6/7/2009
Robert Joy
What, me worry!
Every time I travel by airplane somewhere, (it doesn’t matter where) I go into outer space. I am encased inside a metal and plastic case, sipping at a pepsi and watching the miniature television hanging from the roof, while all the time I am traveling in the black of space. Sure I can look out the window and see blue and the white clouds below me, but by god if for some reason the skin of that flying coffin should tear, none of us would be able to live on the atmosphere outside. The only reason we are alive inside is because the pilot is watching the fuel gauge and keeping the aircraft going fast enough to make the thin air useful enough to keep us aloft. Its all just so fragile.
Last night while Marcella and I drove back from watching a film at friends home… I started thinking about how fragile it all is right here on the surface. What the hell keeps us so safe down here? A giant flash of lightening streaked across the sky and there was an encore of thunder. It reminded me of my childhood, when the same thing happened. The same dark starless night with a storm over head. The thunder rumbling in the distance. A bright flash that makes the lights in the house flicker. We would all count the seconds to figure out how far away the lightening stuck. Then the thunder would come and sometimes hail and the patter of rain against the windows. Back then I felt so safe and so endless.
Last night, when the lightening flashed it was frightening. It was almost a warning to me to go do something. Do something about all the poor people on this earth not having a meal each day. Not eating anything and I just watched a show on my television last night on the human impact on our planet. One of the little “blurbs” on the screen during the closing credits, stated that forty percent of all the grain grown on this planet is used to feed and fatten livestock and make biofuel to keep our cars and trucks running. Nearly half the grain produced on this earth is used for crap. Crap food. Crap food that feeds and panders to about ten percent of the worlds population while the rest have less and some have none. Ten percent of the people on this earth are spoiled, overweight and have the time, money and wherewithal to go off and squander a fortune gambling on the alien planet of Las Vegas.
Then I go to work every other day and toss out a hundred pounds of uneaten food. I drive my giant fuel guzzling car home, sit in my air conditioned home and I don’t have worry in the world. Why in hell should I be frightened about a tiny crash of lightening? Why should I worry about anything? I could just turn off the tube and not watch all that doomsday stuff. I could watch the Cosby Show, nothing dangerous there! That’s just the way I used to live. I lived a safe little existence. The government watched our shores and the policemen watched our streets and my parents watched our house. It couldn’t be better. The schools told us about all the wonderful things Americans have and our churches all told us what we had to do to get to heaven when we die. It was all so perfect. I thought that was all life was about.
Just being born, going to school, going to church, going to the army and defending our way of life, getting married, having children and doing the same thing all over again. Well that’s what I thought. Then my grandparents died. Then my parents died. Then my older sister died. Then my best friend in the whole world died and that really hurt. It still hurts me now. Now, I’m just here waiting for my turn. My brother and I are all that’s left of the tribe. (I’m not counting the offspring, because they belong to the next tribe). Now I’m wondering what all this has been about.
Am I supposed to lean back and watch the next tribe take the wheel. Just lean back and let go and not give a care what happens. I suppose every older person has lived through this same thing, but its all new to me. No body told me about it in school or church. I haven’t completed anything yet. I haven’t written enough words or drew enough pictures yet. I’m not ready yet and I won’t be ready ten, twenty, thirty years from now. Who’ll give a crap any way? Why bother? That lightening flash only served me a reminder of how thin and delicate our atmosphere is. Its the only damned thing between us and the black of space. Its just like the wall of that airplane. We sit here in this dangerous orbit, sipping on our pepsi’s, watching the tube on our walls and we think this is how its going to always be and nothing is ever going to happen to change any of it….. So we keep on making babies, that one day we won’t be able to feed. We keep making more and more plastic crap to toss into our water and fill up the ocean with a swirl of indestructible floating garbage the size of Africa. We keep on over fishing the sea. We keep on creating more and more nuclear weapons to (protect or stuff) and our way of disposing of crap. We keep on feeding livestock and vehicles better than we do our fellow man. We keep saying, “Green.” I hear green all the time, but we keep doing the “black.” (right now, “the black” makes more profit) and its really all about profit.
Crash bang, flash of light and I jerked at the steering wheel a bit. I don’t think Marcella even noticed. She said, “Bob, look at the moon!” I looked up and there it was, bright and full peeking through the clouds at us…… and I thought about God.
