Nibbling On Hope at the Edge

Photograph 9:AM Sept. 25 on Vinalhaven Island by

My story in the work memoir, “Divining Chaos,” ends just before the 2020 election and won’t launch until June 2022. I am now making final copy edits. That means I can’t add anything substantive but I can review what the publisher’s editor suggests and consider a word change here or there.  So in my epilogue, I can’t write about the Biden presidency, the insurrection, or global wildfires. I have to raise any issues I've considered since November 2020, like the connection between climate change and gaslighting women by just tweaking a word here & there. It's a painstaking and laborious process. I feel like Penelope. creating her shroud for Odysseus each day and unweaving it each night to protect her faithfulness. The shroud I weave is for the Earth as I know it. My faithfulness is to hope. The Odysseus trying to get home to me is our collective, common future. As I weave and unweave, I sing my story.

Just now I wrote, "Everything I learned required others to take these kinds of questions seriously and test my premises even though they were coming from outside the authority of established institutions." I think mine is the refrain of the outsider, the whistle blower, the disenfranchised, the Cassandras & Joan of Arcs and now, the young people of our world who apparently feel hopeless in the face of ecocide with impunity.

So what about COP 26? I give a lot of thought to the COP. When I went to COP15, in 2009, I was hopeful and determined. From various sources, I’ve heard no one expects anything to come of this COP anymore than any of the previous ones. I have also heard people expect the side events to have an impact tho it’s not clear what that might be. Much as I’d love to head to Glasgow, the prospect of the contrail effect from us all flying across the planet makes me feel nauseous. What I’ve been hearing is that only massive global, localized demonstrations might budge the fossil fuel beholden governments of the world, tho even that is dubious. It feels excruciating to chip away at various projects right now that address the imperatives of ecocide and contiguity, even though that seems to be my task and accept the limits of my personal capacity to save the world. It is a crucible of humility and honesty. It’s all very Zen and painful. And yet our collective task is to continue to bear witness and do our best.