The Thing About Our Planet

The thing about our planet, about Earth, is that it’s not only ours. It’s not only for us. As sentient beings, as the smartest species roaming the lands, though, we are the better equipped to manage matters ’round the world – but we own nothing.

Animals live here, too. Above us, under us, next to us. With us. Our pre-pandemic brand of humanity killed many, though. Killed, murdered, drove to extinction. Sometimes, for the fun of it, even (it ain’t always pretty when humans peacock, and some juniors just gotta make themselves feel big).

So gross.

One of the most beautiful, truly awesome things I’ve seen during this season of self-isolation that the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed upon us (you guys, this is so much bigger than any one of us – take a bow), well, that would be dolphins swimming and jumping and whooping it up in and out the waters of Biscayne Bay, near Star Island (so gorge – you gotta just love it), in Miami. Dolphins, doing what only comes natural – what those tacky, noisy, painful (honestly, like, ouch) wave runners usually keep them from doing.

I lived in Miami and Miami Beach almost 13 years, and I never saw dolphins doing it like that. What’s worse, even, around 2013-2014 I heard people had spotted some sort of large reptile in the same waters, near Sunset Harbour. Can you imagine? Chomp. But, yeah, dolphin? Out in the wild like that? Never. I went to the Miami Seaquarium once, as homework, saw them there. That wasn’t fun. That didn’t inspire awe.

We cannot go back to normal, to polluting these fellow mammals’ home (dolphins are marine mammals, and nonetheless worthy and deserving of peace). Why would we want to go back to cruising with abandon and dumping all over the only natural habitat dolphins and the rest of the aquatic kingdom know? Yuck. We’ll do well to fuck off with all that fuel and shit from our dirty cruise ships and rec boats and all our noise. (#NeverForget what BP fucked up in the Gulf, btw.)

We gotta calm down with all o’ that but now, OK. Kids are dying. No son sólo los viejitos los vulnerables; los más jóvenes, niños, también se están muriendo. The priority must be to figure out a long-term, sustainable, less obtrusive and culturally discombobulating way to protect ourselves from this novel coronavirus – for which we must learn more about what it does to the human body. And we gotta prepare for the future by taking care of and acknowledging our present and making reparations for the sins of our past.

This globally shared moment is one of the tipping points about which we’ve been long warned. There is no good reason to ignore what’s happening, what has been going on, unless of course, you are in the business of willful ignorance and crisis profiteering.

That is so last century.

Here’s to our resilience and to our newfound mindfulness. We get it from the Pachamama, don’t you know, don’t you know. To our re-invention.