“Life in the liminal state asks us to carry a heavier mental load,” Dhruv Khullar, from an article in The New Yorker, August 22, 2021.
We’re Inventing New Weather.
That’s what my friend Nan said to me the other day. “We’re inventing new weather,” she said, as she made her way from Idaho to Salt Lake City through a canyon of thick smoke from a nearby fire, mixed with heavy rain – a kind of weather she’d never seen before, and which made visibility nearly impossible. “I’m afraid,” she repeated to herself as she drove, “I’m afraid,” she said aloud, naming it, and grounding herself to the road.
We’ve inventing New Weather.
The skies here in Northern California sit under a smoke dome from neighboring fires. Your sore throat is a reminder that the fire that took out the town of Greenville is still burning. And all the people, and their homes – something you read about, but don’t know how to respond to. The way residents told reporters, “It’s gone, the whole town is gone.” And how you try to take that in before you turn the page.
New Weather.
The sun these past few days is a kind of orange I’ve rarely seen. A beautiful orange, actually. Brighter than the orangiest egg yolk, stunning, really. Yet, even as I want to admire it, there’s something not right about the muddied pall it casts over everything as it attempts to rise over the city.
“We’re in the thick of the fucking it,” Nan said – which is strong language for a woman who prays.
Images of people running after planes at the Kabul airport. 834 people crammed into the body of a plane meant for 134 people. The story of a toddler trampled. Another baby, in diapers being lifted over a barbed wire fence into the waiting arms of a U.S. serviceman.
I know. I’ll stop. You don’t want to read this, I don’t want to write this. I’m afraid of upsetting you. I’m afraid I don’t know what I’m talking about because, as my dad used to say, “it’s complicated.”
But I feel it. That part is true. And I’m also pouring another cup of coffee, and checking the time to make sure I can get to the tennis court to meet my friend, and maybe I’ll stop at the market for more half and half.
That too. The mundane world of completely unimportant and distracting things. The projects and plans, alongside the images of families making their way through the streets of Kabul with their suitcases in tow, and doctors in Florida walking off the job because they’re so angry that people who aren’t vaccinated are taking up their ICU beds.
It’s a wonder more of us aren’t falling to our knees from the weight of it, the heartbreak of it, really, if you allow any of it in, if you allow it to touch you.
All these Simultaneous Disasters are Messing with our Brains, from The Atlantic
New Weather indeed.
And the other day, sitting in my car by the lake, I heard the reporter say that the Taliban had taken over the Kabul airport, and this news shot through my body like an arrow – something I actually felt come inside of me. “Oooh!” I said aloud. And even though I can’t tell you where Kabul is on a map, what I realized was that even if we’re not entirely focused on what’s going on in the world – Afghanistan, Covid, water shortages, fires, hurricanes – we’re still carrying it. Just the way our bodies are full of plastic, even though we don’t sit down to a meal of it.
It’s “In the field,” my writing mentor, Deena Metzger says. Which is her way of trying to get us to recognize things outside of our own story. Things that are happening around us; climate change, and its effect on the animals and the planet – for instance.
It’s in the field.
For years I heard Deena’s concerns about the planet, and the way she asked us to wake up to all of that, to bring it into our writing, to include it because it was vital – the most important thing, but none of it felt real to me. Totally conceptual. I believed her, but I didn’t feel it.
But Covid seemed to pull the veil away from everything, and the membrane that separated us from things, and that enabled us to change the channel when the story got too violent or too discouraging has thinned. And I, and maybe you too – started to see the way things really were. Things that weren’t sustainable like the land, the climate, the water, the wars, certain relationships, and even the monarchy seemed to show their real wear, giving way to a shocking nakedness, and for me, an inability to change the channel, and even still, an inability to know how to respond except with heartbreak.
Meanwhile, I am making plans. I am meeting my deadlines and getting on planes, and I’m wondering what this fine white fuzz all over my garden is – something I’ve never seen in 26 years of living here. I’m also not sure how to lead my class in the morning, whether to reference this world or pretend that we can write stories that don’t include the bright orange sun and images of women in burkas running for their lives.
I didn’t know where Wuhan was on the map in March of 2020. It seemed far away, someone else’s disaster. But this New Weather has connected us. We’re carrying more than the virus – we’re carrying each other.
Listen to Laurie read this post …
Tears. Thank you for telling it your way. xx
Thank you for naming this weight we carry, Laurie.
Thank you. 🙏
Thank you for assuring me my heart is not the one breaking. Misery needs Company.
So lovely. And the ending with how we are carrying each other just brings it all home. Thank you
Beautiful, thank you.
Perhaps my body will release its almost unbearable pain as I cry from the reading of this. Not that I dont weep every day for the world, somehow though, just by knowing that you, and perhaps you, and you, feel this sorrow.
Yes, I too was aware without true awareness….
Stunning!
Thank you for creating and writing four your readers anyway.
I was trying to put these kinds of thoughts on paper late last night and you’ve done it beautifully, terrifyingly Laurie. Thank-you.
you can say all that again. so accurate.
A stunning piece of naming heartbreak.
Wisceral, real, true. Thank you. 🙏🏽❤️
Your whole piece is a beautiful on ramp into our hearts, a safe way to get inside and feel all the feelings of being alive in today’s world. Thank you.
“it’s complicated”
orange
she asked us to wake up to all of that, to bring it into our writing
This resonates so much. Thank you, Laurie x
💔 🌎 😷🌪🔥🌧💨🌊🇦🇫😢
I fucking love this.
So true. All of it. And so sad. “New weather” says a lot. Thank you for putting words to this overwhelming depression in my soul.
I don’t even know what to say—except yes. And I love
You.
Laurie I am always so moved by the tenderness in your writing, the holding of it all in your hands, in your heart. Thank you!
It’s so true. Like we’re chained to a weight that we drag behind us, just noticeable, not useful, impossible to escape, always always there even as we go on with our mundane and important lives. I go to the woods or a beach, and that’s about the only thing that alleviates the weight for a few moments. But that’s enough to keep me going.
I’m reminded of living under the heat dome, even here in the north, and how a science reporter said it could create its own weather system. How they were making in-cloud lightening strikes because the storm system was so dense. 710,117 lightning strikes in western Canada in 15 hours.
I walked down to the garage and packed my evac box when I saw that headline. We’re always thinking about what we’re going to pull off the walls and out of closets when we have to get on the road. I wonder where we’ll go?
Much love to you in this communal (all beings) kind of writing & life, Laurie.
Thanks for collecting all the pieces of chaos. It is its own hurricane of Mother Earth saying she has had more than she can bear. And still in China they worry about reducing teenagers gaming because it is a severe addiction and affects health and brain development. The concern is how the tech industry will lose profits. If only the planet’s health was as seductive as a video game
I’m feeling this so much. And now Tahoe too.😵💫
Always love listening to your words.
Superb. So on target. Like reading a page from my own diary if I kept the one. Thanks so much for sharing.
“It’s a wonder more of us aren’t falling to our knees from the weight of it, the heartbreak of it, really, if you allow any of it in, if you allow it to touch you.”
Yes.
Wow. You said it perfectly Laurie. You express so eloquently exactly what I’m feeling XXoo
“The mundane world of completely unimportant and distracting things. The projects and plans, alongside the images of families making their way through the streets of Kabul with their suitcases in tow, and doctors in Florida walking off the job because they’re so angry that people who aren’t vaccinated are taking up their ICU beds.”
This is exactly what I was trying to articulate last night to my husband – people are fleeing for their lives all over the world and I’m drinking coffee and reading the Times.😶
Just beautiful, speaks right to the nucleus. As you do. Thank you, Laurie.
Oh yes. I’m crying with you. Yet drinking my coffee and feeding my cat and wandering through the same morning routine as if nothing is different. Wondering if anything matters. Or if everything matters.
Thank you for putting words to this knot of emotion inside of me
“I’m also not sure how to lead my class in the morning, whether to reference this world or pretend that we can write stories that don’t include the bright orange sun and images of women in burkas running for their lives.”
Beautiful piece. So real. ❤️
Art and writing are the best tools we have for touching the tender spot.
Laurie, thank you. Wrenching, stunning, TRUE. xo
Oh yes. This is the “fucking it”. The weight of the awareness we carry is heavy. It silences me for periods. Then I pick up my pen and put it into words again. A release. A way to bear the weight of knowing all we know. Near the wildfires, people can hear the screams of the animals. That , for me, is the very hardest part.
Beautifully said. I shared this with so many friends and have read this over to myself and will read it again.
You captured the emotions and our inner personal shifting in response to the never ending cacophony of our world beautifully Laurie.
I am walking on this path along side you. Knowing I am not alone in my journey is reassuring.
My the new year bring with it many blessings
Your words and your heart take my breath away…..thank you for putting words to our shared feelings and emotions, Laurie.
Thank you for naming the heaviness we are all carrying, Laurie.
It is complicated, and distressing, and sad. And I hope we all fall to our knees, in prayer, or rise up, take a stand for a more Humane world, and for a cleaner planet.
Thank you for touching my heart and spurring on my thoughts.
Thank you for naming this inexpressible totality with such fierce truth and tenderness Laurie
Feeling the weight of the times, your words, my contractions and dilations. Thank you for feeling it and using your wisdom to make it tangible. I appreciate you, Laurie.
So beautifully put, Laurie. This interconnection we have, humans and planet. And that yes, it’s completely honest to admit that I find difficult some days to enjoy the hot – once upon a time glorious – days because I know the load they carry. That we all, connected, carry. ❤️
We are carrying each other! ❤️ Thank you for this gift in my inbox this morning.
You nailed it all so precisely, Laurie. The pathos and confusion, the inability to parse our exact places in the thick of it all. How we’re all so alone, and so completely connected. How that orange sun shines on us all. It does feel we’re at an inflection point, the time of “miracle and wonder / lasers in the jungle somehow.” Awe, and its opposite. The impossibility of sufficient empathy. You feel it, I feel it, we all feel it, but I’ve never heard anyone express it better. Beautiful. Thank you.
Nothing to say that hasn’t already been said so articulately by others, but I wanted to weigh in with my appreciation for this piece. Very moving.
Laurie, I take the liberty to read and respond to your commenters: Kit said it well, “fall down on our knees and pray”. There is a comforter, Who knows the effects our total lives have made on our total home and the sum of our humanity.
Yet He is ready with answers. Kindness rules. Love keeps trying.
And Jeffji, you have said it painstakingly well. It’s so true, also. The impossibility of sufficient empathy.
Laurie, your gift enlightens. I hope you submit this piece and others you craft so well, to publications where the masses can be touched, even if for a moment, before they drink more coffee and put the newspaper in the recycling bin.
May we all find solace in a true Creator, who says this world was to be only our temporary dwelling place, to begin with. I hope you who read respect my wish to add to our collective wisdom, as I have respected each of yours. We are all so different, yes, but so alike. Blessings and peace, Ruby
Honest. Visceral. Stunning writing.