This is part of an ongoing correspondence between Titus (AKA Samuél Lopez-Barrantes), an imaginary character living in a self-sustaining community somewhere off the grid, and Jo, as a fictional version of myself.
While readers may prefer to think of this as a work of fiction, the intention is to bridge the gap between fiction & reality when it comes to understanding climate change.
Part I (watch / read / listen), Part II (Jo’s response).
Dear Jo,
A few days ago, an elder went to try and reason with the neighboring community. They weren’t successful, but they did return with news from The Beyond. They spoke of a quiet field covered in hi-tech debris. It shimmers in the sunlight and rings metallic on the breeze. According to some, the charred metal parts must have fallen from the sky. Whatever the case, everyone agrees the wreckage is not of this world.
Sometimes, Jo, I cannot help but wonder if all of our efforts to save this place are in vain. Last night, an elder sat us by the communal fire and told us the story of a scientist named Kessler, a man who once worked with the stars.
Many moons ago—the year was 1978—Kessler predicted that Gaia’s very own lower atmosphere would one day be littered with space debris. What chance do we have, I wonder, if generations before us were already polluting the sky?
Maybe the sky is falling. The past is colliding with the present. Satellites and rockets and extraterrestrial scraps litter the world above. And still, we wake up in the morning and look towards the heavens and imagine a different reality, one wherein we can still get things right.
But then I think of down here, and the boars in the forests. And how they feed on our crops to survive. And how we, too, feed on them. Sometimes I wonder, Jo: what is feeding on us? Is it possible that we are not as powerful as we thought? That these unnatural worlds we burrowed ourselves into are finally being returned to us like some mythological fall from grace.
The community beyond the hill believes the space scraps signal the end of this earth. They call it salvation, but I don’t believe it Jo. Or maybe to be more honest: I don’t want to believe it. But maybe that’s why our people left and yours stayed behind...
Ever since the Great Separation, the elders have been insisting that we’re doing the right thing out here in The Kingdom. We tread lightly in the forests and we only take what we need from the land. Wanting, the neighboring community insists, is a disease, an attempt to try and fill a void the act of wanting creates.
I don’t know what to believe anymore. There’s too much work to be done. Out here, we’re also playing God in our own way. We rejected the Old World by coming out to the Kingdom, after all. Still. Don’t you want to see it, Jo? Just once? We didn’t come here to convince anyone, let alone ourselves. The elders tell us the whole point was to prove that there is always an option, a different way.
Oh, Jo, the rain is here, and I’m tired and I’m cold. Are we really so different than that community beyond the hill? Just this morning, a few members returned from the fields of heaps of glistening debris. They’re trying to recycle what the elders’ books say is titanium and aluminium, to build rudimentary shelters and plumbing. There’s talk of strange technologies that might be salvaged for even more wonderful things. But still: just a few hours ago, two of the elders came to blows over what looks like a machine.
I’ve grown weary of being surprised by such behavior. Why does so much fighting start with self-hatred? I don’t know if I have the energy to care. Apathy infects us all like a disease out here, but it’s hard to feel hopeful when our own community members beat each other up for metal scraps. And for what? No wonder the community beyond the hills doesn’t want to trade with us. Maybe the sky really is falling. We have to find a better way. We have to believe in the possibility, at least, don’t we? Of being better, of connecting? Perhaps we have to be kinder to ourselves, too. Do unto ourselves as we wish others to do ...
All we can do is continue onwards and find some kind of peace. For just as sure as we’ll come to blows with those beyond the hills, so too will the boar ravage our crops, and so too will we kill him, and so too will the Great Mother flood the farms in the wet season and freeze them in the winter and bring landslides in the spring.
If this is the era of heat and floods and fire and metallic debris, so be it. I just hope we’ll be ready. Next week, I’m venturing out into the wilderness to forage. It might be a long time before we speak again, Jo. And so tonight when I look at the stars, I’ll think of you, and imagine a new life on the moon, perhaps, my feet covered in space dust, with one eye towards the future, another forever wary of our ever-present past.
In grateful contemplation,
Titus