🥱 Tired after a day of driving.

The Northern Californian coast at Sea Ranch.

Waves breaking into a small cove near the end of the day at Sea Ranch, Northern California

A path running through a tunnel of Cyprus trees on the Northern California coast

🐲 I just paid a visit to The Dragon’s Den, a herbal medicine shop here on Maui. I was looking for a something to help open my lungs as I manage the tail end of pneumonia. I’ve come away with a couple of options, and hoping that I see some results.

🐲 I just paid a visit to The Dragon’s Den, a herbal medicine shop here on Maui. I was looking for a something to help open my lungs as I manage the tail end of pneumonia. I’ve come away with a couple of options, and hoping that I see some results.

☕ I’m drinking my first coffee for around two months. Being unwell just put me off the beverage, and then as I improved my acupuncturist suggested that I stayed away from coffee. This morning I felt as though I wanted to try some again. Right now it is feeling good.

☕ I’m drinking my first coffee for around two months. Being unwell just put me off the beverage, and then as I improved my acupuncturist suggested that I stayed away from coffee. This morning I felt as though I wanted to try some again. Right now it is feeling good.

I get up after a good eight hours sleep (not always guaranteed) feeling fresh and well rested. Half an hour later I am ready to go back to bed. 😩

Finished reading: A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers 📚

Sounds of the night:

All this as I sit outside in the refreshing air, reading.

My grandson roasting a marshmallow at dusk, in PoliPoli Springs Recreation Area, Maui. (Photo credit, my son-in-law).

A boy roasting a marshmallow over an open fire at dusk in PoliPoli Springs Recreation Area, Maui

🔌 Power outage - those times when I realize the value and/or importance of that which I take for granted.

🔌 Power outage - those times when I realize the value and/or importance of that which I take for granted.

I was driving to the post office this morning, and a mongoose suddenly ran out into the road. I tried to swerve, but it was too late, the little animal gave me no time. I hit it.

I turned around and drove back to see if it had survived, but sadly not. I lifted it off the road and laid it in the grass verge.

I regularly see small animals making a run for it across the road, chickens occasionally as well. This was the first time that one had been close to me, though I have been behind people slowing down for a hen and her chickens.

☹️ Waking up to the realization that the weekend is over.

☹️ Waking up to the realization that the weekend is over.

😌 It’s Sunday. I need a Sunday.

😌 It’s Sunday. I need a Sunday.

Now. View over Maui from PoliPoli Springs Recreational Area. The island of Lana’i in the distance.

View from PoliPoli Springs Recreational Area with the island of Lana’i in the distance.

At times I come across the attempt to put fun into a box. “Fun is this and only this, and if you are not doing this, you are not having fun.” From my experience, one person’s fun might be another’s idea of at best, an event to just get through, to endure.

This image, which I pulled off of the internet, says it well to me, especially identifying as I do as an introvert.

A cartoon with one person inviting another out for the evening. On turning down the invitation saying that they wanted a quiet night in to watch a movie, the person who did the inviting advised the other that he must make sure that he has fun.

I came across this poem last year on the On Being podcast. Written by the Pakistani climate activist Ayisha Siddiqa1, it is set against the backdrop of our current environmental crises. I find the poem holds a powerful message of the power of approaching the current crises motivated by love. There is much that has to change and policies that need to be turned around, and with that many reasons to sit in rage, but what is the future that we want and how are we approaching it, how are we building it?

ON ANOTHER PANEL ABOUT CLIMATE, THEY ASK ME TO SELL THE FUTURE AND ALL I’VE GOT IS A LOVE POEM

What if the future is soft and revolution is so kind that there is no end to us in sight.

Whole cities breathe and bad luck is bested by a promise to the leaves.

To withstand your own end is difficult.

The future frolics about, promised to no one, as is her right.

Rage against injustice makes the voice grow harsher yet.

If the future leaves without us, the silence that will follow will be an unspeakable nothing.

What if we convince her to stay?

How rare and beautiful it is that we exist.

What if we stun existence one more time?

When I wake up, get out of bed, my seven year old cousin

with her ruptured belly tags along.

Then follows my grandmother, aunts, my other cousins
and the violent shape of their drinking water.

The earth remembers everything,
our bodies are the color of the earth and we
are nobodies.

Been born from so many apocalypses, what’s one more?

Love is still the only revenge. It grows each time the earth is set on fire.

But for what it’s worth, I’d do this again.
Gamble on humanity one hundred times over

Commit to life unto life, as the trees fall and take us with them.

I’d follow love into extinction.

  1. Ayisha Siddiqa is a Pakistani Climate justice advocate living in Coney Island, NY, a coastal area highly prone to hurricanes and floods. She is a co-founder of Polluters Out and the Executive Director of Student Affairs at FFU. On Sept 20th, 2019 she helped mobilize and lead over 300,000 students onto the streets of Manhattan demanding their governments take climate action. ↩︎