Mar 21, 2016 Climate Change is Real!, Daily Life
Climate Change is Real: Day 3 of my Lone Vigil
©March 21st, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
©March 21st, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
6:58 a.m.: I awoke BEFORE the alarm on my i-Phone went off (yes, yes, I’ve succumbed completely to the many enticing temptations of this instrument from Hell, including using the Record function, checking the weather, checking how many miles I’ve walked, looking up abstruse things on the Internet, and so on, but I AM a responsible driver, please note).
I did not groan or moan. No, sir! I was wide awake, and ready to face the elements. I WAS going to be on time, dammit! I was!
Heated up yesterday’s coffee (I know, apostasy for a true connoisseur of coffee), poured it into one of the three trusty travel mugs which I’d bought from that Satan company, Starbucks, three or four years ago, and which has stood me (and us) in good stead over that period, let the dog out, wiped her snow-clogged paws when she returned, got abluted, got dressed, and ready to go out at 7:30 a.m..
Then, I realized that I needed this and that and the other, and when I had found the gloves, put on extra socks, taken out the unused ear-buds for my i-Phone, and headed out, it was 7:47. (Warren, I need more practice being there on time at 7:30. What did your devotees on the road think when they saw that there was no one there for the last two days of last week, and the first day of this week at 7:30 a.m.? They’ll think you’ve abandoned the cause. So sorry! I shall do better tomorrow!)
It was 28 degrees, and the snow blanketed everything. The sky was white, and the ground was white, and my coat was a chillingly pale ice-blue, my scarf a beautiful indigo ikat one, just for contrast, and my cloche hat was a dark forest green (this is for those who care about fashion and such things, you understand). Thus attired, your fashion icon (NOT) stood at Warren’s intersection, and, checking her time, noted that it was 7:53 a.m. Pah!
As soon as I got there, the first car that went by gave me the universal sign of approbation (or, rather, the passenger did): The thumbs-up. Yay!
I began to sing, first in Bhairav thaat Vibhas, one of my absolute favorites, and meandered up and down the aroha and avaroha, then doing several slow gamak taans, and then some paltas. The tamboura drone mysteriously switched from E to F drone. I think it must have been on shuffle. Not to be deterred, I went along with the shift. I sang Miyan ki Todi. Todi is a late morning raga and its mournful tones suited the mood of the snow drifting down steadily, increasing in speed as time went on …
… as did the cars, although they were somewhat slower than usual. I got nothing but smiles, waves and thumbs-up signs for the first fifteen minutes from several people. After that, it was just grim-faced commuters too focused on the weather to think about the Climate, or my husband’s “Climate Change is Real” sign. Draw your conclusions, folks!
I drifted into thinking about the Fibonacci series, for no particular reason, except that I got tired of singing aimless paltas in Todi (this vigil is certainly causing me to discipline my singing) – so, I tried singing sargams going up and down the scale, using 1, 12, 123, 12345, 12345678, 12345678910-11-12-13, and back again, up and down the scale. The nice thing, of course, it that it comes to 32, so it fits neatly into two cycles of teental (a 16-beat rhythmic cycle in Hindustani classical music). I could develop this as an improvisational diving board, I suppose. I communed with this for a while, and enjoyed myself. (And no, I am not some mathematical whiz, far from it, actually!)
The snow drifted steadily down, and the landscape was beautiful around me. I wondered about the two geese I’d seen taking off from the Fells from right behind me on Friday. I wondered if they’d made it. I’m sad about the birds, very, very sad. Just read about Adélie Penguins at a colony in Cape Denison being decimated. I also read a more optimistic report that they might have just picked up and moved one. Whatever the case might be, I fear for all animals, and for people everywhere. I also feared for the beautiful bulbs I’d planted in the fall, and which had just begun to come up. I was sad.
Sadness did not possess me, however. There’s something lovely about standing there, defying the elements, or celebrating them, rather, and singing in the snow. I recommend it, especially the getting up early part (no, seriously! I might be turning into a morning person, heavens forfend)!
A Confession: I must admit that I haven’t been as good as my husband is about using resources. I found I was more wasteful with water than I liked It’s only more recently that I’ve become less so. I used to be impatient about composting (although I WANTED to compost), so I let him take care of it. Now, I do the composting. It took me a few years (about eight years ago) to stop buying bottled water, and remember to take my own to work. Now, we never go anywhere without carrying our own water. I recycle that which needs to be recycled, but I need to stop buying things in packaging, period! So, I’m going to sew little cloth bags in which to put perishable vegetables, and take those to the market when I shop, instead of using the “recyclable” plastic bags they provide.
And I think: If it takes me, an informed person, SO LONG to get going on doing the right thing, how can I judge those who don’t even try? Those who live in glass houses, and so on.
And YET, try we must.
That is why Warren’s vigil matters. That is why we must keep on repeating its message. If the GOP likes to invent facts and hammer away at them so much that people believe them to be true, why should it be harder for us to speak the TRUTH? All we have to do is repeat true facts, and THIS mantra over and over and over:
Climate Change IS real!
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Tags: #ClimateChangeisReal, #ClimateVigil, #Recycling, #Saving the Planet, #using the Fibonacci series to create patterns Hindustani vocal music