downthefallfullpassagain

This short story is the third (and longest, unexpectedly) in a collection of three inspired by my master's thesis research on sea level rise narrative futures in the Venice Lagoon: talk, trust, time. A year or more in the making, I'm going to be publishing weekly installments of the novella that I'm writing in Italian. Titled La Laguna Ancora, ovvero Miel da Cansiglio va a Venesia  (The Lagoon, Still; or, Miel from Cansiglio goes to Venesia), it takes a hydro-punk approach to speculative futures in Venice, imagining the future city as seen by a young traveler from the highlands who must deliver a package to her grandmother, who has recently disappeared after a fire in her building. The world that Miel belongs to is also one of recovering past forms and narratives, and one key source is the 16th century Venetian writer Veronica Franco, whose verses are refashioned for very different ends in this story. The challenge of writing in Italian (with encouragement and early advice ...

New article “NoMOSE: Contested Flood Barriers in Venice, Italy" —>  https://www.environmentandsociety.org/arcadia/nomose-contested-flood-barriers-venice-italy The MOSE panels at dawn, with the Dolomites present in the background. A rare sight captured by resident Paola Juris, who said, “I heard the bora blowing in Venice at 5:30 and knew the barrier would be raised. I imagined that from Lido the mountains would be visible behind MOSE. It was true, and I ran desperately to the vaporetto, making the last trek on foot because there wasn’t an early bus. I went alone through the blackberry brambles and pine trees while the sun was rising. And I guessed correctly, the visibility with that type of wind was perfect. It was two degrees Celsius.” ———  A few months into my research in Venice I got introduced to one of the grandfathers of the NoMOSE campaign, which back in the early 2000s was the main organized voice against massive lagoon engineering. Stefano Micheletti graciously sat...

My friend and colleague remarks to me over dinner that islands make visible what it means, or might mean, to live with limitations. On an island it is not always expected that what you desire is at hand. Here on Terschelling, an island in the Waddenzee, Netherlands, it’s normal to make do with what you have. Island-ness, I say, is the embodiment of salvage culture. When you use a broken ship’s mast as the topline for your humble roof, you are solarpunking it with the sea. We go to speak with an islander who leads school groups to pick up trash on the northern beach. Under his knit cap and mustache he has a character deeply attuned to plastics and pollutants, and he is adamant that these represent the largest threats to humans and nonhumans alike. We are standing 150 km down along the coastal current from Rotterdam and just a few kilometers from a major shipping lane where cargo routinely gets tipped overboard. Terschelling, he says, is a place where ‘international rubbish’ washes up: ‘...

Huge thanks to the journal SHIMA for picking up and publishing my first article, adapted from my masters’ thesis work on labor issues and climate adaptation in Venice, Italy.  I went into this research expecting to work on a small conflict between workers and citizen-activists. What ended up in the article was instead something much bigger: workers telling me, in recorded interviews but also in off-the-record hints and implications, that the Italian state is robbing them of their future. The one thing that I wish everyone in Venice takes away from this article is how strongly the lagoon features in the future imaginary of those who work with or on the water. MOSE workers mix their own fates with the fate of the lagoon, often telling me that a non-responsive government will make the lagoon, and their jobs too, disappear. Sea-level rise is not just a technical issue for these technicians. They are among the first, in Venice, to feel the enclosure effects that a rigid project like MOS...

I’m very excited. My friend Brianna Cunliffe and I are beginning to lay the groundwork for a soft open on a micro publishing house based in Durham, New Hampshire. We will be publishing essays and anthologies on transformative futures, starting from the local and regional levels. Taking inspiration from Elizabeth Rush’s Rising , we are calling our venture Flooded Pine Press . This idea was born the day after the 2024 election. I was reeling in my apartment in Venice, having cast my absentee ballot weeks before. That day I had plans to meet my dear friend Matilda, who was in town from Helsinki, and she invited me to walk the Ponte della Libertà (Freedom Bridge, an apt name for the day of mourning) that connects the mainland to Venice. The sunny distance, with cars and trains swooping past us for all three miles of our walk over open lagoon, was ritualistic for me. Helped to focus on what’s important, what was to come, in great company. We were later lounging in the sun on Campo San Lore...

If I were the Earth asleep Laying down my mountain ridge Wanting hard to bury deep In the folds of ground-old age What do I do when stirring At the people who poke me Climb all over conferring Dig their pincers in slowly I turn over and grumble Grouse and groan I get angry Slapping out in my slumber At specks on these seabed sheets Only then do I really shout Oh my god have you no shame My rage clouds my blood gets hot Stop it — I am trying to dream Durham, New Hampshire — October 12 2024