Drawdown

Dear      ,

I truly believe that it all begins with the heart. If our heart isn’t in something, then it’s a wisp, a wish, a passing distraction we’ll never turn into something we pursue with… all our heart.

What do you love? What makes your heart just fill with that inexplicable sense that inspires forward motion?

This year, I read a book that explains, in its way, why we use “heart language” like this—why we say our heart is in something. Or not in something. Or broken. Or warmed.

We say this because our nervous system causes us to literally feel things “in our heart.” This is the seat of compassion, of positive forward motion that can link us to others. At the very least it’s a survival mechanism. I like to think of it, though, as something that makes us beautifully human and capable of kindness, poetry, art, song.

When, the other day, I saw stunning pictures of waterfalls pouring over the sides of melting Arctic ice, I felt something right in the center of my heart. The waterfalls reminded me of magical childhood secrets that were mine in the woods, on the creek, so long ago. I felt a sense of forward motion.

But? I also felt a nervousness that traveled deep into my bones. A feeling of coldness washed through my body again and again, like waves. I could almost feel myself, my own very self, careening off the sides of that majestic, melting, Arctic ice.

And, Dear——, I felt unmoored. More than unmoored. I felt myself falling.

The waterfall picture was in a Scientific American article called Meltdown. The statistics were so sobering I wanted to cry. Best case scenarios place the complete disappearance of summer Arctic ice at just 22 years out. My daughter is about to be 21. In one more daughter-lifetime, the ice will have died, disappeared.

We know only some of the consequent effects, like sea levels rising 13 to 20 feet, which means the loss of Miami, the naval base in Norfolk (VA), large portions of New York City and London and Silicon Valley. There’s Venice to lose, too. And Shanghai. New Orleans (and all that great cooking and culture).

There’s gravity to be messed with. Gravity? Yes, unbelievably, this was first picked up by satellites monitoring the effects of receding Arctic ice. I have no idea what it would ultimately mean to mess with gravity.

I do have some ideas of other effects. All interesting. Some strange. Some perplexing and complex and hard to parse. But must I know any more, understand any more deeply, before I take my artful life and put my heart towards mooring prodigal carbon back here on earth—drawing it down, back home?

Sometimes we know enough to take steps. Sometimes we know more than enough. Sometimes the real issue is that our hearts must be captured by a waterfall—of love, of fear, of vision.

Mine is captured, Dear——.

So I’m going to take a few Drawdown challenges and write poems along the way. I promise to tell you what they are. I’ve written them down. But, for today, I offer a simple poem…

Melting,

my heart is.
Falling.

Careening

over the edge
of what is

and what will
be.

Come with me,
friend.

The sea

is rising,
in a daughter’s dawn
of time,

to meet us.

Today I wish for you vision, Dear——. Not fear, but vision. Make poems with me? And embark on explorations? Let’s put our creative hearts together and bring carbon home.

As Always,

L.L.