Today’s subject is (pause here for dramatic music as the contestants for subject of the week bite their lips, gripping hands with one another for mutual support, all hoping to the The one)… well, now, it could be fleas. Or it could be the weather, or community (I’ll let Dee Rambeau discuss that one for now - so many thoughts on this), Venn diagrams or human existence. Politics. Torpor around climate change. Oh, Godfrey*, the list is endless and if I had endless time to sit and do this I would tick off every subject, eventually. I would also be unable to walk anymore after sitting so long, but them’s the breaks.
I have just finished listening to ‘Olive, Again’, by Elizabeth Strout. I listened to it on my road trip to the east (more on that soon I promise), and it filled 12 hours plus with such vivid characters, wisdom, imagery and wit that I would happily drive all day to listen some more. But I would also be unable to walk after etc, plus you know, wasting petrol and contributing to climate change unnecessarily etc. Olive is irascible, funny, awful and totally lacking in self awareness, until it slowly dawns on her as she becomes old, observing her encroaching decrepitude with curiosity, disgust and resignation. ‘Oh Godfrey’* is one her favourite exclamations which I just may adopt permanently.
I have read a few of ES’s books and I love them, I love her crystal clear observations of humans in all their glory, and equally in their shame and weaknesses. But Olive’s stories, and those of her (sometimes reluctant) friends and acquaintances are the stand out best because she is such a human human.
So where do these humans sit in this warming world we inhabit? Where do we sit? I moan constantly about the weather we are having here in West Wales (pouring on Tuesday, sunny but cool yesterday, pouring and quite warm today) this summer. It’s a stupid thing to do, pointless, because no can fix it and because by so many other people’s experiences this is bliss. The world is over heating. The world, the planet, the globe. And yet, we carry on, living our lives, reading our books, occasionally going on marches, shouting at the telly or the radio. Everything we do, every email, meme, photo, google search or screen written thought (this) has a footprint, a carbon one. The internet is not a cloud or ether. It is, once the wireless bit is done (no, I don’t know how that works), all wires and cables and hot, humming centres of machinery made from are minerals probably mined by children that are warming the polar ice caps. When you hit reply all you use way more data than just replying to one person.
ether
ˈiːθə
noun
a pleasant-smelling colourless volatile liquid that is highly flammable. It is used as an anaesthetic and as a solvent or intermediate in industrial processes.
terrifying thought
any organic compound with a similar structure to ether, having an oxygen atom linking two alkyl or other organic groups. methyl t-butyl ether
no idea what this means
the clear sky; the upper regions of air beyond the clouds. literary nasty gases and smoke disperse into the ether
but where do they actually GO?
air regarded as a medium for radio. informal choral evensong still wafts across the ether
nice
a very rarefied and highly elastic substance formerly believed to permeate all space, including the interstices between the particles of matter, and to be the medium whose vibrations constituted light and other electromagnetic radiation. archaic the motion of the planets would be retarded by the ether through which they moved
mild head explosion
So, we could regard ether as an anaesthetic, for the human race. We are walking around anaesthetised to consequences of the mess we have made. We still buy shiny vegetables packed in plastic, processed meats, pre-sliced cheese, frozen fish fingers, new clothes from shein, drive cars that billow oil smoke, dispersing it in to the ether (only it is not dispersed, it is gathering into a cloud that will eventually get so heavy it will simply land on the earth like a giant gaseous duvet and suffocate it, maybe, she added dolefully).
We can do some small things to reduce our use of data and therefore energy. I have no idea how much difference any of these really make but here goes:
One of the amazing things about being human is our ability to know awful stuff, or even to be awful while knowing awful stuff. We can understand the misery of some people’s situations, do what we can to alleviate it in the full knowledge that we can’t, actually do much at all, really, or we can choose the illusion that everything is someone else’s fault and that we must do all we can to protect ourselves, just ourselves, while destroying the one thing that keeps us all, good and bad, alive.
And also we still find and create beauty and glory in the world and in each other. We continue to make art, tell stories, love each other and make our lives as good as they can be. There is knock on effect in this, like a smile will generate another smile, a door held open will prompt another door to be held open and so on. Is it enough to push back at the narcissism of the arseholes? In the endless story of good versus evil love will conquer all. Or will it? Love and some un-common sense maybe; either way it turns out this week’s subject is the ether, whether for bad or good.
Cerys Matthews sings so beautifully: The Reverend Eli Jenkins' Prayer from Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
One more thing. When I was a child and went on train journeys with my mother and siblings we would be allowed to get a comic to read, for example the Beano - the joys of Dennis the Menace, Billy Whizz and Lord Snooty so much more intoxicating for being so rare. Going from A to B meant a relaxation of the rules. We were not allowed any comics at home, ever - Look and Learn was the closest we came to them. So it was on train journeys or wet play times at school that this ‘trash’ was allowed into my life.
I have continued this tradition of allowing relaxed rules involving buying trash when travelling. When my son was small we made frequent visits to London from our home in Bristol and one of the treats to make the journey more fun was a McDonalds happy meal, something I would never, ever buy when stationary. We would also play ‘guess-what’s-in-that-lorry’ and spot the blue onion, but that’s another story.
Nowadays it involves buying things like sliced loaf and some fish fingers in a mini Waitrose on the motorway and using them, when home, to make a fish finger sandwich. Sorry not sorry.
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