I'm Italy Mola, and this is the slowdown.

Once when I was visiting a college in New Jersey, a student asked me what the question was

that I always returned to, and I said, how do we live?

And I think he was taken aback, but I mean, how do we live knowing all that we know?

How do we live with mortality, with the climate crisis, with the end of all things?

I'm not being facetious.

I literally asked myself this daily, do we surrender and give up and just crumble into

a heaving mass of nothingness, or, and you see where I'm going with this, or do we find

pleasure in this overwhelming world, that in its looming end is also wondrous and breath-taking

and full of so much beauty it can bring you to your knees.

I'm on the side of that ore, that yes and moment, yes, the world is rough, and I choose

to live in it with all my brokenness and sweetness, mingling in this surreal and very real present

moment.

I was talking to a friend the other day and he said, which apocalypse?

And we laughed and it felt true.

There are so many endings, so many reasons to glue yourself and fatically to what's good

in this world.

Today's poem is an ecstatic poem, which is a term that commonly means a poem that describes

a work of art or imagines meaning behind a work of art.

In this poem, we see two influences.

One is the work of Sonia Sanchez Audius, a sculpture she called Dorian Gray, because it's

a gown made entirely out of recycled plastics left over from Hurricane Dorian.

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