A question of focus and intent

 A little sun; a little clouds; a little warmth; a little spring is what we’re enjoying today. At 4:24 pm we will experience Vernal Equinox and, once again, the meteorological season will coincide with the astronomical one. Spring will have sprung.

As we know, or I hope we do, Spring Is A New Beginning. For my "New Beginning,” henceforward I’m going to train my focus on “news” about which I can do something. I don’t really care about when or how tRUMP gets arrested and convicted, only that it happens. I’m not about to stuff my money in a mattress, so I will but hope and pray that the banking system remains sound, as Treasury Secretary Yellen assures US it is. (Full disclosure: although the staff of the failed bank probably should have followed the Fed staff's guidance, I’ve been in a position in which I truly believed only an idiot would follow the guidance state and federal staff were suggesting for some projects I was helping lead.)

soaring into Spring

Photo by J. Harrington

Anyhow, much as it troubles me to not be a fully informed citizen, the ratio of noise to signal even in a paragon of news virtue such as the Guardian has exceeded my tolerance. Henceforth I will be spending less time checking the news and social media and more time focused on:

• fly-fishing
• rivers
• sourdough
• poetry & storytelling
• Druidry and “the systems view of life”
• matters related to the above and
• writings about any and all of the preceding

I think part of what pushed me over the edge was this article in MinnPost: Why Minnesota lawmakers’ plan to enlist social workers to help Metro Transit woes could be a challenge. We need elected and public officials who are better at connecting dots and solving problems than at protecting their own functional or geographic silos. You don’t need me to rant about what’s wrong with the world and the IPCC is doing a fine job pointing out global malfeasance.

Continued greenhouse gas emissions will lead to increasing global warming, with the best estimate of reaching 1.5°C in the near term in considered scenarios and modelled pathways. Every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards (high confidence). Deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would lead to a discernible slowdown in global warming within around two decades, and also to discernible changes in atmospheric composition within a few years (high confidence).

It is increasingly apparent that the human race will soon be living in a self-created hell-on-earth. Meanwhile, we are being beleaguered by alleged news that’s actually lies and distortions of racist, homophobic, book-banning idiots. I’m not yet ready to start rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but I am ready to start a new beginning focused on enjoying what’s left of my life and paying attention to magats only to the extent I can help put a stick in their spokes.

A Song on the End of the World

By Czeslaw Milosz

Translated by Anthony Milosz

On the day the world ends

A bee circles a clover,

A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

Happy porpoises jump in the sea,

By the rainspout young sparrows are playing

And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

         

On the day the world ends

Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,

A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,

Vegetable peddlers shout in the street

And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,

The voice of a violin lasts in the air

And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder

Are disappointed.

And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps

Do not believe it is happening now.

As long as the sun and the moon are above,

As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,

As long as rosy infants are born

No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet

Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,

Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:

There will be no other end of the world,

There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944

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