Something deeply painful is the fact that seasons, especially fall, dont feel the same. Not because of individual maturity but because climate change has impacted the weather patterns so so so much that we cant even experience the same annual shifts that our ancestors have for centuries
I feel displaced, i yearn for the spring, summer, fall, and winter that i can barely remember experiencing
To make things worse, if you’re under 50-60 years old, you can’t even remember what normal seasons were like because you weren’t alive to experience them
In the graph above, you can see how there’s a clear tipping point in the late 1970′s, which is when global temperatures first began to really skyrocket.
I was born in 1997, so about 20 years after this shift occurred. There is an immense difference between the climate now and the climate I remember growing up in, but the way I experienced the seasons in my childhood was already fundamentally different from what the seasons were supposed to be like! My parents were pretty much the last generation to experience a normal climate, and that’s just… incredibly sad
I am processing this information in a normal way devoid of rabid rage and bloodlust i am processing this information in a normal wa-
I’m just old enough to remember the tail end of real seasons. I can’t express how different it is now.
My wife and I grew up in the PNW and have continued to live here.
We were discussing a few years back talking about how we remembered snow year long on the highest peaks of the cascades and now it barely makes it into May before it’s melted and how small the glaciers look, how much rock can be seen on the big volcanoes from June to October.
Our kid turns 18 soon. They have never seen snow in the high country in summer. We stopped seeing it some time in the 90’s.
My in-laws well is no longer safe to drink from and is dry for most of the summer.
A friend of mine grew watermelons and other plants that shouldn’t be able to grow here.
i find the differences between hamlet’s and ophelia’s “madness” super interesting. because hamlet puts on his “antique disposition”, in part, so that people essentially stop listening to him. he can ask weird questions and put on weird plays and do weird shit that he needs to do to confirm claudius’ guilt and then kill him, without anyone suspecting him because they dismiss him as a madman. ophelia’s madness, on the other hand, is, in part, because nobody will listen to her. throughout the play, she is dismissed and ignored, and when she breaks, it’s through her “madness” that people notice and pay attention to her for the first time. it is then that it shows how desperate she is to just be listened to - repeating “pray you mark” - and that people actually let her speak, even if only out of horror, concern and morbid curiosity. just. the fact that hamlet needs to be ignored and ophelia needs to be heard.
the difference between hamlet’s madness and ophelia’s madness is that hamlet can’t commit to it. both of them are using madness as a tool and a way to escape the confines of their circumstances. but the reason it doesn’t work for hamlet the way it works for ophelia is that hamlet still has hope for a resolution that isn’t already scripted. ophelia knows there isn’t one.
hamlet isn’t used to being trapped the way ophelia is. ophelia, never alone physically but forever alone with her thoughts, has long come to the conclusion that she will have to find an escape herself. she’s able to realize what hamlet is doing, to recognize the way his situation has become closer to hers, and to understand his methods, therefore, can work for her. and then they work for ophelia better than they do for hamlet, because he can’t give up the possibility that things could be different but she grabs her one freedom and sees things through to the bitter end.
