Sad, happy, underwater…

So there’s this a swirling mass of plastic trash in our beautiful ocean. The OCEAN, the heating and cooling system of the planet. Two swirling masses, actually. Both the size of the continental United States.

No, I’m not kidding. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s fact. How deep do these swirling masses of plastic trash go?

I don’t know, have you ever seen a tornado from the top?

I think about this every time I grab a plastic fork to eat one meal with, or purchase tomatoes in a plastic don’t-squish-the-tomatoes box (not often), or throw away a broken Ziploc or ripped bubble-wrap envelope or literally indestructible body-bag of hippie dog food … every time I throw away both trash and my dog’s poop in a plastic bag … that’s what I think of. Those swirling masses of trash.

We put them there.

How in the Sam Hill are we going to clean them up? I mean, even out there in the desert at that big arts festival where I used to be one of the employees responsible for removing every speck of evidence we could, to erase the fact that a temporary city of 50,000 people just lived their alternate-reality lives on for a couple weeks, all told …

That trash went somewhere. Whether the participants took it home with them or accidentally dropped it during a drunken walkabout and we picked it up, it went to landfills. And very certainly, some glow sticks took flight and went swimming in the ocean. Where they will degrade in the sunlight and break apart, to ultimately be digested by everything in the water, from the bottom of the food chain to the top. And the whole ocean will be sick, and the planet will get sick and die.

Strangled to death, stricken with cancer, choked out the same way poison takes over a smoker’s lungs. Proof there are some things that should not be digested.

Just like smokers, the human race is in denial about the state of the planet’s health.

Again: Not science-fiction. This is a very distinct possibility. Probability.

Not preaching, mind. If I could afford it, I might purchase a handmade smoothie and a shot of wheatgrass almost every single day. And it would come in completely non-biodegradable packaging, and even if I did bring my own cup, health codes would prevent them from allowing me to be environmental like that. So maybe I would make my own smoothies and wheatgrass if I could afford it..

So … yall out there drinking Starbucks lattes with the big whip-cream-holding bubbles on the top — toast yourselves to remember when. Because it might all be over sooner than we think.

After all, unexpected cataclysms are as common in nature as gradual change and slow death.

So crazy these days. Nearly psychotic with guilt every time I throw away a piece of trash. Washing the dishes in such a water-conserving way as to seem obsessive-compulsive to the viewers just tuning in. But I have my reasons for washing dishes this way, even though there seems to be plenty of water. I HAVE MY REASONS.

I don’t think it’s my apocalyptic-focused Southern upbringing this time. Everyone can feel everything about to F***ING CRASH. Even when roaming out in the woods or the desert in solitude, I imagine I can distinctly hear the distant roar of the Last Wave. The sound of of Mother Nature taking her shoe off. I think she’s about to throw it at us.

Makes me want to voluntarily take a bath and floss my teeth and put on my tie and pray she doesn’t go get the belt.

Visit Indonesia! (but this could be anywhere, really)

But I don’t want to actively bitch and complain without offering some sort of solution, even if it’s only random and rambly:

Keep utensils in the car when you’re out and about, and try to eat at places where there’s very little to grab and use and throw in the trash. In the old DPW days, where everything was burnable, even the forks and whatnot … we used to clang clang clang with our tin cups on carabiners next to custom-made “fork-spoons” — not sporks, mind you, but one on each end, welded to a piece of rebar attached to a keychain.

I also like to try to buy glass bottles and jars rather than plastic tubs when grocery shopping. But then I end up with a massive collection of jars which annoys my housemates. I keep a lot of bulk items in these jars, and display them on the shelves like candy, secretly pleased with myself about how much harder it is for the human mice in my house to eat someone else’s food when they can’t identify it.

It’s almost a problem. I collect jars like that Genie girl they found in 1970 who’d been strapped to a potty chair her whole life, who hoarded vessels of water around her bed. Like any good (but functional!) pack rat, I hate throwing things in the garbage, so I always dream of some other way to be, where the purchase dilemma of glass-vs-plastic never happens in the first place because I live on a piece of land where I eat mostly only what grew in the dirt there or swam in the water nearby, just like my grandmother.

That’ll happening. Slowly, but it’ll happen. Or almost. There’s more than one person who talks all kinds of jive about my packed-with-useful-things room … like they’re not juuust a leeetle beeet jealous of that touch o’ hoarding instinct which I thankfully picked up from my Depression-era cottonpicking grandparents, and which I knew would come in handy someday.

When you have no skills besides being an art fag and sewing leather patches on holey worn-out Carhartts — then collect materials, hand-make or repair something personalized, and trade, trade away.

Land with a water source. That’s all you need, really. And the fight in yerself to not give up and lie on the train tracks.

Life itself

Maybe we plot out our lives from birth before we get here. Maybe we’re behind the green curtain — players, either enthusiastic or bored, in a game which consciousness invented for itself to grow food and flowers and weeds in. Talkin bout souls, metaphorically. Or personalities. Individual consciousnesses. Whatever inhabits our meat-sacks when we take our first breath, and goes somewhere else when we die.

Maybe we write out our life script, get born, and then GAME OVER — look at the scoreboard, see how we did, discuss strategy with others who’ve also recently finished the game. Or maybe we just get shunted straight into a different world / existence to do it all over again, or to embark on a different journey of our choosing. Or for those who don’t care, there’s the option to just give their tokens to someone else and fade away into the sweet by-and-by.

Maybe we never, ever get to see who made the game.

Maybe we never get to know everything, because if we did, we’d break the game somehow, for good. But one only advances to the next level by surpassing obstacles and limits, not by standing there while the avatar’s legs move in place. Those who have the most fun are the ones who try to see backstage; who lead the charge and storm the gates and try to figure out how it all gets put together. Or WHO puts it all together.

There are ten hundred ways to do this; a million honorable pastimes for humans to embroil themselves in. Thousands and millions of ways to waste time and hurt people, too … so the only satisfaction we ever get, every time we choose to play, is the satisfaction of a job well done. However we interpret it. Do as thou wilt, and harm no-one. (Or, if you’re a Reptilian, see how much damage you can do.) Extra points for unconditional love and selfless service to humanity and/or creation. (Or mass murder and widespread human suffering.)

I don’t know what I’m trying to say here, except for yeah. I only hope I’ve got a pocket full of tokens, because I’d like to be one of the last people at the arcade.

Now that’s what I’d call putting on some pants. Shit is SECURE

Living is the equivalent of sitting down to analyze your favorite song. Meditation is the equivalent of getting up to zone out and dance to it.

I’m new at meditation, but I’m starting to get into it, at the behest of my friends who are tired of my spazzy ways. And for my own well-being, of course.

When one meditates, one gets a glimpse behind that curtain. Some people are too scared of or unfamiliar with free-form meditation to think of nothing — just nothing. So they need an object or a God to focus on. And some — most — people are born into families who teach them the Big Nothing has a name. But higher advances can be made in the game when you realize the patterns in the chaos, and that it’s all showbiz. One showbiz, under “God.”

To meditate is to purposefully sit still and think of nothing. To shut up the chatter and let the brain have a rest. I always feel a tingle in the middle of my head-meat on the left-hand side when I close my eyes and make the shift.

I think that’s the right-brain function revving up. The right brain is where the more base / higher self lives — the unspeaking creature driving the vehicle. This badass motherfucker turns on and gets to work, washing your skull and your attitude and fixing your cells and kicking out junk. But if you look at it, it freezes. When you look away, the tingle resumes, and you get younger and more centered. It’s complicated at first. I’m still new, myself. But it feels good, and apparently studies have shown that blah blah blah.

Meditation can also come in the form of anything which causes you to zone out. For me it’s sewing. I formulate a plan, and cut and arrange materials, and make a playlist on my Itunes, and then the hands just go and my mind wanders everywhere. Then, inspired, I get up to write and pace back and forth between the sewing table and the computer.

It’s a shame so many humans waste that area of their brain by ingesting television. The junk food of the soul. The drug of a nation.

Since I’m on a soapbox, I might as well quote Bill Hicks:

“Oh yeah, and keep drinking beer, you morons.”

(Make no mistake: I’m talking to myself.)

But anyway, life is beautiful, even when it sucks. And meditation is the new hot-shit drug. Is my point.

hamster… wheel… get it? sigh. More corn, please. PS is that hamster balls, or…?