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Editorial Note
With this zine issue of INK, we shed light on the anxieties held by so many people all over the world who know that: ◊ 2019 is the hottest year in recorded history. ◊ Global warming is an existential threat. ◊ A lot has gotta change. We seek not to fan the flames of fear, but to give fear a voice. Sometimes we really want to be heard, but in this case we need to be. So, please — if you’re able — scream at the top of your lungs.
INK
Living Near the “But actually, it’s like, why would you go to school or get a career or anything. The world is fucking literally going to end.” Like that’s what I’m saying. I told my mom I’m gonna drop out of school. I wanna live in the mountains. I wanna be in nature. She says I have to go to school. But what’s gonna be the point of a degree when the world fucking ends? Anyway. You know what I’m saying.” Emma took a sip of green tea from her teacup. I twisted my chopsticks into my noodle bowl. The four of us, myself, Emma, and two other buddies I’ve rock climbed with since childhood, sat slouched into the corner booth of Sticky Rice for lunch. All of us ordered “Dirty Vegan” bowls. I watched a mass of steel clouds roll by out the window, orange leaves flicker in the breeze. I did know what she was saying. I fished a piece of tofu out from the noodles, prodding around in my brain. My dream for years has been to become an English professor. I have many more books and poems to read before then. Gerald Manley Hopkins, William Blake, TS Eliot, all of these poets saw an apocalypse on the horizon, perhaps in their lifetime, and their verse burned with the urgency of this premonition. How embarrassing, I thought, this cycle of doomsday anxiety. Obviously civilization hasn’t ended, yet each age brings its
End of the World
Luke Campbell
own prophets of the world crumbling. So, when I began to feel my vision of the future shake with uncertainty, shake with earthquakes and forest fires and hurricanes, I talked myself out of it. I thought, if I ever write a poem about the impending downfall of humanity, I’d better be damned sure we’re on our way out. Emma finished her green tea, and I my noodle bowl. We all chimed in on the desperate state of the world. I said something pretty smart about capitalism and corporations. We talked about other things too. I only really remember what Emma had to say. “I think it’s the most selfish thing in the world to have children. I can’t believe how conceited someone has to be to think it’s their right to bring another fucking person into this world. You know what I’m saying?” I think I would make a pretty good father. I’m sure a lot of people think that, and I’ve never been a father so I guess I can’t be sure. Regardless, I badly want to have children. In some of the lower points in my life, one of the reasons I carried on was because I haven’t yet gotten to try being a father, and again, I feel like I would be pretty good at it. But maybe a good father wouldn’t become a father right now. That’s tortuously phrased. You know what I’m saying. I ate that lunch at Sticky a long time ago now.
Sometimes when I am having a rougher day I call my mom. I guess I call her kind of a lot. When that report came out saying that humanity might well end in 2050 due to climate change, they covered it on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, the NPR news quiz. The comedians on their panel that day responded with “Oh man! We have to wait that long?” I’m not sure how else to make that news funny. I’m pretty ready to write that poem. So I called my mom, because I’m desperately afraid of the future. To alleviate the anxiety of facing the murky opacity of the future, I have given myself long-term goals. Going to grad school, becoming a professor, having a family. Even if I don’t achieve these goals, and my goals have changed, imbuing the clouded topography of the future with theoretical landmarks helps me in the day-to-day. Perhaps, I have lived for a long while in the future. Now, I find rising sea levels have drowned my goals, what seemed concrete enough to me, in ambiguity. Honestly, they seem a little ridiculous. Why would I spend eight or so years pursuing a PhD when I have no idea what the world will look like when I get there? Isn’t hiding from reality in books a little selfish? Climate change has erased my ability to vacation in the future, leaving me only with the vivid reality of now, and nothing else, and so, I burn with fear. So, I called my mom, and I’m not sure what I could have wanted from her. I unloaded my fears onto
her, much like I am onto you, reader. She listened dutifully, then, with a glimmer of hope in her voice, told me she heard on the radio that some people planting a lot of trees might be able to reverse a lot of climate change, might be able to take us back in time. I retorted with how quickly trees in the Amazon were being cut down, I brought out statistics that linger in my head from an obsession with reading about the hopelessness of our situation. It seemed to me, she didn’t understand the depths of my fear - how could you be hopeful? I felt like she wasn’t listening to me. I rationally debased the foundation of her hopefulness. Suddenly, she had to go. Sitting in silence, I realized I had upset her. I called her back to apologize, and she didn’t answer. Six calls and thirty minutes later, she answered, still crying. She told me she didn’t want this world for me. She told me that her mom, who she had taken care of in my parent’s house for the past eight years, was about to die. She told me that my younger brother, her only other child, was about to leave for school in Cleveland. She told me she was going to plant a tree in the backyard. === I’m gonna go over and help her plant that tree. I’m thinking about actually writing that poem about the world ending. I’m thinking about getting a big, wingback chair for my apartment; somewhere I can sit, and stay, in the now.
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Jess Som Kylie Newcomb Issa Atrash Sean KeontĂŠ Claire Busby Valeria Moreno Page Ryland Vanessa Moreno Sydney Twine
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