Climate Justice Fast

A three day saga

Submitted by Mikayla Irle on Mon, 09/11/2009
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Today is day 4 of the fast. This blog is a bit long, but only because it covers my activity for the past three days. Fear not, reader! Future blogs will be shorter should you finish this one and happen to read later ones.

Last Thursday, I journeyed from my quaint and quiet little college in central New York to the madness and bustle of the Big Apple. It's always a shock to sit for four hours in the muted interior of tin can train and emerge into the chaos of bright, big, loud New York. I power-walked through the city’s dark, hotdog and gyro-scented air from Penn Station to Port Authority, eventually meandering through the mall-like station to the bus I would take to Ted Glick's house in a suburb of New Jersey. Ted (another faster), me, and some of his friends planned to hold a climate justice vigil outside the United Nations building the next day, on Friday the sixth.

 

I arrived and despite the lateness of the hour (nearly midnight), Ted and his wife Jane greeted me warmly and offered me my last meal before the fast: bowtie pasta with spinach and tomato, acorn squash soup, and cold, organic apple juice. (Fantastic!) Ted sat with and told me about his adventures as an activist as I quietly nodded my head in awe between bites of soup. Who would have guessed this mellow man had been tear-gassed four times by the police?

 

The next afternoon we set out for the city and arrived in front of the UN building at two o’ clock, banners and posters in hand. This marked the most awkward and transitional moment of all. The normal street corner was going disinterestedly about its usual business, but we, people with posters and a purpose had come to spread out and disrupt its routine. As the large "ClimateJusticeFast.com" banner unfurled between Jane's and my hands, I was suddenly catapulted from a quiet supporter to a public protester. Fortunately, the lurching, transitional awkwardness vanished quickly as more supporters showed up to hold posters and passing cars honked in support.

 

This was day one. Hunger pangs grated my stomach all day. The cold air gnawed on my toes and fingers until they started going numb from standing in one spot and gripping the posters. But I was in cheerful company and ever-encouraged by the honks of passing cars. It was fun.

 

I stayed the night at Ted’s again and spent the next day killing time. Dry, brown leaves blanketed his massive back lawn in a thick layer, so Ted, Jane, and I spent the morning raking and dragging them away. My arms burned, the same hunger clambered in my gut, and I thought wistfully of the non-shedding, evergreen trees back in Washington. Later, I departed Ted and Jane’s house laden with sincere, warm wishes and returned to the city to meet a group of students from my school who’d come down to New York watch the musical Avenue Q. The show was hilarious, although a bit unsettling. Puppet sex is sort of awkward, but at least they had no lower bodies…

 

The other students and I boarded the bus and arrived back at quaint little Hamilton around two a.m. I dragged myself sleepily to my dorm room and crashed until 8:45 the next morning. Thus, passed day number two.

 

Day number three was the worst. At the sound of my alarm, I stumbled clumsily out of bed and groped my way down the hall to the shower with bleary-eyes. My arms and legs felt so weak! Lifting the shampoo bottle and scrubbing head caused burning sensations in my arm muscles. I usually enjoy showers, but this was tiring! I dried off, pulled on my Sunday best and walked quickly across campus to meet the members of our school Brass Ensemble. We were traveling to a church in Rome, NY to play for the service that morning. The walk was miserable. I’d forcibly swallowed some water before I left and felt nauseous, like I was constantly on the verge of vomiting. The terrible aftertaste of whole food vitamins singed the back of my throat, and my legs felt heavy and useless, seizing and burning as I strode across the grass and pavement. Couldn’t be slow or late.

 

Fortunately, hunger pangs replaced the nauseating symptoms within an hour and a half, and my legs warmed up to moving around. In fact, by the time we were driving back to campus, I felt positively chipper. A soft vibration buzzed suddenly on my thigh and I pulled out my phone to check the text.

 

“Hey Mikayla,” my roommate said. “I wasn’t sure when you were coming back and I put in a loaf of bread to bake. I’m sorry if it bothers you but I couldn’t move it downstairs…”

 

She holds her precious bread maker dear. How could I possibly deny someone as bubbly as my red-headed roommate her gluten-free bread? “No, it’s totally fine. Doesn’t bother me at all. You bake your bread,” I replied, punctuating the statement with a smiley-face. 

 

But good God! As soon as I entered my dorm building, the scent of freshly baked bread wafted down from the second story. I hopped up the stairs towards my room, and ran into her boyfriend as he exited our room with two slices of bread in hand.

 

“Would you like some?” he asked me in his friendly, Romanian accent.”

“I can’t,” I replied with a smile.

“Oh, that’s right,” he said, heading downstairs.

 

Inside my room, the smell of bread saturated the air. Half a loaf of the golden, delicious bread sat in the window sill.  I approached slowly, hovered over it, and lowered my face next to it so the soft, fleshy interior warmed my cheek. I tilted my head towards the loaf ever so slightly and drew in a sudden, raucous breath, taking that bread as close to my stomach as I could. Ahhhh. It was overwhelming. I inhaled its scent over and over, but knew I couldn’t eat it. Maeve would be freaked out if she knew I’d assaulted her bread in this way.

 

It sucks to be hungry. It really does. Why then, am I making myself hungry? Because there are people who don’t have a choice about being hungry, who are hungry now and will continue to be hungry if climate change runs rampant and is allowed to destroy their sources of food and water. They’ll starve to death. It sucks, and this is what it feels like.

 

-Mikayla