Climate Change is Real: Day 8 of my Lone Vigil
© March 28th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
This morning, I actually had some dreams (which means I had about five hours of sleep, instead of four) from which I arose, like a fish jumping out of the sea, water streaming off its fins, before plopping onto an unforgiving shore. Fortunately, that’s where the fish analogy ends, because I evolved quite rapidly, grew legs, and trooped downstairs with dog, to start my coffee.
Dog went out, came back in, settled down, and I left.
I dragged myself to Warren’s Intersection (as I have dubbed it), travel mug in hand, and the “Climate Change is Real” sign on my shoulder. This was a most unusually flavored coffee, for it tasted like French Roast and Ginkgo Clarity tea (because I had accidentally forgotten I was pouring coffee into the travel mug, and had tossed in the ginkgo tea prior to that. Fortunately, I detected it before I left, and fished out the offender). Ever tasted coffee that tastes like ginkgo and other herbal ingredients? I don’t really recommend it, though it wasn’t completely awful.
It was a cloudy, gray morning, with no sign of sun. There was no sign of anything that denoted life, except an endless stream of cars, which, having awakened from their Sunday torpor, sullenly headed towards Boston.
I should have checked the weather (duh, here I am holding a Climate Change sign, and I don’t even remember to check the weather?! Tsk, tsk!). Why? Well, it started to rain, and increased in volume as the hour unrolled – and I’d forgotten to wear rain-proof gear. I mean, my wool-influenced winter coat held off the worst of it, and so did my wool felt hat, but my shoes were getting more wet than I would have liked. So irate and discombobulated was I that I didn’t notice anything much that would have piqued my interest.
So, I drank my coffee grimly, and started up the music, my ear-buds in place, hoping that would dispel my gathering gloom, and it did. More songs in Raga Bhatiyar, a nice tarana (the Indian Classical Music equivalent of scat-singing) that our Guruji had composed that was massively fun and rhythmically thrilling to sing, so much so that I had laughed out loud in delight in our 1994 recording, and laughed out loud today. That cheered me up a little, and took my mind off the weather. I confess I forgot about Climate Change, as well, for a little bit.
So, the cars went by, and there were even a few waves, smiles, thumbs-ups, despite the dreariness of the morning. At one point, someone honked, and I looked up from fiddling with the i-Pod, and a young man waved, held his phone out the car, and took a picture. Hm. (I’m going to be world-famous, folks! Hah!)
The usual vans and trucks advertising various services drove by – plumbing, masonry, water conservation, air purification systems and other environmental services, security systems, communication systems and construction services – the providers of the infrastructure of our modern modes of living. (Sometimes, I wish that Atlas could shrug. That would show us the way to a different world). Apart from that, the usual cars drove by with preoccupied people and their Dunkin Donuts coffee, their i-Phones, their children, their spouses.
When I see all these cars, I make up stories about the people in them, just to pass the time. I have always, always, been curious about every single individual I see, because each person is such a magical mystery tour of sorts, each person’s trajectory is unique, each person’s life is being lived parallel to mine, and I know ONLY mine. And yet, great things happen simultaneously with terrible events, tragedies occur, people are born, people learn, people play, fall in love, get married, get separated, or stay together, and people die. People love and hate, live and give, and take and make, and everyone is moving blindly, or consciously, along the path or her or his life, like a bead on a wire. And we learn from all these experiences, and from our reactions to our setbacks. It’s all we can ever hope to do. And music can steady us as we learn.
Music has been in my blood and bones, in my voice and in my fingers, and it has helped me always – that is why when Warren speaks about saving music, the traditional music that bridges the past and the future, it resonates deeply with me. Music is the best of who we are. (I wrote a semi-sci-fi story about it three years ago, which I transferred from an old blog of mine to my current one. See: Polaris-Bound – A Short Story.)
We have to preserve our best selves. We have to preserve the planet and its music. Climate Change is Real, true, but music is Real-er (sorry about the grammar, but as a former English teacher, I grant myself a pardon on this one!) – so, sing, and learn the music that sustained you as you grew up. And if it didn’t, find the music that does sustain you. When there’s more beauty, there’s more peace, and more concerted effort to unite. And we can unite on this issue.
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P.S. A nice encounter this afternoon. I was walking Holly in the misty afternoon rain, when a young man came towards me from the opposite direction, and said, “Excuse me, but are you the one who stands with the sign every morning?” When I said I was, he said, “I have to tell you I appreciate what you’re doing, and think that it’s right and true.” Then, he said, “And what happened to that gentleman who held the sign earlier?”
I informed him that “that gentleman” was my husband, and that he was returning on Tuesday, and would be back at the circle. We exchanged names. He had nice words for Holly, and we parted. Gives one hope, doesn’t it?