The ocean can swallow us now | Ammi Midstokke

I recently returned to the island of Oahu to gather with writers and participate as minimally as possible in the great wasteful occupation of a land that does not belong to us.

I do this by treading lightly, picking up trash when I see it and listening with tearful reverie to the poetry and writing of local artists who speak in brilliant Pidgin to the travesties of erasure.

Erasure of a people through assimilation and the slow creep of development, and the plasmatic way religion swallows millennia of myth and interconnectedness with nature to replace it with “dominion.”

Erasure of an island, through the waters of a disgruntled climate willing to swallow landmass and the pestilence of people in an indifferent restoration of environmental justice.

Mother Nature came with her rain, like a relentless tsunami from the sky, and scrubbed down the steep slopes of jungle and rock, washed the filthy debris and detritus of our neglect and arrogance into mud-sludge streams that spread brown and thick into the once-clear waters of the ocean.

“We must rebuild the streets!” people cried.

“We must upgrade our drainage!” people crowed.

On the distant ledges of the island, windmills waved their white flags of neutrality. Like Switzerlands of stored current rather than currency, they say: We’re just here to solve a problem of power.

If clean energy lobbyists spent as much effort and time campaigning for a reduction of energy use, would we need to carve thick, clay roads into pristine wilderness to raise our proud, spinning virtue signals of my-energy-is-better-than-your-energy? Or could we: Turn off our TVs, refuse microwaves, hang our laundry to dry and stop building golf courses in deserts?

My privilege and I checked the water safety every day, because it would be a shame to have made such a marked carbon footprint with that flight to Hawaii without being able to swim. People said, “You can swim, but I’d keep my mouth closed if I were you, and make sure you don’t have any open wounds.”

After I checked the water warnings where I was, ChatGPT said, “If you’d like, I can direct you to a beach that is safe for swimming today.”

Which made me wonder how many turns of a wind turbine that answer cost the planet.

I swam where I was, and I swallowed enough salt water to qualify as preserved meat by the time I exited the sea. I had two reasons: One, if I got sick, we’d know what it was; and two, when Mother Nature decides to take my life, it’s her well-earned point.

I swam until the murky water became so thick with particles. They floated past my goggles as if I were paddling through a watery minestrone. How can we understand the gravity and tragedy of what is happening if we don’t expose ourselves to the reality of it?

In Waikiki, I drove through throngs of tourists, past the Prada and Louis Vuitton stores, through the maze of towering beachfront hotels, to stare down from the 16th floor balcony at the invasion of the shore.

An army of hopeful surfers bobbed in low waves, the anticipatory ranks of a loose military formation bound to descend upon the nearest tiki bar once all their sunscreen had washed off in the ocean.

Yellow catamaran taxis horned their way through the floating mobs with incessant honking, until they unfurled impotent sails for show. A rock band, who surely incurred karmic debt in a previous life working for Genghis Kahn, was forced to play Hawaiianized versions of “Kokomo.”

I ate grapes imported from Mexico.

Somewhere, long-deceased Hawaiian royalty whispered to a volcano, “Is it time yet?”

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why human carnage is the only kind we seem to see, as if the collective suffering of the organism of this planet is of no consequence.

Until it is, and then we cry out, “Oh no, the farmers market isn’t open on Saturday, and I’m really craving an Acai bowl.”

Because the farms have been decimated.

Because the air conditioners have been running.

Because we can’t think past our retirement plans to live in gated communities in Phoenix.

And have our groceries delivered by drone.

After AI tells us what we should make for dinner.