My earliest memory is of my mother bathing, in a wooden tub moved in front of the fireplace. Dirty blonde hair pulled up on her head, her pale form outlined in an orange glow, steam rising up from the water and swirling around her face, as though she was some otherworldly sacrifice.<\/p>\n
I sat on a woven rug over the floor beams of our one-room cabin, chewing wild mushrooms gathered from the forest outside. My mother stood up with the sound of sloshing water and reached for a piece of old bed sheet hanging on the mantel. On the stone chimney above was the framed painting of a pink sunset in an unfamiliar place. Painted in the middle was a tall figure rising from the ground, its arms held out, glowing boxes where its head and hands should have be. Below the painting, between my mother\u2019s shoulder blades, [perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]I saw the same figure in black ink[\/perfectpullquote]<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a lamppost,\u201d she said when I asked. She was dressed then, in hand patched clothes and a tattered shawl around her shoulders, braiding her wet hair. She let me unbutton the back of her dress so I could see it again. I traced my fingers around its lines and curves.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow did it get there?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the old world, I had someone paint it with ink under my skin, so it would stay there forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
I pointed to the painting.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, Genesis, that\u2019s the same lamppost,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere is that place?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a city very far away called Venice. I vacationed there when I was young.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs that one of your stories?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
My parents\u2019 heads were full of these stories. Images forever etched in their minds of a foreign world I had no memory of. They would one particular storie to get me to sleep at night, when I laid restless on a straw-stuffed mattress. [perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]After years of drought, rain hammered on the roof [\/perfectpullquote]<\/p>\n
and leaked through the unpatched holes, accompanied by the sounds of wolves howling deep in the woods, lighting slicing through the sky and thunder claps I could feel in my chest. Nature regaining balance, flexing her muscles. Reminding us she was queen once again. You don\u2019t own me anymore. <\/em><\/p>\n My father took another blanket from his shoulders to cover me with, while my mother smoothed my hair from my face.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a world before you were born,\u201d my father would begin, \u201chumans tried to tame nature to their will. They paved over the soil and clogged the skies. They cut down all the trees and killed the animals. There were too many of them, billions of them, and it was too much for the earth to handle. Soon nothing would be able to live on the planet anymore. Everyone was warned–\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut some people didn\u2019t believe it,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cRight, Genesis. Some people didn\u2019t believe it,\u201d my mother said, \u201cso they wouldn\u2019t do anything to change. The earth was hurt, and everyone was going to perish.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUntil the sickness came.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes, until the sickness came. It killed almost everyone. Only the people with simple blood could survive. Your father and I were some of the few lucky ones. Now we live like this, taking only what we need from the earth, and it will always provide.\u201d<\/p>\n Outside, the wolves were singing again.<\/p>\n As I grew older, I learned the rest of the story. 2030 was the endpoint, the year of no return<\/em>, as the scientists called it. By 2030, there would be no fixing the climate, and no going back, unless drastic changes were made.<\/p>\n 2025 was the year of the sickness. Nothing was changing, the earth was as polluted as ever, the temperatures even hotter, and the air even more clogged.<\/p>\n Then came the doctor. One of the CDC\u2019s most renowned scientists. In a makeshift lab in his basement, he created the disease that would kill ninety three percent of the population. It attacked all antigens in the blood, so that only people with an O negative blood type, about seven percent of the population, were immune. People of \u201csimple blood\u201d as my parents called it. The lucky ones.<\/p>\n The doctor\u2019s blood was not simple, and he died in the same airport where he released the disease.<\/p>\n My parents would never say if the doctor was right or wrong.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happened has happened, Genesis,\u201d my mother said once as we were stringing up our clothes in the late spring breeze. \u201cThere\u2019s no point in debating the ethics of it now. Will you hand me another pin?\u201d<\/p>\n And so, like my parents, I accepted my life as it was, living off the land in the cabin at the edge of the woods. We gathered our food from the forest. [perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]We caught fish from the brook and sewed our clothes by hand.[\/perfectpullquote]<\/p>\n I pulled vegetables from the garden with my father and bundled firewood with my mother. We trapped and skinned what we needed. Everything in our cabin had its purpose, the hides, the rugs, the bathtub, the jars, the fireplace, the shelves, the handmade lock on the door. Everything was about surviving, leading our simple life as those of simple blood.<\/p>\n Everything except for the painting on the stone chimney.<\/p>\n I rarely showed interest in the old world. From what my parents told me, it was destined to fail. A place of greed and destruction and disaster. The planet was moving forward now, and there was no use looking back.<\/p>\n But there was always something about that lamp post that I could never quite pry from my mind. Something about that place far away where the sun always set pink.<\/p>\n Once I made my mother take the painting down for me, so I could get a better look. Beyond the lamp post, in the city square, was a building of white pillars and long porticos, carved statues of lost people guarding over it from the roof. A tall pillar stretching to the pink sky with a winged lion on top. Decorated gondolas floated in the water and further off, domed buildings rose from the sea.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t know any of these words at the time. My mother was the one who explained them to me, pointing to each thing formed so carefully by brush stroke. It didn\u2019t seem possible that such a land could exist.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere is Venice?\u201d I later asked my mother as we followed the foot trail, checking our traps in the woods.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s across the ocean,\u201d she answered.<\/p>\n \u201cHow did you get there?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn a machine that flew in the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n My father and I were in the cabin, boiling drinking water, on the evening when I finally asked about my kingdom\u2019s fate.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happened to Venice?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt flooded,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole thing?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes. It\u2019s underwater now. When the earth got too hot, the ice melted into the ocean, and the oceans got higher,\u201d he said, pouring the bubbling water from the iron pot into a glass jar. It fizzled and cooled with a hiss. \u201cVenice was very low and close to the sea. It was one of the first cities to go.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIs it still underwater now?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cAre you ready for landing,\u201d Sawyer says.<\/p>\n I smile and slice another piece from the apple in my hand, leaning over the railing to watch the trail of the ship under the fading sunlight. After almost three months at sea, we\u2019ll reach what was once was called Venice this evening.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, aren\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n He shrugs.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re really just here to measure the water levels? You\u2019re not even curious about this place?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cVenice, New Orleans, Bangkok. All the sunken cities are the same to me. I can\u2019t even tell the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve heard the stories though?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAbout people living in the clock tower? The church?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe basilica,\u201d I correct.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t get your hopes up.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not hoping for anything.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s long after dark when we anchor just beyond St. Mark\u2019s Square. The pale moon makes it difficult to see what\u2019s left of the city. I think I can make out a tower sticking up from the water, maybe a few roofs, but I can\u2019t be sure. The entire crew has gathered on the deck, hovering around the edges to try and catch a glimpse through the darkness of our awaited destination.<\/p>\n \u201cGet some rest, all of you,\u201d the captain says. \u201cTomorrow morning we\u2019ll send out the first boats.\u201d<\/p>\n The thought of what\u2019s sunken underneath me, all around me, keeps me awake for hours in my bunk. Just before dawn, I rise, pull my woven bag from under my bed, and carry it up to the deck.<\/p>\n [perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The sun is just beginning to pull itself up from water, casting a pink glow over the sky[\/perfectpullquote]<\/p>\n , as I take the hide canvas and handmade paints out from my bag. I perch myself on the ledge of the deck, balancing the canvas on my knees, and gaze at my childhood kingdom.<\/p>\n The ocean has swallowed much of the city, but not all of it. The gentle waves just barely touch the feet of the rooftop statues. They stand in a perfect line like ghosts walking on water. The winged lion has remained untouched, and it rises proudly on its pillar. Further into the square, I can see the pointed roof of the belltower, still green, and the arched domes of the basilica, like rounded islands in the ocean. Everything else is submerged in a blanket of dark blue.<\/p>\n I paint all of this as the sun rises higher in the sky, just like someone else did, long ago in another world, who sold it to my mother in the same square.<\/p>\n When the sunlight hits the water, I can barely make out a black shape, perhaps a lamppost, deep down in the sea. But it\u2019s gone a second later.<\/p>\n I paint it anyway.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My earliest memory is of my mother bathing, in a wooden tub moved in front of the fireplace. Dirty blonde hair pulled up on her head, her pale form outlined in an orange glow, steam rising up from the water and swirling around her face, as though she was some otherworldly sacrifice. I sat on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"My earliest memory is of my mother bathing, in a wooden tub moved in front of the fireplace. Dirty blonde hair pulled up on her head, her pale form outlined in an orange glow, steam rising up from the water and swirling around her face, as though she was some otherworldly sacrifice.\n\nI sat on a woven rug over the floor beams of our one-room cabin, chewing wild mushrooms gathered from the forest outside. My mother stood up with the sound of sloshing water and reached for a piece of old bed sheet hanging on the mantel. On the stone chimney above was the framed painting of a pink sunset in an unfamiliar place. Painted in the middle was a tall figure rising from the ground, its arms held out, glowing boxes where its head and hands should have be. Below the painting, between my mother\u2019s shoulder blades, [perfectpullquote align=\"right\" cite=\"\" link=\"\" color=\"\" class=\"\" size=\"\"]I saw the same figure in black ink[\/perfectpullquote]\n\n.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a lamppost,\u201d she said when I asked. She was dressed then, in hand patched clothes and a tattered shawl around her shoulders, braiding her wet hair. She let me unbutton the back of her dress so I could see it again. I traced my fingers around its lines and curves.\n\n\u201cHow did it get there?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the old world, I had someone paint it with ink under my skin, so it would stay there forever.\u201d\n\nI pointed to the painting.\n\n\u201cYes, Genesis, that\u2019s the same lamppost,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cWhere is that place?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a city very far away called Venice. I vacationed there when I was young.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs that one of your stories?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\nMy parents\u2019 heads were full of these stories. Images forever etched in their minds of a foreign world I had no memory of. They would one particular storie to get me to sleep at night, when I laid restless on a straw-stuffed mattress. [perfectpullquote align=\"left\" cite=\"\" link=\"\" color=\"\" class=\"\" size=\"\"]After years of drought, rain hammered on the roof [\/perfectpullquote]\n\nand leaked through the unpatched holes, accompanied by the sounds of wolves howling deep in the woods, lighting slicing through the sky and thunder claps I could feel in my chest. Nature regaining balance, flexing her muscles. Reminding us she was queen once again. You don\u2019t own me anymore. <\/em>\n\nMy father took another blanket from his shoulders to cover me with, while my mother smoothed my hair from my face.\n\n\u201cIn a world before you were born,\u201d my father would begin, \u201chumans tried to tame nature to their will. They paved over the soil and clogged the skies. They cut down all the trees and killed the animals. There were too many of them, billions of them, and it was too much for the earth to handle. Soon nothing would be able to live on the planet anymore. Everyone was warned--\u201d\n\n\u201cBut some people didn\u2019t believe it,\u201d I said.\n\n\u201cRight, Genesis. Some people didn\u2019t believe it,\u201d my mother said, \u201cso they wouldn\u2019t do anything to change. The earth was hurt, and everyone was going to perish.\u201d\n\n\u201cUntil the sickness came.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, until the sickness came. It killed almost everyone. Only the people with simple blood could survive. Your father and I were some of the few lucky ones. Now we live like this, taking only what we need from the earth, and it will always provide.\u201d\n\nOutside, the wolves were singing again.\n\nAs I grew older, I learned the rest of the story. 2030 was the endpoint, the year of no return<\/em>, as the scientists called it. By 2030, there would be no fixing the climate, and no going back, unless drastic changes were made.\n\n2025 was the year of the sickness. Nothing was changing, the earth was as polluted as ever, the temperatures even hotter, and the air even more clogged.\n\nThen came the doctor. One of the CDC\u2019s most renowned scientists. In a makeshift lab in his basement, he created the disease that would kill ninety three percent of the population. It attacked all antigens in the blood, so that only people with an O negative blood type, about seven percent of the population, were immune. People of \u201csimple blood\u201d as my parents called it. The lucky ones.\n\nThe doctor\u2019s blood was not simple, and he died in the same airport where he released the disease.\n\nMy parents would never say if the doctor was right or wrong.\n\n\u201cWhat happened has happened, Genesis,\u201d my mother said once as we were stringing up our clothes in the late spring breeze. \u201cThere\u2019s no point in debating the ethics of it now. Will you hand me another pin?\u201d\n\nAnd so, like my parents, I accepted my life as it was, living off the land in the cabin at the edge of the woods. We gathered our food from the forest. [perfectpullquote align=\"right\" cite=\"\" link=\"\" color=\"\" class=\"\" size=\"\"]We caught fish from the brook and sewed our clothes by hand.[\/perfectpullquote]\n\nI pulled vegetables from the garden with my father and bundled firewood with my mother. We trapped and skinned what we needed. Everything in our cabin had its purpose, the hides, the rugs, the bathtub, the jars, the fireplace, the shelves, the handmade lock on the door. Everything was about surviving, leading our simple life as those of simple blood.\n\nEverything except for the painting on the stone chimney.\n\nI rarely showed interest in the old world. From what my parents told me, it was destined to fail. A place of greed and destruction and disaster. The planet was moving forward now, and there was no use looking back.\n\nBut there was always something about that lamp post that I could never quite pry from my mind. Something about that place far away where the sun always set pink.\n\nOnce I made my mother take the painting down for me, so I could get a better look. Beyond the lamp post, in the city square, was a building of white pillars and long porticos, carved statues of lost people guarding over it from the roof. A tall pillar stretching to the pink sky with a winged lion on top. Decorated gondolas floated in the water and further off, domed buildings rose from the sea.\n\nI didn\u2019t know any of these words at the time. My mother was the one who explained them to me, pointing to each thing formed so carefully by brush stroke. It didn\u2019t seem possible that such a land could exist.\n\n\u201cWhere is Venice?\u201d I later asked my mother as we followed the foot trail, checking our traps in the woods.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s across the ocean,\u201d she answered.\n\n\u201cHow did you get there?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn a machine that flew in the sky.\u201d\n\nMy father and I were in the cabin, boiling drinking water, on the evening when I finally asked about my kingdom\u2019s fate.\n\n\u201cWhat happened to Venice?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt flooded,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cThe whole thing?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. It\u2019s underwater now. When the earth got too hot, the ice melted into the ocean, and the oceans got higher,\u201d he said, pouring the bubbling water from the iron pot into a glass jar. It fizzled and cooled with a hiss. \u201cVenice was very low and close to the sea. It was one of the first cities to go.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it still underwater now?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\n \n\n\u201cAre you ready for landing,\u201d Sawyer says.\n\nI smile and slice another piece from the apple in my hand, leaning over the railing to watch the trail of the ship under the fading sunlight. After almost three months at sea, we\u2019ll reach what was once was called Venice this evening.\n\n\u201cYes, aren\u2019t you?\u201d\n\nHe shrugs.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re really just here to measure the water levels? You\u2019re not even curious about this place?\u201d\n\n\u201cVenice, New Orleans, Bangkok. All the sunken cities are the same to me. I can\u2019t even tell the difference.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ve heard the stories though?\u201d\n\n\u201cAbout people living in the clock tower? The church?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe basilica,\u201d I correct.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t get your hopes up.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m not hoping for anything.\u201d\n\nIt\u2019s long after dark when we anchor just beyond St. Mark\u2019s Square. The pale moon makes it difficult to see what\u2019s left of the city. I think I can make out a tower sticking up from the water, maybe a few roofs, but I can\u2019t be sure. The entire crew has gathered on the deck, hovering around the edges to try and catch a glimpse through the darkness of our awaited destination.\n\n\u201cGet some rest, all of you,\u201d the captain says. \u201cTomorrow morning we\u2019ll send out the first boats.\u201d\n\nThe thought of what\u2019s sunken underneath me, all around me, keeps me awake for hours in my bunk. Just before dawn, I rise, pull my woven bag from under my bed, and carry it up to the deck.\n\n[perfectpullquote align=\"left\" cite=\"\" link=\"\" color=\"\" class=\"\" size=\"\"]The sun is just beginning to pull itself up from water, casting a pink glow over the sky[\/perfectpullquote]\n\n, as I take the hide canvas and handmade paints out from my bag. I perch myself on the ledge of the deck, balancing the canvas on my knees, and gaze at my childhood kingdom.\n\nThe ocean has swallowed much of the city, but not all of it. The gentle waves just barely touch the feet of the rooftop statues. They stand in a perfect line like ghosts walking on water. The winged lion has remained untouched, and it rises proudly on its pillar. Further into the square, I can see the pointed roof of the belltower, still green, and the arched domes of the basilica, like rounded islands in the ocean. Everything else is submerged in a blanket of dark blue.\n\nI paint all of this as the sun rises higher in the sky, just like someone else did, long ago in another world, who sold it to my mother in the same square.\n\nWhen the sunlight hits the water, I can barely make out a black shape, perhaps a lamppost, deep down in the sea. But it\u2019s gone a second later.\n\nI paint it anyway.\n\n \n\n ","footnotes":""},"categories":[82,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-fiction","category-sunken"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4345"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4554,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4345\/revisions\/4554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}