“Look away at your peril.”

 Dear Friends,

This is a very important post, I hope you take the time to read it. (Grab a cuppa.) 

I was trying to find the words to describe the pain and frustration I feel about the floods and raging  force of nature in S-pain.

Then, I realised that I *did* find the words, back in 2021, when I wrote this poem. I haven’t shared this poem before. 

I must mention, that as a creative person, the “most” devastating aspect of my Traumatic Brain Injury, by far, has been a very long period of “creative paralysis.” My brain stopped working that way … But then, due to all my rehabilitation, things have started to change on that front.

 

This poem is the second piece of creative writing that I have been able to write since I had my accident in 2017; so, this is for me and my team of consultant neurologists in London, “terribly exciting.” 

 

Now, what prompted me to write “this” poem about what’s happening to our beautiful blue planet? 

 

After my accident, especially after the acute phase of my brain injury when life and the world around me were a blurry mess, I and my waking-brain started to “make sense” of the space and world around me, everything looked so different, but I noticed that I was anxious and particularly worried about one, speedy transformation, which is affecting us all: climate change. 

 

Suddenly, I felt this “urge” bubbling up inside me, to try and say something, to put something in writing. I was in turmoil. I spent months researching, distilling the subject, pages and pages of science and annotations from all corners of our world, and I knew “I had a poem.” 

In a way, my poem, is a warning for us all, call it a message in a bottle. The disaster in S-pain is yet another reminder, so is the title of my poem.

 

I vividly remember putting pen to paper to write my poem in 2021, in the “sweltering” heat of Cordoba, Andalusia, where I spent most of the COVID-19 pandemic with my eighty-three-year-old mum. With no vaccine in sight yet, London was no longer safe for me and my brain injury. I had to flee London. I did. Mum looked after me. Bless her. 

 

Cordoba had always been hot, but the temperatures were just awful that summer, reaching an incredible 47.4 °C, 117.86F (Spain’s highest temp on record). It has now become quite clear that this will be a new trend in Southern Europe. It was “a summer that really scared scientists,” according to Bill McKibben of The New Yorker. Personally, I’d only (and I am not kidding!) experienced record-breaking temperatures like this… filming… in the Kalahari Desert!

 

That summer of 2021, I read a fantastic feature article published in the National Geographic magazine  (“The Edge of Survival” August 2021 issue) about climate change and its impact on wildlife in the Kalahari Desert. 

I remember contacting colleague Leonie Joubert who wrote this investigative piece, to tell her that we were already worried about the situation for meerkats and other wildlife in the Kalahari back in 2007, when I directed a film about this “extraordinarily” resilient species for Animal Planet in the Northern Cape, South Africa approximately 17 km south of the Botswana border and 30km west of a small town called Vanzylsrus. 

The film was produced by friend and colleague Caroline Hawkins and shot by the incomparable John Waters and Robin Smith.

 

With temperatures rising across the planet, and no rain - even back then – I, and the zoologists from Cambridge University I had the pleasure of working with, had already started to worry about our furry friends and feared for their long-term survival. The situation is far worse now, Caroline tells me, and could seriously threaten the balance of life not just for meerkats but for many species in the Kalahari. 

 

It is also tangibly clear that climate change, which seems to be on speed-dial, has started to affect humans, all over the world. Alas, it was Spain’s turn this time. 

 

I remember Leonie telling me that my experience in the Kalahari surely helped “joining the dots” with her article. (At one point, I remember making the decision to add a line about “connecting the dots” when I wrote the poem, and I am glad I did. That’s where that line comes from.)

 

This poem - of course - didn’t happen overnight; it took me and more importantly, my recovering-brain, months just to understand and research such a complex and broad subject. I read so many papers and articles on the climate crisis.

 

I have to admit that the actual “writing” of the poem was “quite something” for me and - more importantly - for my traumatic brain injury. You see, when I tried to put pen to paper, it was clear that things “had changed.” It felt as if I’d become in a way, dyslexic all of a sudden. The process of “visualizing” what my waking-brain was telling me to write, to then put it “on paper,” was terrifying, and quite fascinating. 

Trying to find the words stored in my brain felt… like fly-fishing. It was a struggle, of course, but I found a way. I actually had to cut-up index cards into thin, one-line strips, and that way, I was able to rearrange the order of the verses, on a cork pin-board, whilst trying to keep my cognitive and oculomotor symptomatology at bay. Neuroplasticity, that’s what this is called. The brain finds a way. I was able to write my poem this way!

 

I had been wanting to share the poem with you for a long time. 

The disaster in Spain tells me, it’s the right time. Please, have a read…

and…

“Look away at your peril.” 

©️ J. Montero 2021