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Sep. 25th, 2023 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormIn past years they talked about fire on the landscape. This year the landscape is fire. Small fires that started during the lightning in June and July and didn't have enough people to put them completely out flared up in August and even the beginning of September and their outlines are creeping across the https://wildfiresituation.nrs.gov.bc.ca/map map. No doubt if I circle back to this post in future years that link will be defunct, but right now it's very lively. All the international firefighters have gone home; most are in the southern hemisphere where their skills will be needed, and where our folks will soon go to help. But. Our fires aren't out, we're only getting a sprinkle of rain, and Canadian firefighters are burnt out and demoralized, in part because of the high number of deaths this year. Most years no one dies.
At this point it's likely that both the drought will continue in stage 4 or 5 for a third year (when in fact most of BC hasn't hit level 4 or 5 in the history of the system previously), and that the fires will go underground into the duff, the forest floor which decomposes so slowly up here and the peat in all the wetlands that dot the landscape, and they'll pop up as soon as the snow is gone.
That used to matter to me. The Waste Land still reverberates in my head moment to moment:
Not that we have cicadas here. But the thing is.
Last week I was hooked up to electrodes for 19 hours. I slept, and then I napped four times, two hours apart. After each nap, after half an hour, someone would rap lightly and then open the door a crack, letting the light in, and say "good morning". I don't think that's happened since I was a child? Then she would ask, "did you sleep? Did you dream?"
I don't know if I slept. I think I did. Isn't the point of sleep that you're unconscious, so you're not aware of it? In November I'll talk to the doctor who will interpret the results, and he'll let me know whether my assessment of whether I slept lines up with whether I actually slept. I'm curious. There were a potential 5 naps, and if I fell asleep in less than 8 minutes in at least two of them, and entered REM sleep within a short time after falling asleep, that's a narcolepsy diagnosis. They sent me home after 4 naps, which I believe to mean they got clear information one way or another, so one more nap would not make a difference to the findings. So either at least two, or zero, met the criteria.
I'm genuinely curious. The whole experience also basically flooded my PDA coping mechanisms for the week: I had to prep the farm, drive in for a certain time, bring a day's worth of food, be confined in a place and kinda forcibly relax myself, then live life in 1.5 hour chunks with those half hour naps in between. I had trouble doing anything else.
The idea of it being or not being narcolepsy isn't stressful. What was stressful was that day there were anti-LGBTQ+ protests across my country, and counter-protestors. Someone I know ended up in the hospital, and it kind of threw off my last nap. Someone threw a rock at her head.
Over the last several days I've learned that two more of my people were injured: one just bruised, from having a full waterbottle thrown at them, and one punched in the face.
There were protestors in my town. I don't know if there were counter-protestors. I was in this room, you see, with electrodes attached.
I might be able to shrug that off, but tomorrow and the next day I've signed up to help present to some high schoolers about the non-stereotypical parts of forestry: how ecosystems are connected, how figurative shit flows downhill and ends up in riparian areas so they're a good litmus test for how the system is doing, how it's important to always monitor so we can make decisions from a place of knowledge. I have a couple fun stories to back it up: how beavers were airdropped into a valley to successfully fireproof it ( https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/environment/2015-01-14/parachuting-beavers-into-idahos-wilderness-yes-it-really-happened ), how willow evolved in waterways to be broken off by floods and then the pieces float down the river and root, colonizing raw soil and turning an environmental liability into a strength. We were going to wade around in a creek, look at the fish, and count insects and talk about abundance vs diversity.
The protests were about keeping talk of people like me out of schools. Letting kids know that folks like me, genderweird and with love for folks outside whatever normative bullshit, that's called pedophelic grooming, child abuse, all that. You probably know the drill by now.
Yeah, if I wore a rainbow shirt to the thing I could maybe help out a kid. But.
I'm partly angry. You don't want me in your schools? Don't expect volunteer labour from me. Don't expect me to support you in maintaining your normal of having kids stay in your community supporting your economic bullshit.
And I'm partly scared. But when I'm scared and angry my power move is to come out loudly and basically say "yeah, are you all talk, or are you going to try and enact consequences"
Which. A coworker just came by and asked how I was, and I explained the above to her, and the organizer of the event walked by, and I said I was basically at the point of wearing a rainbow shirt and introducing myself as "they/them" and coming out at work properly and she was very supportive of both. So. But it's not something that can be taken back.
Anyhow. Last week was a mess, this week is a mess, we're getting overcast skies but bits of drizzling rain.
There were two club meetings this week, simultaneous, the clay and the garden clubs. One was shorter than the other so I flitted back and forth. At the garden club someone who is deeply respected in the community for being from an old family and making paintings went on a multi-minute tirade about how awful my house and yard look, full of "geese and ducks and garbage", and that she was thinking of calling the district on me. It went on long enough that everyone else there was very uncomfortable for quite some time while she was talking, then there was a long silence.. Like, this wasn't a short outburst, it was ignoring very loud "shut up" social cues from everyone else there for those long stretched-out seconds.
I want to do pottery. I want to make beautiful bowls imprinted with goose feathers that say things like "one girl's flight is another lady's garbage" and "the garbage is always greener". I want to do a series of heart-shaped cups with a rainbow of blues on them that say "I exist. I still exist."
I want to make rock-shaped red bowls that cut you when you pick them up that say "there is no water, there is only rock" with tiny hints of glossy blue glaze deep in the cracks.
I want to do this work with the kitten sitting on the back of my neck as I sit at the wheel, as he is wont to do, drawing blood as he gets older and heavier. I want to do this work with my dog sitting behind me on the dog bed and occasionally sighing. I want to go sit with the silly chickenlings, the silkies and showgirls and my chantecler lines, and turn off my mind and watch them peck around.
Instead tomorrow I go down and tell kids that the world is all connected and that as humans we have a responsibility to be involved, to know the consequences of our actions.
That's all.
That's been less than a week. That's all.
At this point it's likely that both the drought will continue in stage 4 or 5 for a third year (when in fact most of BC hasn't hit level 4 or 5 in the history of the system previously), and that the fires will go underground into the duff, the forest floor which decomposes so slowly up here and the peat in all the wetlands that dot the landscape, and they'll pop up as soon as the snow is gone.
That used to matter to me. The Waste Land still reverberates in my head moment to moment:
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Not that we have cicadas here. But the thing is.
Last week I was hooked up to electrodes for 19 hours. I slept, and then I napped four times, two hours apart. After each nap, after half an hour, someone would rap lightly and then open the door a crack, letting the light in, and say "good morning". I don't think that's happened since I was a child? Then she would ask, "did you sleep? Did you dream?"
I don't know if I slept. I think I did. Isn't the point of sleep that you're unconscious, so you're not aware of it? In November I'll talk to the doctor who will interpret the results, and he'll let me know whether my assessment of whether I slept lines up with whether I actually slept. I'm curious. There were a potential 5 naps, and if I fell asleep in less than 8 minutes in at least two of them, and entered REM sleep within a short time after falling asleep, that's a narcolepsy diagnosis. They sent me home after 4 naps, which I believe to mean they got clear information one way or another, so one more nap would not make a difference to the findings. So either at least two, or zero, met the criteria.
I'm genuinely curious. The whole experience also basically flooded my PDA coping mechanisms for the week: I had to prep the farm, drive in for a certain time, bring a day's worth of food, be confined in a place and kinda forcibly relax myself, then live life in 1.5 hour chunks with those half hour naps in between. I had trouble doing anything else.
The idea of it being or not being narcolepsy isn't stressful. What was stressful was that day there were anti-LGBTQ+ protests across my country, and counter-protestors. Someone I know ended up in the hospital, and it kind of threw off my last nap. Someone threw a rock at her head.
Over the last several days I've learned that two more of my people were injured: one just bruised, from having a full waterbottle thrown at them, and one punched in the face.
There were protestors in my town. I don't know if there were counter-protestors. I was in this room, you see, with electrodes attached.
I might be able to shrug that off, but tomorrow and the next day I've signed up to help present to some high schoolers about the non-stereotypical parts of forestry: how ecosystems are connected, how figurative shit flows downhill and ends up in riparian areas so they're a good litmus test for how the system is doing, how it's important to always monitor so we can make decisions from a place of knowledge. I have a couple fun stories to back it up: how beavers were airdropped into a valley to successfully fireproof it ( https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/environment/2015-01-14/parachuting-beavers-into-idahos-wilderness-yes-it-really-happened ), how willow evolved in waterways to be broken off by floods and then the pieces float down the river and root, colonizing raw soil and turning an environmental liability into a strength. We were going to wade around in a creek, look at the fish, and count insects and talk about abundance vs diversity.
The protests were about keeping talk of people like me out of schools. Letting kids know that folks like me, genderweird and with love for folks outside whatever normative bullshit, that's called pedophelic grooming, child abuse, all that. You probably know the drill by now.
Yeah, if I wore a rainbow shirt to the thing I could maybe help out a kid. But.
I'm partly angry. You don't want me in your schools? Don't expect volunteer labour from me. Don't expect me to support you in maintaining your normal of having kids stay in your community supporting your economic bullshit.
And I'm partly scared. But when I'm scared and angry my power move is to come out loudly and basically say "yeah, are you all talk, or are you going to try and enact consequences"
Which. A coworker just came by and asked how I was, and I explained the above to her, and the organizer of the event walked by, and I said I was basically at the point of wearing a rainbow shirt and introducing myself as "they/them" and coming out at work properly and she was very supportive of both. So. But it's not something that can be taken back.
Anyhow. Last week was a mess, this week is a mess, we're getting overcast skies but bits of drizzling rain.
There were two club meetings this week, simultaneous, the clay and the garden clubs. One was shorter than the other so I flitted back and forth. At the garden club someone who is deeply respected in the community for being from an old family and making paintings went on a multi-minute tirade about how awful my house and yard look, full of "geese and ducks and garbage", and that she was thinking of calling the district on me. It went on long enough that everyone else there was very uncomfortable for quite some time while she was talking, then there was a long silence.. Like, this wasn't a short outburst, it was ignoring very loud "shut up" social cues from everyone else there for those long stretched-out seconds.
I want to do pottery. I want to make beautiful bowls imprinted with goose feathers that say things like "one girl's flight is another lady's garbage" and "the garbage is always greener". I want to do a series of heart-shaped cups with a rainbow of blues on them that say "I exist. I still exist."
I want to make rock-shaped red bowls that cut you when you pick them up that say "there is no water, there is only rock" with tiny hints of glossy blue glaze deep in the cracks.
I want to do this work with the kitten sitting on the back of my neck as I sit at the wheel, as he is wont to do, drawing blood as he gets older and heavier. I want to do this work with my dog sitting behind me on the dog bed and occasionally sighing. I want to go sit with the silly chickenlings, the silkies and showgirls and my chantecler lines, and turn off my mind and watch them peck around.
Instead tomorrow I go down and tell kids that the world is all connected and that as humans we have a responsibility to be involved, to know the consequences of our actions.
That's all.
That's been less than a week. That's all.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-28 05:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-19 06:19 pm (UTC)On the other things... I don't know what to say. May love prevail, eventually...