by Nathan Kroms Davis & Becca Shaw Glaser December 28, 2021, The Free Press

O you snow, O you ice, O you winds that freeze skin and snap branches, O you vast cold Darkness, child of Darkness vaster still, we welcome you! A bone-snapping tiredness under the snow and full moon. I heard her say yesterday in Belfast, “I want to schedule my booster but my schedule is already more than I can chew off, just trying to keep it together. It’s just hard to stay afloat.” The metaphor of floatation implies a hostile universe — or at least one indifferent to human suffering or flourishing. Over what do those of us lucky enough to stay afloat float? An unfathomable void that the living may not penetrate but that embraces the dead? If you’re reading this, you have survived so far, and to what — glistening pomegranate seeds, pear sauce made from pears growing on a midcoast street, politicians who try to please everyone but instead melt down to a mush of gum tacked under shoes and the meanness that happens behind closed doors and things called the department of environmental protection who claim they work for the public good but hide behind bureaucracy and let corporations of greed and lies take over public waters.

Maybe it’s just the misty mood I’m in, but “public waters” reminds me of the Simon and Garfunkel song Bridge over Troubled Water, which in turn reminds me of Audrey Hepburn singing Moon River in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which I’ve always found enchanting. I guess sad, beautiful yearning is a terrible cliché, but it’s also
how I feel much of the time. More anger than usual, sorrow, the way our winter now vacillates between soggy and crisp, way too warm, melting and dark. I feel betrayed by government, as if it’s a surprise that it serves corporate interests over everyone else most of the time. Have never not exercised this much, never watched so much TV (Squid Game, Harlem, Reservation Dogs, Gentefied, Road to Avonlea), pure endurance, survival mode, a flutter of polka dot lace, the taste and feel of fir and fresh snow.

But the world is changing. The world has always changed, of course, and I wonder how we’d feel facing down an impending ice age. This time is different because it’s our fault, and I think that most climate grief and rage is not specifically because the climate is changing, but because we collectively don’t care enough to change our behaviour. We look around at the world burning and drowning and mostly just shrug and keep on driving. I suppose that’s an obvious point, though.
There’s a wonderful line from an old Jethro Tull song that I always think about at this time of year: “And the thin wind crawls along your neck — it’s just the old gods getting older.” An October thought while in line for hot dogs at Wasses with ketchup, onions, relish: “Move your white hipster asses to Rockland immediately!” as I watched a youngish touristy couple walking tall past the old lime kiln, looking quite pleased. December 2021: Teslas are the new status symbol in Rockport. I have a belly now but who cares. What music are you loving?

Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, especially his classic album 80/81, and klezmer clarinetist Andy Statman. What art or music or food or anything else are you loving, Becca? Sona Jobarteh, Janelle Monae: “Turntables,” Hurray for the Riff Raf: “Pa’lante,” early live Sinéad O’Connor. The afternoon sun piercing the sky and bare black trees, and the news of course is always fun. Tired of being practical. What is childhood to us? Nothing lately is fully comforting. We resist the discomfort of knowing that millions — millions! — of people are starving in Afghanistan, but that we are doing so little to help them. I know I’ve said this before, probably at length, but I think that people here really underestimate the scale of suffering elsewhere in the world.

O bare trees, O ice-bearded cliffs, O sea mist rising into diamond sky, will you avail us in our time of despair? Could you be more tender; we are all struggling, or at times, could you be more fierce in the places and times it is needed? Will you be grateful, thank the ways we are woven together, the cheese that came from Australia, the heat from the tree or the evil energy company, I can’t even reach my anti-vax friends but can I at least say, please please please wear a powerful mask, and please take some time for pleasure and relief. One out of every 100 people in the U.S. over age 65 has been killed by COVID in less than two years, yet someone at the Belfast Goodwill, an unmasked man in his 60s, on the eve of the winter solstice, was exclaiming, “It’s just like the common flu.” Also, “Everyone’s gonna get it eventually.”

I wish we had other things to discuss, I wish we had better things to report, I wish we knew for sure that Omicron wasn’t going to be as deadly, I wish we knew that the winter holidays weren’t going to spread the virus to those we love, I wish hope felt more vivacious and unexpected, phosphorescence in the harbor. Think of oranges, of grace, of love, of cakes. Of asking for help and getting exactly what you need.

Nate is an erratically charming Rockland city councilor.
Becca moved to Urbana, Illinois, in the late ’90s to take part in The School for Designing a Society. They wrote this with a wandering “I,” employing a variation of the Surrealists’ le cadavre exquis.