Heat death
No one on my Zoom calls wants to talk about the pandemic, the explosion of wildfires on the West Coast, the dire future of American democracy. Instead, we talk about our personal lives, the amusing things that happen to us as we go about our day. Our new foster cat sprayed everywhere and had to be barricaded in the laundry. My coworker said something funny yesterday.
(Sweetwater Springs Rd. outside of Guerneville, CA, where I lived until I was five. The fire somehow missed the house my dad built. Image: Gary Weiner)
A few weeks ago (when we were still thinking about the fires) a fire evacuee in the Times said they knew God had a plan for them, they just didn’t know what it was. Trying to believe things will get better through the progress of social justice feels like just as much an act of faith right now. My belief in a better world is flagging.
For those like me, who have always worried about what the future might hold, at least our wait is over. The bad things are happening. It could get worse, and probably will. But if this year has shown us anything, we’ll get used to it. We will hope to evade the path of the latest disaster in time, be it natural or manmade. For people who are middle class or richer, living in first world countries, we usually will.
Meanwhile, trailer parks full of people who already had almost nothing burn to the ground. Those same people are the ones on the front lines of the pandemic who have disproportionately died alone in hospitals in the last six months.
I listened to the first two episodes of the podcast Blowback this week and then I couldn’t get out of bed for awhile. The problems are so big, so intractable, and we are the ones to blame. I’m ashamed to have benefited so much from the same forces that have ruined and ended millions of lives, destroyed entire civilizations, for nothing. Caring doesn’t feel like enough.
I’ve started and stopped writing a post like this many times over the last month when I feel hopeless. But there is not much to do but to keep going. Will I lie in bed every day in a puddle of dread? Will I learn to compartmentalize? I don’t know. Every day is different. I tell myself that the injustice of my fairly pleasant life shouldn’t be wasted in self-recrimination.
This week I watched a video on the largest stars in the universe (they’re really big). It’s nice to remember that we are just bits of energy playing out an unimaginably slow dance back towards equilibrium. I don’t have believe in God, but this knowledge feels similar. I can trust it.