Trigger warnings: suicide, genocide
Natural disasters don’t exist anymore. Hurricanes are man -- made[1] disasters. Scientists can show that the ferocity and frequency of devastating phenomena like cyclones directly links to Climate Change. Unlike ever before, we manage and maintain the hurricane.
Just like we blew up the levees to sacrifice the poor.
Earthquakes strike from an unnatural turbulence. Hydraulic fracturing explodes rock walls deep in the ground, attesting to the literal and omnipotent depth of human influence.
Everything is under control.
What we actually cannot control is the human system: homelessness, killer cop impunity, greenhouse gas, systemic racism, political corruption flowing into the global political watershed, perpetual war, violence against girls and women. Such universal human evil gnaws away with supernatural force.
Crisis is stasis. We need a new word for crisis, tragedy has flat-lined. The fantasy that it’s all real, the suburban consumption, the shopping carts, the SUV, the lawnmowers -- the sham wreaks real destruction of minds, families, communities, and countries.
Alienation is the subtracted difference between 4 and 1 inches of lawn.
We catch glimpses of the catastrophe, the lack of order, the true freedom we realize we (always) never had. Explodes like a dream deferred. Washes up overnight. When gay marriage came out on top. The quaking open of hard work can happen anywhere, like a breakdown.
It tends to insist inward, upward, once the doors close, the lights are off, back of house, online, from an echo, from two-person parties, final forms evading as dance, in gray spots that lead to a pre-traumatic free expression.
I remember when the derecho came. They called it a “land hurricane.” Basically a windstorm beyond anything anyone had seen. Tree branches were everywhere, power lines dangling, totally wrecked, not just in town but across the entire Midwest. They told us the power would be back on soon. The blackout lasted over a week in the summer heat. No cooking, no cooling. Stuck in humid breathing air.
“It’s not so bad,” I said, but I had candles and Bolaño’s 2666 and it was only day two. Nobody lost water pressure, thankfully, considering nobody can dig a well or locate potable water these days, myself included.
That was our test for destiny in ecological end times and we flunked. It was only memorable for how easy we fall without (electric) power.
The power is within you, sort of. It’s apart of you and all, partly responsible for the source of the stars too. We realize our power and feel a loss at how to handle its intense heat.
The rupturing forth of different histories, histories made silent, herstory, can uproot different, more real pasts. The only way the building up of a better world can come is in the ashes of this violent historical moment.
My neighbor made it to the end of Blackout day one before he kicked on his gas generator and started vacuuming his house. That summer of 2012 felt kinetic, in Ohio at least. I hear Europe doesn’t have above ground electric lines so this sort of dcrisis doesnt happen. eels like empathy is the root of this tale, but that feeling is entirely dependent on if we’re together in this, all of us. When interdependent we strengthen.
Could we use this (lack of) power? Can we awake from our grave given history? Am I being too idealistic? I get greedy for optimism sometimes, but hey, don’t all Americans?
In Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth the comatose narrator begs to the reader country “HOW THE HELL DO YOU GET LOVE INTO POLITICS OR COMPASSION INTO HISTORY?”[2]
Sometimes I can succumb to hopefulness, with my candles and desert stories.
“And if you can’t get here from there, that too is truth.”[3] He, named Bliss, says.
The true utopia is capitalism, with its endless resources, mechanical projections, and externalities. By contrast, communism was but a pragmatic and brutish plan- not revolutionary at all.
The avant-garde has been so trapped by standing in opposition to this reality, endlessly reproducing, developing the mundane like real estate. Meanwhile the actual freakish revolution is everyday, that we continue moving forward, that we keep on in this toxic environment.
Our revolution will be already, normal, commonplace. The revolution eschews petroleum as it expands bussing.
The revolution comes of gray, not black/white. Revolutions come from contact, access, syncretic understanding. Visibility, representation, intersectionality, these vast nouns are a vital part of the discourse, but lacking use in everyday discussion. Depending. And if these are not some things you hear or say everyday, I recommend it.
Simply expanding the screen is enough. Opening a book is enough. Learning at the root- in lithe line with the radical work of Angela Davis. Practice is perfect, of we practice the revolution. Unlock the radical, up from the root cause to the top tier missile defense systems that bomb the Poor. Getting ready to play the big game.
Borges’ map -- where the ratio of distance on map is scaled exactly to true terrain, has become the web. We are the network scattered as it is gathered, the more we can connect the less we do.
Better living through peasantry. We can make do with traditional methods, livelihoods of the earth, where amenity is excluded. We did it before, now it feels impossible. The outmoded buildings speak of squares, timetables, a world of switches and not streams. Look again at the urban spaces and note the clotheslines, container gardens and companion crops abound. Anachronism brings such sweet breeze in reverse.
Are we better off with washing machines and fertilizer? I wouldn't mind hand washing and slash and burn, but I've been a self proclaimed luddite or neoluddite, as my sister would correct.
I can tell you fertilizer made from ash is free. Unlike the fertilizer poor farmers of India drink to commit suicide.
I've been rejoicing the dead zones of the ocean where fertilizer mixes into runoff and causes massive oxygen-sucking algae bloom that eventually dies and takes all life down with it.
Empathy is not built-in.
“We” become more durable through difference, and more determined through shared difficulty. Breathing and coughing together until the environment stabilizes. Stability, smooth, undulations and cycles built life into our chests. But the air is contaminated.
Used to be able to drink river water. No more.
Traditional livelihoods of the world have been under consistent, colonial attack since 1492.
Opened Veins value-add. So-called scholars pump false blood in unison with the US model of modernization. Mayhem is normalized, university is catatonic, hearts are disjointed from bore. We are not hedonistic to play Xbox all day and drink 3 cans of Mountain Dew. We just do it.
And when the electric grid is famished, when miners dig up the last ingot of aluminum from the mountain, our descendants will sigh. Nothing to do, no mountain, no dew. Only option left is to look out over desert fields, flooded dry lands, wading through the oceans of plastic debris and ire.
If not for the rain, people would forget we life on a planet. With ecosystems, biomes, interlocking, chaotic, and co-dependent components of living and non-living. Gods are the forces of nature, which also bring destruction. Thank the rains. Pray and dance for the rains. Each season has a melody, a rhythm, and a harmony that we can lock into,
From the primordial tide pool we can wake up without checking our newsfeed. But the revolution doesn’t mind facebook. The revolution is definitely tweeting. The revolution is media malnourished. The revolution isn't an ideal
The revolution will die, and it has to. We wouldn’t want it to never decay like a happy meal. Things that never die are cancerous, growing into malignant tumors. Carcinogenic elements of the capitalist culture will be called out, revolted against and neutralized, with little regard for profit and much regard for human rights.
Cynicism and sincerity are the same. With a straight face let's speak of abolishing prisons and customer service. Our revolution doesn’t need us to realize who we “really” are, it doesn’t need violence or loud speakers, it doesn’t need anarchy.
We are the awake-sleeping giant. A good night’s sleep requires the everyday overthrow. Don't stop.
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[1] the gender bias is intended
[2] Ralph Ellison. Juneteenth, p 264 (all caps in original)
[3] ibid.