Rock-ocalypse
Exclamations from the Edge of the Anthropocene
It’s one of those days when I’m catching up with the news, and the algorithm alerts me to a frightful discovery. The Anthropocene is here now, finally arrived according to some geologists who have woefully discovered plastic rocks. Yes, plastic has fused with rocks on a far removed coast. Plastic often used in commercial fishing nets are the source, or maybe “resource” forming these new rocks. The story comes at me all across the webs, with pictures of this new expression, and I have some thoughts, a pang of the familiar.
Am I surprised? Why yes, I am surprised a bit. Am I shocked? Well, no, I am not shocked. You shouldn’t be either. The scientists especially should not be shocked. Now I’m not gaslighting any individual. Insight comes on in shockwaves. What I am turning a side-eye towards is the way media portrays this newest expression of the Anthropocene. We all heard this new age existed. We even have scientists saying this has been in the making since we landed on the moon. I’m looking at you, (gratefully) esteemed astrobiologist, David Grinspoon. I’m looking at the facts and taking our media to task for clutching their cultured pearls, their festive party beads of the past.
I understand the Anthropocene is pretty terrifying at times. I accept that we are not ready to accept that even remote locations are no longer safe from our industrial age output. I get it. And I support these scientists getting a good nap, a nice meal, maybe a drink or some meditation time in; so as to relax themselves into acceptance. Intellectual acceptance and emotional integration of the apocalypse are two different things. The intellectual and the experiential realizations of any big transition can come at slightly different blips. But I still take the media outlets to task for turning the biggest news story, the foundational, existential news story of our time, and turning it into some clickbait.
Sure, we don’t have big attention spans anymore. No doubt, the people who own the media make more money in ignoring the big arc of our evolution in order to focus on breaking it into doom scroll–friendly tidbits. There might be some useful truth in portraying these logical results of our previous collective actions as terrifying. I will accept we are at a transformational threshold that will last longer than any of our current lives and that can be daunting. Apocalypses even in geology generally take a while and then they don’t. Remember, one civilization’s apocalypse is another’s birth canal.
I understand we need the media to report these findings, and I am in fact grateful to be able to see and comprehend this detail. As one of the billions of actors in this collective narrative, I am addicted, integrated, part of the scrolling times. I accept this. However —
The melted plastic of fishing nets has made its way right into the tender and protected nesting areas of the beloved green turtles. I can hear the ancients in my mind’s eye: reminding me that turtles are long-enduring beings. Turtles are key to our oldest myths, our very longest sense of lineage. Yet, I am also reminded of a day, easily a decade ago, when my tiny nieces gathered shells with me on a beach that is groomed, ticketed and generally tamed to within an inch of its sandlot life. The tiniest one of precious nieces came back to me running, breathless, eyes wide open with joy. She exclaimed that she had found “sea glass!” in the prettiest shade of turquoise. As she put the glass into my hand I saw, touched and perceived it as plastic. It was indeed, sea plastic, not sea glass.
In that moment I too had terror for this child and for future generations. In that moment I also had to look in her eyes, had to greet her innocence, in fact her native experience with something other than my own terorr. I was staring into the eyes of Anthropocene through the eyes of my tiny niece. So, I decided to not be the killjoy I can sometimes be, and I said, “Wow! How beautiful!” Then I explained that the glass was probably plastic not glass, but that it was such a lovely shade of blue-green. I accepted the plastic into our bag of collected treasures. I stood staring outward into the sea and inward into my collapsing sense of the world. That moment never made the news.
I wanted to comment on the pain of the scientists today, not to degrade their experience or to say, “I could have told you…” because I don’t assume they didn’t know this was possible. I don’t take joy or feel especially smug at their heartbreak.
The one thing I do want to point out is that the turtle is at least as precious as a child, and a population of human children is at least as precious as those of the turtles. One population in this grand system we call Earth is equally precious as any other. Sure, some populations die out and others live, over time, but usually this happens gradually or locally, not always vocally and globally. I have no solution, no 12 step program of plastic solutions. I know hemp is making a comeback and I understand that myco-plastics are a growing alternative, but let’s face it, I don’t have the perfect listicle solution. The only thing I can offer is that the way through these confrontations with our collective situation is one of unflinching emotional acceptance.
It’s time that we start to feel again, and I dare to say that it’s not just us poets and artists who have to take up the task. It’s time to get ecumenical, and to extend our sense of the precious and precarious to all the Earth’s children, whether they be remote reptiles or suburban babies. Another world is arriving, and it will bring the pains and concerns endemic to birth. We have to breathe through this birthing. We have to feel it, deal with it, and keep finding our way.
I applaud these scientists for doing their work and for feeling their feelings. I even applaud the major news organizations for bringing this snapshot of our collective truth to the table. But I clap back at all the news outlets who silence or ignore the context of this particular event. Context is everything and the fact that many people do not know what an Anthropocene is, or that we are living and breathing into one, is forgivable, explainable, but it is not laudable. The Anthropocene must be audible to become something other than a storyline of terror. Context must be given to our ravings, and our rages so we can understand that all of this tumult we think of as being apart from the world is actually nested within our shared ecosystem. We are the Anthropocene, physically and emotionally.
