So. I listened to this on my way into Ithaca to work this morning…
I stepped out into thick smoke from wildfires that crossed Canada west to east, burning in QuĆ©bec’s 600 sq miles of forest. I looked at the wind map, to see the swooping ladle of winds into the Ohio Valley and then the flowing turn into our strange skies. Now in this night we learn there are 135 new fires š„ in QuĆ©bec, perhaps 250 miles as the crow flies from these deep long lakes…
Here no one is outside and few people on the road; the smoke penetrates my nostrils even with the house closed up and my vehicle closed up. I woke up coughing near to choking, eyes watering all the day. In the City people are wearing masks again; I saw a few on the virtually empty Ithaca streets.
It was so eerie, and this haunting and beautiful piece pulled me into the strangest peace… we have done this, we humans have. Look how this sorrow quiets everything… elsewhere people and animals flee the flames. Here, we float into a barely-known new reality, fire, and there, in Ukraine, the Russians blew up Kherson Dam, and humans and animals and cities drown… and this is how it ends: Fire and Water. But the piece took me somewhere. I just can’t begin to excavate it, and perhaps because of my unwillingness to fight in the moment, the odd, deep, inexplicable solace of the tones and emotions from an ancient world consoled me.
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