Growing Old in the Anthropocene

Photo by Joshua Lanzarini on Unsplash.com

I awoke last Sunday with a heaviness in my chest. This is not a metaphor. My first conscious sensation was of a subtle yet undeniable weight right where I imagine my heart to be. The sensation was difficult to articulate. Not quite a tightness or pinching, nothing, in fact, that I would describe as in any way painful. This was . . . a weight, as if the fibres in my heart had become denser through the night, or (my mind began to rouse…