7 For All Mankind Was My Business

A reel about our over-consumption plays on my social media feed: A woman rushes into an elevator, and like Jacob Marley and his accounting books, she drags a long chain of handbags tied to her ankle. She exchanges looks with a second woman wearing dozens of scarves. This week I decided to undertake a HUGE closet clean out. I do these regularly, but this was a deep dive. My clothes are mostly friend exchanges or thrifted, but I still culled four massive bags. Had I been in that PSA, my ass would have been encased in fifteen pairs of jeans.

Inspired by It’s Just Weather. Image from Holé.

It’s Just Weather

He shifted in his chair and went “Hmmph.” Here was yet another woe-is-me climate report, some pointy-heads claiming that if we continue ‘business-as-usual,’ the world’s economy will be one-third smaller in 2100 than in 2024. That, with two billion more people in it. Ridiculous! That would mean everyone is poorer, and why? Because the world’s a little warmer? Winter’s too long anyway! Besides, if it ever heated up, it wouldn’t affect us. Not here.

      Jesus, he thought, even the Weather Network has gone woke. It’s all a hoax to raise taxes! Angrily, he flicked the channel back to Fox News.

Inspired by Biblical Times and “The Macroeconomic Impact of Climate Change: Global vs Local Temperature", the study by those pointy-heads. Image of the 2021 Abbotsford BC flood by Jonathan Hayward, Canadian Press.

Biblical Times

We make a run for it. We’d been packed for days—just the essentials of course, and Freddy, our Maine Coon cat, whining in his carrier. Hit the traffic jam on the road south. Horns honking. People driving up the sides—an exodus of Biblical proportions. But so is everything these days. Last year with the wildfires. The year before with the plague. When the flood closes in, we all abandon our cars. A human swarm scrambles to higher ground, ditching “essentials” along the way. We let Freddy loose. It’s up to him now whether he follows us or not.

Inspired by Raccoon. Image by Rawpixel.

Raccoon

While we wait for ice cream, a hundred fires burned all the days of summer. Racoon, still an infant, on its back, blank-faced towards the sky and there, a thousand starlings swarm in silence where once there were ten thousand, where next year there will be few dozens.

No entrails, no blood. Its paws are burnt and something looks broken. I pull the racoon off the road. Its body doesn't need to be desecrated by drivers who will swear at it for soiling their cars when they splash over it. Better use of it as meat for a hungry coyote.

Inspired by Walk the Line and and also The reality of Canada’s new season of fire. Illustration by Fred Ni.

Walk the Line

The men stood, lined up, single file. There were a few young children strewn about unchecked in their activities, looking uncomfortable with their parental arrangement. The men marched one by one into the place. Moving in a robotic and obedient fashion, like an altered version of an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale with Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work playing in the background. The faces determined, eyes darting seeking camaraderie, and a hint of fear in the air. They disappeared into the place and reappeared with purchases, swiftly making their way home.

It was Mother’s Day morning at Cherry Bomb Coffee.

Inspired by last Sunday, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Photo by Wendy Whelan.

The Good Doctor

You hear him before you see him pushing his shopping cart. His kindly face and long beard and sturdy legs. One time, after a particularly robust round of exhortations he returned from No Frills with just two frozen pizzas. That night at a dinner party I recounted the event only to be schooled about food insecurity. This lent Larry David vibes to the second telling and the soubriquet Dr. Oetker to our hero. But this dear man walks by my house every morning, praying, preaching, sending us blessings and magical numbers. I think he’s holding the world together right now.

Inspired by Beyond. Image: Daily Blessing by Laurie.

Stumped

To drabble thus can be a chore

The goal, you see, is not to bore

But entertain with a few bon mots

Tell story smart and in the know

With crisp tight plot and punch line clever

No hanging threads, uncertainty, never

Sometimes though, nothing'll flow

Without idea or inspiration

Fuelled by angst and perspiration

I stare at page in search of words

And generate a gross of turds

I should’ve learned the trick by now

Not who or where or what, but how:

That at the point where you are stumped

Just grit your teeth and write some bumf

Inspired by writer’s block. Image by Elliott Park.

Beyond

Beyond fast clothes bought and shed like dead skin by celebrities and those who follow
Beyond moneyed pursuits of influencers and those who follow, their need for all-things-shiny, cars and guns, mansions and jets, adulation and new pussy
Beyond genocidal war lust of singular men and those who follow, yearning for rape torture child-killing and other thrills of conquest
Beyond god
Beyond even our precious feelings
Here it is and here it comes
Bebop-de-doo-wop
With hard teeth and clenched red hands
Tra-la-la
And a big ol’ morningstar spiked hard-on
Fa-la-la
Climate is karma
La-di-da
Climate is karma
Blah blah blah

Inspired by Sour Cherries. Photograph by Fred Ni.