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How sterile it is to write about the climate emergency when the air no longer flows because the heat is so sluggish that it no longer transmits the sound of words or our thoughts. We look across the morgana gap of the horizon as if we were the ones left on the platform, watching our beloved travel at the speed of light, thin as a shiny noodle the moment we last saw each other. for the eyes. I wish we could rest our foreheads on that person’s back again, close our eyes and imagine being somewhere else, escaping through the fresh humidity and letting our breath take us to beautiful dreams, because it’s been a long time that we have found peace.
I would like to say the opposite: the heat once again made me stand up and imagine how to build a forest. I walked past one side of the Jagüey while the frogs hid and sensed my presence. What were you looking for? The barren soils to think about: Here you have to plant oats and look out for geese that can roam in these areas. The compost I made is far away, but I will gradually bring it with me to feed this newly planted clover space. The ferns that were there before our house was built are no longer growing. But they will return, there are the bulbs and the roots that reconnect through the mycelium. You have to create mountains, forests and jungles, a place where you can get lost and hide. A place where it’s not hot.
Over the past hundred years, the planet’s average temperature has increased in unusual ways. I think whoever is reading this already knows this. But if you don’t know, you should know that there are those who believe – since it is only a belief resulting from ignorance – that this does not happen. And when they accept that it happens, they immediately say that it is a natural phenomenon, part of a constant cycle of the earth. (It is very difficult and painful to write about the fruits of ignorance). Apparently, the scientific method has searched for the reasons for this anomaly of rapid temperature rise and has come to the massive and overwhelming consensus that it is due to human activity since the beginning of the industrial age and has worsened dramatically over the last fifty years. Almost my age, damn it. It hurts to say that this tragedy endangers the existence of all living things on our planet and that it was caused by humans. It must be clarified: “through the industrial and economic system of man.”
But it hurts much more to use words to describe the idiocy of climate change deniers. Be careful, perhaps here is a key that illustrates the contradiction I presented at the beginning: the defeat of our species weighs on me and puts pressure on me; It depresses me and I sink into the sea of heat. But the ignorance of some members of our species – they are generally men – makes me stand up and feel that the struggles we undertake alone, but especially in community, to find a way to slow down and reduce pollution to stop, are not so sluggish, combined with expansion of the absorption capacity of all gases that cause the temperature rise. And we return to the forest, to the sea, to the wetlands, to the songs we can sing as we play in the waves on the beach all day into the night. Authentic joy and prosperity lie in the splendor of the songs in which we celebrate together that there is a future. The authentic desolation and ignorance lies in the photo on the social network in which the “content creator” announces his journey on a private plane towards “the well-being of living in the moment”. (Sorry for writing this miasma concept).
From immobility to revelation. Perhaps theoretical physicists have experienced the same journey, resisting the defeat of the meaningless to enter into the painful realization of the collapse of a star whose density is so extreme that the future and the past are one and the same place. It makes no sense for this to exist, but it does.
At an even more inhospitable extreme, evil exists. It is difficult to decipher or debunk because it takes refuge in concepts and words inherited from economic growth: “prosperity, progress, wealth.” And these words are used again and again until they become the key to a political campaign or become an ideological positioning. “I promise development, well-being and progress. As? Follow me and together we can do it! The semantic battle is another battle that needs to be fought. We must restore the meaning of words to undermine the economic synonyms of prosperity. But above all, we must reclaim it so that meaning – the legacy of truth/life that unites us as a species – is no longer exploited by men (once again, we tend to be the vast majority) who seek a political madness that to leadership leads to bringing them to power and thus being able to satisfy the unbridled pathology that arises from the lack of affection and joy.
A few days ago I had a public conversation at the Hay Festival in Querétaro. The actors’ strike by one of the unions of which I am a member prevents me from participating in the promotion of the films in which I participate and which are currently being released in cinemas. This will remain very anecdotal for posterity compared to the agreement to regulate and improve the conditions of the audiovisual industry. As soon as a fair and necessary agreement is reached between the parties, I will be able to do so. In the meantime, I talked about the issue that concerns us and inexorably challenges us: the climate emergency. If you look at it from a real perspective, anything to do with the struggles within the audiovisual industry is infinitely irrelevant compared to the environmental crisis we are experiencing. I am even more grateful that you gave me the space to share and promote this conversation around the climate emergency. The most important and transversal, and that restores the meaning of the words: justice, dignity, joy, prosperity, equality. At this moment I am looking for poets who can nuance my optimism and kitsch to transform them into abstract forms, giving life to a different reality of understanding.
Fragments of Ode to the air, by Pablo Neruda:
As I was walking down a street, I met the air, greeted him and said respectfully: “I’m glad you’re leaving your transparency for once, that’s how we’ll talk”…
No, air, don’t sell yourself, don’t let yourself be channeled, don’t let yourself be channeled, don’t let yourself be adjusted or compressed,
Don’t let them make you pills, don’t let them put you in a bottle, be careful!
Cautious! and come with me, we still have a lot to dance and sing. We walk along the sea. We go to the top of the mountains where the new spring blooms and with a gust of wind and song we spread the flowers, the scent, the fruits, the morning air.