more named storms than in any other year (& what happens after the flood?: “water-borne diseases like diarrhea, typhoid and other diseases like malaria, & chicken guinea,” sez dr. shankar in hyderabad) & remember that “derecho” that walloped iowa in august? it’s now the most expensive t’storm in u.s. history; “2020 weather roundup: less tornadoes, but overall the weather played like an apocalypse film” -- so sez the sanguinely-titled successful farming magazine meanwhile, 7” hailstones batter tripoli (libya), which gets less than 11” of rain per year; brazil burns out of control in parts: “how am I supposed to control a fire in the middle of the jungle?” (farmer núbia machado) "for a minority, it is more viable to commit a crime than to work properly" (farmer sidnei mendes) europe just had its hottest oct. on record cyprus had hottest summer ever; hottest nov. day ever in nederland; 99 f: hottest nov. day in phoenix history; & don’t even look @ what’s happening in the arctic . . . chances are, you won’t: "we react to a rustling in the bushes with lightning speed. but the threat posed by climate change is abstract,” sez the environmental psychologist; "in evolutionary terms, we are not built for this kind of danger”; & the “psychotraumatology expert” (i’m not kidding) sez: "people don't want to hear how bad things are, so they push it away” like we do w/death, like we do w/ illness, injury, like a smoker lighting up, breathing in, & breathing out
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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. |