Wednesday, August 8, 2007

The stagger in heat and misplaced aggression of wind

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world

Today is a puddle, muy grande, my face. Say you like it like this and the slapping will commence. I've been living for the summer with no fans and no conditioned air in my home. You may call that obscene, but the occupation of sweating is a good one.

There seems to be a cycle of talk about sustainability among people I know and respect. I can address some things but fail at many...the global economy is cloaked in oil--this affects the cost of production of just about any consumer good--as almost all things need to be transported and produced. The relation of the cost of transport to the cost at the shop may not be one that's always figured in, but it's there and it alters the price of the goods we buy--from food to flat screen tv's. And what's most important to the issue of sustainability, straight away, (and convincing people that convenience isn't always the best option) is cost. The benefits of altering our means of production and consumption may not seem readily accessible to most folk. Hell, it's more money. Look Ma, my pockets are thin. It's less choice. Where'd that mango come from anyway? We'd have to change a bunch of shit in order to make it happen. You mean I can't grab some hormone-injected, cornfed chickin anymore? Nobody likes change. Especially if it means that people will be less reliant on the larger distributors of goods and services, since this will undercut company-wide earnings and throw a wrench straight at the market's ballooning numbers. Oh and where's my retirement going to come from then? And there's really no good way to switch up our energy sources (or our farming methods and means of obtaining food) if the right people aren't concerned with doing this because it's way more fun to swim in money and burn it afterwards.

I know there's a lot of legislation leaning toward greener energy but I know very little about that legislation. I do know that if we continue to rely on non-renewable resources, eventually they run out. That's their story and they're sticking to it. Ah, but it's not close to happening, right? Even though it may not be in our particular lifetime (though it may well be)--this collective stick-to-it-iveness and shrug of non-concern will widen the gap in the distribution of wealth, and quite possibly lead to an utter economic collapse. (Secretly, sometimes I hope for this but don't really know what in hell I'd do if it happened--I can't make fire with my hands and eventually all the lighters would run out...) Why do people keep waiting? Good ol' TJ with the help of a few friends came up with this: "all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed." And suffer we have and will continue to: complacency, pharmaceuticals (those fricking confusing Cialis commercials--what do 2 people do in separate tubs outside with no plumbing?), convenience, disgust, war, iniquity...

It's like there's a building burning above us--or better yet, like the whole damn sky's on fire and we're all walking around saying, "Will you look at that, huh?" Oh, chickin little, I'm not generally an alarmist and I'm lazy as the day is hot and long (especially this one), but something's got to give here and I don't want it to be the future. Our future. The future of the neighbor kids and possibly your own. I know that there's no more or less matter on this planet than when it was first globbed together and when we're all fouled up and gone it's still going to be spinning until it explodes but I've got a mind that lets me know it's alright to be alive most days and don't want the people from the future to look back and hate what they have because of us. I mean didn't you all see Terminator? Gawd!

And my prattling has gotten nowhere. Time to go wash my clothes in the river.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could sustain the ideals we carry instead of tarnishing them with counterproductive actions? O, Laundromat, sing me a clean song. One that means OK is better than OK.

5 comments:

Kristi Maxwell said...

O, Lawn-dried mat, sing the saw a wooden song.


Neither do we have a/c.

But two fans.


& sweat. Much of it, and slick. And ick & stick to all things.

I wish I didn't feel a NEED for a/c. It was a want, but then 100 hit inside the house & hitched my pores to drench.

tmancus said...

Sing the wood a song of sawing. It's f-n hot. Though not as hot as there hot. You make good sounds as usual. I had to go back and edit this since I'm a sloppy sentence maker. Damn fool I am.

Fool sitting in a puddle of sweatpool.

Anonymous said...

nice rant man

-bethlehem

yonderincarp said...

Lifting a glass darkly, a nod to your words.

Global issues. That is the crazy thing. The oil crisis would hardly be an oil crisis if China weren't 'emerging'. Not to mention India rising in the wings. But how can you argue with 1.8 billion people who watched their siblings die from malnutrition and who now have an opportunity to live in the big city, to buy hip jeans with money they made making the stuff you buy.

I don't know, man. You pull on a thread and it just keeps pulling back. Sure rich people try to stay rich and get richer, and it is not too hard when you can get money just for having money. But I like making a living making $20 million homes, so I can't really complain too loudly about rich people living in $20 million homes. But the rich folk aren't the ones building the massive demand for cheap goods. They have money to buy the nice crap.

The one that I have been wrestling with is the issue of los illegales. On the one hand have met a lot of sweet folk out here on the Left Coast, good hardworking Latin American folk who are just trying to make a better life. Really most I've met don't want to stay. They just want to work and then go home. But the crazy thing is that these wonderful people aren't doing jobs 'nobody else would do'. They have all the construction jobs out here that would demand good solid wages if there weren't illegales who you can pay nothing an hour to do the same work. So American homeowners get their houses cheaper, but it is hard to find work between $10 an hour retail and $100,000 a year doing whatever the hell people do around here to make $100,000 a year.

Pardon my rant...

I guess for what it is worth I find myself looking at these things through two eyes:

One eye says these are complex issues, that will probably never be solved completely, but that real solutions will have low centers of gravity, and the world will keep turning one way or the other.

The other eye reads...
'All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they are strangers and exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.'

(There, I have seen your rant, and raised you one rant.)

tmancus said...

yeah, the immigration business is a tricky one. i don't rightly have the head capacity to try to address that coherently right now. not that i address much coherently, or dress coherently, for that matter. hmm.

one thing though--while it's not the rich folk who lead the drive towards cheap goods, it is the wage gap that is forcing people to make decisions to buy cheaply and the lovely wanting that is wired into our tubes and our radios and our neighborhoods.

so while the wealthy aren't to blame wholly, the cycle of distribution that keeps them the above class definitely contributes. kids on the upper east side can have their locally grown goods and their $15 a pound ground beef and the kids in the bronx can eat their $.79 canned beans. i dunno though. you pull on one thread and 75 other threads come loose and the whole weaved thing looks more like a series of holes than a fabric.

i think this country is astounding and i want it to be more, but maybe you're right, maybe it doesn't happen here...