curled and joyless we try once again
Spent the really hot part of the day after work taping private practice for mom. Big mistake. Because now I have a headache and a terribly stuffy nose. Honestly, I haven’t cried this much at a television show since John killed Aeryn on Farscape. (Nanna, do you remember that?) Not during the ‘Pink Mist’ ep of Grey’s. Not even when Leo died on West Wing. Seriously, was rather drained from work and now just feel completely wrung out. (You know it’s a bad sign when you need a tv show to remind you that you take things too seriously. Rule 62, I think)
So I took a nap (unintentionally, but essential nonetheless).
Then I finally sat and watched some news (rather than hearing it in the morning as I wake up, on NPR in the car or bits and pieces online) and I can’t talk about it. I can’t talk about the Gulf coast or watching oil rush into the ocean or off-shore drilling or corporate (ir)responsibility. Because it all comes out in a rush of blubbering highly resembling ‘I told you so,’ and that does nobody any good. Sadly, I have no solution. But I remember an entire fourth grade class obsessed with the Exxon Valdez - reading news articles, watching news reports (and how cool did we feel watching TV in class?) and brainstorming ideas for how to clean up the spilled oil, how to help wildlife and water plants survive the spill, and how to prevent another one. (And we all vowed to never buy gas from Exxon, and yes, I still don’t. Not even Mobil, which was really hard when they merged because when I learned to drive that was the closest gas station to our house.) And it’s more than 20 years later and the grown-ups are asking the same f*cking questions. And I wonder what all those classes of fourth graders are doing/thinking right now. Do teachers still do those sorts of projects with kids? How horribly must they think about adults and our general disrespect for the planet? I mean, it pissed me off even then (maybe more then because I had no control; maybe more now because I see people not doing enough or even doing harm, mostly out of pure laziness and an attitude of ‘I didn’t do it so it’s not my problem’).
Which makes me wonder if anyone remembers the difference between ‘guilt’ and ‘responsibility.’ Obviously, ideally one would take responsibility for the actions one is guilty for. But a) that doesn’t always happen, and 2) there are horrible things out there every day with either no single guilty party or a dead/disappeared/historical guilty party(ies). So somebody has to be the grown-up. Somebody has to stand up and say ‘Yes, we can deal with this. We can change it, we can redeem it into something Not Horrible. We can take steps, monitor behavior, adjust our perceptions as well as our actions.’ Not that everything happens for a reason, but we can derive purpose from the horror we see and experience.
But this is one of those times I become overwhelmed by the knowledge that while we can, we don’t. And I’m sad and disappointed and I understand what my mother always said about being sorry for the world her generation left/is leaving me. What will I tell The Flower? She’s such an outdoor girl, she loves the natural world around her; what will I say when she asks me why there are millions of species that existed when I was her age that are extinct now (whatever age she might be at that time)? What about Huck? Obviously, I don’t know him well yet what with being less than a year old, but he’s dad’s kid, so I’m sure he’ll be all about the outside. What do I tell him about invasive water species and dead or extinct fish or poisoned drinking water or three-legged frogs (note to Nanna - did they ever figure out how/why that happened? Are they still around?)?
And on that note, I am turning off the news and taking a break from the internet so as not to peek at more photos and excuses and articles and glossing over of a huge mound of horse muck.
(Tomorrow’s Friday and it’s my day off and I promise to come up with something fantastically happy.)
So I took a nap (unintentionally, but essential nonetheless).
Then I finally sat and watched some news (rather than hearing it in the morning as I wake up, on NPR in the car or bits and pieces online) and I can’t talk about it. I can’t talk about the Gulf coast or watching oil rush into the ocean or off-shore drilling or corporate (ir)responsibility. Because it all comes out in a rush of blubbering highly resembling ‘I told you so,’ and that does nobody any good. Sadly, I have no solution. But I remember an entire fourth grade class obsessed with the Exxon Valdez - reading news articles, watching news reports (and how cool did we feel watching TV in class?) and brainstorming ideas for how to clean up the spilled oil, how to help wildlife and water plants survive the spill, and how to prevent another one. (And we all vowed to never buy gas from Exxon, and yes, I still don’t. Not even Mobil, which was really hard when they merged because when I learned to drive that was the closest gas station to our house.) And it’s more than 20 years later and the grown-ups are asking the same f*cking questions. And I wonder what all those classes of fourth graders are doing/thinking right now. Do teachers still do those sorts of projects with kids? How horribly must they think about adults and our general disrespect for the planet? I mean, it pissed me off even then (maybe more then because I had no control; maybe more now because I see people not doing enough or even doing harm, mostly out of pure laziness and an attitude of ‘I didn’t do it so it’s not my problem’).
Which makes me wonder if anyone remembers the difference between ‘guilt’ and ‘responsibility.’ Obviously, ideally one would take responsibility for the actions one is guilty for. But a) that doesn’t always happen, and 2) there are horrible things out there every day with either no single guilty party or a dead/disappeared/historical guilty party(ies). So somebody has to be the grown-up. Somebody has to stand up and say ‘Yes, we can deal with this. We can change it, we can redeem it into something Not Horrible. We can take steps, monitor behavior, adjust our perceptions as well as our actions.’ Not that everything happens for a reason, but we can derive purpose from the horror we see and experience.
But this is one of those times I become overwhelmed by the knowledge that while we can, we don’t. And I’m sad and disappointed and I understand what my mother always said about being sorry for the world her generation left/is leaving me. What will I tell The Flower? She’s such an outdoor girl, she loves the natural world around her; what will I say when she asks me why there are millions of species that existed when I was her age that are extinct now (whatever age she might be at that time)? What about Huck? Obviously, I don’t know him well yet what with being less than a year old, but he’s dad’s kid, so I’m sure he’ll be all about the outside. What do I tell him about invasive water species and dead or extinct fish or poisoned drinking water or three-legged frogs (note to Nanna - did they ever figure out how/why that happened? Are they still around?)?
And on that note, I am turning off the news and taking a break from the internet so as not to peek at more photos and excuses and articles and glossing over of a huge mound of horse muck.
(Tomorrow’s Friday and it’s my day off and I promise to come up with something fantastically happy.)