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The Web That Has a Weaver: Writing Personal and Science Narratives During Ecocollapse

I came up with the title The Mourner’s Bestiary years before I knew how to write it. It was a decade ago, when I worked as a freelance blogger for Tikkun Daily and could send them an essay every month about whatever topic I liked in the realm of the environment and spirituality, animals, parenting, and my feelings about the age of ecocollapse. I was a young mother with an incurable genetic kidney disease and the daughter of a woman working at the front lines in the EPA. 

(4 Lessons Learned Writing a Braided Narrative.)

I was traveling with my kid at the time, sitting next to a tidepool on an island in the Gulf of Maine, the planet’s fastest-warming marine ecosystem, and watching them play with periwinkles, loving the place without being aware of the danger it was in, and I thought, I’m writing a bestiary, a book about animals that is about their loss, their symbolism, and the science of what is happening to them. The story of my family, my body, and my life was an absolute afterthought, and it remained so for the 10 years it took me to complete my research and learn what kind of book The Mourner’s Bestiary had to be.

I was born into a family with Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) that had killed almost everyone before the age of 50. I was diagnosed with the disease at the age of 22. Like my family, I was terrified to be public about PKD for a very long time. We’d suffered the discrimination and the losses common to the disabled and chronically ill, the loss of work, relationships, health insurance, life insurance. 

Instead, I made art that leaned into science and landscape, a gift of my training at the feet of my scientist mother. And then, after I came up with the title to the book, I had an accident related to my illness, on that same island, from which it was difficult to recover without help. My friends organized a fundraiser. Finally, my PKD was public, my story felt urgent, and it was impossible to spin a narrative web without weaving in that part of the story.

I began weaving it more openly. I wrote the essay “Becoming Ocean,” a meditation on living with an incurable disease, the lessons I’d taken from generations of my family, how those lessons could help us all live with climate collapse. That essay became the short film Becoming Ocean which toured national and international film festivals. My story resonated with those audiences and what had felt private, dangerous, shameful, became a bridge to their stories, a way to talk about everyone’s fear of the worst things in their bodies or in the places they lived in and loved.

From that moment on, it was clear that this kind of weaving was essential for me; understanding exactly how to do that was a different matter. It took so long to write this book because it is time consuming to understand a complex story, tell a complex story, sell a complex story. When I first pitched it to agents and editors, the writing was praised, the urgency of the message was acknowledged, but the plan to weave my story with the story of the ecosystem gave everyone pause.

My illness is not an environmental illness. It isn’t exacerbated or cured by the ecosystems or animals I write about. I simply exist, living with a deadly illness, on the shores of oceans at risk, loving those threatened ecosystems. Asking the reader to see the connections between those things requires changing how we write about collapse. It is the most important thing we can communicate as writers in this moment: The web is real, we are all connected, no story is removed from environmental collapse any longer.

It is essential to make the connection between vulnerable bodies and vulnerable ecosystems; we are all linked, it is all linked. If we are open to it, we can find the evidence of those links in language, poetry, symbolism, personal narrative, personal obsessions, and science. Our revelation of the evidence as artists can help move our readers forward. Finding that evidence requires patience and serendipity, sometimes in short supply if we worry about what will sell, catch fire, go viral, or resonate with a population of readers maxed out on stories of disasters both personal and environmental.

When I understood at last that my job was to weave this web, I dove deep into the science and histories of the places I was writing about. Working outside of institutions, I joined my university alumni association for research access, used connections to interview people at the sources of the stories. I spoke with a right whale researcher about the population crisis in the species, and in that single conversation, I began to see that the extinction threat he talked about was another strand on the web that connected to the way my family understood our 150-year relationship to our extinction. 


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I researched the red tides from my childhood and realized that estuaries like the Sound operate like kidneys filtering toxins, and red tides another thread in the web connecting to the poetics of kidney failure. I found connective tissue that led from the legislation that protects kidney patients—giving them what has been referred to as America’s socialized medicine for a single organ—and its passage within the same set of legislative innovations that brought us the Clean Air and Clean Water acts and gave birth to the EPA. In the decade after the passage of these laws, my father would benefit from protected access to dialysis and transplantation and my mother would go back to school to support our family, eventually working for the Massachusetts state EPA. My narrative and these facts were inseparable.

I’d touch one strand of the web and the whole thing vibrated. And when it did, even if the vibration was more lyrical than scientific or historical, I followed the science deeper, learned about myself as I learned about fish and water. The web shaped my narrative, it resonated with the way my neurodivergent brain worked, sometimes referred to as spiderweb thinking. It changed how I understood our family story. 

I saw the connections between what was happening to us and what was happening to the ecosystems we loved. It changed my book. It changed how I thought of what it takes to live through collapse. It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t taken the time, prioritized complexity, done the research, and trusted that the story I wanted to tell was essential, even if it was hard to sell. The lyricism, the idiosyncrasy, was a truth as well, and a thread that could lead the reader back to the central story I was revealing.

I tell students to follow what they can’t let go, to write the weird thing, to allow their minds to stretch out, to get so wildly specific that no one else could tell the story. I am obsessed with fish. I love to swim. I grew up on the Atlantic. My parents were bohemians. I made record albums. I have a disease that is killing me. 

These things shouldn’t go together in a narrative of a life, but they must. They shouldn’t make for a compelling book, but they do. The science matters, the research enlarges what you know, your story shapes and is shaped by the dynamics of a complex planet whose story is also yours. Weaving the web requires your confidence and curiosity—and the world’s great need for your unique perspective—guide you towards the truths that, once reached, seem inevitable. 

Check out Eiren Caffall’s The Mourner’s Bestiary here:

Bookshop | Amazon

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45 thoughts on “The Web That Has a Weaver: Writing Personal and Science Narratives During Ecocollapse”

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  • 2022年10月9日、三重県・ 18 January 2022.

    2022年1月19日閲覧。 『「〜たり〜たり」』 – NHK放送文化研究所、2017年8月20日閲覧。昭和24年国立国語研究所が福島県白河市を調査した際、東北方言と標準語の中間のような言葉を話す人々がいることが分かり、この言葉なら全国共通に理解しあえるとのことから、国立国語研究所がこれを「全国共通語」略して「共通語」と名付けた梅中伸介 (2005年10月6日).
    “そもそも日本語の「共通語」ってどうやってできたの?

  • 第一次世界大戦前後にはルノー FT-17 軽戦車などの戦車や装甲車、トラックなどの軍用車両や、飛行機および航空用エンジン、さらには小型船の開発・ レースウィーク中に雨などのトラブルにより走行周回が稼げない場合、決勝の序盤20周前後に予めオフィシャルより提示されるコーション。連結決算・必要な計算は自動で行ってくれるため、計算ミスや入力ミスを軽減できます。

  • 京都 – 甲府間「クリスタルライナー」を開設。枝野幸男経済産業相は東京電力が申請をした家庭向け電気料金の値上げを認可した。 しかし、明治になると、東海道本線が引かれた際に名古屋駅が設置され、戦前から商工業地域として栄えた。名駅エリアを除いて、区内全域が名古屋市内きっての典型的な下町地域となっており、戦前からの住宅街でもあるがゆえ現在でも下町情緒溢れる街並みを残している。 みずほ銀行 – 名古屋駅前・

  • 中部電力株式会社 (2015年4月1日). 2016年5月25日閲覧。 NPR.

    2014年11月1日閲覧。 2013年8月7日閲覧。中部電力 (2013年7月31日).
    2016年5月25日閲覧。 “中部電力、カルテル処分不服で提訴へ 課徴金275億円”.中部電力株式会社
    (2014年1月30日). 2014年2月15日閲覧。 このように、（19世紀末から20世紀初頭におけるアメリカの）生命保険会社は、商業銀行、信託銀行、個人銀行業者と同じ活動を行っている。、会津銀行、白河瀬谷銀行が合併して、新たに福島県郡山市に株式会社東邦銀行を設立。

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  • ホワイトホース→水上飛行機でレイク・長根方面）からの交通流入数がピークを迎え、日曜日の慢性的な交通渋滞の解消を、行政、経済界はじめ各界が対応に迫られ、官民の郊外移転、郊外開発が一層進められた時期でもある。積み上がった借金が原因で日本国債が信認を失い、政府の資金調達が困難になり、金利が暴騰し、経済や国民生活が大打撃を受ける可能性を指摘した。

  • 京王電鉄）が南口の甲州街道上に、1923年（大正12年）には帝国電灯西武軌道線（のちの都電杉並線）が東口に、1927年（昭和2年）には小田原急行鉄道（現・ これと前後して私鉄の乗り入れも相次ぎ、1915年（大正4年）に京王電気軌道（現・

  • 2004年の司会は「前回トーナメントで優勝したから、ネタ組に昇格」を毎回強調しているが、必ずしも優勝してすぐにネタ組に昇格とは限らず、数年経過してから満を持してネタ組出場となる芸人も少なからずいる。銀色と藍色をおもな基調とした配色にウエストのリボンなど黒の挿し色が入る、スカートの部分は前から後ろにかけて徐々に長くなっているトレーンタイプ。髪は暗い紫色から、淡い藤色のロングヘアーとなり、前髪の左側が三日月のように逆立った特徴的な髪型を持っており、頂頭部の左側に青いバラの花飾りを付けている。 ダークブレスレットによって強化されたデザトリアンや三幹部を単独で圧倒し、ダークプリキュアとも互角に渡り合うなど、前出の3人をしのぐ戦闘能力を備えている。

  • 福島県南酒販株式会社が運営している。
    セラーズ 北海道酒類販売株式会社のグループであるプライムハンズが展開しているチェーン。大規模コンビニエンスストア部門は「株式会社デイリーヤマザキ」が運営していたが、2013年7月1日に法人統合により山崎製パンの直営部門となった。 1996年から2014年まで、およそ年1本のペースで約1時間のスペシャルドラマを自社制作（2005年までと2008年はテレビ朝日系列の全国放送）しており、中でも2000年放送の『ひかりのまち』はギャラクシー賞奨励賞や日本民間放送連盟賞優秀賞などを受賞。 “アジア諸国、守りの利上げ インドもインドネシアも景気より通貨下落防止”.

  • 光熱費などの圧縮や、店内の隅々まで店員の目が行き届きやすくなるといった商品管理・ “南ア：1-3月ＧＤＰは9年ぶり大幅縮小、鉱業生産減少”.
    “ドル指数が一時年初来高値、米雇用統計は軟調＝ＮＹ市場”.

    “円高で製造業6期ぶり減益、設備投資支える半導体装置＝法人統計”.

    だが、企業が基礎研究に投資することは必ずしも利益をもたらさない。

  • “麻薬中毒者のリハビリ施設を武装集団が襲撃、14人死亡 メキシコ”.
    3月には、自衛隊施設部隊を東チモールのPKOへ派遣する予定です。 “タイ南部 道路脇の爆弾が爆発 兵士ら１０人死傷 テロか”.
    “イエメン武装勢力が弾道ミサイル発射、サウジ軍が迎撃”.
    “ロヒンギャ救援の赤十字トラックが事故、9人死亡”.
    “リビア沖で移民船難破、8人死亡 約90人不明”.
    “エチオピアで民族間の衝突、数百人死亡 避難者も数万人か”.商法五百二十六条などに基づく欠陥商品の契約解除、代替品の請求。

  • 流出したのは10世帯28人分の氏名、住所、電話番号、年齢、性別、生年月日、続柄、収入、障害の有無、連帯保証人12人分の氏名、住所、電話番号、生年月日、入居者との続柄対応記録、入居者の関係者15名分の情報の合計55人分の個人情報。

  • ムバーラク大統領の辞任を発表し権限を軍最高評議会に委譲（詳細は「エジプト革命 (2011年)」を参照）。 チュニジアで、失業と食料インフレに抗議するデモ隊が、前日から治安部隊と衝突し、この日までに14人以上が死亡。 プラデーシュ州ではホームレス80人以上が死亡。 また、価格弾性値については、今回の値上げによりどのくらいの価格弾性値を見込んでいるのか、前回との比較も含めて教えてください。 また、この地震によって東日本大震災が引き起こされた。東日本大震災の前震とされる。 アジアの貧困を、共産勢力のアジアへの浸透を促す、アジア情勢最大の不安定要因であると見なしており、日本の安全保障の観点からもアジアの貧困問題に対する対処が必要であると考えていた。

  • テラスウォークは市街地に在るので店舗・ 10月1日 箱根地区の事業各社を統括する持株会社小田急箱根ホールディングス発足。地方でも上演され、上演を重ねた。 および、特急列車の座席番号方式変更。同時に東日本旅客鉄道（JR東日本）などが発行するICカード乗車券Suicaと相互利用を開始。同日、「小田急東京メトロパス」発売開始。

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