I am thinking about ways to save the world but there is more to it
than the need to save it, than the science by itself.
Carbon ideologies are part of it, and then there is the force
of our own inabilities to rein in our own desires, as much of a problem
as what can be put on a list of what works and what doesn’t.
Today I read in USA Today scientists say the world is spinning as always
but it has also now started to wobble, resulting from the melted ice
and earth changes. The wobble cannot be measured now but it is there.
I see it is our own behavior that causes it all, measurable or not.
This is why I have begun to make my own list of what is possible
to change and what is easiest to make happen. Recycling
everything is first on the list, remembering not to throw food away.
I focus on eating what I like and what is good for the planet, brown
rice and garlic, olive oil, everything counts, a notion we have always
known about, that it all matters even if it is ignored in an age of immediacy,
a world of apps, and instant messaging. I think about how we are messy
and how we can change it, and how none of it is simple. For me walking early
in the morning under the old palm trees is a start, learning what lives
with less water in the deep desert and how I can live with it. What I may
enjoy, the moon in the morning, the moon at night, the clouds covering
the mountains, how they clear away, the silence of the place where we live
our lives, time filled with what is, the vulnerable land we live on, rabbits
in the brush leaping in and out, lizards running in the sun, fewer movies,
less driving, the civic duty of spending time this way how we can live as
we are, in a universe of glittering stars, the moon rising over the mountains