Re-making the American Dream

The need to stop acquiring STUFF.  How riches create fences, and fences empires with ever-expanding spheres, like unhealthy, gluttonous waists, which completely coheres w the obesity/diabetic epidemic – we are crashing our pancreas, blowing them out just like the tops off mountains to mine whatever we can find out of them. 

     Mine:  Yup, thar's the problem – the humanity problem.  I had a teacher once, Rhagavan Iyer, who said that the first time man's consciousness separated him from everything else he looked around and his first thought was, 'mine'.

     Imagine the intricacy, the complexity of the bio-habitat, how everything has grown to support each other – the prairie dogs and the soil, the mongoose and the snake, the cactus finding water deep down in the desert, the tiny deer mice and the deer they share the woods with, the flowers upon flowers, the grasses and vines, the fennel chrysales, the caterpillars and butterflies, the bees dancing forward then flying back to their intricate, octagonal hives made of wax and layered with the pollen that accumulates around their legs like Flashdance legwarmers, soft and gold, waiting to be turned into honey, and then the bears who raid them, ignoring a thousand stings just for craving that sweetness -- 
     Sweetness which makes me think of the songbirds dying in the hundreds of thousands from eating the leftover lead lodged in bark, vines, soil and the branches where they raise their young, and then think of the wild turkeys with their hidden nests (and it takes a lot of land to hide a nest!) now seen walking the streets of the Laurel District, clearly having been evicted (Silicon Valley wanted those hidden nests!  They had NEED!) 
     Look up to see the red-tailed hawks, kestrels and eagles, raptors with piercing eyesight circling on thermal waves looking for rabbits, and then the predators that seem to shake nature into balance from the top – bobcats and panthers and coyotes, shot on a daily basis by farmers with cattle humped up on each other, no grass to eat --
     And, on another level entirely, the hundreds and hundreds of years' old trees still growing in copses, birch with its peeling scroll-like bark calling up the idea of paper (which all seemed to begin in scrolls, be it Israel, Egypt or Rome) and pine and the gorgeous, slightly medicinal-smelling (yes we know, we KNOW) non-native eucalyptus that ridge mountain crests, providing shade and nesting sites and nuts for all the foragers – those wild flying (and just nimble) squirrels -- entire forests of them, even, trees and bees and butterflies and squirrels and opposum and raccoon, swans in hidden ponds, geese flying overhead, beaches dedicated to nothing but plover -- but you better believe those are just the less and less 'protected' areas (if only by one gang at a time, just like the Mafia) – let a Republican majority prevail, and it's all about releasing poison everywhere so as to pathetically peck for the last of the gas – and there are hardly, if any, funds available to pay for this ongoing protection – yeah, like public radio, it's all about fund-raising from the people, who used to but now cannot afford either the time or the money it takes to get there and enjoy it, who don't have an extra $25 in the budget for Fresh Air, who are now third-generation buyers of poison in supermarkets, nbd (GMO's the latest but before and still all those transfats and hydrogenated oils and high dex/fruc/tose corn syrup to 'yummify' everything, to create cravings, chips and cookies and soft drinks and 'snacks,' all sold cheaply and clamored for by children) -- except in France, where they have a long tradition of not snacking between meals and hey!  Very very little obesity.  Portliness, stoutness, barrel chests, broad hips, big busts, yes – but rolls and rolls of poundage?  Non non non non non!

- Despairing rant, Part II:

   I do not understand why everybody doesn't want to know, just to know, as they fall asleep, that when they wake up there still exist great wild places – big, huge, dramatic, awesome wild places -- the Arctic, say -- places that are not infested with people (did you know when you compare our growth on the planet, it compares quite precisely with the way bacteria grows?  Not a lot, then suddenly way, waaaaay too much!)  Which, if you want to push the metaphor, means we share the same imperialist (and poisonous, killing) goals as a lot of bacteria does – or, as The Botany of Desire writer mused (and it was so hard not to find proof in his words, so difficult to refute – now there was an innovative mind at work, and thank you for those humans, God, Earth, Sun, Water, Plants, Animals, and whatever is not fucked up about our evolution!)

     We have moved into controlled environments and tried to pretend we aren't animals, just (as an alien in Star Trek.O -- ie original, once said), plain old 'ugly bags of mostly water,' and somewhere along the way – pretty early, I bet, as the human male now must shows off his wallet the way the baboons display their bright & bulbous pink asses, it became about accumulation:  real estate, vehicles, flying and four-wheel (see:  squirrels, above), until very few people owned great swathes of beach front, mountain tops, beautiful valleys, hillsides, along with enormous houses in which to put mounds of furniture and tons of art, all cherished – if cherished at all – by just the chosen few.

     And how much this culture pushes us all to want to be the chosen few!