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This is not a post about the apocalypse, but it鈥檚 apocalypse adjacent. Like life right now. My friend Carla recently shared a piece with the headline , and while the piece itself, a meticulously ordinary account of escaping from the NSW fires, was riveting for its relatable scariness, it鈥檚 the headline that keeps flipping around in my brain like a fish on a rock. The banality of apocalypse.

My friend Khristina says she can鈥檛 watch apocalypse shows now because it鈥檚 all too close to home. I鈥檝e always felt this way. I don鈥檛 need to watch The Walking Dead. Mitch McConnell gives me nightmares enough. The news from Australia is apocalypse writ real.

But how to sit next to an apocalypse? How to enjoy breathing unsmoky air? How to write New Year鈥檚 resolutions? How to spend a week at the beach, drinking craft beers in cute cans? It feels callous and unseemly, like when  their programmed tweets minutes after a disaster. But if I follow this line of thinking, it can render me completely immobile. So I started taking piano lessons.

I take piano lessons because I have to think that life will go on. That there is still room, amid the complete depravity of a world that chooses coal over koalas, to do something that exists only for myself for a few hours a week, to concentrate so deeply on something so micro, despite a macro gone berserk. For me, it鈥檚 hope manifest. The world is burning, but I have to hope that we鈥檒l figure it out. And even as I want to focus on ACTION all the time, piano is a way to take time to breathe. It takes me an hour to work out the fingering for just a few measures of Chopin. It takes me a second to curse my musical ineptitude. But if I have to sit next to an apocalypse, I may as well do so with a nocturne at the ready. Or at the very least, the theme song from The Office.

I鈥檓 in South Florida, which has always been apocalypse adjacent, but is even more so now that there鈥檚 an  in the mall. Every time I think this town can鈥檛 get more garish, it surprises me.

In my search for a piano that my family can grow with, I鈥檓 astounded by the range of free pianos available. No one wants a piano anymore. It reminds me of another article with a great headline a few years ago: . No one wants brown armoires, not even the beautiful, solid wood pieces that have lasted generations. We鈥檙e in the particleboard epoch. This is a tangent. But it鈥檚 an apocalypse-adjacent tangent. Thinking about things that last a long time is comforting. Remembering that I鈥檓 a blip in a continuum makes it OK to play piano for an hour. As the world burns. 

THIS WEEK:

What do you do to stay calm and focused amid the relentless stream of koala fire photos? Let me know in the comments! 

COOL STUFF:

Vogue Italia , to avoid the waste of all those travel-heavy photo shoots. Beautiful and inspiring and about time.

Thank you  for this beautiful hilarity:

Thailand started 2020 with a major plastic bag ban so now Thais have made it a trend to put their shoppings in random things & i鈥檓 living for it LMFAO

— sighyum (@sihamese)

Hope you are having a wonderful week!

As always, send me your thoughts, links, suggestions.

Sarah

P.S. I鈥檓 always curious to know what you think. This is my newsletter for the week of January 9, 2020, published in partnership with YES! 麻豆社事件 You can sign up to get Minimum Viable Planet newsletter emailed directly to you at .