The PROOF of doom
February 12th, 2023
The aliens are coming! But that is expected by me and not really a doom scenario — except for the (also expected) insane and inane public reaction when it finally happens. And they must be shitty aliens if Canada doesn't want to welcome them, and they must be really shitty aliens if they can get shot down by our military technology. And now with my funny and ridiculous starting paragraph out of way, let's get serious —
I noticed them last Sunday, the 5th of February. They were just breaking the ground and as much as an anomaly it was, and as much as I didn't like it, I thought that with the upcoming week of freezing temperatures, they won't last. I was wrong. That photo above was taken yesterday on the 11th of February. In north-east Poland. Still during the calendar winter. With the ground still frozen in many places and patches of snow still visible between the trees and scrubbing off the morning frost on the windshields is still an everyday occurrence.
So wintertime hasn't passed yet. And as the passing season was much milder than winters in the past, it was still a nominal regular winter. There was quite a lot of snow (I had to change my plans several times since driving in so much snow was impossible occasionally). There were plenty of days with blistering cold and near-blizzard conditions. The ponds and lakes froze over with a solid and walkable ice cover. There were plenty of days with the sleet freezing overnight and making walking and driving very difficult. So it wasn't a freaky warm and unseasonable winter, just a new-reality winter.
And that was enough for my lilacs in the garden to start sprouting out at the beginning of February. And last week they were just tiny green specks poking from the ground, vulnerable to any changes in weather, I thought. But apparently not — today they are solidly several centimeters above the ground with a healthy look and color. If that would happen in the middle of March, I would be surprised and happy and hoping for an early spring. But at the beginning of February? Come on! That is not normal, that is ways off the normal calendar season and it is scary how much the local and global climate is changing and how visible those changes are.
Except people don't want to see it and think about it. Hiding a head in the sand and pretending that nothing is happing seems a common response. I spoke with several people about it last week. And I didn't present any doom scenarios to them, just mentioned what was happing with the lilacs in my garden. That was met with a shrug and “it is no big deal really” responses. The vibe I got from even trying to start a conversation was that not one person wanted to talk or to think about it. It was just a la la la la la — I cannot hear you, everything is fine attitude. On some level, I understand that. All the people I talked to have children who might grow up to live in a desolate hellish wasteland that we are so busily and thoroughly preparing for them, with solid work done by previous generations as well. And if that is unpleasant to think about now, how pleasant will it be to know twenty-thirty years from now that there was still a chance of doing something and we didn't? More important was the corporate bottom line and the mythical shareholders and a need for comfort in a rat race and greed and jealousy and keeping up with influencers and marketed fictional needs. And that is the somber reality of rapidly upcoming doom.
