When you live in a city, in a crammed and crowded urban environment, then there’s nothing more shocking then when you get out of it. Go out into the countryside, go into what looks a lot more like nature, and there you’ll find something you don’t find as much in the places where humans cluster and overpopulate: Space. Open space on a sometimes grand scale.
Well, maybe it’s shocking to you. Maybe it’s terrifying. Maybe it’s like hitting the reset button, breathe in some fresh hair, let your self stretch out, psychically trying to fill up that big open everythingness, and then you go and cram yourself back into the human condition, become a part in the machine again and go back to work.
The sad thing is I was reading something once about how cities are actually how humans should be living, at least for the sake of the environment. Sure, they pollute and destroy nature, but that’s because we don’t stop ourselves, and we don’t do better. The constant suburban sprawl is what is eating up our world, getting it closer to inhospitable for all involved, this thing I was reading was telling me. Now, I’m no expert, so take everything I say in this post as fast and loose, but it sounded frighteningly true.
The Crowded City by Kerry Belgrave.
Sometimes you need to go out into nature, find a testament and a monument to the parts of this beautiful planet that were here long before (and hopefully will be here long after us) and just say…
“You rock, rock.” Or something very much like that.
All of this occurred to me this afternoon, I’m sad to report to you, in a Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is easily one of the prime examples of how human begins are so incredibly good and quite ingenious at owning you in all the little, petty ways. We’re good at compassion and community too, but we’re even better when it comes to making those values a part of a corporate mindset that slowly invades your lives, giving you goods and services you can’t live without.
But, really, this isn’t going to be a post about Wal-Mart. I hate the place, obviously. Sadly, though, I live in a part of the world where I have to shop there just because of the level of income I make and the cheapness in every sense of the word of what they can give me. So I guess I can’t complain? Or shouldn’t? Well, of course I can. And should if I want to. But this isn’t going to be that kind of a post. But we all get the gist of Wal-Mart, and other “big box” department stores. They’re not only soul crushing and demeaning, but they’re affordable in those regards.
Anyway. So there I am in this Wal-Mart today, and they’re remodeling there, I guess. I didn’t know this as I walked in. I’ve gone to get my local grocery shopping done here for years and today I noticed that the usual things weren’t in their usual places. And then I turned a corner and saw something shocking…
Great big open space.
It was like looking at an art installation. I was half expecting someone to walk up with silly haircut and a glass of champagne and tell me what it “means.”
by Lori Nix.
Wal-Mart’s a giant warehouse with fluorescent lights and banners for Miley Cyrus/Jonas bros. bullshit all about and constant calls over the intercom for either a manager or a clean up on some aisle or another. People are always crammed in it. Usually the lowest common denominator of people and you can feel like an alien observer amongst your own human race as you go there, but the point is, things are packed in there tight. Someday aliens or future humans will look at the ruins of a Wal-Mart and treat it like the marketplace of Pompeii or an ancient Aztec city. They’re write beautiful dissertations on how it was important in our lives, and they’ll question what things like J. Lo and DVDs are, as young, nubile Indiana Jones-wannabes dust through what used to be the electronics section with little brushes.
They’ll talk about how money was our universal language, and that even things like God are spoken about in dialects of currency, and Wal-Martw will seem like a holy temple to people of the future and/or alien visitors. This is after some cyberpunk-ish dystopia period where corporations rise up as nation states and you have implants with Sam Walton’s face somewhere in your skeletal structure.
Again, I’m rambling. Apologies. But open spaces. It wasn’t shocking to anyone else. Or, at least, it didn’t appear that anyone else stopped to notice it like I did. Maybe it doesn’t matter to anyone other than me. My other shoppers just filled that newly opened space as they crossed over from $5 DVD bins to the grocery section where you can buy Wal-Mart’s store brand of everything you’d ever need to buy, and now they all come in the same white bag, bland and cold, and reminiscent of the products in Repo Man.
Or stuff produced by the DHARMA Initiative.
Look at that. Rambling again and complaining about Wal-Mart again. And I promised I wouldn’t do that, right? So sorry. But, then again, complaining isn’t so terrible as long as it isn’t all you do. And I should add in that a majority of people who shop/work at a Wal-Mart aren’t terrible people. They’re not all white trash or Jerry Springer rejects. They’re just people. Some of them are people like me, and some of them are better than me, and some are worse, not that it matters. They have lives to live, jobs to work at (when work can be found), and places to be, even if those places are nowhere.
It’s not always easy to rise up from complaining to action, but maybe somewhere on that road is where all your anger and frustration and complaining turns into conversation with others and perhaps eventual solution.
Just remember: As you, me, all of us, everyone and anyone, as we all pick our paths and walk through this life and this world, we’re leaving footprints. Are they for the better or for the worse?
from here.
I’m not advocating anyone go chain themselves to a tree or put themselves in front of a bulldozer. I’m not suggesting you go vegan or start picketing things, but just be aware of how your world is changing and decide if that’s a change you’re okay with and then go from there. Of course, as you make that decision, the park closest to you is being turned into a parking lot so more cars can help to cram more people into a mall and a bunch of trees are being turned into another housing development. These things happen.
They don’t have to happen though, but that’s a conversation for another time, maybe. Think, search, learn, grow. Or, do your best at something similar. That’s all I’m saying. It’s okay to be naive and idealistic for a while, but then go turn it into something useful, if that’s your bag. Or, just go find an open space, something still untouched by the hands of man and enjoy it while you can, while it’s still with us…
And try to fill it with your imagination before it gets filled with things and stuff, or trampled all to shit.
