Crystal Ball

 

I don't need a crystal ball to be reminded that in six months time, this will be the view from my window.

I would, however, love a crystal ball that could tell me more about what is to come, rather than me, just trying to put all the pieces together and figure out what I *ought* to be doing, which road I should consider travelling, in order to keep doing what I love doing.

With each passing year has come challenges.  Some have been satisfying upon completion, while they were stressful during the 'birthing' stages.  Each Big Project has entailed far more 'work' than ever gets seen outside of the walls of my studio.

As I grow older and my body continues to age, my well of energy diminishes.  What that means is that any Big Project will have to become smaller in order that I can 'manage' it.

OTOH, Life Happens, and sometimes Big Projects are thrust upon one.  When that happens, modifications are required.

There is a meme going around to the effect that if you don't make time to rest, your body will choose the time and it might be a very 'inconvenient' time.  In my experience this has not just a kernel of truth, but a bushel full.

We don't choose to get injured, but sometimes it happens.  When it happens, we have to live with the consequences of that injury.  We need to listen to our bodies and make sure they get every chance possible to heal.  Unfortunately an injury can, and frequently does, leave scars - or weakness.

As we get older, we have to accommodate those injuries, or memories of injuries, or risk re-injuring ourselves.

With two 'major' writing projects this year, both pulling on memories, some of them long buried, I find long ago instances of injury or illness floating to the surface.  

I find it interesting that in spite of these events being decades old, they are as fresh and clear to me as if I only just recently experienced them.

Combine that emotional upheaval with current events and I am feeling very...unsettled.  I worry for the future of our planet, even knowing that I won't be around to experience most of what I see arriving.

I have no children to fret about, but I have lots of friends, many of them younger than me, and I worry for their well being as climate change continues and too many voices try to convince the frog that the rising temperatures are 'no big deal, it's always gotten this hot' or 'climate change is a myth, it's always fluctuated like this, it's fine, it will be fine!'.

Given the climate dashboard being hosted by the CBC, it is clearly so much NOT fine, and I can't even convince the 'non-believers' because their non-belief refuses to accept the data.

So I circle back to 'what can *I* do?'  It's like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.  It's like the story of the man on the beach viewing vast numbers of starfish stranded after the tide has gone out, throwing them, one by one, back into the water.  When asked why he bothers, there are too many to save all of them, he responds "Because I can save this one and their survival matters to *them*."

I paraphrase, but you get the gist.

I keep writing about weaving, trying to educate as many as I can because if it all goes pear shaped, weaving (and spinning and pottery, etc.) will become survival skills.  A recent conversation at the post office with a gardener where we acknowledged that when the apocalypse arrives, she can produce food and I can produce cloth and we can trade our goods left us each smiling (behind our masks, while everyone else stood in line, maskless).

So here is what I 'see' - the return of Covid in the fall when schools are back in.  If each person wore a mask, the wave would be minimal.  If people are not willing to mask, they should advocate for air filters in the schools.  (If you have any doubt about this, remember that billionaires require everyone *else* around them wear a mask so that *they* don't have to.)

I see climate disasters piling up one on top of the other.  We had a taste of that two years ago in this province, where the forests in the mountains burned leaving the slopes denuded of vegetation so that when the autumn rains came, mountain slopes came down burying everything beneath them, and rivers rose and flooded out hectares of farms and towns.  Some communities that had been evacuated because of wildfires in the summer had to be rescued from the floods in November.

More heat domes and deaths due to heat exhaustion because people either don't have a/c or we start straining the electrical grid and we have power outages (just like in some of the US states, right now).

There is a mass extinction event happening with not a few of the members of the animal kingdom going extinct, but masses of them.  If we lose critical members of our relations (Indigenous people remind us that all living things on this planet ARE our relations) we will wind up harming ourselves.  No bees?  No food crops.  Etm.

We need to develop the concept of 'enough' instead of constant 'growth'.  

I work on gratitude every day.  I have 'enough' material goods that I don't really need much beyond the consumables.  I will be trading in a vehicle in order to get a hybrid to reduce our use of gas.  We are looking at a heat pump to reduce our use of natural gas.

Neither are cheap, both are but teaspoons trying to empty the ocean.  But it is what *I* can do.

Perhaps your crystal ball shows you a different picture.  I could be entirely wrong - gawd knows I've been wrong before.  But we are in the midst of the worst wildfire season EVER, which is bad news on so many fronts I can't even explain it all (it would take a book and there are others far better qualified than me to write *that* book).

So I look for a teaspoon.  I watch to see if there is a starfish I can toss back into the water.  I keep writing about weaving.

What can *you* do?