Category: planetary hospice

deer hunting season | regular firearm, November 15 – 30, 2023, Michigan, U.S.

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Animals, Ceasefire, deer, deer hunting, Earth hospice, Earthling, earthlings, ecocide, fauna, Gaza, Genocide, holocaust, hunters, hunting, hunting season, ki, kill lists, kin, kinship, Life and Death, November, Palestine, Philosophy, planetary hospice, Poem, Tradition As Violence, Tradition Is Violence, wildlife, ZionismLeave a comment

the gunshot
crisp, startling
a radiating crackle
floating on the unusually warm autumn air

my dog bolts for the house, and once inside, takes cover under the desk – this is a natural response to explosives

fear, confusion, rage, sorrow course through my marrow — we are made of the same stuff

then i remember that deer-stalking-luring-and-killing with a gun season started today

i’d seen the dignified six-point buck head south earlier,
the same direction of the blast / i realize that he may be dead, now

then i remember that i haven’t seen the
doe and her playful and curious fawns
in over a month’s time

on my way to the highway entrance ramp,
i avoid the main roads
where the bodies of two deer lay dead
a half mile apart
/ i pretend they can’t be, that they aren’t my familiars /

the deer always seem to be lying just barely off the road

do they collapse and die there identically — or does someone drag them there by their legs or antlers; are there protocols for this?
what does the weight of a dead deer body or dead human body feel like in the hands? are the dead heavier? would i be able to drag a deer or human body? maybe — in my heyday
i have only ever held dead rabbits, squirrels, birds, fish in my own two hands

then i remember that our first dog was euthanized at home, in the back yard, in the June Sun, but it was not me who lifted and carried his body away / why didn’t i carry him? back then, i was in my strength heyday.

Continue reading “deer hunting season | regular firearm, November 15 – 30, 2023, Michigan, U.S.” →

“The crew compartment’s breaking up”

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Climate Acceptance, Climate Chaos, Climate Collapse, Crone Consciousness, Earth hospice, Earthling, earthlings, ecocide, exposition, Funerary, Hospice, Lament, Lamentations, Life and Death, music, planetary hospice, Song, Songs, Space Shuttle ColumbiaLeave a comment

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”” →

Earthling in Planetary Hospice: the 9/11 closure of North American airspace: climate scientists observe the great Catch-22 — the Aerosol [De]Masking Effect

On By ©️K.T. 2025In 9/11, Aerosol Demasking, Aerosol Masking Effect, Capitalism, Climate Acceptance, Climate Chaos, Climate Collapse, Earth hospice, Earthling, earthlings, Global Dimming, planetary hospice, September 11thLeave a comment

“To deliberately believe in lies while knowing they are false.”

The US accounts for more than a third of the expansion of global oil and gas production planned by mid-century, despite its claims of climate leadership, research has found.

Canada and Russia have the next biggest expansion plans, calculated based on how much carbon dioxide is likely to be produced from new developments, followed by Iran, China and Brazil. The United Arab Emirates, which is to host the annual UN climate summit this year, Cop28 in Dubai in November, is seventh on the list.

Fiona Harvey, Environment Editor, The Guardian, September 12, 2023

Damned² :

Damned if we do; damned even faster if we stop.

the grounding and ground-stoppage of aircraft and closure of US airspace on September 11, 2001

The thin wisps of condensation that trail jet airliners have a significant influence on the climate, according to scientists who studied U.S. skies during a rare interruption in national air traffic after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Richard Stenger for CNN, August 8, 2002

only the immediate cessation of industrial
civilization could’ve saved us – 50, 80 or more years ago, that is /

but now, we are dependent on industrial civilization for everything including the Catch-22 conundrum of the Aerosol Masking Effect aka “global dimming” //

the “aerosol masking effect” where pollutant aerosols emitted into Earth’s atmosphere by human industrial activity reflect the Sun’s heat and mitigate the rise in global average temperature and artificially “cool” the planet —

but here’s the rub: as we draw down industrial activity – with falsely fantastical greener energy alternatives and “cleaner” industrial operations, we lose that artificial benefit and global temperatures will rise even more and faster because of the opposite effects of global brightening or demasking (colloquially known as: The McPherson Paradox for Prof. Guy McPherson, guymcpherson.com) ///

if the World’s population begins to understand that the aerosol and particulate pollution from some of the worst industries and practices — those that also emit the greenhouse gases that cause global heating, fuel climate chaos and drive ecological destruction and collapse — is also simultaneously and artificially cooling the planet — keeping global temperatures lower than what they actually would be

— and that the warming effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere last centuries or decades longer than the near instantaneous effects of aerosol demasking, 

Changes to our atmosphere associated with reactive gases (gases that undergo chemical reactions) like ozone and ozone-forming chemicals like nitrous oxides, are relatively short-lived. Carbon dioxide is a different animal, however. Once it’s added to the atmosphere, it hangs around, for a long time: between 300 to 1,000 years. Thus, as humans change the atmosphere by emitting carbon dioxide, those changes will endure on the timescale of many human lives.

Alan Buis, “The Atmosphere: Getting a Handle on Carbon Dioxide”, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab

maybe then, they will realize — there is no time for hope — only hospice.

Continue reading “Earthling in Planetary Hospice: the 9/11 closure of North American airspace: climate scientists observe the great Catch-22 — the Aerosol [De]Masking Effect” →

Earthling in Planetary Hospice: climate acceptance versus climate doomerism

On By ©️K.T. 2025In climate, Climate Acceptance, Climate Chaos, Climate Collapse, Crone, Crone Consciousness, Earth hospice, Earthling, earthlings, ecocide, Hospice, planetary hospiceLeave a comment

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.

Continue reading “Earthling in Planetary Hospice: climate acceptance versus climate doomerism” →

Earthling in Planetary Hospice: late July 2023

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Crone, Cronehood, Earth hospice, Earthling, earthlings, ecocide, Existence, Hospice, planetary hospiceLeave a comment

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.

Earthling in Planetary Hospice
a new section of the Limineen
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.

from the inner city to the outer rural:

On By ©️K.T. 2025In 2-flat, agraria, biographical, bucolia, Crone, crone chronicles, Earth hospice, Home, inner city, limineen, outer rural, planetary hospice, Portage Park, Rainy Lake Miami Meadow, ruralia, Stabilization, transformationLeave a comment

first in a series

new geographies

All movement is thirst.

Hafiz

she moved out of the city of them, into the country of Her Self

in January 2017, i impulsively yet instinctively, instinctually, bid on a house in the country — after viewing one listing on the internet employing the most banal search terms — and never having physically toured the interior of the house; after losing the first bid, and rebidding within minutes to spare, in the second round — as my unfamiliar real estate agent was at the gate at O’Hare about to board a plane for a Caribbean vacation, i won with a numerological bid (against the agent’s advice) and closed escrow on March 30th; then in late July, i abruptly and stunningly — listed my home of 22 years in the city — for-sale-by-owner— without even a for-sale sign and telling only a handful of people — selling it twice, the second time, successfully — also using numerology, in August; then closed sale and left for the country house on September 29th —

nine months time – a human gestation.

Continue reading “from the inner city to the outer rural:” →

Earth

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Crone Consciousness, Earth Day, Earth hospice, Earthling, earthlings, ecocide, Garden of Eden, ki, kin, Mother, planetary hospiceLeave a comment

“Do you realize – we’re floating in space?”

Our ancestors were born on a spaceship that never needed refueling, repair, redesign or course correction.

Earthlings have all uniquely adapted to their respective natural, geographical habitats and migration routes — except for the warring and dominant human regimes and cultures — that decided for all Earthlings that they should geo-engineer artificial environments and extract the blood and bodies of the ancient ones — for one species’ sole benefit — until Earth no longer feels or looks like Earth – and has become unrecognizable, unsafe or uninhabitable to most other species.

photo credit : European Space Agency

There are PCBs in the Atacama Trench and microplastics in fetal tissue of mammals – of humans.

Despite all the wonderful river and beach clean-up and tree planting projects on Earth Day, for me, it’s always a contemplative and sobering day.

We all have a stake—equally. Because if we do not save the environment and save the Earth, then whatever we do in civil rights or in a war against poverty will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction and the brotherhood of the grave.

James L. Farmer,
at the very first Earth Day,
April 22, 1970

Equinox Upon All Your Houses! | All, Praise Theia!

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Creation Story, Earth hospice, Earthling, earthlings, Equinox, planetary hospice, Sol, Solstice, spring, SunLeave a comment

Equinox upon all your houses!

and an Equinox and Solstice prayer:

All praise, Theia!

Thank you for life, the genesis of the path of our axial light;

in your violent, alchemical transformation,

you twice, gave us our light,

the cycle of seasons,

and the precession of the equinoxes in the northern and southern hemispheres of our life-giving Mother Earth,

your gifts are incomparable; an enduring aweing abundance.

All, praise, you Theia, for our Earth Mother Gaia and our Moon, Selene!

Vernal Equinox Evening, Chicago, 2017
Vernal Equinox Sun’s set, Michigan, 2023

derivative work based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet — Mercutio’s curse, as exclaimed to the Montague and Capulet families and their factions as he realizes he is mortally wounded by Tybald’s sword — he, collateral damage in the melee of their war of and for power — and against, love.

for the Earthling/environmental/political take on the equinox:

Continue reading “Equinox Upon All Your Houses! | All, Praise Theia!” →

residuum II | collab with Yeats – he only died 84 years ago

On By ©️K.T. 2025In anthropocene, Anthropos, birds, Capitalism, Earth hospice, Earthling, earthlings, planetary hospice, Poem, poetry, YeatsLeave a comment

pushed to the margins
hanging on by one stressed thread
to toxic or barren fringe-lands

when the once-verdant centres could, and did, hold

us, all/

“Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.”

while now, all about it

“reel shadows of the indignant [shore] birds”

harkening

one day soon, you too, will be residuum here

what remains: gulls converge in a chasmic rain-filled pothole in the parking lot of an abandoned mall

An ephemeral asphalt pond after heavy rains in the parking lot of an abandoned mall, long-infested with gulls, as testimony – not merely to the inorganic evolution of consumerism, but of the intersection of NAFTA and other free-trade agreements, American soft segregation and hard apartheid, and the inherent discriminatory and predatory migration of US and Western global capitalism.

Continue reading “residuum II | collab with Yeats – he only died 84 years ago” →