White Noise - Aug 9 2022

 

White Noise

Aug 9 2022

The fan

barely stirs the air

in this oppressive heat.

But the white noise is comforting,

and I can only hope for relief

if it cools over night.

The paradox

is that above body temperature

a fan makes you hotter.

So as the world swelters,

and even the fan struggles to move

against this soupy thickness,

there will soon be no way out.

So I sit,

motionless

conserving energy

generating as little heat as possible.

Wet cloths

and almost nothing on.

Even the birds are grounded,

with not enough purchase

for wings to grasp

this super-heated air.

Like sitting ducks;

except their predators, the clever foxes

are also inert,

lying on their sides

taking quick shallow breaths,

lolling tongues

suffused with blood,

saliva

rimming their mouths

with a thick white froth.

This is the world

as it now exists;

a still life,

that can't adapt fast enough.

All we can do is acclimate

until the heat becomes too much;

and then

just as the fan betrays us

there will be no escape

from our short-sighted foolishness.

There have been record-setting highs all over the world. For now, though, we seem to occupy some sort of climate refuge: here, it's been temperate days and cool nights, with a nice sprinkling of rain. Who knows how long such good fortune will last.

I'm sitting in my favourite chair in a pleasantly cool room, reading. There is a small fan beside me. It blows gently across my face, and the sound is soothing. So I decided to write about a fan's white noise. Given the state of the world and my own preoccupations and priorities, I guess it's no mystery why that innocuous premise soon (the 2nd line!) turned into another rant about climate change.