In September, Stelliform will publish its first book, Depart, Depart! by Sim Kern, a cli-fi ghost story which considers Jewish and trans experiences intertwined with the changes wrought by climate destabilization. Climate change as a whole is slow, but some of its effects can change the world on a scale of minutes or hours. Not unlike the experience of a global pandemic.
In this post, Sim Kern writes about the links they see between experiences of climate change and experiences of the pandemic.
Every year, Earth Day affords an opportunity for us to collectively take stock of our relationship with the environment. The first Earth Day fifty years ago is the result of one such stock-taking. Environmentalists were inspired by the “Blue Marble” photo — an image which still reverberates through Western culture with nearly the same potency as when it was first viewed.
We are learning, if we did not know before, that there are different ways to be quiet: the quiet concentration of holding one’s breath; a silent prayer; deep breathing in the moments between acts of care-giving, or going through the now-displaced motions of our former lives. We’re not quite sure when this quiet will end.
I’ve been reading and listening to podcasts, but it’s difficult to think. Hard to reconcile big, transformative ideas into the strange quietness of this moment. But over the next few weeks, I will share some of the things I’m reading here, in case they are as helpful or inspiring or merely interesting to others as they have been to me.
While many of us are at home — with others or alone — the world outside is changing. Under the pressure of a global pandemic, many are seeing the possibility of further change — of the ways that it becomes more possible every day to resist falling back into “normal” once quarantines and self-isolation protocols are lifted.
