I am fully extrovert, perfectly adapted to America. In my other life, I enjoy making small talk & do not identify with Greta Thunberg. I am consistently cheerful, a great product. I do not identify with Gaea. In my other life, I play all my cards right and keep one up my sleeve at all times just in case. In my other life, I can zip it, go along to get. I am able to signal my virtue to others and then go ahead and do nothing anyways. In my other life, I don’t check to see what the jet stream is doing this week. I don’t go on and on about the polar bears. In my other life, I am not ashamed to take fabulous vacations via airplane travel, and I can dismiss “carbon shamers” as cranks, joyless nutballs, without feeling even a twinge of unease. I curate my life in my other life. Everyone likes me, on Facebook and off. In my other life, I did not grow up in the south and I was not raised Irish Catholic; in other words, I am neuronormative as fuck. True, my other life is not lived as a free person, exactly, but I don’t even know it, so much happier am I. In the other life, it is 1989, I am benevolent overlord of the world, and I know exactly what to do to avert climate catastrophe. In my other life, I just keep my head down and do my job: one day at a time & the devil take the rest, am I right? In my other life, I don’t think about whether I’m right. I may go days w/o checking the weather. No, really, I’m really happy in that other life. In my other life, I don’t have the Guardian’s “Natural disasters and extreme weather” page bookmarked. In my other life, what I do for a living is save the earth, and I earn a lot of money for it. Or I don’t save the earth but convince myself I do, and I earn a lot of money for it. In my other life, I don’t take it so seriously. There are no “climate wars,” no “climate refugees.” In my other life, I accentuate the positive, e-liminate the negative. In my other life, I don’t worry about growing old eating cat food and living in a chicken coop. In my other life, I don’t worry about creeping fascism. Or creeping deserts and seashores. In my other life, I don’t worry about climate disaster at all. In my other life, I don’t have to.
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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. |