The older I get, the more comfortable my own brain gets with the idea of communicating the real Hannah to the (and I say this with all hilarity and affection) busy-bee bullshit rule-following hamster-running-on-a-wheel boring-as-hell ambitious business-card-flinging Girl-Scout-civics-lesson penitent guilt-ridden half-a-calorie-counting serious-as-a-heart-attack Metro-Stations-of-the-Cross work-ethic conscious mind that has made my life a living hell since adolescence, but I haven't got back to the garden yet, so until that day comes, I will have to work at it to nudge the doors of perception a little opener.
CONSCIOUS MIND: But, but..? Are you sure that's a word, Hannah? "Opener"?
UNCONSCIOUS MIND:
SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!
OF COURSE IT'S A F____G WORD!
HOW THE HELL ELSE
ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO GET SOUP
OUT OF A CAN?
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I was always really impressed by Burning Man. I never went, but wow! It's not just the sheer logistical nightmare and wonderment of it. It's not just that I love art that is created only to be destroyed. It's not just the barter-only economy. It's not just the lovely tank top I have with their lovely slogan "Joy Is a Form of Protest," brought back as a gift from my lovely ex who probably went to look at drugged naked women spray-painted in tiger stripes.
The real thing that blows my mind about Burning Man and the whole culture is that it's really a gigantic pagan ritual that has sprung up as a result of and commentary on the carbon combustion age. We are all Burning Men. It's a ritualistic and cultural expression of the fossil fuel economy.
I wish I were more familiar with it so I could draw out this argument in depth, but the only other think I can think of in the same category is that town in India where they ceremonially burn Santa Claus. Which is not all that different, really, and perhaps more meaningful since cremation is kind of the industry standard there.
I find it almost unfathomably creepy and horrible that our civilization is entirely powered by burning the remains of beings that died millions of years ago. We're literally burning our ancestors. We are powering these millions of cars and all those blinking little appliances in our homes and apartments on fossilized dead bodies.
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that the implications of this practice are massively destructive, from the degradations imposed by the extraction industries, through the pollution caused by refining and shipping, and then the release of carbon dioxide in combustion, which has already started the greatest man-made environmental disaster in human history.
They should have known from the beginning that there was going to be some kind of devil's bargain with petroleum. It's far too powerful. Human beings aren't supposed to be whizzing in and out of cities in giant tanks of steel at 70 mph for their daily commute. Human beings actually really shouldn't ever go 70 mph an hour in their life. (Except on a train, IMHO).
There is very little of our daily life that corresponds to the way that human beings have lived for millennia; at least in the United States, most of the country's physical landscape has been completely reordered around this. Not to mention the mountains that we are currently being leveled, or the fracking pumps injecting radioactive water 8,000 feet into the ground to crack open bedrock so gas can escape. That's just baaaaad voodoo.
Links:
Award-winning new documentary on fracking and the oil and gas industry, which is coming to mess with PA very soon: Gasland (screening in Philly on April 10).
CAN YOU DO THIS WITH YOUR TAP WATER? from JOSHFOX on Vimeo.
Democratic candidate Joe Hoeffel is the only candidate in the Pennsylvania Governor's race to call for a moratorium on gas drilling/fracking wells. (New York already has, considering it far too dangerous.) His position is here.
The Oil and Gas Accountability Project at Earthworks.
And of course, love to Greenpeace, the organization that made me a liberal by canvassing my house when I was 12 or 13. The canvasser showed me photos of dead elephants and burning rainforests, and I got very upset, gave her all my allowance, and the next day canceled my subscription to the National Review. Never let anyone tell you that going door to door doesn't work.
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