Maybe I am only slowly understanding my connection to reality. Maybe I need to take half a step out of my skin to have the right perspective to tell stories, or maybe the „Barbie“ – movie almost made me change the names of my online accounts – this is a thing I am still thinking about. Reality is challenging, but how challenging is it to feel challenged by reality? Or to turn it around, and challenge reality? After all, I am a pandemic writer. I took writing seriously when Dystopia hit my world, so I am probably supposed to have an answer to this.
Some people accuse those with a dark view on the world to have lost their sense for reality, but I think in many cases it‘s the other way around. On my failed date the other night, when I was wearing my cat ears and drinking a grinch, I was in the end even denied climate change, although I assumed this problem to be accepted as a fact. A fact that is hard to swallow, so if you don‘t want to learn more about it in this very moment, that is your right. It‘s still a fact. Somewhere out there, don’t look at it too closely! And well, I am a science teacher that talks about things like these in museums as my day job, and was lectured by someone without any degree about how great it was supposed to feel that global warming went from 4°C down to 3. I asked him if he even knew what the 2°C – border ever meant, and he just held my hand and smiled at me as if I was a child.
Accepting reality is tough. I get it, don’t worry. Still, mansplaining a science teacher with a witch in the back of her head on a topic they both studied and you don’t know thing about …?!
White, male confidence, I suppose.
People, systems, or whatever else, are seen as resilient if under change they still create the same outcome, so I wonder: Do I want to be resilient? Do I want to keep doing the same thing, although I see it‘s bad? Do I want to keep taking short distance flights, the car to work, failing at recycling, just because I have always done this? Do I want to forget about sustainability once I‘m in a hurry because life is messy and there are appointments? Why does this definition of resilience not cover talking to the dead is if they were still here? Seems unfair.
Reality is a challenge, so I think it‘s only fine to be challenged by it. I for now have decided to wear more sparkly make-up and probably dye my hair pink again.
What else can I do with my view on the world that always wants to learn and understand how things actually work? Can I forever just ignore all the unsettling things I learn?
No, I can of course try to make the best of it, sparkle in purple and be pretty.
And I can prepare my heart. I can accept the consequences of the bad news reality gives me and always be ready …
…To be pretty but live day to day feeling is if there was a gun pointed right at me?
I very often have in the past four years, and I see why that is not the way to go.
An understanding of my relationship with reality, I still don’t have.
Maybe a little bit of distance, as in half a step outside of myself, to tell stories and create is the best place to be for now.
And don’t ever mansplain to me why climate change is not that big of a deal.
Mistress witch writes 