Friday, August 15, 2008

I Feel More Alive Today Despite This

I had a mix tape of Ryan Adams songs playing in the car while I drove around town today. I thought about how he used to be so much more down to earth in both his music and his public life. He’s kind of spiraled through the world of the famous and beautiful and it seems to have left him dizzy.

While I was listening to the music and enjoying the drive (for the first time in a while), I drove by a large chunk of property that had apparently sprouted a forest of “Auction” signs. It made me immediately angry because most of my town’s beauty has been entirely undermined and nearly destroyed by commerce and industry.

Then I had a thought of how our country (and maybe the rest of the world) has been so corrupted by money and consumerism. Men are busy trying to be God and women are trying to be Mother Nature, then selling and therefore forgetting what they’re trying to emulate. We’re busy recreating the world instead of living in it as it is. This is the root of everything that’s wrong with the world today. Money makes us buy and sell things that are no longer precious to us. We spend trillions of dollars every day trying to adapt the world to us as opposed adapting ourselves to the nature of the planet. And all this makes us lose contact with the ground and the very atmosphere.

What the hell happened? Why do we have this insatiable drive to become masters of everything. Why can no one be content with just being a student of everything? This lust for lordship has even infected those that would ordinarily bring us back to ourselves (like Ryan Adams). I shudder to think how much farther we can take ourselves from the basic joy of being a resident on the planet.

8 comments:

  1. You know me honey. I'm all about concrete and steel. I know that we need nature, etc but it's not me. But I do understand where you're coming from. One of the things I like about Tallahassee is that they've got trees. The canopy roads are one of the things that T-hassee's famous for and the locals got pissed when a bill was trying to be passed to cut down the canopy roads.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There are a whole lot of unhappy people in this world and plenty of advertisers standing by to instruct them on what they need to purchase to improve their well-being. We all know where it goes from there... folks spending money they haven't got only to discover they're not any happier than they were before.

    ReplyDelete
  3. There comes a time in all of our lives, that we must step back and look at what is left. It is sad, but most focus on what they can have in life and not what they can do to help others....we need balance....

    ReplyDelete
  4. Balance is good. But then there are times when someone just needs to shake, shake, SHAKE things up!

    Good luck on your path to becoming a novelist! I hope to see you in print soon!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I learned the other day that there are 38 billion acres of land on this planet. If each person was given their fair share of land, we each would receive 5.36 acres. It takes 4.5 acres per person to produce all of the food and raw materials we need to live. Humans haven't changed for millennia, we are now just at the breaking point for our environment. Once we reach 8.4 billion people, we will be beyond our carrying capacity. Keep talking about what you are talking about. Something is wrong and we can't just focus on the positive until its too late.

    ReplyDelete
  6. like your writing. especially your About Me section. I am one of those too..in the process of writing a novel..dunno when will ifinish n publish one!

    great coming on ur blog!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I reckon that means I should start blogging again. Y'all've convinced me.

    ReplyDelete

What would you most like to see on my new website for unpublished writers?