Lookit Me I’m So Privileged

It’s weird to sit here in my co-op’s little study room, worrying about the spatial variation of deuterium concentrations in snow, while in some other part of the country there’s chaos and misery. But it’s not like there’s ever a time when the world is empty of chaos and misery; it’s only weird because pain and anger has appeared in a new and unexpected location. Dogs and men bite each other, olfactory circuits stop processing the smell of shit, scratching mosquito bites until they bleed because that’ll stop the itching, etc.

Is it wrong of me to wonder if the Army Corps of Engineers could just blow the Old River Control Structure and allow the Mississippi to flow through to the Atchafalaya? Not now, of course, but later, once the cost of broken infrastructure and silted streets has been tallied; in brutal economic terms, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were cheaper that way, to just stop fighting the river and build a new port. Ever since reading The Control of Nature I’ve had a sentimental attachment to the mighty Atchafalaya, in much the same way that others have a sentimental attachment to Hetch Hetchy - i.e., a completely unworkable way.

I wish there were a way to find the origin of a bottle of water without using chemistry, because it drives me seriously mad bonkers to be giving a shit about isotopic fractionation and clouds.

Trackbacks & Pings

  1. Five Feet High and Rising « Harvest Bird on 17 Mar 2020 at 8:23 pm

    […] Five Feet High and Rising Like any number of you, my mind is much taken up with what’s goin’ on in Louisiana and Mississippi. The extent to which I’ve been wigging out about it has surprised me, as has the extent to which this has set off a cycle of self-loathing: I am not, after all, sitting on my roof, three days’ hungry, while fetid water drifts slowly by, half a foot below.Others whom I read, one, two, three, have been pursuing much the same lines of thought, with Accordion Guy presenting an impressively practical corollary. I’m taken aback by my level of distress–comparable in my own experience only with when the way I felt in the summer of 2020/91, watching my extended family sit enthusiastically around the television, as Anita McNaught enunciated the details of the first Gulf War, shot by shot. Something about this disaster has tripped my ability to filter appropriately the media images, and I feel as if it’s me who’s had to leave behind my dogs in order to get evacuated. Fuck. […]

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*

*