Transcriber: Anita Campana Reviewer: Amanda Chu
In 2014,
I got married to the love of my life.
It was a simple ceremony.
I wore hand-crocheted white lace,
and he showed up au naturel.
I took him on that day,
for better, for worse,
for lusher and lesser,
in evolution and extinction,
to love and nourish
until death made us one.
He took me in awareness and ignorance,
as presence and in personhood,
as part of and apart from,
to feed and support
until I decayed into his embrace.
My husband and I have been through good times and bad,
endured ghosting and oversharing, separation and therapy,
but somehow we solved
for a healthy state of union that was balanced.
However, I'm getting ahead of my story.
I met him at birth,
but it wasn't until the fourth grade,
when I read the "Trials of Life" trilogy
and watched a lot of Explorer and Captain Planet,
that I got re-introduced to him
in this personal, seductive, descriptive, poetic way.
So, you could say
that Sir David Attemborough, National Geographic and TBS
were my cupid, dating app and match maker.
My love and I brought a lot of personal baggage
when entering the relationship,
as is to be expected.
I brought myopic exes -
consumerism,
pollution,
non-biodegradable trash,
you know, the usual.
He brought mass extinctions,
non-renewable resources,
deadly pathogens and natural disasters.
I mean, nobody is perfect,
and every relationship has its challenges.
Most of my disagreements with him
have been about our age difference.
Ugh!
He's been around a little longer than me.
I won't lie.
My timeline dates back three decades;
he boomed 4.6 billion years ago.
So OK, boomer,
what I lack in years I make up for in life hacks.
(Laughter)
I know what you must be wondering.
Did we miss a meme?
When did Earth become a man?
What happened to goddess Gaia, mother Earth?
Please, there is no way the Earth is feminine -
stay with me.
You must be thinking the Earth is a womb, a cradle, a nurturing fertile myrtle.
But no.
The Earth's true origin story
was all about flatulence, violence and inner turbulence.
I mean,
there were like explosions, acid, dust, open tar pits, geological lava lamps
all over the place.
I mean, if that doesn't spell man cave,
what does?
(Laughter)
(Applause)
So clearly,
the Earth was far too unstable, self-absorbed and self-destructive
to be a woman.
I must confess
that the Earth makes me feel like I am, we are responsible
for all of his erratic behaviors and extreme outbursts.
And now what he tries to pass off,
these conditions and symptoms,
on me, on us,
like it's new to him -
typical male entitlement!
He thinks everything revolves around him -
as if!
(Laughter)
And while I get why seeing the Earth being overlooked, overworked,
exploited, taken for granted and constantly dismissed
could begin to hint at the obvious XX geno-pheno stereotype.
But just consider for a moment
that the majority of his constitution is mental
and he man-spews it all over the place
because he doesn't know how to self-soothe -
mommy issues much? -
(Laughter)
and - note to self - does not perform well under pressure.
I can only hope
that clarifying Earth's gender for you all
will inspire the patriarchy and Wall Street
to finally step up for, respect, and care for one of their own.
(Laughter) (Applause)
So Earth has gotten a bit fussy.
He blames me for my decisions,
which apparently impact his physical health,
like my frequent flyer status gives him acid reflux,
me eating steak causes him to bloat
and when I Amazon Prime, it just gives him gas.
So he's proving to be a pretty high-maintenance partner.
He also pins what my predecessors,
my great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great grandma and grandpa,
have done to him on me.
Talk about holding a grudge.
He blames me for my kind's past choices,
like the Agricultural Revolution.
He was okay with the Stone Age
because we were mostly just feng-shuing rocks.
But he did throw the industrial error and population explosion in my face.
So, too can play that game, Sir.
I blame him for botflies, mosquitoes,
volcanic eruptions, humidity, infectious diseases and death.
That's right.
I hold my own in this connection, like Sally when she met Harry.
(Laughter)
Earth is the original disaster artist.
Step aside, James Franco as Tommy Wiseau.
This year alone,
Earth garnered a lot of press and publicity for losing his cool,
which is raising sea levels, sinking island nations,
destroying beach vacations worldwide
and ruining the real dream of retiring to Florida.
(Laughter)
I'm a city bird, guys, born and raised by vertical buildings and the grid.
It's probably why I love nature so much.
It is so messy and hard to contain,
kind of like my belongings in a studio apartment.
When I met Earth, I was a hardcore New Yorker.
So it's true what they say - opposites do attract.
And he would awaken to the dawn chorus;
my morning alarm
was an orchestra of horns hitting on a double-parked FedEx truck.
But at the end of the day, Earth just gets me.
I get him too.
After all, we were cut from the same cloth,
or the same fabric of space-time,
but let's not split hairs, or strings.
Speaking of space,
Earth and I both have exes who shattered us,
kind of ultimately the great chaos theory there.
So neither of us is doe-eyed
about how difficult a real committed relationship can be,
especially not after listening to SuperSoul Sundays by Oprah.
His previous partner, Theia, nearly destroyed him.
They had to separate and keep at a distance from one another.
I then learned that she changed her name to "the moon,"
and now she's his personal stalker,
constantly orbiting him, changing up his tidal zones!
Consequently, I have to keep a close eye on her.
But Earth gets possessive of me too.
However, I can't blame him.
He's justified.
Guys, don't judge me.
But I did look up Mars, OK?
And I was wondering if he could be cultivated.
Unfortunately, I got caught red-handed.
(Laughter)
When I decided to commit to Earth, all my friends warned me.
They were like, "Girl,
he's got way too many red flags:
climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, plastic pollution."
But I was so keen on being his savior in his darkest hour -
role play much?
I wanted to be the International Monetary Fund
to his developing-nation self.
And that is how you get into a lopsided, unhealthy relationship dynamic.
So, Earth thinks we humans
have been embracing climate change the way we do hot yoga,
while initially,
it feels like we're undergoing both menopause and chemo at once;
over time, we warm up to it.
Especially with the right Spotify playlist,
we adapt to any temperature setting.
But that is just not the case for his wild family.
They need Earth to be a little more stable
than an Ikea table that was put together by a hot glue gun.
(Laughter)
After all, they plan their rations and migrations
around him being as predictable as seasonal depression.
Earth has developed this bizarre nervous tic
called "the butterfly effect" -
way to source responsibility, Hon.
I rent an SUV in Hawaii, and what?
He burns down Australia - to what?
Teach me cause and consequence?
Or maybe to get me to cough up for a Tesla?
I mean, he's got good taste,
I just don't know if I can offer to do right by him all the time.
Also, bit of a dramatic campaign to run in a relationship:
What? I don't vote wisely with my wallet, and he'll just set himself on fire.
His temper tantrums have gotten out of hand,
particularly with the category four hurricanes and tropical cyclones
we've been embracing for of late.
Storms clearly fueled by methane, carbon dioxide
and unchecked ego and testosterone.
Earth has a short fuse - two degrees is all we get.
And even that is to our detriment.
Policymakers,
responding to his ultimatums and tipping points
with denial and hubris,
are basically making Earth the fire festival.
Except instead of a few wealthy hipsters
and during a couple of days of scarcity and loss
that results in a traumatizing yet compelling Netflix documentary,
this is going to result in a global ecological and economic collapse
that affects everyone across the board.
Earth will rebrand the fire festival as a franchise experience
and make crying out for help
as useful as calling Aquafax's customer line.
(Laughter)
The good thing about being involved with Earth
is that I no longer have to self-mutilate.
That means no plucking, waxing, shaving, exfoliating or laser treatments.
Dating men in my own species
means I have to groom myself more frequently
than a chimp trying to ascend social status.
Being with Earth
has meant I can waltz about like a heathen goddess.
I found it so weird
that in order to be attractive to the opposite sex in my species,
I needed to be minus a layer of epidermis
and about 99.8% of my hair,
0.2% of which has to be styled for over an hour
to defy the physics of gravity and maintain volume all night,
using products that should just be called what they are:
hair viagra.
(Laughter)
And maybe that's what traditional Chinese medicine markets need -
more hair products,
or my highly flammable upright quaff,
because that would have the same lack of impact on male virility
as ingesting rhino horn, pangolin scales and fingernails.
Speaking of wildlife trafficking, serious concern of our times,
did you know that we lose an elephant every 15 minutes? -
a number that really came to weigh on me when I was dating men in my own species
because every time I went out to dinner,
I would wonder to myself by the time I got to dessert
if this guy who was sitting across was worth the six elephants.
Invariably, he was not!
Hence, married the planet.
At least, Earth and I share the same love languages:
science and statistics.
And while with my species,
I had to adopt the life hack, shave what you should -
you know, that thing when you wear an outfit and literally shave around it.
Well, with Earth,
when I'm on expedition in his arms,
I can just live up to my true primate potential.
I unconditionally accept Earth too,
in his most untamed, authentic self-expression.
So yes, at his worst,
he can be barbed, prickly, bug infested and venomous.
Yes, a botfly might impregnate my arm
or a wild dolphin might just crap in my face,
but every relationship has its risks.
For a while,
things did get more codependent
because we lost sight of our interdependence.
But Deepak Chopra's 21-day meditations on love
really brought us back into perspective,
and I've got to understand the importance of being whole on your own.
It dawned on me then
that someone who's whole
is self-aware, self-contained and self-evident,
rather like a full bladder.
(Laughter)
There was a time when Earth was as popular as a Kardashian.
And when he was pictured as the Pale Blue Dot,
there was just so much buzz around him.
So Earth was briefly grateful
that as a species, we began to see his significance.
However, we suffer from crippling ADD,
so we got sidelined by selfies, selfie sticks and Bitcoin.
Our relationship with the planet has since devolved
and has tragically become as impersonal as health insurance,
as nonconclusive as a juice cleanse
and as detached as currencies to national commons.
But the time to avoid responsibility is over.
As Tim Gunn's arrival on Project Runway announces,
last-minute panic is upon us,
and whiners, it's time to make it work.
My marriage tragically involves all of you.
And while as his wife, I can have his back,
I've come to see
that where he and we defer the most is when it comes to life.
He seems intent on perpetrating it,
and we seem both suicidal and homicidal as a species.
We don't want to do that easy thing of just coexisting.
We would rather cause the apocalypse
and develop a Silicon Valley patch for that problem,
give it a cool contemporary tech-name like "D-extinction,"
a really expensive solution
that essentially combines anthropocentric arrogance with cloning
and hybridizes that with the plot of Stephen King's Pet Cemetery.
(Laughter)
We push life to the brink; Earth pushes life to think.
We take extinction to the bank; Earth takes evolution up a rank.
I made that Dr. Seuss rap for your lot just so you can get this point.
We are a keystone species,
and if we were intelligent and acted with integrity
to protect our whole self,
that self would come to encompass every species our lives depend on,
from bees to blue whales.
Instead, most of my extended family is at odds with life itself,
like bipedal Ebola,
pushing the planet
to where even asteroids and Cyanobacteria didn't dare to -
to a complete midlife meltdown.
In-laws, no wonder you guys have a bad rap.
Evidently, some members of my Homo sapiens family
act so unintelligently that they make flatworms look upright,
while others of my kind have been meditating so much
that they've become one with the force.
Unfortunately, all of us are bound to the same end,
to the same fate.
So unless the enlightened Jedis in the upper canopy
turned the light on
for the Jabba the Hutt clones slithering down below,
the canopy will get burned or cut down by these nematodes
to make more room for tooting livestock.
Naturally, the burden of these colossal concerns
came to weigh on Earth and I,
and soon we got caught up in the classic toxic triangle.
But unlike the love triangles on Jerry Springer,
it just failed to peak public interest.
I spent a lot of sleepless nights
mulling over a helplessly flailing present
and a difficult failing future marriage,
about as difficult as P90X for a couch potato,
except the Earth is more forgiving than a fitness craze.
That's when I discerned
that it's not about fixing, saving or protecting him;
rather, it was about doing those things for my own self -
healing my own past traumas and dramas -
so I could change and show up as my resolved whole
and trust in his capacity to do the same.
As Albert Einstein suggested,
we cannot solve a problem
with the same mindset and thinking that gave rise to it.
The more I have worked on my own self,
the better my relationship has gotten with Earth.
I now recognized that Earth is complex,
rich in character, chiseled, layered, self-sufficient,
capable of balance and surviving with or without anyone,
even me, his partner.
Earth is George Clooney,
(Laughter)
but his fate and future is not just up to me, his Mrs.
We must each take it upon ourselves to do better.
We must stop fighting for our way of life
and start fighting for life itself.
The time has come to rise above, being a part of the whole,
to being whole within.
Although you see no evidence of this,
try to embody a functional federal government.
Lastly, I should mention
Earth and I would like to have our vows renewed in 18 years
for our first non-precious-metal anniversary.
And I personally would like to definitely not enter the dating loop again.
So would you each evolve your engagement so I can save my marriage?
I get he's my husband,
but no matter how you cut this pie, he's your homeslice.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)