FRANKIE

&

TWINKIE

It's November, with Thanksgiving less than a week away, high winds, heat, and where's the rain? Remnants of sacred groves are charred, and Paradise has burnt completely. The Camp Fire inferno, with Mother Nature hurling fire bombs and embers, helicopters spitting back water, evacuees incinerated in their cars. The bay area is blanketed in smoke, people wearing masks. Our eyes are burning.

This is just the tip of icebergs which are melting. It's no malapropism. Oceans are rising, and getting hotter. The jet stream is crazy like a hula-hooper on acid, dipping down high pressure into a bald-eyed sky. Islands are disappearing.

Our cats haven't said anything. What if they change their minds? We're on our way to self-extinction, and no more mice, they'll be the first ones to say.

Underground in silos are monstrous missiles, guarded by soldiers whose defining moment will be to end it all. After billions of years, now there is something new under the sun. A copycat. A rival from which there is no escape.

One planet harbors two civilization terminators, both home grown. It's not an alien invasion.

Porter house steaks, thick and rare, barbequed with soy sauce, are still a savory thought, even though years have passed since that day when I felt the terror of a final trip to the slaughter house. There is this tenacity of mental maps, even though I no longer eat meat. I'm not the only one with entrenched habits, but personal change is possible, and has results unimagined. Cattle are fattened for market with a diet of grain, a fact that hadn't entered my mind, and it makes them fart methane, a potent green house gas. So which is more important?. Market value, or concern for other beings who also live here?

In the ways of thought and social systems that led to the destruction of Paradise, and to other holocausts, we have an accumulation of business as usual. It's a pile up of mistakes built on blindness, not appreciating the fundamental need of empathy. It's backwards. We are not just fungible parts, but each of us the whole. When this is realized consciously, then actions or inaction are beneficial.

If this seems far from the realities of Paradise and Camp Fire being burnt, far from climate change and nuclear annihilation, consider that these disasters have been avoidable all along. There are any number of plans for improving or saving the world. This is not another plan. It's about what comes before them. It's just that we can back out of bassackwardness. Then plans will work.