Written by Luisa A. Igloria on Nov 15, 2022 11:29 pm
According to recent reports, it's nine years before
climate crises reach their tipping point. Apocalypse is on
everyone's minds, everyone's lips, everyone's playlist.
Grate the cheese coarse or fine, you know it comes from cows.
In stores across the UK, activists take milk from shelves,
kick bottles across the floor after pouring out the contents—
macabre protest meant to turn meat-eaters and -producers
off their long predisposition as carnivores. Couldn't that have
quenched the thirst of children in refugee camps,
served a purpose other than such lofty waste? What are we
under obligation to do, what could we even do? Today, #World-
WarIII was trending (again) after missiles blew up grain facilities.
You can make up stories if you want, but everyone's tired. Tired of
Zooming, tired of the virtual, tired of arguments over what it means to use
-x in Filipinx or Latinx or other gendered words for a group of people.
Vintage clothing stores have popped up everywhere, and
thrifting has become not only trendy but a way to reduce
pollution caused by fast fashion. Upstate last summer, I
nabbed a Marimekko dress for $2 and was as happy as a
legit fashionista might be... I'm not really digressing. All this is
just to say I've been wavering on a more daily basis between
heartache and fear of the inevitable: yours and my looming mortality,
fuse boxes shorting in the night while we sleep, the will I
drafted ten years ago mostly listing my emotional assets—
but then, suddenly, I want a fedora and a faux fur jacket.
Written by Dave Bonta on Nov 15, 2022 09:33 pm
My camera took this photo today and I absolutely love it. I don’t know, it just feels like my digital equivalent of a Rothko or something.
I think it may have been a close-up of one of these blackberry leaves:
Yes, it was our first snowfall of the year. We got three more inches around dusk. Sleep-deprived as I was, it was wonderful to amble around the mountain watching winter lay down its first blank page.
One thing to be said for all that blankness: my photo files are smaller! Fewer leaves mean less data—in more ways than one, of course.
Winter days are strange in how quickly the magic can come and go. You have to be ready. The power went out midday when I was a mile and a half from the houses, watching the first flakes sift down through bare branches. Power cuts are common but there’s only one first snow of the season so I took my time getting back. Just as I was about to hook up jumper cables to Mom’s ailing generator, she hollered that the lights were on.
So back out I went, after making some hot chocolate and putting it in a thermos to have up in the memorial grove. Delightful to watch it snow from under the spruces. It was Dad who taught me how to make cocoa—one of his few culinary specialties apart from blueberry buckwheat buttermilk pancakes and soft-boiled eggs.
And then another slow wander through another portion of the forest. I justified part of it as walking the property line, a good thing to do during deer season. I only saw one set of deer prints, but that’s to be expected. They’re laying up. What kind of idiot goes out in a snowstorm?
