Ocean Fondue and Existential Balance

An in-between blog post from the middle of the night while I can’t sleep.

I’m launching my sailboat during the same month the seas started burning.

I don’t know which half of that sentence is more unbelievable.

I’ve dreamed of the first half all my life. I’ve dreaded the second just as long.

My serendipity is simultaneous with seafires. My burning desire is balanced by what I care about burning.

Water doesn’t burn. Except now it does. We made it volatile and flammable. We drilled holes where they don’t belong, to pipe toxins we don’t need, using methods and justifications that don’t make sense.

We made the Gulf of Mexico look like a scene from a cheap sci-fi flick. An oil rig — an explosion. The boiling fire looks so unrealistic it’s hard to incorporate into reality.

I don’t know what happened in the Caspian Sea. Some sort of burning mud volcano… another thing that doesn’t happen.

What happens to the sea creatures? The marine life? The fish and seaweed and whales and jellies and octopii and things in shells? What happens to the water?

Fondue.

We had seas teeming with life. Now we have this. We’re starting to understand, but it’s so deep we’re drowning in the realizations.

It’s real, though.

But this is the same month I launch a sailboat I always dreamed about. How can such utterly opposite things occur in the same small window of time? It’s surreal to me.

A piece of me asks… why? It’s too late.

But that’s why. Because too many of us think it really is too late, and that’s as damaging to any possible future as believing there’s no crisis.

It’s never too late. That’s not just words, it’s truth. The only time it’s too late for anything is after you don’t try.

The only time there’s no more possibilities is when we give up.

I can’t give up — I’ve seen too much for that. My Walk convinced me even more. That’s the value of stories, of collecting and spreading experiences and feelings. It’s connections, not just for comfort, but like the synapses in the brain, connecting to create an idea and make it a tangible action or expression… make it real.

What we’re seeing iscall too real. We need to make our response even more real.

Somehow, this sailboat I always imagined is now real. Just ask my wrecked shoulders, the ones now barely functional enough to type because of sanding all day despite previously wrecked ligaments and whatnot. There is most definitely a boat here. It’s quite real.

So — now — are burning oceans.

I don’t know if I’ve been clear about just how ludicrously unlikely this boat is. I’ve spent my life falling between the cracks. I have a boatload of disabilities. This wasn’t possible. Nobody ever believed.

Just like so many didn’t believe global systems collapse was possible, or that we’d witness it.

Just like so many don’t believe it’s possible to do anything about that.

I sanded a sailboat today. If that’s real, I can quite honestly say, and believe it with every bit of myself, that anything is possible.

That’s why it’s here now. That’s why it’s happening now. That’s why I launch my dream in the middle of a nightmare.

To balance.

To enable something that can be part of catalyzing change.

To show what else can be real.

#CaspianSea #climatecrisis #GulfofMexico #Ecosystemcollapse #Globalecosystem #climateemergency #climateemergencysailboat #oceanfire #burningsea #AnnCognito