call the people you’ve been thinking about calling. / do the things your pummeling heart says do.
Texting friends in different states about various permanant climate emergencies and whether they're prepared for them, or how I spent my weekend.
(please consider a portable power station and at the very least keep your backup chargers charged and some reliable flashlights in spots you can navigate to even in the dark.)
two full months in new york, the first weekend in which I didn't feel utterly overwhelmed by the weight of the logistics of moving or recovering from covid or figuring out the new job. Still navigating all of those things (the movers lost all our rugs, still tired all the time, still trying to hire a team), but the horizon seems ever so slightly clearer.
This week there's a flash flood warning in new york.
Have you heard the one about the bomb cyclone and the atmospheric river?
The coast is never really clear so you always need to be refining your instruments.
Attribution
take your hand off your forehead and remember you can already filter sunlight. take consistent deep breaths and surrender for you are moon. let the rage held in any of the muscles in your shoulders, re- lease. give love room.
drink enough water to remember how long water’s been waiting. eat enough plants to remember what water can do. let the fear in your hands go back where it came from. clean the room.call the people you’ve been thinking about calling. do the things your pummeling heart says do. let the lessons forming lesions be less real to you than children. make room.
—from another set of instructions by Alexis Pauline Gumbs