Hi.
Coffee: Almond Milk Latte, Bottled, Starbucks Brand; was a bit lighter than the dairy stuff; a road drink, caffeine to get you places, the formaldehyde linger of sugar
I was four feet out in the lake where the water got up to my shins. A dead fish passed by. The sun was out, a few white clouds. You were so far away, it seemed, even more so with the way the water was moving.
Today was preoccupied with climate change. After morning, the sun got higher and hotter and we were sweating 90’s. I came home and sat under a ceiling fan. I listened to a podcast panel talk about how the climate crisis is informing peoples’ decisions to have children. We’re all scared, basically, and none of use know what to do.
There’s this performance that’s been going on around here for 20 years, The Paperhand Puppet Intervention. I heard about it a few weeks ago for the first time. Today, after the lake, S invited me to see it (she was going anyway, she’s got family performing) and I said ‘Sure.’ Driving over to Chapel Hill, my car read 98 degrees. The performance was outside, but thankfully under old UNC trees.
What’s worth fighting for? The play was a predictable kind of magic, bred from the bones of this old liberal town up on it’s hill. They danced on stage as elaborate papier-mache monsters, circling birds. S’s son was mostly mesmerized. The story went like this: the heavy hand of industry strips a forest of its trees and builds up a city filled with rampant pollution; only the hope of three children and a magical acorn can push back the pollution; a pastoral return to romantic dreams of sassafras trees and frog-filled countrysides.
Halfway through, a kid runs out of the amphitheater and comes back with a plastic bag of chips. He’s loving the performance, and loving it even more with his pre-packaged snack. His shirt has an ad for electrolytes. Five or six families have brought out their silicon-chipped, electricity guzzling phones. It’s a big amphitheater, so two large speakers project the songs all the way up the audience. They’re selling shirts at the entrance made in China and printed in chemical dyes. We all took our cars out on the winding highways to attend the show.
The more you say you want something, the less you see it for what it is. How much comfort are we willing to give up? Will we leave the forest to the trees and stop using paper? Will we fill in the silicon mines and plant flowers on the graves of our iPhones?
S told me she bought her son a toy excavator for his 2nd birthday. When the big machines came out to cut down the forest, he was happy, he cheered. People started clearing land for a reason. We let industry burn away our ozone because there’s beauty in this too. We all want the answers to be easy. But they never are.
Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller
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“But now,” says the Once-ler, “now that you’re here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear. UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
Livesay Writing 