Love and Lamentations    

                                                                                                            

            Dear Mother Earth, I know you have big problems regulating temperatures around the globe - jet streams, melting glaciers, and burning temperate forests are just a few of your worries.

            Let me be so bold as to speak to you of my problems. I believe you are listening despite my puny contribution to the greater macrocosm of the universe. Can my story offer any meaning as we are swept toward an impending cataclysmic climate emergency?

            To be truthful, I confess to some internal shift taking place. What can it mean? I am filled with terror and yet a sort of calm. We had a mild winter which is wonderful and scary at the same time. I ask myself what global warming will look like down the road when the Great Lakes are not replenished by ice and snow. What will happen to the trees that can’t migrate to cooler climates? Despite these worries, it is the summer heat that scares me the most.

            Living in lower Michigan which is still considered the North country, I prepare myself psychologically for a milder version of the blistering heat that was attacking so many parts of the world. Initially, Michigan manages to slip past the worst outcomes.

            Then the storms come and power is knocked out for days at a time. I feel isolated living by myself in a country cottage home. It begins with a lightning strike taking out my computer. I imagine the motherboard burned to a crisp and hope that I am wrong. The generator chugs on like an out-of-shape athlete. It will give up the ghost the few times I forget and turn on one too many lights or use the stove. Fortunately, a neighbor knows how to reset the machine. The power reluctantly gasps and fights back to life. Lights flicker on, clocks buzz awake, and the refrigerator hums. I quickly plug in my cell phone and flush the toilet.

            The house is dark. A curtain of maple and pine branches hangs low in the steady rain that turns green as it falls. The world lives in shadow now. I’m not sure if this is an apocalyptic landscape, or if Eden is returning us to some primeval roots we have long forgotten.

            The first thing on my mind involves texting three friends. One is in Chicago. One is working. The other never answers her phone. There is no escaping my solitary existence. I lie on the bed and try to match my breath to the wind slapping against the frame of the window. If I fall asleep, will I awake in the far distant future - my home filled with the ghosts of past lives? Slap, slap, the sound is mesmerizing. I’m lulled into catatonia much like the nights when sleep eludes me. I am a monk floating in a great silent void.

            My thoughts flash back to yesterday, to the eco-activist on the podcast who claims we have already overshot any chance of escaping the worst-case scenarios of climate change. He reminds me of ministers standing on street corners preaching repentance. I think it is too late for repentance. Too late for bargaining. I don’t want to join the line of those awaiting the rapture. Neither do I want to buy into a total doomsday scenario that leaves no course for action other than practicing everyday random acts of kindness.

            I lie still and cover my heart with my hands remembering the ancient mystics who believed archangels are energetic beings who drop into our world to assist us and the earth in our planetary evolution. Then there are the ancestors. Some I don’t recognize, some I want to disown, yet in that long line stretching back to the beginning of time, I spot those beloved ones: grandparents, movie stars, my favorite 10th-grade teacher. I want to believe they are showing up at this time in history to lend us their support and wisdom.

            It’s been a while since I felt this helpless. I notice some sort of entreaty, maybe a half-baked prayer bubbling to the surface. It involves talking to Mother Earth again. My heart wants to tap into her Gaia wisdom, the resonant matrix, the iambic pentameter of angelic muses, the hum, and the song of planets. I want to be carried by her.

            The rain has stopped momentarily. I’m distracted by the singing of the wren living just outside my window. Are you safe in your house with the tiny circular doorway? I can’t bear to think of your fragile body struggling to throw off too much heat or cold. A tiny frog leaps up on the window, its toes splayed to create suction, its chin bobbing like an old man without teeth. I love you, too,” I repeat out loud. No one hears me. I guess end-time scenarios bring out the love in us as much as the fear.

            Lucky for me, I have a stack of books sitting on the chair. What inner guide directs me to stop at the library on my way home from Trader Joe’s today? “I won’t be long,” I tell my frozen edibles. Like a sorcerer, I scan the new releases. Nothing. I pass up books on wars, domestic abuse, murder mysteries, recipe books, and romance novels. No self-help books for me at this stage of life, if I haven’t learned my lessons by now. I finally pick up a book about people surviving in a lifeboat after their ocean liner sinks.

            This is the book I choose to read as I float in my isolated universe, my bed a raft taking me out to sea. I figure they survive if someone is telling the story. I want more than a survival story, however, or a mere dystopian worldview. I want the characters to spit out the truth by the end of their experience. “What did you learn?” “How did you survive?” “What made life worthwhile?” The narrator seems to hear and answer me. Near the end of her ordeal, she describes a night filled with stars and the bio-luminescent sea. She surrenders to some mystery - a god no longer in the sky but in the depths.

            I light candles to fill the void in the shadowy corners of my bedroom. They bring beauty. I will remember to extinguish them before sleep. Let there be no terror of fire along with water this night. I check my cell phone. No calls. No texts. I am forgotten on the edge of this plateau leading into a sleep where it’s impossible to catch any dreams. What are these images slipping by me? Who are these people? Where are we?

                                                                        Day Four

            I’m still here Mother, Dark Mother, Star of the Sea. I believe you are, also, Luna, the 1,500-year-old redwood who comforted Julia Butterfly Hill during the 738 days she lived in your branches. I’m still here waiting to climb into your lap.

            I awake early, relieved that the generator is still chugging away. The heat index is expected to break records again. I feel for those who have no escape. This morning, I’ll drive to Ann Arbor where my mechanic will check out a sound that I am sure is the heat shield rattling.

            After dropping off the car, I walk uptown to Afternoon Delight and order the $6 Veggie Omelet special. I can’t believe my good fortune. The older waitress with the tattooed arms and tired face offers me a huge carrot muffin. “I’m sorry but I didn’t order this.” She silently nods and tilts her head toward the muffin again. “Oh, I see, it is a gift from the universe. Thank you.”

            The phone rings and everyone sitting nearby looks up. Yes, I forgot to turn off the universal ringer that belongs to every phone in the world.  It is my mechanic. “Your vehicle is unsafe to drive,” he warns. “The wheel is ready to come off, no heat shield problems just a loose muffler pipe. You are taking your life in your hands.” He asks if I felt the car shaking. “No, I only heard a rattle, not a shake.” Then knowing what he’s thinking I add, “I don’t play any loud music - only listen to NPR.”

            I am now officially a migrant, a wanderer for the next six hours. Outside I sit at a table with an umbrella and call a friend. The waitress re-appears a few minutes later. “You can’t sit here,” she announces sheepishly. “It's against the rules - must keep the tables open and all that.”

I begin to feel a bit panicked. Where will I find refuge on this hot and humid record-breaking day? Will I survive another six hours of aimless wandering? Across Fifth Street, I stop to admire a giant dinner-plate red hibiscus. The blossom is larger than my entire face. It seems to be aware of my dilemma and bows in the slight breeze that kicks up just then. The library stands at the end of the block.

            Inside I join a caravan of the homeless, some with neatly stacked piles of bags. This building has been designated a cooling station. One man on the third floor sits sideways in his chair staring at a photo of a lake. Two leather suitcases and a few briefcases lie at his feet. Is he a businessman who is waiting for a ride to the airport? I finally decide he is homeless. His spirit has left the room and is roaming like a hungry ghost through the portal of the painting.

            The large rooms of the library are cool, cavernous, and morgue-like. I explore a stack of New Yorkers. Now and then I turn around to check in on the man. I’m curious and saddened by his lonely visage. He moves slowly like some crustacean checking out various new venues within the same corner. Something opens up inside me allowing him to enter into the panorama of my vision, a real person with a history possibly much like mine. Something softens and begins to expand. Is this what humility feels like, something more expansive than restrictive?

            I am ready to move on. At the elevator, a homeless woman hurriedly arranges her walker with bags hanging from the handles. Her chihuahua curled on the seat looks up laconically and seems to gaze blankly in my direction as I say, “What a sweet dog.”

            On the street, I meet Felicia, a woman with beautifully coifed cornrows, who calls out asking if I will purchase the Homeless News. She parks her wheelchair in front of the Chinese restaurant. A white chihuahua rests on her lap. Soon a small child with braided hair joins us. She wears a big smile on her face.

            “Bet you can’t guess her name,” she calls out pointing to the dog. “Yeah, if you can guess it, you will get this paper free of charge,” Felicia adds. I glance toward the dog. Is it my imagination that she looks at me with some interest as well? What are my chances of meeting two homeless women each carrying a chihuahua?

            “Give me a clue,” I ask throwing my hands in the air.
           “It’s the name of a white food,” the girl shouts back enthusiastically.

            “Sugar, Taffy, Tapioca, Salty… I give up.”

            The child is beside herself with glee. “It’s Powder Sugar Donut,” she announces jumping up and down having won this match.

            I don’t have two dollars so hand Felicia a five. She gives me the paper. “Be sure to buy next month’s copy,” she whispers behind her hand. “It will have an article written by me called Truth or Lies. You have to decide which.”

            “Truth or lies,” I repeat. “That’s life isn’t it?” I walk back into the heat of the afternoon feeling rejuvenated. The temperatures are still close to unbearable but I no longer feel panicked. I have found companionship in the camaraderie offered by Felicia, the child, and Powder Sugar Donut.

            At home, the power is back on. A survival movie catches my eye. A young woman lost in the Northwest wilderness doesn’t look like she has a chance of making it out alive. What is it about my fascination with survival stories? Angie calls just before I’m ready to view the last episode.

            “Why did you recommend this? I’m hating the suspense. Will she die?”

            I can’t remember how long the woman has been alone. Has it been six days or more since the plane crash without any real food? Toward the end, she lies on a bank of moss near a river with rolling rapids. This woman is too young to die. She looks up through a canopy of leaves, her fingers clutching a handful of rich soil. Can I admit that despite the precariousness of her situation, this connection with the earth is grounding? I feel my pulse slowing, my breath deepening. Flashbacks allow her to converse with important people from her life. The ghost of her father looking very much alive sits next to her at this moment. He loves her. She is too weak to respond fully but a wise interior dialog ensues.

            Like the woman lying on the river bank and the one in the lifeboat, reality has shifted for for me in the last 48 hours. I ask myself if these women will manage to cling to a life empowered by some force of love? If so, is it possible for me to do the same? Some will call me delusional or naive, yet, I reason a tragedy greater than death is to feel abandoned, despairing, and alone. Images of my ancestors and angels float into view. If they are truly alive and well, I will no longer delay inviting them, along with Gaia herself, to accompany us at this eleventh hour in human history.

            Only in this way can I pick myself up each day and move forward. I will embrace the conviction that even my small actions, connected to those of others, might contribute to our planetary well-being. If nothing else, I hope they might change my outlook on life, a life that seems pretty good at the moment despite constant signs of global pain and heartbreak. It is now only a matter of keeping my eyes open to the multitude of tiny miracles appearing everywhere, all the time, as quarks and atoms fly headlong into this universe of dark matter.

 

(Note on Book & Movie: Charlotte Rogan’s The Lifeboat and the Netflix Series Keep Breathing)