I would die for us.
For the human race to become immortal and immune to our idiotic blunders, for us to live and die, but exist forever, I would give my life. For the guarantee that we would eventually figure everything out, know it all-from the reason for unequal tree growth to a clear conceptual definition of the universe-I would sacrifice myself. It would be nice to be remembered for all eternity as the one human who ensured that future generations would live on, that the planet would sustain us as long as we needed and wanted it to, and that mistakes made generations ago (oh, when we were young) wouldn't compromise our breed.
Most people think it would be too hard for a human being to do this. I like to think that if you sped up time fast enough, but just fast enough, to to observe life and death at eighty miles an hour, you would see souls forced in and pulled out in every direction, like rain drops, like eyelid blinks. This makes my life way less important and easier to offer.
Watching this existence in fast-forward makes me realize that I am not one blink in a sea brown, green, hazel, gray, and blue, but an ocean moving, thinking, breathing as one. Mixed in there with genetics and evolution is love, home, and every moment since the end and until the beginning. Though I would leave one spectrum, I would stay with my family at home and experience not only what I might have missed trapped in my life, but everything forever, and all at once. I wouldn't miss a thing.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
This Comfort
Some people don't care about where they are.
It bothers me if lights in a room are too florescent. I get uncomfortable if you can see every pore in my face. I don't like classrooms for the most part, and cement walls without windows scare me. I hate having to stay quiet in libraries, but I love not talking and being alone for hours on end. I need noise. I like fireplaces and candles. I like the smell of cooking and the atmosphere around a well-set table. In order to get anything accomplished, I need to be in an environment I've deemed comforting.
An hour into today, I drove half an hour away with seventeen of the most comforting people I've ever met. We parked near a huge field in the middle of the dark, away from the light pollution of Lancaster city and forgot about nine a.m. classes. We galavanted across an unkempt field with blankets and excitement, plopped ourselves into a pile, and watched what some were saying was the largest visible meteor shower of our lives.
I sat there amongst gentle, caring people, those who understand what's really important. To see a meteor streak across the outskirts of Earth- leaving an imprint of red, blue, and gold in the mind's eye- leaves one with a feeling of comfort. How comforting to observe a tear across the blackness we cannot understand because we were built to exist here, on an upside-down orb and held in by gravity- at home no matter what.
It bothers me if lights in a room are too florescent. I get uncomfortable if you can see every pore in my face. I don't like classrooms for the most part, and cement walls without windows scare me. I hate having to stay quiet in libraries, but I love not talking and being alone for hours on end. I need noise. I like fireplaces and candles. I like the smell of cooking and the atmosphere around a well-set table. In order to get anything accomplished, I need to be in an environment I've deemed comforting.
An hour into today, I drove half an hour away with seventeen of the most comforting people I've ever met. We parked near a huge field in the middle of the dark, away from the light pollution of Lancaster city and forgot about nine a.m. classes. We galavanted across an unkempt field with blankets and excitement, plopped ourselves into a pile, and watched what some were saying was the largest visible meteor shower of our lives.
I sat there amongst gentle, caring people, those who understand what's really important. To see a meteor streak across the outskirts of Earth- leaving an imprint of red, blue, and gold in the mind's eye- leaves one with a feeling of comfort. How comforting to observe a tear across the blackness we cannot understand because we were built to exist here, on an upside-down orb and held in by gravity- at home no matter what.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Who We Are [or Who We Are Not]
There's a two-person tent on my campus green. It is dwarfed by the brick dorm buildings, and the towering exotic tree species to its right and left. Ironically, this school prides itself in being an arboretum, but really most of those trees became invasive after being transported from native countries like Japan. They dominate our campus and the surrounding woods now; they've driven the endemic breeds to extinction.
Why there's a climate crisis: It's simple. Electricity emits carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. As it builds up, it prevents more and more solar radiation from escaping back into space. The planet warms. Right now there is an atmospheric carbon dioxide level of about 385 parts per million.
Why some people don't care: 90% of the species that ever lived on this planet are extinct. We are destined for the same. It's natural and we can't do anything to stop it.
Why some people care: It will get too hot for humans to survive. The safe upper limit is 350 ppm CO2, but levels only keep climbing, and there is a very low chance of leveling off before damage is done. My generation's grandchildren are going to live in a very different world than we do today.
Why I'm vegan: If Americans stopped using the electricity it takes to produce meat, chocolate, and cheese products, atmospheric carbon dioxide would level off.
Why there's a tent in the middle of the campus: to prove to people who don't think it's possible that humans can live happily, healthily, and comfortably without electricity and running water. Students and a handful of faculty members alternate this as their home every night. A journal sits in the tent and serves as a document of the project (The girl before me wrote that washing her face with cold water made her skin feel like marble. The professor who slept there the next night recorded the strangest place he ever camped- on an airplane runway above the arctic circle).
The planet will be fine. If you're a fan of the human species, and you think 200,000 years isn't long enough, then it's us you should worry about.
My roommate is at his desk on the other side of the thin stark wall we share shouting at his computer, which projects a live basketball game to him. Try to tell him any of this? He'll pretend he knows, take another bite of his BLT sandwich and go back to shouting.
Why there's a climate crisis: It's simple. Electricity emits carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. As it builds up, it prevents more and more solar radiation from escaping back into space. The planet warms. Right now there is an atmospheric carbon dioxide level of about 385 parts per million.
Why some people don't care: 90% of the species that ever lived on this planet are extinct. We are destined for the same. It's natural and we can't do anything to stop it.
Why some people care: It will get too hot for humans to survive. The safe upper limit is 350 ppm CO2, but levels only keep climbing, and there is a very low chance of leveling off before damage is done. My generation's grandchildren are going to live in a very different world than we do today.
Why I'm vegan: If Americans stopped using the electricity it takes to produce meat, chocolate, and cheese products, atmospheric carbon dioxide would level off.
Why there's a tent in the middle of the campus: to prove to people who don't think it's possible that humans can live happily, healthily, and comfortably without electricity and running water. Students and a handful of faculty members alternate this as their home every night. A journal sits in the tent and serves as a document of the project (The girl before me wrote that washing her face with cold water made her skin feel like marble. The professor who slept there the next night recorded the strangest place he ever camped- on an airplane runway above the arctic circle).
The planet will be fine. If you're a fan of the human species, and you think 200,000 years isn't long enough, then it's us you should worry about.
My roommate is at his desk on the other side of the thin stark wall we share shouting at his computer, which projects a live basketball game to him. Try to tell him any of this? He'll pretend he knows, take another bite of his BLT sandwich and go back to shouting.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Written March 3, 2009
As I near my twenty-first birthday, I can’t help but think that come next November, I will officially have a completely different body than I did when I was fourteen. My skin, hair, toenails, nerve endings, blood vessels have been replaced and renewed, transferring their information from ‘parent’ to ‘child.’ This is astounding! What have I forgotten? What have the neurons in my complicated brain failed to replicate? What has ‘parent’ kept to its dying self? I remember being fourteen. I remember my seven-year-old self vaguely. Is that being actually me? —The same me? Really, that being is a concept now—an entity, an idea, a memory, someone I will never be again.
I have been around for twenty years and counting. Well, Earth…Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years—its a very young planet. Its body is completely different now as well. However, Earth is so young that its ‘excrement’ is still visible. The stratigraphic rock sequences that still exist below our feet and on mountain ridges, which provide detailed descriptions of past environments, will eventually melt in the core and resurface through volcanoes, like cells replicating. The earth at certain points in its young history was a mass of fire, a mass of water, a mass of giants, a mass of buildings. It is changing and it will continue to change. Zoom out. Right now. We are specs. We have been walking around on this planet, infesting it like “good” bacteria infests our skin and mouths. If you were to stretch the geologic timeline out to the length of a ruler, Homo sapiens would span less than half a millimeter. WE ARE MINUTE. The earth will shed us in a time comparable to the time it takes our bodies to shed bacteria.
I have been around for twenty years and counting. Well, Earth…Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years—its a very young planet. Its body is completely different now as well. However, Earth is so young that its ‘excrement’ is still visible. The stratigraphic rock sequences that still exist below our feet and on mountain ridges, which provide detailed descriptions of past environments, will eventually melt in the core and resurface through volcanoes, like cells replicating. The earth at certain points in its young history was a mass of fire, a mass of water, a mass of giants, a mass of buildings. It is changing and it will continue to change. Zoom out. Right now. We are specs. We have been walking around on this planet, infesting it like “good” bacteria infests our skin and mouths. If you were to stretch the geologic timeline out to the length of a ruler, Homo sapiens would span less than half a millimeter. WE ARE MINUTE. The earth will shed us in a time comparable to the time it takes our bodies to shed bacteria.
Loose Thoughts
Too often I have loose thoughts. While staring at the map of the world shower curtain in my roommate's bathroom, or the multi-dimensional powerpoint graph in my morning lecture class, they come to me. I think of them in bridge pose during yoga, when I'm listening to a song I've had for three years but never heard before, as I'm twisting a stiff paintbrush into a perfect circle. I think most of them in class, when reading, on a train, and after I've met someone new. I think the least of them when I'm in my first home, focused on cooking, or absorbing the intelligent remarks my parents make to their friends.
Usually, they are fleeting. If I don't write them down, they slip away. I've had three bodies and four personalities-one of which is owed single-handedly to my cat Harry. I'm a college student, whose roots in England, Ireland, and Italy fused together twenty-one years ago and created three American sisters- all strong and powerful in their own terms.
Usually, they are fleeting. If I don't write them down, they slip away. I've had three bodies and four personalities-one of which is owed single-handedly to my cat Harry. I'm a college student, whose roots in England, Ireland, and Italy fused together twenty-one years ago and created three American sisters- all strong and powerful in their own terms.
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