Twilight Twilight Twilight
Twilight Twilight Twilight.
Death comes for you tonight.
Every bird in flight.
It will gobble the world
and all its life.
Too little too late to rage,
rage against the dying of the light.
Sit inside that grief, that loss before it happens.
Science gives us the ability to see the things we cannot feel. It gives us the ability to see over the horizon, it lengthens our vision. Rationale can make decisions and choose behavior from this extended sight, but not a heart unwilling to experience pain.
———
Social media offered up a stream of images this morning. A mix of climate and geopolitical news coupled with armature nature photography. The juxtaposition induced the surreal quality of a dream. It seemed like we where attending our own funeral - it was mother Earth’s funeral. With the logic of dreams my consciousness could switch perspectives. I watched, and was, our extended family bickering, greedy for Mother Earth's inheritance, justifying our actions and desires. And I was our self leaning over the casket shedding tears over the beautiful life lost. The life that could been, had we chosen differently. Like a spirit that could watch the whole room and yet be everybody in that room at the same time, the ghosts of Christmas past. (Sit inside that grief, that loss before it happens.)
One of the videos this morning was of birds in the last evening’s light flying to find a roost. Beautiful, singing shadows against a twilight sky. Tomorrow is finally too hot. Tonight you're witnessing their last flight. This is happening now. It's just that most of the time the catastrophe, the death, the extinction, happens in the next town over, just out of sight. (Science gives us the ability to see over the horizon.)
The thing about death and loss is that it doesn't directly affect you unless you are close to it. There will be no reminder of that person, animal or object, because it will be gone. The world only knows them by the ripples they don't make. We can handle so much pain and tragedy because it's quiet, out of sight, out of mind.
What if every bird where you live dropped out of the sky one day. What if every tree died one summer? Then your kids are born, and they grow up in a town without trees, or birds. For them it's normal. We are that generation. None of us have seen the sky darkening flocks of Passenger Pigeons.
And so I get it. I get how it’s normal. I get how we can go on like something didn't happen, because it didn't happen to us. I get how the rich can keep choosing to do the things they have been doing to be rich. I get how the rest of us are too depleted of time to do anything about it. I get it, at the cost of all this life. I get it.
And it's all just so fucking sad!
(Sit inside that grief.)
National Museum of Natural History, Martha the last Passenger Pidgin
And the list goes on.
Sit with this pain for a bit.
Then go out and do something about it.
