The other night, I drove home in my fossil-fuel burning Toyota, thinking about the library program I’d just attend where a meteorologist kept returning to our “weird weather.”
Standing in the back of the Woodbury Town Hall, a righteous old building whose front door swung in the frosty night, I drank hot tea, shivering a little. He had data – reams of it – and reading one particular chart, I noted the sharp curves right around the year 2050. I couldn’t help but think, We’re seriously fucked. What kind of world might my daughters inhabit when they’re 40, wandering through their lost-in-Dante’s-miserable-woods? What kind of world will your daughters and sons, your grandsons and granddaughters inherit?
I’d like to write that the stars overhead, when I walked into my house, reassured me, but – their distant beauty notwithstanding – the firmament did not. Today, again, pondering the unclear future, I reminded myself that where I’ve always failed is when I narrow my vision to fear, to repugnance, to outright hatred. Here’s all these contradictions, like driving my car to an info session on carbon emissions. Isn’t this the way of the human realm?
Like a muscle, deepen imagination.
Beyond the low iron fence (of the graveyard), cows graze…
All that brute flesh wandering close to graves –
how calm it is –
like two hands about to touch.
– Howard Nelson
