That’s what Pakistan is dealing with, 1/5th of it, “ravaged by floods“

“The water was up to my neck, then my nose, I only survived because our men took me by the arm and lifted me up,” she told me. “We walked for two hours like this. Ever since the running away my belly has hurt all over. I don’t know if the baby inside me is alive or dead.” Saeed Bibi from the Punjab

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Meanwhile the hottest weather on record in Russia has wiped out ONE THIRD of their grain crops.

They’ve had to impose a ban on grain exports, which will raise prices across the world, hitting the poorest, hardest.

That previously linked article comes with a handy explanation on how both are caused by a shift in the jet stream, the instability of which has been linked to climate change:

“The World Meteorological Organization says this “unprecedented sequence of extreme weather events … matches IPCC projections of more frequent and more intense extreme weather events due to global warming.”  NASA says July 2010 is “What Global Warming Looks Like.” ” (source)

Even the DAILY FREAKING MAIL has changed it’s stance to ‘global warming is happening, and it is our fault‘

Donate to Pakistan relief efforts, because you should. Donate, because you can. Donate, because this will soon be us. Donate because Western lifestyles have contributed directly to this. For whatever reason, whatever you believe, please, reach out, £5, whatever you can. Donate.

And all this comes as the so-called ‘green’ Coalition government are side-stepping their promises on climate change action, including an incredibly damaging broken promise RE power provision, and the mooted selling off of our conservation land and country side. Not only will reneging on green policies like this mean being hit severely by EU penalties, if the coalition government carries on like this a greater cost will soon be at their feet. The sooner and better we act, the lower the human and monetary cost the world is hit with. The later and more half heartedly they act, the greater the risk that  it’s not long before we won’t have to do any imagining.

*that’s one fifth of England, mind, I don’t know how many counties there are in the UK. Also, it’s 1/5 of counties, not of land, I did try to pick coastal ones, as we’re more likely to be affected by storm surges and sea level rises. They’re also mostly low-lying. But I will freely admit this may not be exactly 1/5 of land or population. I hope you accept it as a quick way of making a point, if not, feel free to do the maths and I’ll happily amend it.

[images off the BBC, via the linked articles, I always try to use CC images, hopefully these will be seen as 'fair use' as quoting the referenced articles, however I will take them down if wished]

Is gravity responsible for falling in love?

The first time I realised I was in love I fainted.
I was up a ladder. In a warehouse I was working in at the time.
I’d like to hold the effects of gravity responsible for the concussion.

The second time I realised I was in love I wasn’t sure.
The falling was replaced by an easy, settling feeling.
And it fell apart in the same, slow way.
Though here, the word ‘fall’ is inaccurate.

The third time I began to be in love I resisted.
It made the descent even harder.
It dragged me down, out of myself into someone I didn’t recognise.
Well I still looked like me, but you get what I mean.

66% of my sample of love was like loss of control, or breath, or the feeling you get when a lift speeds upwards, and you feel like it forgot the bits of you that aren’t your body.

66% of my sample made my heart soar, my stomach drop, but really our internal organs don’t care what madnesses our hormones are inducing because they have a job to do, and in fact a ‘thank you’ wouldn’t go amiss for keeping you alive, you and your ungrateful endocrinal system.

Science explains the forces that act on us, and we heat it up and warp and twist it’s simple, meaningful language to mean the things we don’t understand, in the hope that by penning them in, we’ll be closer.

Is Gravity responsible for falling in love?
If it is I’d like it to be corporeal, I would bring it close, rest my hand gently on its bare upper arm, and whisper into its ear.
But I wouldn’t let you hear what I said, it would be like the end of Lost in Translation.

Which means if you have no romance in you, you could probably google for it.

This is a bit of creative writing I did in response to the question ‘Is Gravity Responsible for Falling in Love’ from here. I don’t really put creative stuff up on here anymore, mainly because the little pieces seem to suit Posterous more, but I think I’ll try and keep a bit more for the ‘proper’ blog. So here we are.

This evening I took part in a sound walk-come-performance called ‘As if it Were the Last Time’. It was devised by Duncan Speakman and was put on by subtlemob. It took place on a small number of streets near Covent Garden. It was a (performance? Experience? Neither of these words do -) for two people. We were provided with a map, an mp3, and told to set it going at 6pm on the dot. My critical vocabulary is already struggling with this piece, because it really was very individual. That was the point. For each and every person who took part, the performance (for want of a more accurate word) was theirs. Entirely. And not, in staged theatre, as each audience member receiving the piece from a different perspective. This was each participant doing. The movements, the characters the gestures, the reflection in the shop windows and puddles, and the touch of someone’s hand on a shoulder, were all completely yours. Of your making.

Conventional suspension of disbelief – the time and credence that you pay into conventional, staged performance, pales into comparison to the weight of belief that you pour into this kind of experience. I’m not going to argue that staged theatre is irrelevant, the video game didn’t kill the cinema, theatre is powerful but I do think that this is a form that is incredibly powerful in new ways. A piece of staged theatre is a rip in the space-time continuum, it is a hundred different hours, paid into one, it is a hundred held breaths, a hundred moments of people turning one seen thing, into another. ‘As if it Were the Last Time’ was one whole moment, it was the heat of one breath, it was noticing how the ripples of rain in a puddle shake the light of shop fronts in time to a piece of music. It was stories, yours, of others, and your reflection in the window. It was one voice, lost, and your own, quiet.

You were inhabiting a new world instead of conspiring with another.

The narrative was fractured, the one solid piece of information you were given at the beginning was that the piece was in memory of another, but instead of talking about the person lost, it asked you to find yourself there as if it were your last half hour. It was the story of a person seeing the world as they’d never see it again, you heard thoughts that occurred to them as they saw the same things you did, the memories prompted. The narrative built like a collage, like a barrage of images and sounds and ideas that didn’t fit, and then you realised they were building a whole person. It hurt. And it was wonderful. You felt like you were falling off a building. Or maybe ‘you’ didn’t, maybe only I did.

This was a piece truly (to borrow a phrase from the phenomenologists) about the thickness of experience. It went all the way around the back. It also talked about ‘drifting’ – asked you to find places that were safe, it led you away from your partner, and then back again – and was the closest to the dérive and détournement of the situationists out of anything I’ve taken part in so far (See The Cracks Between the Worlds for more)

There were moments when it faltered, when things weren’t fitting, they didn’t fall into place, but you were seeking, willing them to get back on track, because this was you – your belief at risk. This wasn’t and actor fluffing their lines, it was you, as an avatar of the narrative.

“[an avatar is] amachine that is attached to the psychology of its user. From within that machine the driver can peek out, squinting through alien eyes, and find a new world. And, oddly, the driver can also look into himself, as if gazing into his navel, and find a new landscape inside as well” p.8, I, Avatar

This was a very hard post to write. It might be because I’ve been travelling to and from London for two days. It might be because at the moment I’m horrendously busy and trying to engage my brain on a number of different levels, with a number of different things. Or it might just be that this piece of… experience, was more a part of me than my critical eye finds itself able to analyse.

Those thirty minutes were the most vivid, most high contrast of my week. It was true augmented reality, and I want to take my friends and loved ones back there with me. It hurts that I can’t. But that’s kind of what being is, isn’t it?

Here, where the land meets the sky, here. Where the landscape leans back and the world opens up, past where the cliff drops away. Stumbling and kicking stones away down the path that leads to the sea. The languid beauty of a still day, the water whispering what it sometimes roars. We came from there. Staggering, gasping, dying for air, thrust out of the warm, wet place where we were not one thing, or another, but everywhere.

I haven’t felt a loss like this before.

I realise I’ve stopped. That my pause has coincided with a lull in the air, his face swims in front of me, wrought out of the hot vapour that hangs in the air and the tears don’t want to let go of my cheek, they hang on for as long as they can until too heavy, dully they fall to the sand.

It doesn’t feel wrong – it feels like a sharp pain, like vinegar and lemon, like salt water, like a headache and like a memory I’d forgotten. But it doesn’t feel wrong, this loss. It feels like tears to the sea.

I stagger, though I don’t move. The wind stirs, and I walk on. It is all I can do. Move. Let the sea air wipe the salt water from my face, I breathe in.

It’s right that I feel this, and it will fade. But this is my offering to him – my tears – I’m returning like him, to the sea.

This is the memory I have. My daughter thinks it is because I have the picture. I always kept the picture. Took it with me always. I don’t remember much. They always tell me I don’t remember much, well they tell me they always tell me, and why would they lie? Anyway, it’s my daughter, I trust her. I remember my daughter. Her beautiful face. That’s not gone yet. She’s a woman. I don’t know what that makes me. Old, I suppose, finally. I don’t mind. I’m not sad. How do miss what you don’t remember you’ve had? It’s hazy, but I can still chatter away. I’m chattering away aren’t I? But I remember her. I remember that girl, who thought she was a grown up, 19 years old and standing on top of that hill. I have the photo he took. I don’t remember what happened to him. But I get the feeling, I get the feeling that’s one of the things I’m glad I forgot. My granddaughter wrote something down on this piece of paper, when her mother wasn’t looking. I have a granddaughter for goodness sake! ‘He broke your heart grandma’ it says. I must have told her the story. I think I am glad it’s gone, that bit, I’m glad he went. I think that would hurt. But the other memory – I’ve got the photo. I don’t want to give that up. I’m not going to give that up. I can still taste it.

I fall in love a lot. I travel by train every day. And I people watch. I don’t know whether or not everyone secretly looks at everyone else, or if it’s just me. But I like to look. I do like to watch people. And I don’t mean to, but I do, I do fall in love. It’s the way they close their eyes as the warmth of the sunlight filters through the carriage, or the battered, well loved book I see them secretly smell, or the fact that they keep their laptop in a battered old leather satchel. Last week I fell in love with someone because he had ridiculous shorts on. There was this guy, who did a silent punch in the air when he finished his Sudoku puzzle. And this other one, who just stared, stared into the dark, when all you could really see was the dirt on the dusty windows. I loved him because he didn’t need the time and place where we were to be clear for him to see what he was thinking. I don’t drive. I own a bicycle, but they’re not really up to the long distances are they? So I travel a lot by train. And fall in love daily. I imagine a hundred different futures. And hundred different whispered vows. I don’t think it’s weird. I can’t be the only one. I told a friend once. She laughed a bit but I think she thought I was weird. She asked me why I didn’t talk to any of them, and to be honest, I didn’t know what to say. “Well, I mean they never talk to me do they? And they’d probably think I was weird, wouldn’t they?” The truth was, it had never occurred to me.

I have a teddy bear. I know. I’m an adult, right? I have this bear. A ratty old thing. I think an aunty bought it for me at one point. Before I can remember. It’s knitted, made of wool, it’s got straggly arms, brown eyes and a little green knitted belt. I’ve had this bear for a very long time. Though don’t ask me how many times it’s been washed. When I was little my mum used to steal it off me, put it in the washer. Now I’m in charge it’s been a while since it’s been wet. It never used to smell right afterwards. Boyfriends came and boyfriends went, usually going a bit faster if they poked fun at the bear thing. I once dated a guy who had a security blanket. It smelt a bit weird. But the bear, yes. It has a name. It’s called ‘superted’. I’m not crazy, I don’t talk to it, that’s just it’s name. And it sits in the crook of my arm when I sleep, there’s a bit, just between my arm and my right breast. If it doesn’t sit there when I sleep it feels weird. Empty. My husband puts up with it. Sometimes I dream that I have two. Bears, not husbands. Those dreams are always distressing, because I don’t know which one is real, or how to divide my attention. You know, in that weird kind of dream logic. And then sometimes, I have these nightmares. Maybe my nightmares should be about losing my health, or the kids, or my husband cheating on me. But they’re not. They all revolve around this horrible moment when I find out my bear has been damaged or eaten or stolen or dissolved or torn beyond repair. And I feel everything fall away then. I have no anchor. And I wake up, and I can’t even find tears, it’s not like that. It’s like something from the very heart of me has gone, just for a moment. Like how my right arm feels when I have to sleep without it.

“Don’t go” she said

“I have to” He said

But he didn’t. She buried her face, her long silver hair splayed across the bed.

“Stay longer” she said”

“I can’t linger” he said “besides, how are we to make an omelette without eggs?”

He was being metaphorical of course, in that annoying way of his, really he was in love with her sister.