Out to Sea

All interconnects,

Each touches every other.

I'm thinking that out here on the left end of Terminal City it's World Water Day, another self-appointed day of reckoning for an issue more pressing than one in three sixty five can possibly accommodate. Somewhat obligingly, water leaks from the sky.

Water surrounds us on all sides here on the western peninsula, but I suppose the same can be said for everyone everywhere, if you only stretch your horizons far enough. Turtle Island, my enlightened friends say.

Water runs through our cities and towns, grand rivers are synonymous with their grand cities--we know them by name: the Seine, the Thames, the Mississippi and the muddy Fraser. Perhaps the first lesson of civilisation is 'Build near water', but not too close.

Without water, there is barren landscape and few signs of intelligent life. Yet life perseveres. Air -conditioned golf course houses to air-conditioned SUVs to air-conditioned workspaces, these creatures of comfort that inhabit this wasteland, these A/C'd hayseeds require huge inputs of energy and water, the extraction and wanton usage of one ruining the purity of the other.

I'm thinking of the hydrological cycle we all learned about in grade school. I can still picture the textbook illustration--the "happy clouds" gathered over the ocean, swept inland to drop in the shadow of the mountains. I'm considering the general westward push of the weather on this big ol' ball of water and mud, and how, far to the east, a new sun may be blooming.

I'm still thinking of the images of black oil boiling out into the bottom of the Ocean for days, weeks on end, of executive lies and government blinds and cures that may prove to be more terrible than the disease. I'm learning new terms generated from the regime of capital meeting the consequences of disaster, phrases like: "run to failure" and "meltdown chain" and hearing the unspoken behind every corp-o-rat spokesman: "protect the investment, defend the brand".

In the Gulf last year and at Fukushima today, the talking heads attempt to reassure the public as the situation rapidly deteriorates. No matter which side of the big lie they lie, the professional punditry seems to offer as a source of comfort that the latest man-made defilement was "drifting out to sea". Out of sight, out of mind.

I'm thinking "out to sea" really means the Ocean. Our Ocean. The Ocean that more than two-thirds of the world's population is connected. It is no comfort at all when the unholy gods of energy and industry still consider the Ocean to be an open sewer, a Hoover-matic that never needs its bag to be emptied.

The sky no longer sheds its purple tears and the sound of a hose running draws me from my reveries. Peering out I see our neighbour performing his ritual obligations. He proclaims it to be a great day, before commencing to slop suds upon his spotless car, his chariot of smoke and fire well watered beyond the limits of Hur's team. He soaps and rinses, waxes and vains while the dishevelled wife glares from the kitchen window. Ah, the suburban dream continues...