The beach shacks look out at a grey dish of cracked silt. These houses are made of dust and are slumped on the sand, many for sale and some abandoned; a bed half-made from when its occupant rolled out from under the doona for the last time many years ago. If you walk onto the lake bed and look back at the village, the houses look like moviegoers, all facing forward and eager for the…
The fireplace: flickering images of flame and shadow reassure me that domestic life is in motion. Likewise, TV is the tick-tock of domestic time. TV programs for dogs confirm that something about watching the flickering of light is fundamental to creatures with eyes or emotional intelligence, or sentient things easily distracted by recognisable forms. Indeed, it seems that we like TV. As prime-time audience numbers for free-to-air television decline and streaming services such as Netflix…
One might be inclined to think that something as universal as the atmosphere, and as broadly catastrophic as global warming, would give rise to a united force for change and be a cause for solidarity. Perhaps, if it did not result in solidarity, it would at least provide the energy for political unity in the form of some sort of action to mitigate the onset of global destruction.
