Poster Premiere

After Jessica and I met, she went home and created this amazing poster to share on social media. Today was the Great Poster Reveal, so while we have some of the worst air on the planet, we have been madly sharing (as did WalkingMarj on Facebook, bless her, she and so far 30 other people). I've been jumping up and down, shouting, and waving my arms wildly in my little apartment, while outside, the smoke is a yellow wall of death, a toxic gas boiling, a terrifying statement of the horror we have long feared. We thought we knew what climate change meant. We had read all the books, thought about it, talked about it, heard panels of experts, watched documentaries, and thought we knew what it would be. But the truth of it is worse than any of that imagining. 

While I was having a Zoom call with Sue and the Portland Buddhist group, trying to decide if we should try to do our meditation again next Tuesday or if the air will still be toxic and dangerous, Donna phoned in tears, sobbing, so moved to see the poster and to know that it's "really a Thing," she said, "and not just some crazy dream I had, and told you about. We could've both been crazy, you know. But I see this, and I see that it's real."

So here it is on my laptop, the wall of yellow smoke through the windows beyond. The joy of the achievement on the screen. Two years of work, and on October 6 we will finally see what it has come to. Nobody but the editor has seen all the pieces of the play together. We have no idea if it "works." It will all be a great surprise.

This must be what Buddhists call "the 10,000 things." We are here for the 10,000 forms of suffering and the 10,000 joys. We didn't expect them all to arrive at once. But some days are like that.