it’s six am and I’m trying to beat the clock. Where do climate change and immediacy and action and just wanting time for oneself collide?
A short poem.
Transcript
Leela Sinha 0:02
It's 6am and I'm trying to beat the clock. I've been doing this for a week now, rising early five o'clock, 530, bleary eyed, wandering around the house half awake, opening doors, windows, turning on fans, encouraging cross breezes trying to think about physics. But the truth is all I'm thinking about is heat by 8am that will be over 70 by 10 o'clock it will be intolerable outside by four o'clock of the air conditioners will have to be on full blast, just to keep the interior of the building at a reasonable livable temperature what is livable is highly variable, of course
Leela Sinha 1:11
somehow, in the next few hours
Leela Sinha 1:18
somehow in the next few hours, I have to eat, drink, go for a walk, cool the house down as many degrees as I can. Breathe, think, compose, write. Live a whole lifetime before the heat claps a lid on my thinking on my moving I remember a time that wasn't like this. Where summers at this let latitude didn't do this. Where 100 was hot over 100 was unthinkable. Where there was no routine for scorching days, because there were no scorching days. Every day that I do this is shot through with grief. I'm sorry about the grief. I also realized that once it's too hot to record outside, and once it's too hot to exist without the fans and the air conditioners inside, I will not be able to do the thing that I had planned to do today that I need to do for Saturday. So somehow, I need to get my brain operational enough to work. Before water before breakfast.
Leela Sinha 3:09
The muse craves these hours but so does everyone else. My body cramps up from sitting and sitting resenting the heat, resenting the 50 years that I spent not knowing what to do, including the 20 before I turned an adult I resent myself and everyone else. For not having stopped this we could have stopped this. And I can't think about that too long because we have our own right-now "The best time would have been 50 years ago." We must act today. This week, this month. This year before November every time I read a book that takes place before now. I envy the innocence of that moment before now
Leela Sinha 4:24
I am horrified about where we have come. I am perplexed about how we did that to ourselves when we knew better. I am not perplexed at all about how we did that to ourselves when we knew better. I know that the further left you go the harder it is to pull together. I know that the enemy as many headed Hydras and demons and tentacles are all good metaphors. We've been treating it like it is one honorable night on a horse. We've been treating it like maybe we could be friends. I have given up on the idea of being friends. I do not want to have given up on the idea of being friends. I know that we have more in common than we have different. But right now in this moment in a declared revolution All I know is that everything's up for grabs. revolution can turn full circle. Revolution goes all the way around a few that revolution can stop at any point in the cycle. Revolution does not have to mean what they think it means. Now that the soil is disturbed, now that the fire is here what can take root in the aftermath?
Leela Sinha 6:21
It's 6am and I'm trying to beat the clock.