#0 | Introducing "Weathering"

Whether whatever we weather together

A view from the Pacific Crest Trail in Washington

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Welcome to “Weathering.” This is not a newsletter about the weather.¹ Nor is it a newsletter about vintage leather repair, erosion, or skincare.²

This is a newsletter about climate change, culture, and how we weather on.

You and me – we are both living in an age of climate chaos. Isn’t that grand? We are historically significant! And isn’t that terrifying? What are we to do!

We’re weathering.³

Living through the everyday of the climate crisis isn’t as glamorous as future generations may come to believe. Some days, it’s downright dull. We commute and hear the morning news that another wildfire has burned an entire town to ash. We work from home and glance at the notification about a record breaking flood, then close the tab. We go for a walk, observe the neighborhood skating rink has failed to freeze for the third year in a row, and carry on.

How do we make sense of climate change in medias res? How do we live with the outrage? How do we admit that sometimes we feel resigned, not mad enough, or really not much at all?

I’m interested in this question – how we continue to live and make meaning in this chaotic world – and I’m inspired by the people creating in response. Climate change has been called a “hyperobject,” “wicked problem,” and “super wicked problem.” Taken together, climate change is an entity stretching across such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that it defies our ability to describe it and reshapes ideas of what a “thing” is at all. It’s “super wicked” because it doesn’t have an answer, time is running out, and policy-making, our presumptive mode of problem-solving, is a political mess.

Climate change is big, impossibly big, too big for any one mind to have a handle. Who better to turn to, then, than those who have long lapped at the shores of abstraction, dilemma, and immensity? Who other than the artists, writers, and thinkers who make art, write, and probe as a metabolic activity, a way of “churning the world”? 

We, the human species, are still here–for now. And while we’re here, we have people in our ranks who will continue to create and share with us what they’re seeing and how they’re feeling. Aren’t we lucky? The least we could do is pay more attention.

Let’s weather together.

This newsletter seeks to bring the vibrant world of climate change culture to your inbox. Each month, you’ll receive a missive that might look like a book review, gallery report, or essay synthesizing interconnected themes across works. Look forward to exploring “climate fiction” as genre and political movement, book reviews of Ways of Being by James Bridle and The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On by Franny Choi, and imagined conversation between Maggie Nelson and Amitav Ghosh on the power and peril of climate storytelling.

Who am I? Mostly, someone who likes to read and talk about it. Also, someone who believes in the power of climate storytelling to stoke our imagination, brandish new viewpoints for the chaos, and make living in these times somewhat more bearable, perhaps even delightful. If nothing else, climate chaos invites us to experiment with something new. So here I am, writing, experimenting, sharing my churn of the world with you. 

Until next time,

MJ

1. Definition 1: the action of the weather conditions in altering the color, texture, composition, or form of exposed objects

2. Definition 2: wear away or change the appearance or texture of (something) by long exposure to the air.

3. Definition 3a: come safely through (a storm). 3b: withstand (a difficulty or danger).