a sweet spot, a warm, quiet evening,
of a too-soft winter here,
on & of the good Earth,
that tempts the comfortable one
to flirt with forgetting
the hard totality
of this hot and cold, man-made,
loud and brutal World.
Category: Hospice
phenology II
lilacs re-leaf, re-bloom
in October
hummingbird moths feed,
— not cultivars —
in unprecedented re-leaf and re-bloom
October 12, 2024
and simultaneously,
She’s un-be-coming a human be-ing
She’s destined to,
we’re destined to, too
no
need to
tell me, explain
what’s happening
as constant witness,
as constant, remote witness to slaughter,
as constant gardener,
as constant tender,
as constant daughter,
i see.
i recognize.
i know,
Continue reading “phenology II”ghosts
if you’re seeing this, you’re alive,
though dying — no matter your age, health, relative safety, relative comfortability —
on this living, though suffering and actively dying, planet
Earthlings and Earth together in a protracted hospice
right now, in these brief years, these grief years,
we are the “ever-living ghosts of what once was”
a “was” that most all of us alive this morning have never known as lived experience — save for the untouched tribes — 10,000 Uncontacted Peoples — 10,000 unsystematized, “uncivilized”
and the Ocean, and the few, still-standing Ancient One Trees; the untouched Desert, and the Mountains — even the youngest of them — The Tetons and The Himalayas, know what it “was” to be alive.
we are mere ghosts, walking dead.
the recession
i witnessed the last of the snow piles
hand-shoveled or machine-threwn
and the natural drifts too
and the mound in the hollow
of the hügelkultur crescent moon
slowly recede, in a mesmerizing, seemingly molassic, week’s long retreat
then finally and sadly, concede
to the undormant grasses and soft ground beneath
to the sunlit warmth
of these nouveau
great lakes winters
my god,
what global madness
this adored microcosm, my priceless homestead, reveals
and catechizes for me:
our violent, human heat
an unrelenting torrent of accelerant that would
vanquish the ancients
melt greenland’s sheets of ice,
calve antarctic glaciers, strand polar bears,
expose or drown granite, basalt, gneiss
all, in the time of
that old sugar maple’s life
goldilocks’ zone
the widespread muck,
usual to late March
now spoils the January, the December, February too
there are no more
seasons,
only drownt
or parched
what use
is axial tilt, solar distance
while these men
lock-up the thermostat and disarrange the elements
the last meal of a woman
the last meal that She cooked for herself
was in the late afternoon of the 18th of September the Year of Our Hearts, 2023
that same evening
She would spend the last night together alone with her only child, her son, in Their house on Adams Street
he had already stopped at Chik-fil-A
– or Quesabroso? for his dinner
he, sixteen forever, for Her, not even licensed for a year yet
She thought, then said aloud to him
“pasta. i want some pasta.”
and so She very slowly set about
choosing saucepans, boiling water,
sautéing a little ground beef with a bit of diced onion, and minced garlic from a giant container from Costco,
adding in a half jar of Rao’s Original, some dried herbs — nothing too spicy or fancy now,
cooking her favorite gluten-free rigatoni,
or was it penne, mostaccioli?
She ate, rinsed the pots, loaded and ran the dishwasher, put the combined leftovers in her fridge
and at dinner time the very next day,
She told her oldest and dearest friend about it
her friend listened, and watched Her plate, reheat, and sit down to eat those leftovers — She wanting to do all that for Herself, still
She taking the smallest and most intentional bites possible,
every delicate swallow and cough amplified in the too-big-for-two, unusually quiet house, the parade of Her friends and visitors gone until tomorrow
“i’m not supposed to drink with these meds, but lemme have just one lil’ sip of your wine”
Continue reading “the last meal of a woman”art appreciation: thresholds
first in a series
The Entrance Gate on the far bank of The River Tuoni according to the Kalevala and as depicted by Finnish artist Hugo Simberg
oil on canvas
Hugo Simberg, 1873-1917
Finland
In this piece, which is an interpretation of one of many universal myths which impart the water crossing and trek we all are to embark upon after death,
most of the departed climb up the steep, barren embankment and enter the tunnel individually, while a child and a dog are tenderly escorted — led by the hand or carried by chthonic monks into the tunnel leading to the
Underworld
the tunnel appears under geological strata — presumably the surface of Earth, with blue sky and forest in background above it
interestingly, the artist’s limited use of perspective also allows the sky and forest to be viewed potentially as the Great Beyond itself — as a Northern or Alpine “paradise,” a Valhalla, beyond the sojourn in and through the tunnel
a high, solid, wooden fence bisects the river, embankment and tunnel and prevents arrivals from observing the exiting monks — only one-way vision and traffic for the dead
and while the monks do not cast shadows, the human figures continue to be accompanied by their shadows; for those who subscribe to Jungian analytical psychology or gnostic texts, the physical shadow depicted may be interpreted symbolically as the anima/animus of the person — which would ultimately disappear during the tunnel upon the full reintegration of the Self/Soul/Spirit
through re-unification with one’s divine twin (which is sometimes also called the cosmic/celestial twin or daimon) after having been separated during human incarnation and birth.
author’s note:
i often and prefer to call the underworld aka afterlife “The Great Wide Open of the All” — which in my liminal gleanings is a supremely contented blackness of universal consciousness, devoid of thought or sensation — a perfected existence in the dark cosmic fabric of nothingness,
there may be levels in the afterlife which may manifest our own personal imaginal constructs of paradise — far beyond what our limited sensory perception and experiences of life on Earth are - such as, an Alpine Paradise upon emerging from the tunnel -
i know full well the breathtaking beauty and feeling upon exiting a scary and lengthy mountain tunnel where my heart and eyes are stunned by a grand vista of forest, peaks and sky — from my many road trips in the Western U.S.
yet, i truly prefer the former — when i die, i want to rest for all eternity — although with just one desire, one sensation: warmth.
Continue reading “art appreciation: thresholds”
“The crew compartment’s breaking up”
John Roderick wrote the above line and repeats it seven times(!) in his song, “The Commander Thinks Aloud”— about the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster that happened February 1, 2003
and, if I’m not careful, I will start to cry during the first verse
The Commander Thinks Aloud
Boys and girls in cars
Dogs and birds on lawns
From here I can touch the sun
Put your jackets on
I feel we're being born
The Tropic of Capricorn is below
We stall above the pole
Still your face is young
As we feel our weight return
A trail of shooting stars
The horses call the storm
Because the air contains the Charge
The radio is on
And Houston knows the score
Can you feel it, we're almost home
The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)
The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)
The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)
The crew compartment's breaking up
This is all I wanted to bring home to you
Songwriter: John Roderick, The Long Winters
The Commander Thinks Aloud lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Rough Trade Publishing
this song — since the very first time i (belatedly) heard and learned about it on the Song Exploder podcast in 2016 — became an instant melancholic metaphor-lamentation for me, even while retaining it’s very visceral and intended meaning —
at first, for the climate chaos we face on our communal spaceship — Spaceship Earth,
as in, “hey, do you realize we’re floating in space?” — then, why are we [deliberately] destroying the crew compartment?
and
for our lives — for the simplicity that is both stolen and lost
in the daily struggle — of and against exploitation, repression and oppression; in the daily drama of our dis/mis/mal contentment; in the daily, unnecessary grasping, striving, amassing and hoarding — whether for – or of, wealth, land, power, influence, reputation, career, fame, control or privilege —
or, in orbiting the Earth in a shuttle or space station or landing on the Moon in a spacecraft — when we could’ve just been human beings caretaking of this Eden and of each other.
and personally,
Continue reading ““The crew compartment’s breaking up””premeditated mourning
i am in premeditative mourning
desperate to get it
over and done with
before she’s dead
i choke on the dream scene, the prognosis and the grand scheme / ever-present in my throat /
and weep
then, a memory of us wedges in
i cry a smile, and smile a cry
i think
this, is all, too much
i can’t do this.
she is the one doing it
with her dignity, her calm, her reserve, she’s had too much practice, she’s well-traveled on this terrain
these consecutive life sentences, handed out
i am in retroactive outrage
over these injured bodies, injured, not failing,
precision is imperative /
i am in proactive rage
against these failing systems within this failed system in this injured, not failing, closed system /
precision is imperative
does anyone else want to know
the cause/s of death/s
these expendable, collateral clusters — of families, neighborhoods, workers, of an implausible deniability
one after another at four, five or six decades — dead
did he bring home the syndrome
in silica tucked in the creases
of his work clothes
of his brow,
he built the skyline! the Hancock even
my god, did he carry it in his semen
or was it the apartment on wabansia?
on karlov? on keystone?
all zoned mixed-use residential-commercial-industrial — industrial!
when they all walked from home
to work at the factory down the block,
on the next block, or across the alley
a metal plater
a powder coater
a dry-cleaner
tool and die
i don’t want these precognitions anymore!
let me dream her as a grandmother
with her grandchildren, all, all pristine!
i know the outcome
of walking forward in waking fantasy, in empty, unheard prayer, instead of trusting the retrograde revelations of my sleep
Earthling in Planetary Hospice: climate acceptance versus climate doomerism
Rebecca Solnit of The Guardian in late July penned a piece which misrepresents climate acceptance, realism and planetary hospice solely as a harmful defeatism and doomerism.
Renaee Churches wrote an important and thoughtful response that will not reach an audience as large as Solnit’s, and is excerpted below:
We have already lost the climate battle and it is stories or opinions like the one above, that are preventing others from grasping this, and stopping us from taking the kinds of collective adaptive responses appropriate on a local and global scale.
The not-too-late framing is a dangerous one. It means people are prepared to wait for global elites to roll out the energy transition, to deploy such ‘solutions’ as carbon capture technologies, or other flawed techno fixes, aimed at making those elites wealthy, while not stopping the baked in warming that is already here and accelerating. It is only when we finally break through the not-too-late taboo that we will begin the work in earnest of adaptation to reduce suffering as much as we can.
We need to normalise talk about collapse and have a broad, society-wide, honest discussion about how we can respond. These discussions are already happening behind closed doors by the Militaries of the world, by Insurance Agencies, and the Financial Sector elites. So we don’t need more writers like Solnit advising the masses to effectively keep calm and carry on. Rather we need a clear-eyed look at the reality of our situation — as a failing global industrial civilisation.
Then together, as ordinary people, we can adjust, grieve and determine how best to navigate the great unravelling as it continues to play out in our lives.
Renaee Churches, Medium
this is my response to Solnit’s piece, which will reach even fewer people:
Climate acceptance and Planetary Hospice involve the refusal to endorse,
and the honesty to resist, further extraction from and destruction of the Earth and injuries to indigenous and marginalized communities of People across the World and to the remaining, marginally or tenuously stable or life-supportive swaths or pockets of wildlife, forests, tundra, deserts, wetlands, lakes, rivers
and ocean.
Earthling in Planetary Hospice: late July 2023
I have been in existential hospice for a while now — not because I am personally terminally ill, but because I am experiencing and witnessing our planet die – the planet that we and all our fellow Earthlings from the salmon to the sycamores, from the gulls to the goldenrods, from the frogs to the funguses require for habitat — biologically, habitat is synonymous with life, with sustainable, continuing existence.
where I share climate and environmental metrics and information about climate chaos and collapse and write about my own experience of existential hospice and Planetary Hospice.
The Western World and the white-European capitalist and middle classes — that have driven industrialization; fossil fuel extraction; natural, animal and human resources exploitation, commodification and exhaustion; consumer greed and waste; and atmospheric, environmental and ecological devastation and destruction — will not ride this one out like some cyclical economic corrective shockwave or isolated ‘natural’ disaster — this is not like a stock market crash, an engineered mortgage crisis or a flash flood or rogue tornado that temporarily inconveniences the well-insured:
no, they, their children and grandchildren will suffer and die as well.
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.
Dr. Albert Bartlett, 1923-2013
Ph.D. Nuclear Physics, Harvard University/Professor Emeritus University of Colorado
I can understand how ignorance, whether willful or innocent, is preferable. But now is the time for the truthful acknowledgement and acceptance of the catalyzation of unstoppable and irreversible feedback loops coupled with an accelerating rate of change projected to their reasonable scientific conclusion.
It’s also time for individual personal ecological recognition and reconciliation.We are pure consumers, we are not producers. We are human animals reliant on habitat and other species for our lives — there is no other Earthling species naturally reliant on human beings. It is essential that each one of us understands the gravity of this — and undertakes palliative, hospice and grief work for ourselves, for other beings, for other Earthlings, right now.
Being present as witness and participant, perpetrator and victim, and caregiver and care-receiver during the death of the World as we have always known it, is an undeniably crushing experience and responsibility — but simultaneously, it is also an incredible, incredulous, and humbling honor.
What a time to be alive, truly.
I don’t think anyone of us will garner a reservation on some exclusive, off-planet ‘Elysium’ – and I, myself wouldn’t want one.
Immense grief is the close companion to the immense joy and wonder that I still feel and experience.
the May plow
the beautiful spring day that the fields are first plowed for the season is heartrending
the privacy, peace and space that non-human animals had on the barren 80 acres for the last six months is gone within minutes and hours
on the day they plow
the fields clear of last year’s stover
i stay quiet and invisible, indoors
there is a seen and unseen frantic attempt at evacuation, an exodus of
snakes, turtles, frogs, toads, rabbits, moles, voles, possums, weasels, marmots, skunks, raccoons, squirrels, mice, rats,
evicted without notice, again
geese and sandhill crane nests destroyed
over-wintered graves defiled
and newly-born deer crushed, plowed over and under
/this destruction, all,
for corn to fatten-up confined and tortured
pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, salmon, catfish, tilapia
for human appetite, gluttony/
death eaters!
if i just stay quiet,
quieter than the snake and mole i saw yesterday,
if i just stay inside, unseen, all day ‘til Sun’s set, like the possum i saw last night,
then kin may seek refuge, find sanctuary here
to catch their breath
some of us have forgotten that they too breathe
and feel fear,
and scream, wail, and mourn
run!!! come, run here!!!
stay right here, please, the roads to west and south also bring death!
i put all my faith into telepathy today
the gulls arrive
chasing and taunting the tractor driver,
he’s no farmer
his hands literally never touch soil or seed
a machine operating a machine guided by satellite
if only the gulls or crows would pluck out his eyes when he dismounts
if only, i would.
Continue reading “the May plow”the bearable light of being
we adapt, we mitigate.
beholding devastation,
in a moment of transcendent light,
we’ll call it beauty.
i am no exception.
Wanderten Mutter
“Lief heim ins Seitelein.” Unitätsarchiv, R.20.E.36.12. Archiv der Brüder-unität, Herrnhut.http://bq.blakearchive.org/40.3.schuchard
My life seems long, I know
My body’s mostly worn
Inside, she’s just begun to live, again
A girl gone long ago
There are bottled laughs to voice aloud
New smiles to wear with these old shoes
Time to know the world, and you, and you, and you …
between these walls of peeling, muted hues
Once Herr died
My Self was ready to return
My cadence so shy and slow,
Lamenting the awkward waste of precious years
I find my voice as I write the past,
But in my book, the Tomorrow has no page
Forever winter approaches from within
These years and years upright on hard chairs
Unreal, unseen, unheard, untouched
by the world, by the womb, it may concern, Whom
I speak through and then beyond this pain of bone and life
Before the cold within brings silence of the tomb
You see, to me, my presence still feels warm, and blush
somehow, even new
My life stretched out behind me, no steps ahead
And I forestall Death’s cue, awaiting mere glimpse of you
If you can imagine, child
I love, unsaid,
I feel as just alive, as real, as you.
Gnostic Gospel of Transition
All light
That’s what you are
That’s what you always were
But, you’ve got to move on, now
Ready to go home, true.
They’re waiting for you.
All light,
I promise; it’s alright
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 