Solastalgia
is the emotional or existential distress caused by negative, environmental
change to one's home landscape while still residing there. This form of "homesickness at home" stems from the loss
of solace, security, and connection to a familiar environment due to factors
like climate change, pollution, or industrial or residential development. I imagine extreme political change might factor in there as well. Life just doesn't feel as safe any more.
What are you missing, in your heart of hearts? Can you pinpoint what this internal homesickness is about? The way the world was in childhood? The way the climate was twenty (or 40) years ago, compared to today's extreme weather events? Has development removed forests and trails from your neighbourhood? Has the countryside turned into condominium developments and strip malls?
Let's set our pens free and share what we are nostalgic for. Joy Harjo has the gift of writing that inner ache in a way that meets an echoing pang in the reader.
THE LAST SONG
by Joy Harjo
how can you stand it
he said
the hot Oklahoma summers
where you were born
this humid thick air
is choking me
and i want to go back
to New Mexico
it is the only way
i know how to breathe
an ancient chant
that my mother knew
came out of a history
woven from wet tall grass
in her womb
and i know no other way
than to surround my voice
with the summer songs of crickets
in this moist south night air
oklahoma will be the last song
i’ll ever sing
As the climate crisis progresses with very little being done to address it, I looked for a poem offering some hope to the reader. I found it in a poet referred to in an interview by the well-known poet Ada Limon. The poem reminds us that, no matter what we foolish humans are doing, Mother Earth continues on her endless cycles, everything geared towards growth and survival, if only we would support her in her efforts.
REASONS TO LIVE
by Ruth Awad
Because if you can survive
the violet night, you can survive
the next, and the fig tree will ache
with sweetness for you in sunlight that arrives
first at your window, quietly pawing
even when you can't stand it,
and you'll heavy the whining floorboards
of the house you filled with animals
as hurt and lost as you, and the bearded irises will form
fully in their roots, their golden manes
swaying with the want of spring —
live, live, live, live! —
one day you'll put your hands in the earth
and understand an afterlife isn't promised,
but the spray of scorpion grass keeps growing,
and the dogs will sing their whole bodies
in praise of you, and the redbuds will lay
down their pink crowns, and the rivers
will set their stones and ribbons
at your door if only
you'll let the world
soften you with its touching.
