This is from my new novel, which is called American Weather.
The title comes from one of the main characters
has a very dark and doomy environmental show.
And at one point, one of the caller--
callers calls up after there's a segment on climate change
and he says, yeah, yeah.
I've heard all about that.
But what I want to know about is what's
going to happen to the American weather?
Didn't seem quite as dark when I wrote it couple years ago.
"Chapter 1.
Someone's flushing antidepressants down
the toilet.
Don't worry.
Not me.
Yesterday, I read that the worms tested in city sewers
had high concentrations of Prozac and Paxil in them.
When city birds ate these worms, they stayed closer to home,
but appeared unmotivated to mate.
But what I want to know is were they happier?
Did they get more things done in a given day?
Because I must admit, my energy is flagging.
You, I think, when the world makes its demands on me.
Again?
Didn't we just do this?
It's entirely possible that my bar for happiness is too high.
For example, I keep thinking about this Swedish peasant
named Jonas Stolt, who wrote this in a diary in 1820,
'I have known a time when young people were
singing from morning to eve, whether at work or at play.
This is all over long ago.
Nowadays, there's silence everywhere.'
And yet, here my husband stands in the doorway,
sorting through the mail.
'What do you think will happen if you don't open the bills,
he asks me.
Do you think someone will come and take them away?'
But this is unfair.
I'm not that bad at mail.
Once I sent my ex back one sock, Federal Express.
What kind of sock, one might ask, after hearing that.
But you'd be on the wrong track.
It was a white athletic sock bought in bulk at Target.
My dog brings me her slobber frog
and waits until I throw it for her.
I do and then she brings it back again.
This is a game that has no end and is
played by dogs in heaven.
It is relaxing, except for the slobber part.
When my son comes into the room, I give it to him
and make him take over for a while.
He gives me his folder with the monthly newsletter
from his teacher.
This one features a list of the top 10 fears and phobias
reported by schoolchildren.
Fire isn't on it.
Blood, sharks, and loneliness rank eight, nine, and ten.
I take the slobber frog away finally and put it
on top of the refrigerator.
The dog watches me warily, her face on her paws.
My husband tells me a good story about the bad coworker.
My son sits on the floor, folding a piece
of plain white paper.
When he sees me watching, he turns carefully away.
'Don't look, I'm inventing this.
No one will ever know what I've done except me.'
My number one fear is the acceleration of days.
No such thing, supposedly, but there's not a parent alive
that believes this.
Later, when I come out of the bathroom,
I asked my husband what he thinks is wrong with my knee.
I hear this little click sometimes when I'm walking.
Just a tiny click like a key turning.
He puts on his glasses to examine it.
'Does this hurt,' he asks me.
Pressing down hard on it.
'How about this?
Or this?' I shake my head slowly.
He takes off his glasses.
'It appears to be knee cancer,' he says.
But now, I am late for Sylvia's lecture.
The elevator is out again so I gimp my way
down as quickly as I can.
The lady from 1C pokes her head out the door
to complain about the management.
'These days they'll let anyone be the Super,' she says.
Her right wing sadness showing through.
So late, late.
And this woman on the subway has bought a dress
for a destination wedding.
It is shrimp colored, she says.
I have seven stops still to go.
I put on my headphones and listen to one
of Sylvia's old podcasts.
'What do you mean, interconnected,' the caller
says.
Well, scientists have found a species of moth
in the forests of Madagascar that
drinks tears from the eyes of sleeping birds.
Hm.
The shrimp lady just got off at Union
and now I'm almost there and running a little
through these dirty streets.
Sylvia is already speaking when I come in.
'Crises alter morality.
They alter what is demanded of us.
If we are considered to be good, honorable people.
For example, having a picnic in the park is morally neutral.
But, if during your picnic, you witness a group of children
drowning and you continue eating and chatting, ignoring that,
you have become monstrous.'
Right on, sister.
During the break, the woman sitting next to me
gives me her card.
She tells me she is a lifestyle blogger
who blogs about creative sustainability.
She gives me a card for her website, Apocalypse Wow.
She is not here to see Sylvia.
She is here to see the next speaker,
who it turns out is a white woman wearing a great deal
of Native American jewelry.
She paces across the stage and then tells us a story.
'The Shuswap region was and is considered
by the Native American people to be a rich place.
Rich in salmon and game, rich in below ground food resources,
such as tubers and roots.
A plentiful land, overall.
In this region, the people would live in permanent village sites
and exploit them for needed resources.
They had elaborate technologies for very effectively using
the resources of the environment.
And they perceived their lives as being
very good and very rich.
Yet, the elders said, at times the world
became too predictable and the challenge
began to go out of life.
Without challenge, life has no meaning.
So the elders in their wisdom, would
decide that the entire village should move.
And these moves would occur every 25 or 30 years.
The entire population would move to a different part of the land
and there they found challenge.
There were new streams to figure out, new game trails to learn,
new areas where the balsam root would be plentiful.
Now life would regain its meaning and be worth living.
Everyone would feel rejuvenated.'
As it turns out, the speaker has done something similar.
For a long time she lived in San Francisco
and now she has moved to Portland."
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
[MORE LAUGHTER]
"Later, a man comes on to do a panel.
'What are your most useful Anthropocene skills,' he says.
A woman stands up, looking nervous.
She twists her braid in her fingers.
Finally, she begins to speak.
'I recently learned how to make a long burning candle out
of a can of tuna oil, not water.
I've learned how to recognize a black walnut tree
and that you can survive by eating the inner part
of a birch tree, if need be.
I know it's important to carry chewing gum at all times
for post collapse morale.
And also because it suppresses the appetite.
You can fish with it, but only if it has a bright color
and has sugar in it.
Because only then will a fish investigate and somehow get
hooked at the end of the fishing pole, which
I would have fashioned with a sharpened paperclip
and a string and a stick.
If you need to, you can use wet tobacco over a wound.
Red ants can be eaten, they have a lemony taste.
The Mormons ate lily bulbs, a famine food.
Malcolm X said his mother would make soup out
of dandelions when there wasn't enough to eat.
No one liked it.
If you don't have enough water, don't eat.
Keep your mouth closed.
Conserve your energy.
You can go three hours without shelter,
three days without water, three weeks without food,
three minutes without hope.
Don't drink your own urine, that's a myth.
Don't eat snow, you have to melt it first.
If you have a toothache, you can put crushed aspirin in it.
All you need is to make toothpaste
is baking soda, peppermint oil, and water.
You can chew on a stick until it splinters and then
that's a toothbrush.'
'Thank you,' he says.
'Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Please sit down.'
I can't get to Sylvia afterwards.
There are too many people.
So I walk back to the subway, trying
to remember that my body is provisional.
Blessed is he who makes no sadness in the soul.
I wait for the light at the corner.
A gust of wind blows some papers down the street.
A panic of newspapers, I want to call them.
There's a man sleeping in a doorway
and one comes and curls itself around his feet.
Someone once asked the old monks at Mount Athos what they did
all day and was told, 'We have died and we are in love with
everything.'"
Thank you.