Functioning in the Time of Climate change
Earlier today, I did a Virtual Concert with Steffin Keulig, Sacha Kagan and Lena, about the film work they recently completed about life in Karamoja, Africa, near Uganda. The conversation highlighted how fragile, complex and delicate the neccessary interfaces are that we must make between third and first world cultures in these times of population pressure, resource dwindling and climate change.
Living with CFS, isn't the same as struggling to feed starving children on the streets of Kampala, while bleeding from a gang rape, which is not an unusual expereince in Africa, these days, but it does hold some symbolic parallels between how we, as a species are coping with personal limitation and tragedy these days and how we are collectively dealing with the exigencies of global warming.
I returned Sunday from three days at a symposium in Ithaca, that was otherwise exciting, in terms of talking to energized young people and sharing reflections with colleagues, spent the day immoilized in bed yesterday and then rallied to attend Grant Kester's lecture at Cooper Union on art in the intersticial fringes between activism and artifact and then shared sopme felafel with Lillian Ball, en route to work on the Seville Bienalle, about yearning for someone equally thoughtful to write about the kinds of work being done by dynamically oreinted eoclogical artists.
I am still functioning today. After all I did the podcast, responded to about ten professional emails about work, moved my car and did some research reading & thinking and it's now 1:PM. What I didn't do was exercize, my singing practice or eating sensibly. When I stand I am dizzy. Walking is an effort of will to move my body despite weakened muscles. Thinking is at the cost of a splitting headache. My shoulder msucles are in spasm. Shortly, I will have to lie down, probably for most of the rest of the day. But somehow I need to complete and send a written proposal with visuals for an event at MIT due tomorrow. It is necessary to push myself to function because I cannot earn a living if I'm invisible nor can I afford to park my car in a garage or alternately, not move it from one side of the street to the other to avoid several hindred dollars in parking tickets.
One of the articles I read while sitting in my car, was in Vanity Fair's green issue, on the eroding life of polar bears and how they may now be competing with grizzlies for food resources. The rape survivor in Africa is the bycatch collateral victim of increased cinflicts over resources. The bears are dislocated by melting ice and changing weather patterns that effect their food supply. Chornic Fatigue Syndrome is just another in a long list of new and poorly understood illness that limit personal resoiurces. In each case, there is a limitation on resources and a struggle to survive despite pain, despite limitation. Amongst humans, the competition for resources is exacerbated by population increases and increased demands on resources from developed countries. collateral damage for all species is increased as a consequence.
So whether you're a raped woman in Africa, a person with an immune system disability or a polar bear in the Arctic, many of us are learning to compete for resources and survive despite limitation. And many of us will not survive. And it won't be fair. It will exact a high price of grief for anyone who is sane.
