The Racket LitCrawl : COLLAPSE
Poster by Natalie Cowan
OCTOBER 20 - ADOBE BOOKS - 7PM
With the upcoming The Racket Lit Crawl : COLLAPSE hurtling down the pipe, we had sharpened all our writerly knives and we were dead set on carving out a nice long rant on the current state of the world. Hoo boy, we were going to give it to the whole cesspool of, well, everything that's been coalescing like oil on a duck pond to, simply put, drive the world into the shallow grave we've been digging for the last how ever many years humanity has existed.
Then a coalition of international scientists reported to the universe that if we didn't get our collective shit together in the next 12 years, the affects of climate change would be irreversible and start making a more than noticeable mark well before we carve our sixtieth notch on the bed post of our lives. And then the big-wigs of the world took a deep breath and promptly ignored it.
And you know, it really just deflated the balloon. Because yeah, things suck right now (on a mass scale mind you, our individual lives still manage to be full of vibrancy, passion and joy on a daily basis), but there's always the gentle poke of hope digging into the few remaining soft spots of our hearts. We're not saying that this mind-boggling report has stripped us of the belief that things might change for the better, but you know, it has truly knocked us on our ass to imagine that in a few short decades our human selfishness, greed and idiocy will have lead us to something resembling the scarred wastelands of Mad Max.
Instead of writing a typical "well, we deserve it" scree though, we'd like to just shine a little light (it does still exist) on a few of the activities we'll be embracing even harder as the world takes its last few revolutions around the cosmic toilet bowl. It's really all we can manage right now.
We will:
Drink a cold bottle of cheap wine on a sunlit stoop with a loved one in the early afternoon when the conversation isn't about anything more important than a great book or a bad television show.
Polish off a plate of fatty, fried food with a cheap can of beer and then take a two hour nap when we should be working or running or whatever else we've decided we're supposed to do for the day.
Smoke two cigarettes in the morning with a cup of coffee and not spend the rest of the day wringing our hands over every health related reason we shouldn't have done that.
Walk our dog and be amazed at the fact that any creature can be so delighted to just chase a ball or a bird or it's own tail with such utter abandon.
Consume art, books, music, comics, film with the continued knowledge that whatever damage we do on a daily basis, we are so fucking lucky that there are people in this world who strive forward creatively, unabated, inspired even, by the anxiety-stricken atmosphere of today.
Write. Just write and write and write until everything is out of us and we are nothing more than a sack of skin curled into a chair.
Try and find hope in whatever we can.
Compose a list of our small delights that makes our teeth grit at how sap-laden and earnest it is, but send it out to a group of strangers anyways, because, you know, no time like the fucking present.
What will you do?
