A Succession of Weeds

The Safeway vestibule that is no longer accessed accumulates human filth. An armed security guard walks the perimeter, moving people: two men dissectings a bike, sleepy people slumped in a car, and a tweaker performing a monologue - Shakespeare in the parking lot.

The planting strips are bare. Plants that once filled a corporate landscape plan have since died because no one has been paying attention. The green scheme is just an ornament to drive profits without integration into the community. It’s a one-off project that can be ignored. I don’t see a gardening crew on retainer.

The strips are dumping areas for SDOT construction signs, dog pee, packaging and wrappers blown by cars, and discarded memoirs of unwell minds.

And yet, I see this bare patch -in contrast to cement and asphalt- as ugly when it should be the other way around. I’ve taken the well-manicured position instead of nature’s fighting against the death blanket of cement and asphalt. So let ugly dirt be and let nature have its course without human intervention - a succession of weeds.

Escape The Vault

Metal support wire angles up a utility pole attached to a stake in the ground. Vines have cybernetically grown in and through the metal wire and yellow covering like a cyborg appendage.

We are partially made of plastic. Recycling won’t save us. Only stopping the source will. There are innovative start-ups like Timeplast that are creating plastic-like materials that can be programmed to dissolve in water with specific life spans: 30 minutes, a month, a year.

In David Cronenberg’s film Crimes of the Future , a group of evolutionists modify their digestive systems to be able to ingest plastics and other materials via a candy bar supplement.

It reminds me of another human-made technology with unforeseen consequences - the smartphone. Initially a tool to improve our lives, it is now rewiring our brain chemistry to become isolated, angry, fearful, and depressed humans. We are now seeing the mental health crisis of young people due to social media and its years of inculcation. Self-harm and suicide are rising, facts and fundamental truths can be destroyed with memes, and our country is on the verge of a dictatorship.

When I engage with my phone, I cling to lies of journalistic lies to assuage anxiety and fear. That’s what the media has done. Without facts, we are all just pushing opinions. And opinions are like assholes; we all smell like shit. The choose-your-own-reality of online content will destroy society. It already is.

I walk West Woodland's sidewalks. This is the antidote for me: embodied experiences using all five senses. A new brewery opened in the industrial zone as glacial zoning laws change with the death of old Ballard.

I walk in, and beer drinkers socialize among the stainless steel stills. I enjoy the non-hipster ambiance. I buy an IPA 4-Pack called “Escape The Vault.” The can says, “Quit your day job and escape the vault!”

Frozen Tire Ruts

I didn’t venture far from the apartment.   Roads and sidewalks are icy, so you look for sure-footing on crunchy snow where dogs defectate.   I took the kids to the nearby playground at St. Alphonsus Church.  It’s a destination we frequent year-round.  To walk familiar routes over and over again may seem monotonous, but there is always the chance to find novelty if you are attuned to it.  Xavier de Maistre journeyed around his room feeling that staying put was far more convenient than the hassles of travel.  As Alain de Botton said in The Art of Travel, “The sole cause of a man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.”

The kids enjoy walking in frozen tire ruts and seeing the water move underneath.  Their masterful ability to be present is what we lose as adults.  Adults search, spend money, attend retreats, become addictive and clingy in order to experience fleeting presence.

I am in my head a lot these days.  I seek action to avoid silence, opinions to comfort uncertainty.  Yet these are delusional tactics to avoid my 48-year old self.  To find nothing in the silence is terrifying to me.  Is there a difference between “nothing” and “nothingness?” The former may be about a deficit, the latter about abundance.