Ramblings

Over the past five days I've had several blog ideas that have been running through my head and last night, as I lay awake in bed I almost came downstairs to free them from captivity.

But I forced myself to quiet my brain and get to sleep instead and therefore, all those ideas are gone.   Like a dandelion that has turned to fluff and begun its own dismantling, filling the air with its seed, I can almost see all of my ideas floating before me ... and as I reach out to pluck one of them, it scurries away.

Very frustrating!  So ... instead I will just start and see what happens!

First off, I couldn't sleep last night because it was TOO QUIET!  After sleeping in a bed that seemed to be only inches from every siren, trash truck and the subway, I was dismayed at the total and complete lack of sound!  I held my breath and listened ... but there was nothing.  Not an owl hooting or a coyote singing or even a mosquito near my ear.

I thought about how I enjoy the city -- the sounds and smells and bustling activity and the choicest opportunities for people watching.  And I thought about how I enjoy the country -- the lushness of green grass and trees and the lack of activity and no people to watch at all.  And I asked myself, where would I prefer to be?  And my answer was honestly, either place.   And then I thought about how I am equally as comfortable laying on the ground on an air mattress in the middle of the wilderness gazing up at the stars as I am laying upon a fluffy mattress in a four-star hotel.

And I'm not just saying that.  I like change, I like new circumstances, new people, new anything.  Even spending an entire day in an airport is an experience, not something I'd like to do again anytime soon, but still.  It wasn't horrible and there is always a way to make it tolerable.

I have been so focused on all the horrible things that could happen, and that's fine, there's no shame in acquiring knowledge.  But as we were taking off in the airplane yesterday, and it surged into the air and I gazed down through an achingly blue sky down at the world moving below I thought there is no way that a civilization that figured out how to get a monstrous piece of metal to glide through the air and get you from one destination to another in a fraction of the time an automobile could is going to fall apart when the last drop of gasoline has been used up.

All of the solutions are out there -- they are just being suppressed by these ridiculous corporations who are hellbent on keeping this society petroluem-dependent.  And that's only going to work as long as it actually exists.  But once it is gone, then at last another segment of the population will be allowed to bring forth their ideas, instead of getting paid a huge amount of money to just go away.

Which makes me wonder:  If I had invented a transportation device that powered on something cheap and sustainable and I was offered umpteen million dollars so it could be purchased and thrown into a vault, would I?

Since I haven't invented anything, the easy answer is of course not.   But the real answer is probably of course.  Because the alternative choice would be to fight against big corporations who would do anything to keep my invention from coming to market.   And like the democratic elections, the outcome would favor those in power.

Hee hee -- can't stop throwing out cheap shots --  I am obsessed.

As President Bush stated on May 7, 2002 -- "And one of the things we've got to make sure that we do is anything."