Answers

Margie is reading Rachel Maddow’s book, Blowout, about the oil and gas industry’s rape of the planet. Margie loves the planet, has been on it for 93 years, and fears for it. She read about what milk-production is doing to the planet and switched to almond milk, but then she read how much water it takes to produce almonds for almond milk, and she said, “You’re defeated at every turn. You want to be responsible. You need a little something for your coffee, and don’t even get me started on coffee, but anything you drink is bad for the planet. Production methods are bad, and transporting the goods is even worse.” 

“How much milk do you use, Margie?” I asked.

She thought for a moment, looking very worried. “Oh, I’d say a quart lasts me three weeks if it doesn’t go bad before I can use it up.”

I started laughing, and then she laughed with me. 

Again serious, she asked the walls, “What can you do about the airlines? About factory farms? About the dairy industry and plastics in the ocean?”

We sat for a moment in silence. I thought with gratitude of XR, and then I thought of the poem Bill T. Jones read, Bill T. Jones, to my eyes the most beautiful man on earth, a poem about a gay man’s unborn, never-conceived imaginary child. I pulled it up for Margie on my phone, but it was too noisy for her to hear it in the coffee shop, so I sent her the link so she can listen to it at home. This is how it ends:

And you would throw back your head
and open your mouth at the cows lowing their human songs
in the field, and the pigs swimming in shit and clover,
and everything on this earth, little dreamer, little dreamer
of the new world, holy, every rain drop and sand grain and blade
of grass worthy of gasp and joy and love, tiny shaman,
tiny blood thrust, tiny trillion cells trilling and trilling,
little dreamer, little hard hat, little heartbeat,
little best of me.
—Ross Gay.

If you haven’t clicked on the link yet, go back and click on it and scroll down to the vimeo if you want to watch this man, so beautiful that he’ll make your eyes sting, read this amazing answer to an unspoken question.

And meanwhile, on my One Street corner, a very dapper old fellow in black trousers and a fringed leather jacket the color of butterscotch, has tied a ribbon the color of falling leaves onto his black hat. Worthy of gasp and joy and love.