A swift westerly jet stream meanders unevenly across the Earth’s atmosphere. It encircles the globe and, for a portion of its path, tracks a topsy-turvy shape over North America.
The jet stream provides an indifferent late-summer carriage for the charred ruins of California’s great redwood empire. It carries the ashes of Oregon’s forests of Douglas Fir and mixes them with the remains of suburban Santa Rosa and Thousand Oaks; it carries too the smoky chards of Washington’s Pinchot National Forest, as all of this far-flung western debris takes flight together through the atmosphere, high over the Rockies, across the great prairies, traversing the North American continent to settle as a rose-colored haze over the skyline of New York City.
Manifest Destiny coursing in reverse, the Great Western fantasy, in the rearview mirror, its providential mandate, ash.
Hurricanes named like children. A blizzard of tweets. A socialist tsunami, now forecast. Hashtag: the storm is coming. Hashtag: the storm has arrived. A waterspout on the horizon swerves toward the boat made of cardboard letters that fell from their place above the blackboard. The cloud of word weather, over our heads, changes again. Has this “inflection point” become “weaponized”? What are the “optics” of my “bingo card?” When did that initial impulse become the permanent result? What made this time different? The crabs in the pot wonder if it has always been this hot, take each others’ temperatures, and remind themselves that only Hitler was Hitler. I didn’t think there would be any little green men running around without identification, but there one just went. I didn’t think mailboxes had legs, but there one just went. I didn’t think the levee would break or that the water would get quite so high. Something happened between the time I stepped outside and it was sunny and when I stepped back in and it was raining. And then it rained and rained and rained. The rain it raineth every day. We can use the door as a raft. We spin on the strong current. I’m going to try to capture all of this. For now, for starters, I’ll just try to explain to myself, and then maybe to the kids, what’s really going on. And then, if I find the words, I’ll get back to you. I’ll get back to you. I’ll get back to you on that.