Emergency

1. Thirty minutes ago, standing in my kitchen, I imagined a list of points I felt would be interesting, maybe valuable, connected into a narrative

2. In between then and now I sat down to write, but was met with a host of articles that seemed more interesting, more important, or just generally better than what I might write

3. So I read those until I realized I would soon be out of time for writing

4. By then I had forgotten what felt so coherent way back in kitchen time

5. But I do remember this

6. I didn’t like it when Donald Trump, the President-elect of the United States of America, a 78-year-old person, wrote “Gavin Newscum” to refer to the Governor of California

7. Thinking about this brought to my attention that I seem to be offering myself frequent reassurance these days, like a mantra: I’ll be okay. It’s going to be okay

8. I’ll be okay, it’s going to be okay

9. We’ll be okay, we’re going to be okay

10. This time: I will read less news. I will… focus in my lane

11. I’ll cultivate my humility. It’s certain that I’m wrong about many things. Maybe other people see something I don’t

12. Maybe they can fix the tax code

13. Maybe we aren’t heading for The Road

15. I have been working in the genre of climate change since 1999

16. I have always hated working in climate change because it is about boring and invisible gases and nobody likes it and there is no way to refer to it without reverting to language that every human finds distasteful and annoying

17. I didn’t choose this field. It’s like Frodo who didn’t want the ring but there it was, gleaming of Mordor

18. This ring came to me and I tried to give it back because it sucks

19. When one has been working in climate for two and a half decades, one can see some writing on what used to be the wall. You no longer need to have an active imagination because it is written in charcoal and mildew

20. I refuse to write anything about hottest years on record and what the statistics now show

21. I hate statistics and they also suck

22. Those scary numerical bludgeons seem to have been useless, now, though they are still everywhere, all the time, shouting at us and sending us to our uber-available and GNP-enhancing entertainmopharmacopeia of isolated self-soothing

23. Peter Singer said we have “two distinct processes for grasping reality and deciding what to do: the affective system and the deliberative system”

24. The affective system uses images and stories, and generates emotional responses; the deliberative system uses facts and figures and speaks to the reasoning mind

25. Our reasoning minds are jackasses

27. So here we are. It’s almost the Monday

28. There are fires and the various responses to fires

29. There’s also, like, a lot of crumbling infrastructure. Have you noticed that it’s more common now for there to be a gas line problem or a boil water notice or a water main that’s out?? I mean in places where rich people live, even there

30. Or your bank temporarily stops working. Have you noticed that they sell TicTacs in a super large pack now? Or that a bag of rice at Trader Joe’s costs $5??

31. I work as a freelancer, mostly as an editor. A lot of my work has to do with climate change and also statistics and measurement

32. So as you may deduce from #s 1-29, that sucks for me because I hate statistics and climate change

33. All of the above have led to a recent bout of soul searching (on the outside it looks like crying a lot while dancing to the same songs as a form of therapy but I can assure you it is in pursuit of some soul-derived communiqué)

34. WHAT CAN I DO???

35. I’ve tried acceptance

36. I’ve tried cry dancing (see #33)

37. I’ve tried burying a ratskin bracelet, putting my crystals out in the full moon, and asking a higher power to take the wheel

38. Lord knows I’ve tried unsubscribing from all these emails

40. I was recently in a therapy session with a child and the child was focused on reporting the misdeeds of another kid at school. This person or that person is being a jerk and they are doing me wrong, doing me wrong, doing me wro-ong. And the therapist responded: “That really stinks. I’m hearing that this other person is super annoying. I’d love to know what you are wanting. What matters to you???”

41. Seemed like a pretty neat trick so since then I’m paying attention to the habit of being so focused on who’s doing you wrong that you struggle to notice what you want, what you love

42. You become a reaction. You are about their wrongness. What they did, what they are doing. That’s all you can think about, even in describing your very self

44. This coming Monday my nation celebrates the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear”

45. Another thing is also happening on that same day, a hop, skip and a jump away from this happy home

46. This morning over coffee Dave proclaimed: We will do something like we did the last time

47. (Last time, we plunged into the earth with our two very small children and spent the day walking among stalactites, remembering that life has been living for a lot longer than our petty woes)

48. We will turn our back on what is happening down the road

49. I don’t know, I said

50. Turning our back, I said

51. Then I said something brilliant but elusive

52. Then I left to take a shower, seeking either inspiration or just warmth

53. I’m a little embarrassed to mention myself and taking a shower because it conjures me in the shower and I feel awkward to bring that up

54. But i do take showers, most weeks, and this is a week with a lot of showers

55. Gavin Newscum, I thought

56. I remembered something I had read a few days ago:

57. “Every oily-fingered fossil fuel executive, cash-in-a-bag sprawl developer, and corner-­cutting factory owner in America is lining up for a jamboree of lawlessness and impunity. Project 2025 has identified hundreds of regulatory and administrative targets to destroy. A society crashing from one incompetently managed disaster to another offers ample opportunities for corruption, graft, and profiteering. Corrupt incompetence remains the one deliverable Trump has actually reliably produced”

58. Then Rebecca Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby came to mind:

59. “The first definition the Oxford English Dictionary gives for emergency is the same as for emergence: ‘the rising of a submerged body above the surface of water. Now rare.’ Then comes ‘the process of issuing from concealment,’ ... And then the definition we’re used to, ‘a state of things unexpectedly arising, and urgently demanding immediate action’”

60. Solnit continues: “An emergency is an accelerated phase of life, a point at which change is begotten, a little like a crisis. Quite a lot of suffering often comes along with it, of mourning for what will be left behind—an old self, an old love, an old order—and of fear for what is to come, of the wrenching difficulty of change itself. The poet John Keats once referred to earth as ‘this vale of soul-making,’ and it's in emergencies and difficulties that souls are made”

61. I said to Dave later in the afternoon: In the movies, if you turn your back, lots of times that’s when you get stabbed

62. Also, when you turn your back to someone or something, the orientation of your body is determined by theirs

63. So maybe that’s not the right metaphor, we agreed, but what else: if not turn your back and not kiss the ring?

64. I’m on the therapy couch saying: these oily-fingered, cash-in-a-bag, corner-cutting, profiteering, name-calling, ring-kissing dudes are doing us wrong

65. And my inner (unlicensed) therapist responds: That really stinks. I’m hearing that these other people are super annoying. I’d love to know what you are wanting. What matters to you???

67. I spent some time recently considering fear, where it comes from, why so much

68. I drew a picture about it (an alternate to crydancing)

    

69. That brown burrow inside the bottom of the “f” is where I go to hide when I don’t feel safe. It’s also part of the ground I stand on to re-member my feet, attached to earth, and to an energy bigger than me

70. And like envy or shame or any of the less pleasant feelings, it occurred to me, while coloring, that fear sits right next to love. A clarion announcing forcefully from my deepest parts what I love most

71. Sam, now 11, said: The inauguration is happening on Martin Luther King Jr’s day. I bet he’s looking down and angry about that

72. Maybe not, I said, and shared with him a bungled version of the quote above: “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear”

73. Sam said: Are you saying I’m supposed to love everybody? I don’t think that’s realistic

74. Well, I said, let’s say the President makes a law that’s really bad for dogs. But you love dogs. Are you gonna spend your energy hating the President? I think the quote is saying to LOVE SOME DOGS. Fill yourself up loving dogs as best as you can for as long as it takes with whoever will help you

76. I’m nearing 50 and my energy is not infinite

77. Or maybe it is

78. But while I’m here, shipwrecked in this moment of history with you

79. I want to work with land, to nurse it to health

80. with beaver and bison and otters and oysters and

81. beautiful, gentle-ish, messy humans

82. I’m not sure about these oily-fingered, cash-in-a-bag guys. I don’t know how many of those there are

83. My dad has a small business that manufactures bespoke screws and bolts. Is he a corner-cutting factory owner lining up for a jamboree of impunity?

84. I guess there are those. The ones who watch for drunk girls at the club

85. I don’t want it to be true

86. and still it’s true

87. it’s true

88. but then there are the two farmers in North Dakota

89. I have a lot of heroes

90. So many, and I want to learn from them

91. fight for something

92. make something, build something, love something, say something

93. but not the same safe thing, not hiding in the burrow and certainly not as the child on the couch

94. knowing it will take courage, and humility, and openness,

95. and there will be loss, there has to be, there is no other way

96. there is no other way

97. emergency:

98. the rising of a submerged body

99. the process of emerging from concealment

100. a state of things unexpectedly arising, and urgently demanding immediate action

101. I pray for strength

102. and for friends and teachers

103. “Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase”

104. Amen.

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Notes:

• The farmers in North Dakota

• The oily-fingered quote is from Alex Steffen writing in Mother Jones