The Great Heat Death
FROM THE ARCHIVES - AUG 31, 2021
Bamouin Sinzé, Kôguôè #2, 2020
I had intended to write about heat. Heat death. Both fascinating and terrible that Extreme Heat Events (EHEs) — consistently the climate-related disaster with the highest rates of mortality — have, until recently, not captured the attention of media and minds.
“What is it about heat that wants to remain unseen? What is it about ourselves that would prefer not to see it?”
In strictly visual terms, a heat wave is a magical phenomenon to observe. It seems to warp reality, like magic given an ephemeral body. It snakes upward, drifting on air currents of its own design and spreading out like lengths of shimmering gossamer breath. Humans have developed all kinds of poetic language to describe these phenomena. Mirage. Fata morgana. Haze. Shimmer. Twinkling. The Novaya Zemlya effect. Schlieren.
The science of it all is that heat bends light. Or — to be slightly more accurate — when air temperature varies, it can refract light, distorting the image and producing an optical effect for the viewer. It makes me think of Brownian Motion. The hypnotic patterns of gasses moving. Particles being randomly propelled. If there is anything holy, perhaps it is this movement: achingly delicate yet unstoppable, dependable and unpredictable. A reminder that everything is in motion. Everything is breath.
Gas exchange provides the parameters for life on this planet.
Heat disrupts this exchange. It seduces patterns of gas to follow its searing shape and form, scorching and coaxing ever closer to a different kind of chemical transformation. Heat is a duality. It holds proximity to comfort — warmth, ancestral survival, the glory of being held and seen by another. It is also a precursor to terrifying destruction, the cruelest pain, and air that chokes from the inside out.
“Heat is a complex creature. It’s a tool, a torture, and a bastion. Heat is life.”
In stellar terms, heat is both energy and consumption. Of all the extremes of the known temperature spectrum, what an incredible thing that we exist in the narrow window that supports carbon-based life. Where exotherms, endotherms, and yes even kleptotherms can thrive in the same biome. And what does it mean for us to have so thoroughly transformed the conditions of our biosphere that we are effectively wrenching that window shut? What will it come to mean for the children of our children? Will they fear the sun? Will physical warmth cause anxiety? Will nightmares of being trapped in a heat wave replace fears of drowning and tornadoes? How far underground will these future children live? And who among them will get to live there?
We talk about the heat death of the universe — a far off thing that defies comprehension. But I often wonder:
“What will be the intimate, small heat death of my own universe? Can I even claim to have such a thing — a wholly internal and personal and strange geography? What does it mean to believe that we are witnessing the end? And if I believe this, am I doomed to despair?”
To be honest, I don’t feel any despair…but I don’t feel hope, either. It’s a weird liminal space. A lot like that window, maybe. But liminality doesn’t have to be inaction and apathy. I know this because planning to change-make is a monstrously complicated and difficult internal endeavor — even when it appears like nothing is happening on the outside. I also know this by watching plant and animal life.
Creatures that are most active at dawn and dusk are called crepuscular. They make a home in the borderless, liminal phases of light where the sky slides across itself. Morning. Evening. Twilight. To discuss aquatic creatures in their three-dimensional realm, we slice the ocean into layers that borrow language from the sky. Very little light from our sun travels to the ocean’s twilight zone. The creatures there have, on occasion, evolved to create their own light. Tiny glowing orbs nestled in delicate bodies. Light for great purpose (survival)…and maybe even light for light’s sake (it’s hard to know for sure, as I am, sadly, not a glowing fish). In anthropology, liminality is tied to ritual. Growth and change are rites of passage, and a crucial feature of earning passage is learning how to navigate the unknown — the unnavigable. It is the state between pre and post. Between was and will be. It is. We are. Maybe the liminal is the present. Maybe to try to give liminal a definition — a designation — is to miss the point entirely. Probably there is no point.
So, I set out to write about heat, and like all things human I struggle not to reflect myself instead. Seeing myself in the heat like a familiar stranger drifting behind a cooing fog. Am I my own ghost ship on the horizon? My own Morgan? Rising up, all ceremony. Bowed beneath boughs to hand myself an answer I don’t want. I wish I could cradle the world sometimes. But heat death is long. And energy is ferocious.
Life is a fearsome creature and full of awe.
When I get overwhelmed by reality, or my own small fears, I like to think about the wild creativity and ingenuity of nature. There is splendor in and around our heads. Nocturnal creatures have, at the back interior of their eyes, a layer of tissue called the tapetum lucidum. The shining tapestry. At night, the filigreed fibers of the iris contract, opening the pupil wide and allowing particles of light to flood inside the ocular sphere. As the light drifts across this silky space, the tapetum lucidum catches it like a mirror, reflecting it back into the great cathedral of the inner eye. In this way, nocturnal animals effectively double the light available to them. Something as simple, as elegant, as a reflective surface allows sight in dark places. Tucked away. Protected. Waiting.
I set out to write about heat — but I’m not convinced I accomplished my original goal. This is neither an eloquent call to action for including social interventions in heat mitigation strategies nor a rigorously academic treatise on why social workers should be aware of how climate and environmental injustice impacts the communities they work with. I’m trying to become more comfortable with failure — it’s a process :’)
I’ve been working closely in this lab with Jenna and Nicole. Grappling together with the strangeness of finding camaraderie over great distances, imagining great futures and mourning the harmful ones. We’ve talked about developing a language for social workers to use in relation to climate grief and trauma. I’m slowly developing a language for myself.
When I imagine futures, I imagine myself as other people:
my nanu tells me
we used to go outside
not me
but
they
and when they were outside
the air was fresh
and good to breathe
grass on the ground was green
and people stepped on it
sat on it
squished it down
strangers walked next to each other
on sidewalks
and the sun didn’t burn them
and the sky wasn’t dangerous
it was nice outside
nanu says
nice
the sidewalks were lined with trees sometimes
sometimes bushes
sometimes flowers
entire homes
just sitting
aboveground
lots of the homes had yards
a flat garden they didn’t share
to sit in or play in
nanu says
the homes had windows
to let the light in
and that was okay
because the light wasn’t angry yet
the windows opened
to let in cool breeze
like the ohtu circulator
but
big
everywhere
it’s hard to picture
where wind came from
nanu says
the windows had screens
to keep the bugs out
hard shells like jewels
soft wings like paint
they were just
there
buzzing humming
nanu says when she was growing up
the bugs started dying
slowly
and no one noticed
and no one cared
i don’t understand
if they saw the bugs dying
if they felt the heat coming
why didn’t they do something
As Trees Grow, Ryan, S., age 8, Singapore
