I look at the sameness of strip malls and shopping malls all around me in the US; I marvel at the emptiness and structural similarity.... I look at the sameness of strip malls and shopping malls all around me in the US; I marvel at the emptiness and structural similarity of mainstream news purveyors, from magazines to television (but I give thanks for the New York Times!); I listen to the redundant thumping of commercial pop; I watch and worry as mechanisms of control become ever more pervasive in the political and commercial realm; and I think of this comment from Wendell Berry, words we should all think about, because they will make us think about all that we're doing to ourselves in the US in the name of our temeritous indifference:

We're collapsing from excess equilibrium. Look at concrete and asphalt. They're flat. They're under control. That's a form of equilibrium, probably the ultimate form: stasis--which is surely what Western civilization aims for. We can't stand the wild. We can't stand the creative disequilibrium.

What good is a comfort founded on emptiness? The order of long lines of metal cells, each in its lane in the broad trench of the freeway, induces numbness without providing security...indeed, far more US citizens died from road accidents than from murder, suicide, and terrorism combined in 2001. And most of them died alone...let's not only tolerate but celebrate the eccentric: the café with the absurd sandwiches, the old man telling bad jokes on the bus, the punks and fags and rappers and poets, the old women in shorts tending gardens in the vacant lots, the loud and graceful youth, and all those who live life in detail. They show us the way, and each way they show us is different. So we can make our own way through life, together.