The Breathless Air

I’m writing to you from outside the smoke plume.
My husband and I are spending a few days in Esalen, in Big Sur, a retreat center in one of the sacred spots of the continent, in between sky and sea, soaking in hot springs, watching the sea otters frolic in the waves and hummingbirds dart through the gardens, replenishing our spirits and working through some of our pent-up bullshit with communal dancing and singing led by some of the beautiful alive humans of this planet. The O.G. hippie dream.

Meanwhile “more than 115 million people are forecast to be exposed to air quality levels that are unhealthy or worse as winds funnel smoke south from out-of-control fires in Canada and Minnesota — and a heat dome traps that smoke near the ground.” Two of those people are our children, at sleepaway camp. Their camp director just wrote a brave-faced email about how they have plans to keep the kids amused inside all day today, with “bunk games, silly game shows, camper-led learnings.”

I started this newsletter three years ago under very similar atmospheric circumstances. If you want to read some tips for talking to young kids about the wildfire smoke, they are here.

Welcome to The Golden Hour

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July 7, 2023

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Now we’re back here. Only with an administration that is objectively pro-climate crisis.

If you’re in the plume, and you’re feeling off, you’re not alone. Wildfire smoke has been shown to disrupt cognitive functioning. It contributes to more doctor’s visits for anxiety and depression—it’s thought that part of this might come from the physical impact of inflammation and oxidative stress on the nervous system. Oxidative stress sounds like rusting— it means that “free radicals,” unstable atoms with unpaired electrons, are out of balance with “anti-oxidants,” rampaging around, “stealing electrons from healthy cells, damaging DNA, proteins, and lipids.” Greedy little suckers.

Over here, under endless clear skies, what’s opening up for me is hopelessness, futility, numbness and grief. And joy and gratitude and fulfillment and love and dread and anticipation and sadness. Guilt and shame. And anger and frustration! I want to continue to soak up my life and I want my children to have joyful, silly days full of play and connection and the world is literally burning. My life feels very small and my climate “work” the most minor dilettantish warblings, and this catastrophe feels very very big.

“Still-burning Troy turns beacon of its own ruin; destruction’s dust-devils stir the slow-dying ash; crushed wealth’s last breaths choke out through rain-smeared soot”—Agamemnon, Aeschylus

“Yet does it matter whether I’m believed? What’s coming, comes. And you who’ll witness it will have your pain to tell how much truth I hit.” - Cassandra.

I feel frustrated with myself that I haven’t reached a more graceful equilibrium since I started practicing working with climate emotions a few years ago. I’ve had a whole few years to get used to this! To reach a better balance between grieving for what’s happening far away or big-picture, and appreciating the incredibly fortunate circumstances of my own life. Because I don’t want to be cutting down my joy all the time. That doesn’t serve anyone. But I don’t want to waste energy in denial either. This is happening. And I don’t want to turn away; as powerless as I feel, I have more power and resources and energy to make change than most people on Earth.

I guess I just have to keep working on accepting that there’s no adapting at the pace of what’s happening, that the disorientation and surrealism is going to be a chronic condition. I need to keep practicing moving gracefully among all these states without getting sick to my stomach. And I need to keep showing up with my community, fighting for our leadership to talk about climate and address it.

Just now as I was writing, a bee bumbled into my Nalgene bottle full of iced hibiscus tea and honey. I had to walk back into the dining hall and grab a fork to fish her out, and now she’s recombobulating on the table.

There’s something to the fact that I’m here at this moment, that this is all tumbling out right now. The myth of the 1960s was quite literally born here at Esalen, which includes the modern-day environmental movement. Buildings are named for Abraham Maslow, Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts. One of the founders produced a story for Look magazine titled “Youth of the Sixties: The Explosive Generation” in January 1961, branding the kids before most of them had heard what was happening.

When the revolutionary transformative potential of the 60s melted and morphed, it split into hard-core political violence and paranoia on one hand (Maoists, Weathermen). This was Ground Zero for the other hand: the endless fractals of wellness, crystals, herbs, psychedelics, yoga, mantra, mudra, orgies, finger cymbals, loose pants and man buns, celebration and exploitation of Indigenous and Asian cultures, past lives, trauma, drama and all the other waves of authentic holistic transcendence swirled with commodified self-delusion that continue to this day with results both beautiful (organic farming, mindfulness meditation) and not so beautiful (Deepak Chopra in the Epstein files, venture-funded sex cults).

They called it, here, the human potential movement. And fundamentally, the hippies weren’t wrong. We urgently need to transform both ourselves and the world. We need a drastic shift in what we value. We create our reality. We are our own biggest problem. We need to live in harmony with nature, in gratitude, in simplicity. There’s something important to be learned from traditional ways of life, and there’s something important to be learned from casting off traditional ways of life (patriarchy, hierarchy). We have unprecented material abundance, we have the tools, what’s missing is the motivation and maybe the imagination of what it could mean to have a culture and society and economy that isn’t toxic to the ecosystem. And it’s hard to imagine how that happens except with groups of people gathering to support each other and pour out their hearts, with movement and ritual and creativity.

Holding the truth of all that, without collapsing into solipsism and the endless stories and illusions of the self. Which is exactly what capitalism wants you to do, so it can sell you another solution: serenity as a service. That’s the trick. How about a human potential movement that emerges into a human actual movement?

I have limited time to revise this, so please forgive rough edges. I contributed to a local publication, Macaroni Kid, with five ideas to take climate action with your children in New York City, if that is appealing. I also co-wrote this guide with Panu Pihkala on dealing with climate grief. So I’m off to try to take my own advice, I guess.