Clarece Benjamin

Published June 9, 2025

My great grandmother was a great storyteller. She said it’s a trait from her dad, my great great grandfather, who of course I never got a chance to meet, but sounds like an amazing person. 

It kept me wondering how it was to live during their time. I can only ask great granny a few questions a day, as she was always in her oxygen mask. 

Frankly, I’d like my great, great, great grandchildren to have a peak of how I lived my life. 

So here goes. To my future grandchild…children?

Here’s a dozen interesting months of 2224:

January 2224.

My brother calls me an introvert.  I prefer to stay inside. Not because I want to all the time, but it’s excruciatingly hot outside. I’d like to spend some time chatting with our neighbor, but I don’t want to reach my carbon emission limit for this month too soon.

Did I mention the humidity? I’d like to do a bit of weed planting.  Weeds are difficult to grow nowadays.Great Granny, I call her GG,  said they used to thrive everywhere. Her grandmother would ask her to pull them out every week. Honestly, I can’t imagine pulling anything out nowadays. Growing anything is almost impossible. 

Today’s ichigo-ichi-e: peaceful and cooler dinner time. It’s a good time for shaved ice.Everyone’s been getting the quick freeze thingy. Ten seconds and you have yourself shaved ice. My favorite flavor’s watermelon. They come in green, pink, and purple these days. GG said they had red and yellow back in the days. Yellow watermelons would have been awesome.

Anyway, I have been doing laundry non stop. The heat made every day a perfect day to air dry the clothes. Better stock up on dry clothes before hailstorms and hurricane season come. 

Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. The fire trees are on fire. Literally, it caught fire the other day. Artificial rain solved the problem but it’s too bad I would not see it in full bloom before scorching summer ends. 

The dragonflies and grasshoppers are out. They’re bigger and scarier this year.  I need a bigger net for the house. GG used to tell me about the red ones being the rarest and most difficult to catch. She would only use her hands to catch them by gripping gently on their wings.But I’d get rashes and fever when I touch them now. It would have been fun, I told GG.

February 2224.

I told GG that it feels like a lot of animals forgot how to be them. Like, birds falling from the sky forgot how to fly. Or snakes no longer want to be in the wilderness, hiding from us. Yesterday,there was a snake in the laundry basket. I think it was that same snake that my brother saw in the car heater. Today, I saw it slither across the living room, to the kitchen, to the bird bath. I guess it’s too hot for Mr. Snake to go back to its home. 

I must get an anti rabies shot for prophylaxis. My dog Chief Chirpa–I got his name from a classic film that GG’s old folks love to watch: Star Wars. I love how they depicted the future considering it was made hundreds of years ago. The dogs are really sweet all year long, except for the next three months. I wonder what makes them tick and mad. It must be the heat, humidity, and the lack of balanced nutrition for their body. 

Then there are these non-stop sounds emitted coming from somewhere. It gets annoying everday. With this, I must change the home and my gadgets’ AI voice to “green meadows by the falls”. I would love to hear how that actually sounds. 

March 2224.

Summer school is here. Everything’s done on the laptop. I have pens and specialty recycled paper gifted by GG’s friends, but I haven’t had a chance to use them. My handwriting’s all fuzzy now. I saw what an umbrella looked like during GG’s time, when she was about my age. They’re made from  cloth-like material, some made from plastic. I’m sure it will burst into flames or melt when I use it now.Hello extreme heat and occasional acid rain.

I love eating rice but the grains are too small these past few months. Cooking one cup of it would not be enough for me. Maybe that’s why the whole neighborhood is losing weight. Corn for the next two months it is. The yellow corn becomes enormous with some help from the “magic” powder and liquids. Our rooftop crops are all turning brown so the corn will have to be in the greenhouse along with the others. We are going to eat jackfruit as a meat substitute for six months since we will be waiting for the hunting season in six months. The fruits in the greenhouse are mostly oddly shaped. The jackfruit spikes have lessened and the color has changed too. I will have to ask my brother to look into the settings again.  

April 2224.

 We went to a restaurant today. It’s newly opened. They called it 2020. Weird though. There was one chair per table. You aren’t allowed to talk to anyone. It made sense when my aunt explained the concept to me. 2020 was the time when a virus left many families to lose their loved ones and disrupted the world. I looked up what the virus did to people. I was so surprised! It’s a common flu nowadays. Wow!

The family’s planning to go on a trip. We would like to visit the Himalayas. Would you believe that they used to be mountains with glacier waters and produce pink salts believed to have additional health benefits? Amazing! Imagine what it felt like living around those areas. 

This month has occasional showers which last three seconds. But it’s enough for pollen from the narra and firetrees to explode. Hello allergies. Sneezing goes non stop. Stock up on rash cream, I tell you. 

May 2224.

More synthetic flowers means more pollen. This means war for my airways. It’s always a good idea to buy several tanks of oxygen. Also lots of asthma and allergy meds, as they run out pretty fast this month. 

I haven’t seen butterflies for many years now. They probably hibernated somewhere cool, cozy and with actual, real flower. My aunt is getting married in two weeks. She has dried flowers for her bouquet. I heard it was a thing some 2000 years ago. Why? When they had fresh flowers. I would love to throw fresh flower petals down the aisle. Smell an actual peony too. Maybe wear a flower tiara. 

June 2224.

Hailstorms. I have heard of the expression “singing in the rain”. I’ve heard it was from a song. I guess I won’t be able to try that in this condition. I’ll end up with bumps. 

July 2224.

Ground shaking. It’s more frequent these days. I’m still figuring out what I would do with my homework, projects, and everything in between because we were asked to do everything manually and with less technological intervention. Question:What do earthquakes and myself have in common? Answer: Aftershocks!

Lettuce would have been good but the neighbor’s vertical farm is a bit slanted this month. Must be because of the earthquake. 

Mosquitoes. Mosquitoes everywhere.I feel like they have gotten better at dodging my electric swatter and repellants. Did they go to a boot camp on dodging? I need more repellent before the month ends. I don’t want to get what Mindy got from the mosquitoes. She almost lost both her legs. Tsk! Tsk!

August 2224.

The Dust. From yellow to all fifty shades of gray. I’ve heard it’s going to get worse next year as they are building another one of those big buildings with huge silos that emit smoke. They said it’s an answer to food shortage. I don’t believe it. I think it’s a playground for rich dudes. I wonder why they always construct it near the waters. You know, fried fish would be delicious for dinner. Only if I’m not worried about having an allergic reaction. Or worse, poisoned. 

GG said something about August being the “ghost month” back in the days of great great grand daddy. I think they kinda predicted that when this year comes a lot of people will turn into ghosts due to starvation. I looked up what this ghost month is. There were many versions but from where I am the version is, it’s the month before the harvest. And so, people have less supply for food, no money, as most of them were farmers, which then made a lot of people hungry. When people are hungry, they do some bad things. For example, stealing, looting or even more serious crimes. Another country believes in feeding the “ghosts” by offering food, putting flowers and lighting up incense to calm them down, so then they won’t give the people a hard time.

So yeah, I think I will have to say, save up and stock food for August, it still is “ghost month” until now. But wait, I feel like it can be a “ghost year” every year. 

September 2224.

My favorite month of the year. I’m celebrating another year of my life. Last year, I got a sand castle kit complete with simulation, and get this! Real sand!It must be great being able to swim and enjoy the water. I have photos of people by the beach from GG’s archives.People rushing to the beaches wear bikinis and get a tan under the sun. I have so many questions. But ultimately, A bikini? Wearing underwear to the beach? Wow! Just wow! No beach is safe for swimming and getting a tan under the sun. Wearing a bikini is like grilling yourself on an open fire. OUCH! But it was amazing I guess!Hmmm…I hope I get a beach simulation kit this year. Where do I get a bikini?

October 2224.

Changing colors.From where I am, we only had two seasons. And then, and then, I think some 20 years ago, all of sudden the temperature dropped extremely. Everyone came out to see what seemed like cotton balls falling from the sky. The neighborhood got excited until after about three days, all of Mrs. Tanfelix’s flowers died. Also the trees started losing their leaves. They started looking like those trees from scary movies. The streets which used to be full of brightly colored shirts became these boring trails of gray, black and dark blue. 

Maybe this is why they also call this season “fall”. I see faces, tears, bodies fall. Who is ever prepared for that?

November 2224.

People are still celebrating Halloween. They dress up like certain characters, but the thing is, in school you won’t win when you’re dressed as a robot or something that’s technologically advanced. The judges always go for something that reminds everyone of the past. Something from 200 years ago gets them all the time. Must be the good memories that they also hear from their old folks.

December 2224.

It’s Christmas month! We are using recycled cups this year. We are pairing it up with some of the branches from the greenhouse. The inspectors are very strict with the 10Rs: Reduce, reuse, refuse, refill, repair, repurpose, regift, rethink, recover, and restore,  especially when they know that big celebrations are at bay. They are thinking of making it 12 this year, adding, realign and revert. 

Last year, the inspector came while we were opening our gifts, we got one citation as she saw a new mug that my brother gifted me. She said we already have too many mugs. That mug was not new at all. My brother had kept it for ten years and eventually forgot about it. He discovered he had it when he was packing for a trip. She rescinded the citation but we still had to pay a fine as we had “too many mugs” at home. Oh well! I guess that’s the last time I’m getting a mug for a gift. 

I hope my short diary will help you paint a picture of the past. Although, I would love to tell you the stories in person. I’ll stock up on lots of oxygen and will save up on my carbon emission as efficiently as I can.