Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The Daily Write: Marylou walks around her block with a greyhound and a cigarette. (March 16, 2012. 12 minutes).


Marylou walks around her block with a greyhound and a cigarette

What's another word for outcast? One that actually has meaning these days when everyone is an outsider and we're all peering in through the looking glass, or iPhone 4 camera.What is the allure of self portraiture in the post-modern world where cattle are part of the assembly line, Whole Foods gets it vegetables from China and China to the average non Chinese American is the dirty secret we all adore, and abhor. We like our goods cheap, we hate the Chinese for exporting everything they make to us with our insatiable appetites and desire for documentation.

These words are bandied about: disenfranchised, hopeless, bullied, dismal. As a mother, it gives me not a minimal amount of pain to think of what world I've born my children into. I wonder if there will be any polar bears left in 20 years. I like them on film, would damn sure not want to run into one on the tundra, or a floating hunk of former glacier in a salty bay poisoned by oil and a giant patch of polyurethane.

I'm a hypocrite, add that to the pile of words building up around my ears like toxic waste. I think of myself as left of the left, but I want my house protected from the bad guys. I believe in recycling and upcycling and bicycling but I sometimes throw all the old plastic yogurt containers in the garbage because I just do not have the energy to wash them out first. I haven't ridden a bike since I was 15. I'm afraid of falling off, getting hit, or having a sore tush.

I used to think hair could win the war - with the right curl, or smooth flip (more likely), a girl could get practically anything she wanted. Only I've seen those girls face crowds in their swim suits, and there's nothing self assured going on there. They are fakers and outsiders too. Even as they snap their own pics endlessly and post them to Instagram for the "Top Hot Shots" of the day. We hate to be ignored and we hate to really be seen. I guess that's the allure of a Target or Walmart. You can lose yourself among the piles of merchandise - with a mission (not aimless), next to people, but not really seen - everyone's too busy trying to get the best deal while pretending that their purchasing habits don't make them beholden to the 16 hour work days of child laborers in a country they can't imagine as anything more than a caricature.

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