The Great Transition Cento
A Cento After Nick Fuller Googins' Climate Fiction Novel "The Great Transition"
This poem is compiled from lines from Nick Fuller Googins’ clifi (climate fiction) novel “The Great Transition.” I wrote a review for the book here. And you should get a copy, whether from your library or local bookstore, so we can bookclub together about it.
The Great Transition Cento
We should be in love and never stop fighting to make the world a better place. Our biology pushes us to be with others, to help and to care. That’s why it’s so easy to fall in love. Cooperation. That’s life’s success story. Not competition. The problem with the future is that it cannot happen the way I need it to happen. It’s time to be a person who does nothing, or it’s time to be a person who does something. Things might hopefully work out. But things don’t work out on their own. You have to make things happen. That’s the thing about working together. I’m telling you my dude, helping is the only thing that helps. Be a part of a team. It’s the most human thing we could do. It’s in our DNA. Inside every battery is a piece of a storm, when you think about it. When has power given up anything? You never ask. We demand it. Have you gotten to experience nature? What they call terrorism, I call solidarity with life. THEY are the terrorists. Solidarity. The team of teams, the high of highs. Seize the transition. Make it our own. We are the workers. We do the work. The time has come to save the future we want. For us. How many times does history have to repeat? We neat to wake up and rise up. History’s not a tea party. Every generation feels different from the ones below. I know that. But this distance feels different. Building is what takes work. America had a long history of sending prisoners to fight fires. We were following a tradition What it came down to was saving each other’s butts. There’s nothing better than being part of a cause larger than yourself. Nothing comes close. My body is an ocean of turbines humming, millions of blades spinning in a dizzying blur. Don’t think for a second it’s all parts per million and wind turbines and solar panels. History is not just facts and dates and people, it’s suffering. It’s war between the powerful-few and the powerless-many, and it never ends. We had all the technologies we needed for a clean transition. “We don’t get to choose which battles we’re born into,” she says. “The only thing we get is to choose what we'll do. Will we join the fight? Or will we turn our backs?”