I'm feeling a bit uneasy today. Uncomfortably fragile.
Reading a book called City Of Refuge. It is fiction but based quite strongly on the hurricane Katrina experience in New Orleans. Written by a New Orleans transplant - Tom Piazza - who adopted New Orleans as his home and, allowed its magic to seep into his bones; a guy who lived through Katrina's devastation.
Re-living the whole levee breakdown thing, the suffering and loss that could have been avoided, set my mind to reeling.
The disaster was a result of the incompetence and callousness of humanity, not wind. Came close to destroying one of the greatest, most magical cities in the world.
Studies had been completed years before the storm exposing the weakness of the levees and making recommendations on how to repair them. The studies were ignored.
Expand your thinking to include the unstable infrastructure in this country. When I travel somewhere that requires me to drive across a bridge, I bring flippers, an oxygen tank, swimmies, an anti-shark dart launcher, my pink thong and some Fritos.
We built an amazing infrastructure in this country and have allowed it to decay. The decay has been publicized; we allow it to continue. Little is being done.
Politicians play games gambling with your future instead of working together to solve the immense problems that jeopardize this country.
The entire world balances on a fragile financial thread; I don't think us wee folk really understand how dangerous the situation is.
Climate change is burning its way across the country.
Electricity runs the world; if our power sources were destroyed we could not function. Especially me. I am a city boy; no survival skills. When Armageddon comes I am going to kill my neighbors and eat them, but after that I will be forced to survive on poetry. I'm not sure how that is going to work.
Wall Street is governed by the principle of "the rich get richer and let the poor suffer"; banks, once considered conservative pillars are exposed as immoral and without conscience, our food is tainted, the medical community is inefficient and overpriced, water supplies are unreliable, employers have made exploiting their employees an art form.
I could bring up lots more examples but you get the picture. Our existence is fragile and most of it is do to our own stupidity, pettiness, callousness, selfishness and greed.
This supposedly civilized society is increasingly exposed as cavemen in pinstripes.
It's too much to think about. If you worry about this stuff you will go crazy. The catch is you cannot rely on those in power, or, more accurately, those with power, to do anything about it. They don't care about the country, the economy or you. They have thirty five room bunkers with ten bathrooms and they have generators, caviar and chefs. Armageddon doesn't scare them.
I am feeling fragile today. Especially when I compound the concerns I just mentioned with consideration of my tenuous employment situation, working for an organization which refuses to promote its employees, preferring eternal part timers whose hours they can cut whenever they feel like it.
I have a quiet week this week. I am approaching it with religious fervor. Looking for a way out with an open minded, I can figure this out frame of mind.
I'm starting with dinner tonight. Boneless chicken breasts coated in seasoned Panko bread crumbs, pan seared then baked. Maybe frozen veggies or rice or both on the side.
Dig it, baby.
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