The Wonder Chronicles: 8
Photo: rumpleteaser
This is part of a running series. Read the previous Wonder Chronicle: On Wind
Green: as in new, as in newbie.
Green: as in coveting, as in envy.
Green: as in too much, as in nausea.
Green: as in the wonder of a multifaceted colour.
Green: as in environment, as in trying our best against an increasingly worsening climate crisis.
As in Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, blinked and chickened out of congestion pricing, thus denying our state “a nation-leading role in combating the climate crisis.”
We are experiencing an unusually early and brutal heatwave. A citywide notifications app sent me “Heat preparedness” information yesterday, and today my energy provider wrote to ask people in my neighbourhood to “Please, limit your energy use between 2pm and 10pm to help keep service reliable.”
Congestion pricing would have reduced the number of cars in Midtown and Lower Manhattan and generated $15 billion for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for vital repairs and improvements to the subways and buses, including the zero-emission bus program.
A coalition of environmental groups has condemned Hochul's decision to delay and perhaps kill congestion pricing, which they call "a vital policy ... to reduce congestion, alleviate pollution in overburdened communities, and provide dedicated financial support to public transportation." The groups say that the transportation sector is the source of 28 percent of the state’s climate pollution.
In their own letter to Hochul, leaders of New York area environmental and legal groups reminded her that electrifying the bus fleet was one of the key goals of congestion pricing.
"The MTA's commitment to replacing its diesel and compressed natural gas bus fleets with a 100-percent zero-emissions bus fleet by 2040 represents a significant step toward combating climate change," the letter stated.
Green: as in healing, as in a kiss for your eyes
Green can positively affect thinking, relationships, and physical health, and bring down levels of stress. It relaxes some, motivates others.
I train for 90 minutes three times a week, just a few blocks away from Central Park. I hear its verdant siren calling to me as I change after each session: “Come and soothe your central nervous system which you have just fucked up with deadlifts and Bulgarian split squats, with eyefulls of green.”
I don’t know how the park knows what I do; perhaps the wind whispers to it. Once I step foot in the park, green delivers. It’s as if my eyes–and by extension that fucked up nervous system– have been treated to the most luscious kiss. Much as with merely a picture of the object of love, just looking at pictures of trees–green!-- helps heal mind and body.
Green: as in love fecundity.
Green: as in give the green light to your muse
I often have to hastily record voice notes to myself to catch the stream of ideas that sprinkle my mind like confetti; the trees celebrating the marriage of my ideas.
Green: as in go, as in go find what kisses your eyes.
My goal: that you are found by wonder.
My wish: that you intensely live.
Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrum. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
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