On The Weather (or What We Talk About When We Have Nothing Else to Say)
A Summary, Forecast, and Film/Book Recommendations
Sometimes the weather is the only thing left you have to talk about. You know, those awkward moments when you wonder if you’re just having a slow day upstairs or if you lost interest in the moment before you had time to notice. Maybe its both, but we’ve all been there - having to resort to the way too obvious. “It’s pretty cold out, eh?” or “This heat…”
Together or alone, you’re defeated by the end of something. Instead of wading into the interstitial silence, you refuse it. You utilize the clearest common denominator - the weather - to keep this conversation on life support. We’ve all been there. We recognize it as defeat, as the tragicomedy that confesses, “I got nothing else.”
And so in a time of defeat, of defeatism and the denial and distraction and delirium that seems to accompany the former, we might properly start with the weather, instead of ending with it. For some, it seems, there is no other option.
In the place where I live, we’re floating somewhere towards the end of what might be called “a rainy season,” one that usually ends in mid-October or thereabouts. And yet, it’s been almost a month since any significant water fell from the sky. Even in a place that environmental experts say sits in a decades-long drought, this is not normal. Whatever that is.
The harvests of hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers are imperiled, if not ruined. Official reports reveal that the urban aquifiers are about to collapse, that they’ve got about a third of the required water on hand. All the while, the region gears up for the annual spectacle in which a million people descend upon it seemingly overnight, trash the place, and then leave. This is normal (or at least, it’s become that way).
Without waxing apocalyptic, I try to consider certain fates. If there is one less month of rain a year, what if we came upon a time without any of the sky-soaked kisses fertilizing the land? What if the fires and the droughts are how this era surrenders (or is forced to)?
I wonder, if our willingness to use the weather as an ice-breaker, as the last resort in our conversation, as a sign of defeat and our concurrent denial is what’s got us here, however proverbial and impertinent it may sound. It goes from being the easiest thing to talk about to the most difficult. It goes from being the last topic to arise to the first and, in some cases, the only point of discussion.
And maybe it doesn’t have to be flippant or lamenting, that talk. Maybe it could be generative, inquisitive, mandatory, finding ways to reflect on the signs of our times. Most days, in response to my own thoughts, I’m defeated. I got nothing. And yet, some strange prerogative remains. Some fated trajectory makes itself known. A vow to life, to depth, to how it all could be (and sometimes is).
The forecast, as far as I can guess it, includes a slowing down, a tender turning, letting my leaves have their vibrance pulled back down into the roots. It’s been two years of non-stop podcasting, writing, and other parallel projects on this end. I’m grateful for each of you who have supported in the ways that you have.
Summary & Forecast
Season 4 of The End of Tourism Podcast, entitled “Europe” has concluded. It was short and sweet, and there will be a return to those lands, one day. Thank you to Petra Reski (Venice), the team at Stop Despejos (Lisbon), Nick Hunt (Bristol), Barbara from No Name Kitchen (the Balkans), Penny Travlou (Athens), and Macia Blasquez (Palma) for participating and deepening our understanding of the ongoing issues in Europe.
Over the course of the summer, I was also interviewed by Bianca from The Altruistic Traveler Podcast, Stefanie from Sustainable Minimalists, and Amanda from The Thoughtful Travel Podcast. You can listen to those conversations in full, here.
For the rest of the year, I’ll be recording Season 5 of the pod, with some amazing guests speaking to themes such as the Instagram gaze, the unseen consequences of migration, orphanage tourism, walking/pilgrimage in Scotland, reimagining education, radical hospitality, a return to Hawai’i in the wake of the fires, and much more. If you have someone in mind who you’d like to see as a guest on the next season of the pod, please let me know!
I’ll also be dancing my pen through various manuscript revisions, new essays, poetry, research, and of course, Substack offerings (the next of Quixote’s Media Meditations drops next week). I’m looking forward to a couple of courses involving writing and storytelling that will be the basis for a 2-3 hour oral story offering. All of this is made possible as a result of your gifts and donations, your willingness to read and share my writing and listen to the pod. A deep bow to each of you.
Recommendations
Lastly, I try to spend as much of my free time at home reading, and when that fails the occasional film. Here are the stories and shows that have visited themselves upon me recently in a good way, those that I’d like to offer you as recommendations:
Mural by Marhmoud Darwish
Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic
War and the Illiad by Simone Weil & Rachel Bespaloff
Indigenous Healing by Rupert Ross
Why Wellness Sells by Colleen Derkatch
The Critique of the Image is the Defense of the Imagination ed. by Peter Lamborn Wilson
Film: They Cloned Tyrone (2023)
Documentary: Human Flow (2017)
May the weather of our times not be a stranger to you. Still, may it be strange.
Sincerely,
Chris Christou