Stories and News No.1252
The photo of six giraffes dying of thirst in Kenya due to drought went viral within days.
So, I am working on this:
Attempts for a piece to raise awareness about climate change and, above all, the need to modify your lifestyle wherever you are, knowing that the problem is global and we are all accountable with every choice we make everyday, who we vote, what we buy, what we eat or how we travel, what we consume, everything we spread in nature, etc.
First: recursive prose that should strike for accretion.
Six.
Six giraffes.
Six dead giraffes.
Six dead giraffes in Kenya.
Six giraffes died in Kenya from drought.
Six giraffes died in Kenya from drought caused by global warming.
Six giraffes died in Kenya from drought caused by global warming, in turn caused by humanity.
Six giraffes died in Kenya from drought caused by global warming, in turn caused by humanity - including myself and you who read.
Six giraffes died in Kenya from drought caused by global warming, in turn caused by humanity - including myself and you who read, not to mention more than two million of our kind who are disappearing from hunger and thirst in the same country.
And I wonder: the photo in the first place, this piece or any other shared contribution on the subject these days, will push even just one of those guys who go around with their SUV around our cities, occupying streets and future of our children, to change once and for all way of transport?
Second: provocative thought to arouse a personal questioning.
Okay, you saw the photo with the dead giraffes and also thanks to the suggestive composition of the corpses you were moved. So, for an inertial mechanism completely devoid of lucidity, your image detector with a high probability of getting you likes, hearts, shares and subscribers – with your sincere empathy towards the poor animals or not, leads you to share it instantly.
One minute... what am I saying? A second later you move on to something else of a very different tenor. A particularly successful meme, the video with the usual prepared quarrel in a talk show where everyone talks and no one listens, another clip with a dude who has fun with a video game, or you watch and he earns, and resume with the daily web slot machine. But what if the six giraffes were alive? If they told you that those animals are still with us and that their survival depends on you and me, and everyone in the world who will decide once and for all to make a radical change in their life?
And I also wonder: this latest version will induce the reader to decrease the consumption of meat, to name one among many causes of global warming, or even to eliminate it altogether?
Third: the usual fairy tale with a hopefully incisive ending.
Once upon a time there were six dead giraffes.
Inside each one there were hidden six children, six friends, six obstinate seekers of possible tomorrow, reachable the day after tomorrow, and so on, hopefully living.
Six creatures alive and well, thirsty and hungry for attention and solidarity, as well as water and food.
The plan had been simple and daring at the same time: "Let's all hide in the wombs of long-necked queens," proposed the most imaginative kid, "so they will photograph and see us all over the world."
"But there will be a bad smell in there," complained the second.
"You're crazy? The predators will come and eat us with them!" the third feared.
"And before that we will die anyway, because there is no air in the bellies of the giraffes, everyone knows," explained the fourth.
"Indeed, we will be digested by the queens," ruled the fifth. "Because their stomach is the last to die, and everyone knows this too."
The sixth child, or the first, the one with the imagination without walls, did not get upset and said: "Everything you say could happen and even worse, but if we are lucky, strong and smart, that is what kept us alive until today, when it will begin to travel to homes and cities all over the planet, we will suddenly jump out of the photo and find all the water and food that the people who watch and destroy have stolen from us."
Fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh attempt... until the last breath, asking myself the same question every time in different forms: these words will serve to remove even just an ounce of dullness from the scale plate that is falling lower and lower, pushing the other so high that it will melt in the sun like Icarus' wings?