july 27: i took this photo the day i came back to markham from hamilton. the sky was super hazy because smoke from the fires in northern ontario was being blown south, and when the sun was setting the view outside the car window looked like something out of blade runner. it got me thinking about apocalypses again. the fish mass dying in bc oceans and natural disasters increasing exponentially worldwide probably means that the apocalypse is approaching, right? even though i’m lucky enough to say that for me the apocalypse will probably be one of the boring ones, there was something really melancholy about looking out the window and being able to see hard evidence that things were changing for the worse.
i saw this tweet back when heat records were being broken all over the pacific northwest that went something like “this is the hottest summer in the last hundred years, but also probably the coolest summer in the next hundred”. it’s a little (a lot) depressing how unstoppable climate change feels, this two-hundred-year-long collective action problem finally coming to a head. it really does feel like one of those things that’s near-impossible to feel optimistic about. john found solace in the beauty of sunsets, but what are we to do when the sunsets are clouded by smoke?
- j