I’m doing that thing. You know the one. I’ve had breakfast and now I’m sitting in the strange non-silence of Baltimore, MD avoiding the start of my day. Distant crash of garbage cans, the hum of the neighbour’s air conditioner, the skritch of the cat’s claws on our horribly-abused upstairs carpet, the burring of the morning cicadas. No cars, no highway noise. No noise of people. Yesterday the neighbours’ children were out in force. Perhaps they’re back in school. Perhaps not. I don’t keep track of it.
It’s the first day of September and somewhere in my soul I’m programmed to think of it as fall. Maybe it’s the last remnants of scholastic schedule? Last night I’d dreamt of college so it’s fresh in my mind.
It’s been years since I last had a grade school stress dream : unprepared tests, being lost on the way to class, being on the wrong bus. They’d given way to a shorter Life period of college stress dreams : unprepared critiques, being lost on the way to class, being in the wrong dorm. But even those had died away some time ago, so last night was a little bit of a surprise : walking into the wrong apartment at the Commons at Maryland Institute, College of Art was an easy enough fault in real Life, but it certainly wouldn’t have contained friends from my Teavolve open mic working on one another’s motorcycle, and though the Commons apartments all looked alike, the layout wasn’t complicated, so the strange inability to figure out where I WAS supposed to be is… well… definitely a dream artifact.
I woke up and read the news. Always a mistake. Time Magazine off-handedly mentioning that the much-referenced date of 2050, a futuristic-sounding year often pointed to in reports and articles about climate change, was “now within the span of most new mortgages”, hit me hard. As someone looking at placing myself in that situation, potentially embarking on a mission of putting myself in debt for the remainder of my Life, it sort of echoed in my ears a bit.
The article talks about how a LOT of the United States’ population will be shifting north and away from the coasts in the coming decades and I wonder to myself if this town will actually be habitable by 2050. We certainly don’t plan to be here by then, hoping for more like a five year span of holding on to this house, but will things be so blatant at that point that it’ll be useless trying to see a home in the new tropics?
Perhaps. Or perhaps before Maryland finds itself in a new Sahara it’ll be a new Florida and we’ll find ourselves selling to those who want a little rowhouse in the latest dank, sweaty, sunshiney… tropical paradise.
But for the moment I muse. An AI-generated “painting” won first prize in an art competition in Colorado. A Democrat won in Alaska. ilyAIMY played with a clarinetist and Australians tuned into Live from the Lair. Truly, the end times are nigh.
But it IS a pleasantly quiet morning. The fan kicks on on my laptop, the cat settles down, I’m taking Kristen to see Cirque de Soleil today. 2050 can come when it comes. I’m planning on having a good Thursday.
Below, the drive into Boston to the Burren’s show on Friday, August 26th.
