"what matters most is / how well you / walk through the / fire" -- Bukowski

If you are just tuning in to the climate crisis, it may be difficult to process "we are already off the cliff" according to reporter Dahr Jamail, winner of the Martha Gellhorn Award for Journalism for his work in Iraq and the Izzy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Media in 2018. It is unknown how hard the crash landing will be. Jamail's July 15, 2019 article "Dancing with Grief" at resilience.org gives details. Using the above quote, Jamail notes "Meanwhile, the business-as-usual economic paradigm continues, and it, too, shows no indication of changing in the radical way necessary. In the U.S., hopes spring eternal that the Green New Deal, or one of the candidates for the 2020 election, or geo-engineering might save us. Yet none of these take into account that we are already off the cliff. Every single one of them is an attempt to try to fix something that is unfixable. [ . . . . ] The reality is, no government on Earth is currently willing to take the dramatic measures necessary that might begin to mitigate what is coming our way. [. . . .] There can no longer be any question that life as we know it, at least for those of us in the privileged West, is now ending."

His section "How to Be" cites "Czech dissident, writer, and statesman Václav Havel [who] said, 'Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.'" Jamail's section "Remaining Connected" quotes Chief Luther Standing Bear: "There is a road in the hearts of all of us, hidden and seldom traveled, which leads to an unknown, secret place. The old people came literally to love the soil, and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. [par break] Their teepees were built upon the earth and their altars were made of Earth. The soul was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing. [. . . .] For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly. He can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. [par break] This never fails me. And as tragedy strikes, either in my immediate life, or by reading of it afar in the news, I again must remember to be still, get quiet, and listen—listen to the Earth—for what to do next."

Jamail's article reminds me of the end of the poem "How Is Your Heart?" by Charles Bukowski: "what matters most is / how well you / walk through the / fire"

In one of my most-visited posts "PLAYA Climate Change Discussion July 7, 2016" (542 views as of today) I wrote:

"Reflecting on [the climate crisis], I drove to a trout stream and had climate change conversations with ghosts of Socrates, Ed Abbey, Mother Teresa, and Charles Bukowski which I [. . .] put in Hawk on Wire: Ecopoems. I recalled my Outward Bound rock climbing course in the Okanagan Mountains when I was 16, and my instructor Dick Stokes, who later fished with me, saying if the world falls apart he will get his 'last sweet breath in wilderness.'"

"Of the above-mentioned ghosts, Bukowski was least willing.  'Remember, you asked me so I'll speak when I'm damn well ready and not before,' he said.  I forgot about him while catching rainbow trout on a size 10 peacock / mallard nymph, then I rounded a canyon corner past a huge boulder and there he was:"

Ghost of Bukowski Speaks on Climate Change

Yes, it's bleak,
bleaker than sheep snot
on barbed wire

but, hope or no hope,
we must find
some way

to make joy
no matter what.

Below is a new poem I wrote on the Alaska Marine Highway ferry Columbia yesterday in Ketchikan about an earlier trip on the Malaspina. Yesterday, the Columbia captain announced the Inlandboatmen’s Union of the Pacific walked off the boat on strike, and passengers would have to either wait or find another way home. I told Suz "Be ready for anything." Earlier at a coffee shop I heard the song "The Funeral" by Band of Horses (36,267,926 views), and reflected how the song fit, though unintended by the band in 2006, the current climate crisis. I watched the YouTube, and the man falling asleep driving is like  "government[s] on Earth" Jamail mentioned above.

On the Alaska Ferry Malaspina 
South of Juneau July 18, 2019

"No Service"
cell phones remark

and people look up
at the sea

and at each other
as it will be

soon with
climate change

like that song
by Talking Heads

that says "My God!
What have I done?"