An indoor day for me

I’m grateful for all the expressions of empathy, recognition, and encouragement in response to Thursday’s blip. Unfortunately a migraine descended on me Friday, whether an after-effect of the treatment or just a random occurrence, I can’t know. But as a result I couldn’t go out for a long walk in the bright sunshine, which had been my intention. 

Instead I stayed in, continuing to de-clutter my house, and when the migraine let up enough that I could see to read, I found myself lost in a book I had chosen to donate: Beyond the Wild Wood: The World of Kenneth Grahame, Author of The Wind in the Willows, by Peter Green (1993). It’s a stuffy, misogynistic study by a Cambridge classicist, but it’s full of photos of the English countryside that Grahame knew so well, and I’ve held onto it for years. 

Predictions of the end of civilization and life on this planet were rife in Grahame’s time. Green quotes a man named Max Nordau, who published in 1893 a book called Degeneration that predicted “the Dusk of Nations,” “in which all suns and all stars are gradually waning, and mankind with all its institutions and creations is perishing in the midst of a dying world” (p. 108). 

I’m struck by how similar Nordau’s prediction is to some we hear today, to some I have uttered myself, although I blame end-stage capitalism and corporate exploitation of the planet for climate catastrophe. 

I retreat to Buddhist notions of Impermanence, Interconnection, and “Don’t Know Mind” for refuge. Perhaps those who follow us will find some way to keep life going, to provide water, food, and housing for everyone, to reverse the trends. It’s possible, and maybe what feeds that possibility is the science-driven vision of what could be…if we don’t stop it. I retreat to the beauty of the sky and the glimmer of city lights out my window.