Category: climate

weeds

Posted on by empty williams

I’m tending my garden today, in more ways than one, using a polesaw.

It may not be fine work, but sometimes, some broad stroke destruction is needed, in order to create fertile ground for something new and better.

The trick is destroy, and then weed, and create an inhospitable environment for whatever it is you want to replace those weeds with. Otherwise, those sons of bitches will grow right back.

Are you hearing me, left and centre wings?

Target: 1500 words
Written: 1496 words, novel: Father Lightning

end of july

Posted on by empty williams

Summer’s leaving so fast. The heat, the wildfires, the desperate downward spiral.

It has been one to remember.

I see how the world goes and can’t help but wonder. Am I a twig in face of a tsunami?

Using kindness as a block, in a way that could never hold back the tide.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I have ideas on top of ideas.

I’m not sure the world will let us survive long enough to see them through.

I’m not sure I’ll make it.

None of us do, in the end. If we’re lucky, our works will outlast us. The question is, with climate change, the rise of right wing nuttery and increasing division and stupidity, will the world outlast any of us, let alone the things we create?

I’m building a world on kindness. Increasingly, I find the world wants nothing to do with it.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 2405 words, novel: Father Lightning

end of everything

Posted on by empty williams

I think, for the first time, watching the smoke roll in from forest fires thousands of miles away, listening to the news go on and on about this fascist nut or this racist piece of garbage, and none of it pushing back, not effectively anyway, and knowing that this authoritarian menace is not going away, not until the rest of us start imposing real, actual consequences, and climate change is just another buzzword when in reality, it’s killing us all, and all the dystopian stories of my youth are real, real goddamnit, and this is it, this is really it, I think, and for the first time, I truly, truly believe… this may be the end of the world.

The end of us all.

We are in fucking hell, and it’s our own making, as all good hells are.

It’s the end of the world and not just as we know it, because we know this world. Near-future sci-fi writers have been screaming at us about it for the better part of a century or longer.

William Gibson is a prophet; Blade Runner is fact, yet to happen.

These are the end times, as Jonathan Hickman would write. We would tell you to pray, but it wouldn’t do any good. You have earned what is coming to you.

So, I write, and maybe the survivors will one day read my stories, and know that they were written in the hope that one day, they might be read, and not destined to the ashes.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1211 words, novel: Father Lightning

air quality

Posted on by empty williams

We’re not getting it as bad as Ottawa, Toronto or New York, but even a twenty minute walk with Mazy-dog last night, you could feel it in your throats and lungs.

I can’t imagine how my granddaughter is. The neighbouring city to them recorded the worst air quality in the world yesterday. I’m glad they’re staying in, but still. No house is airtight.

Everything has cracks. Things seep through.

The world replenishes at its own expense.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1349 words, novel: Father Lightning