This Must Be The Place/Polar Bears Must Die

When emailing or talking on the phone with friends back in Boston, I describe Pittsburgh as "all new horizons." Then I usually back that up with, "There's a movie night here every Wednesday, and game night, and brunch on Sundays, and on Thursday there's dollar-beer and then an 80s dance party, and every night the restaurants sell their food half-price after 11pm. I've started volunteering at the local infoshop. Classes are all real fun so far, I'm real into my readings and have been working on my writing a lot." Sounds impressive and full, like I will give birth to the child of Greatness who impregnated me as soon as I moved here.

I could be more narrowly centered in my descriptions of the city. Perhaps focus more on the things I do regularly, or can see myself continuing to do regularly. In which case I would have to knock off dollar-beer night, and going out to eat past 11pm probably as well. And if I'm not going to be getting drunk for real cheap, then the dancing won't be as entertaining. Also, I'm not too into "games." What's left is, I've turned into a real nerd and I'm not sorry. I spend most of my time here reading and writing. I go to the coffee shop down the street from me and drink one large cup of coffee for $1.80 and five hours of writing, reading, editing. At home I research strange pop-culture "movements." They're not actually movements at all, for the most part, but I don't know how to group together the phenomenon of The Talking Heads with, say, wheatpaste used as home decor. I decided I needed a change of scenery, so I came to the school's coffee shop to write instead. It's actually helped me focus a lot. At this point in my life, having lasted at least a solid week and a half, all I want to do with my time is write, and do things that will plant seeds in this little brain of mind. The infoshop is great for "the cause" and all, but really I am going to be surrounded by books and their sounds, the whispers of their pages flipping, the cracking of people's mouths into smiles when they come across something they have always thought but never knew they did, the occasional political-literary name-drop in a properly crowded room. Readings, discussions, book clubs. Information everywhere.

Also, I've decided to go to Trinidad. I will leave in the summer. I will be gone two weeks. It's a school trip, but still a trip. I have settled very deeply into window-seats and comfy cushions in Pittsburgh coffeeshops, but other than that I am restless as ever. I have been wanted to go for a while now, have wanted to leave America and go back to Spain, go to South America, go to Croatia and stay with old ladies who will make me food I don't eat. Etc. etc. I want it all. I want everything else.

It's snowing right now. Finally it is winter, on January 9th. Last night I fell asleep listening to Democracy Now!, which had a segment on global warming. There was a representative from Greenpeace (of course) who stated they finally got the government to list the Polar Bear as an endangered (or "at risk of endangerment") species, through threat of lawsuit or perhaps even follow-through on previous lawsuit. This is the first animal to be on the endangered list who is endangered not because of a direct and easily addressible cause such as careless hunting or overdevelopment. It is a human-societal caused endangerment. Through global warming the icebergs are melting at a more rapid pace than environmentally normal, and therefore there is no place for them to live. It is, outcome-wise, the same as developing on the icebergs and forcing the Polar Bears out, except there is no real (or at least real easy) solution, and definately not one that will instantly solve the problem.

The situation is even trickier because we are entering a stage as a planet where things are supposed to start heating up. There are geisers around the world showing the increased heat and pressure below our feet. Scientifically, the seasons should start shifting slightly. Il Nino is largely the result of natural causes, from what environmental scientists can tell. But where do we draw the line, where do we start accepting blame? And when do we start pointing fingers and demanding changes? Much of the changes needed are so systemic, at least here in the United States, that they are short-term impossible. Harold Ford bought out all the railroads to shut them down and boost the automobile industry, setting up highways for people to drive from state to state, rather than taking the more fuel-efficient train. The Deisel engine was initially invented to be run off cleaner-burning processed vegetable oil but was redesigned by corporate politicians to keep automobiles running on gas and oil. We have become an almost exclusively technological community -- my parents even do all their financing and banking via the internet. I communicate with almost everyone I know through the computer. My parents' neighbor in Boston has her groceries delivered to her by a company she orders from through their website. Another website comes and picks up her laundry for her. Everything is tech-no-logic-kill, to steal the term from some band from probably the '90s. This woman's click-of-a-button lifestyle right now seems outrageous to me and possibly to even more mainstream, moderate fence sitting types, but give us a few years and this will likely just be "the way things are done."

This has been often played off as a more ecologically sound way of doing business. Using computers, the internet, cellular translation of information, etc. But this is only true on a very surface level. When I email someone instead of writing them a letter, I am saving the paper of course. But there have been whole countries blown up for the sake of mining the Coltan mineral, which is found largely in Africa. There have been countless lives lost in civil wars fought over who gets to mine, tribes and communities raped and destroyed by the political corruption stemming from outside, from the US and northern Europe. Canada also has a ready supply of Coltan in their soils, apparently, but try telling the populous that we are now going to tear the Canadian forestry to shreds so we can keep using out cell phones. Nope. Not gonna happen. Additionally, there are extremely dangerous pollutants and toxic emissions from factories of digital mechanisms such as computers. Scary.

And there're really not all that much to be done, on a grand-scale level, to change things. the path has been laid out for the past hundred years, and has only been spreading into more intricate designs that would be next to impossible to backtrack upon and erase like that broom puppy in Alice In Wonderland. Even to spread the word of these things, technology has to be used, the world has to be polluted, the icecaps have to melt, and polar bears must die. Newsletters no longer work in our lifestyles. Radio broadcasts are largely audienced through podcasts nowadays.

I have no answers. I have a cup of miso soup and a head full of words and a bicycle, and that's about it. And really, I suppose that's all we can have. Just a knowledge of the world at large, and a dedication to ourselves to not fuck things up anymore than they're already fucked, so much as we can help it. And to try to be at least moderately good people. Smile at strangers. Tip the kid at the coffee shop. Shop at farmers markets or whatever comes closest in one's community. Take the bus or ride a bike whenever possible. And don't hate yourself at the end of the day for all the things you did and didn't do. That's all I can really expect of myself, anyway.