It is four in the morning and I can’t sleep.  I am thinking about work but it is more than that.  For a week now, I have been feeling wired; like I am waiting for something to happen. I feel unsettled but I can’t place the source of the anxious feelings.  It feels like there is something in the air.

I have had disturbing dreams this week as well.  In one, my house is shaking, small pieces of plaster are falling from the ceiling, and I realize that a tornado is directly above my house, creating a vacuum within.  I was trying to hide in the basement with my daughter when I woke up.  In the other one, my sister shows me some small green floating lights that have been hovering around her house.  In the dream, we are both freaked out.  We know they are alien and we know they are intelligent.  Both times, I woke up with adrenaline coursing through my veins.  Both times I woke up wondering where on earth these dreams are coming from. 

I feel like I am picking up on chaotic energy in the universe.  The world feels so unsettled these days and at so many levels!  The newspaper is full of disturbing stories.  Riots, terrorist attacks, and governments attacking their own citizens on the other side of the world.  There is talk of the collapse of the European economy.  Our own federal government is introducing regressive crime legislation, slashing the budget of Environment Canada, and calling environmental groups and aboriginals “ecoterrorists”.  In the US, Republican politicians are calling young women “sluts” for recommending insurance coverage for birth control.  In the City of Toronto, 23,000 workers are poised for a strike in response to concessions being demanded by the Mayor.  There is too much happening!  All of it deserves a response, but I, like many others, feel overwhelmed by it all. 

Meanwhile, there are ever-increasing signs that we are doing irreversible harm to the climate which regulates our natural environment.  We had our first smog alert in southern Ontario yesterday, two months earlier than most years!   We had an eerily mild winter across Canada this year.  There have been news reports of the ice cap breaking apart.  The US has been ravaged by powerful tornados never experienced before.  Climate change predictions, made 20 years ago, are becoming a reality!  And yet, our government has undermined international agreements, is gutting environmental legislation, and throwing its support, and building our future economy, on the Tar Sands.  

Usually, I can see progress in the midst of chaos.  Usually, I can feel the positive trend amidst all of the static.   But right now, it feels like we are slipping backwards.  It feels like things are coming to a head; ecologically, politically, and economically.  But it feels like we are moving in the wrong direction.  It feels like things are falling apart.  And yet, each day, busy with work and child-rearing, we go about our business as if all is okay.  No wonder I can’t sleep at night!!

Related articles

• Chaos (buckwheatsrisk.wordpress.com)
• Toronto’s warmest winter has its drawbacks (thestar.com)