This is crazy, the climate apocalypse. "A predictable side effect of climate change..." they said, and then mentioned it no more.
The restaurant, no AC, hotter than hell, customers - well, people that go out in this, expect to be served, expect cooks to work in industrial kitchens with little to no ventilation - the less said of them the better.
Yesterday - back up to the new crystal spot with Chris. On the Ferry, hot, I've drunk 3 liters of water already, I need more, I'm pissing clear but I can't seem to hydrate. And at the seam, 12 KM up, a mile above the lake, banging on the quartz, decomposed, filled with pockets, but not a single crystal in sight. 2 hours of this, no horsefly can get perch on me, they're washed away in the waterfall of my sweat.
Give it up, head down, back to the ferry, only we've missed it, into the dive pub of the east shore.
Waitress, confused, flustered, a bar filled with a half dozen regulars and she can't keep up, the heat, it's addled her, scrambled her brain, she can't pull it together enough to bill customers, we make token orders - we only want in out of the sun - and eavesdrop on the tables. One guy grows magic mushrooms. Another Oyster mushrooms. So they're talking about mushrooms.
A table sits next to us - Albertans, older woman with her 2 daughters, looking for a bite to eat. This is the only place open in town. And the waitress talks to them, and I'm not paying attention when the chef comes out and tells them "NO WAY!! He's been working all day in the fucking kitchen with no AC, hotter than hell, hotter than hell, and he's finished in 7 minutes and he'll be damned if he can take it any more...".
They leave.
The drone of the waitress, the regulars laughing at how addled she is, we ask for our bill, she can't get it, the computer's stuck, she thought we had left, did we see the other guy that left? She needs a cigarette...
We wait. Everyone has bad days, only I don't think she knows she's having one, it's moment-to-moment survival.
They should just close. Everyone should. This is intolerable. This is payback for every ant that was cooked by a child with a magnifying glass, see, feel how it's like?
The leaves, they curl, wilt and wither in the heat. We're running low on water, every spring less and less, this hot spell - the hottest ever - will by followed by the earliest and longest fire season yet.
And it will be the same again next year, exactly as it has been every year for a dozen years before - every year another "One in a thousand year event" - thousand year flood, drought, snowfall, heat wave, plague...
There's a surreal haze to everything, like through the smoke, only without the char-broiled smells, it's every living drop of moisture being sucked up from the earth, it makes for a beautiful sunset.
***
This morning - up at 7:00 AM. 28 Degrees. A smashing headache, little to no sleep and that brief stint in the sun, it's hard-boiled my brain. There is no respite. This murderous heat wave, it's the kind of weather that births spree killers, madmen, lunatics.
I should be able to meditate this away. If the monks of the high Himalaya can raise sweats in blizzards, then I should be able to convince my body that I'm cold, that I'm hypothermic, I should be able to become Mr. Freeze, insulate myself from the charring heat...
The world has gone insane. From one disaster to another, the restaurant, the laughing face of enterprise trying to pretend it's now "back to normal" - there is no normal, not anymore. This is the beginning of a sea of troubles for which there is no plan, for how can you plan for what you don't believe in?
Harper, and his destruction of all the carefully garnered climate data, his muzzling of scientists, suppression of facts, he's guilty as sin. Hang him. As is Kenney, O'Toole, Ford, the lot of them. We'll make no progress with these ass-holes in charge.
The world's on fire, and we can't begin to foresee the effects. Overpopulation will soon be a thing of the past. Climate change will trigger wars, mass migrations, famines, water shortages, political instability, there are no end to the effects - predictable, predicted and ignored.
We would gag the scientists and wait for the "Visionaries" - the Elon Musk's and Jeff Bezos's and Bill Gates' of the world to come to our rescue, only they are the problem. They are why we are where we are. We are told we should trust in politicians with their long term plans that have no bearing on the immediacy and urgency of our current situation.
There is no long-term plan. We've gone past the tipping point and everything now is in free fall. Grab a parachute, an air-conditioner if you can, a sheltered underground home, This heat wave, it's killing people, crops, what's it doing to the fish and wild animals?
Tomorrow will be cooler - a mere 39 degrees. Bring your parka. The manipulation of language - by the media - is outrageous. It will not be cooler in the least. 39 degrees, 41 degrees, 38, 35, 47 - it's all too fucking hot. None of these temperatures mark any sort of end to this inferno. Quit saying it will be cooler, content yourselves with "you'll be a little slower cooked..."
This is the beginning of the end.