But there I was, forking over the cash for a case of safety. What drove me to the store, on the surface at least, was the earthquake in Japan, followed by a tsunami, the waves of which traveled at the same speed as a commercial jet. And that was followed, as we all now know, by a bit of nuclear horror that’s transformed iodine into a celebrity drug for those of us perched along the Ring of Fire.
My fear of earthquakes makes sense on one hand and, on the other, none. Having experienced one while on the seventh floor of a rickety old brick office building one morning, I have a very rational, logical respect for and fear of the authority the ground has when it begins to sway. On the illogical side of the equation, my most uncensored voice tells me that the place where I grew up is safer, that I should really pack it up while I can and go on home, which is completely ridiculous. In addition to the fact that Saint Louis is the most homicide-happy town in the U.S., Missouri is hardly free of peril when it comes to foundational instability. The only thing running through that territory that’s more mighty than the Mississippi is the New Madrid. Also in the realm of illogical is my hang-up about maps. I’ve lived here for 17 years and I still cannot look at a map of North America for more than a few seconds. Oregon is too close to the edge, and when I see that, when it’s forced upon me visually, I cannot help but imagine the western third or so of the state tilting up and out of the ground at a 45-degree angle and then, as if powered by a slingshot, being flung straight out into the Pacific. Just looking at it on paper makes me nervous.
So there I stood, buying a case of just-in-case water. The sensation was so shameful that I could barely make eye contact with the young woman running the register. This, I thought, it must feel something like this to not drink for a period of years and then, on an otherwise ordinary afternoon, as if guided by a very dark kind of radar, swerve right into the beer aisle and casually toss a 12-pack into the cart along with the canned kidney beans and organic eggs.
For a few weeks now I’ve been out of sorts. I blame it on the time change, I blame it on the weather, I blame it on turning, much to my shock and surprise, 45 years old. I blame it on Haiti, which is still a wasteland. I blame it on the fires and floods that not that long ago ravaged Australia. I blame it on the earthquakes in New Zealand. I blame it on the designers of nuclear power plants, who apparently did not factor tsunamis into their considerations in spite of the fact that word itself is, in fact, Japanese. I’m not sure what the people who have had quite enough in the Middle East are angling for exactly but my guess is that they are sick of living in tin shacks while their rulers, even those who are not officially kings, live according to the standards of royalty. In the case of the Middle East, my blame is directed at the irony: How beautiful, these brown, exotic people taking to the streets for liberty and justice and the right to assemble and be heard, and at the same time, isn’t it a stroke of heaven-sent genius that they are not employed by the State of Wisconsin?
So instead of watching and listening to the news, I’ve been reading Harper’s and The Sun. I’m reading Thomas Hardy and a novel by Barbara Kingsolver so full of sadness and despair that I wipe the table down with a soapy washcloth after reading – even if only a few pages – for fear that the blood and tears that gush off the pages will leave stains. Howard Zinn’s take on the causes of exactly the sort of stupidness I’m muddling through at the moment sits on the coffee table, patiently, silently. I’m avoiding the talk with the same resolve usually reserved for avoiding a love interest with whom it is clear, painfully, that there shall be no future.
My excursion into emergency provisions caused me to realize something, though. I’m not avoiding the news because of the content of it; I’m avoiding it because of what follows the announcement of each new calamity. From KBOO to KGW and pretty much everywhere in between, every natural disaster, every political collapse, every instance of money trumping might is greeted with dramatized disbelief that is expressed like this:
No way!
And that, I think, is what’s causing distress: I think it runs contrary to basic human instincts to not know where the provisions come from. I cannot resist pointing out that removing that knowledge, scrubbing us clean of that understanding, is the heart and soul, the bread and butter if you will, of marketing. When fresh produce grows at Safeway, when energy is invisible, when the particulars of retirement accounts and health insurance are conveyed not by someone whose face you recognize but via a slicked up Internet site, that frees us up to focus on more pressing issues like celebrities behaving badly and clever pets and precocious youngsters, videos of whom transcend You Tube and end up on the evening news so regularly that I can no longer get pissed off about it without really trying. And then, of course, when something basic runs off the rails, like the price of gas, or the diminishing – rapidly diminishing – returns on the 401k account, when something happens that would come as no surprise if we were paying attention, all hell breaks loose. We’re shocked, and we’re outraged.
So I started wondering. How is my house heated? It’s gas, I presume, since I get a bill from Northwest Natural every month. How does that gas get into the house? Hell if I know. There are two utility lines in and out of here, one, I presume, for electricity, the other for the phone. Which is which? There’s a line that comes right over my house from the front. Is that the lifeline for the people at the other end of the block? What exactly is our arrangement with various countries in the Middle East? In order for someone in this country to drive an SUV or to heat a 750 square foot home from late October until May, who has to give up what? I bought some spinach and a carton of mushrooms on Wednesday afternoon. Where did they come from? Is someone earning poverty-level wages to grow the spinach so that I can have a nice little salad in the middle of March? Is it really spinach that I ate? Are the mushrooms actually mushrooms or are they clever homage to the nuclear age? There are facilities around here, of course. Are they on or off? When I write out the check for my mortgage every month, where does that money go? Who has the deed to the house? When I make the call – as I will eventually – to change my long distance carrier, to whom, exactly, will I be speaking? What does Hazardous Materials actually mean? How natural is the natural gas provided by Northwest Natural?
Buying the bottled water didn’t make me feel better, of course. It’s just that I now know where one provision in this house came from – Safeway – and how it got here – I carried it – and where it is: It’s in my kitchen, in a cabinet, so when the kitchen collapses into the basement, I won’t have to do as much digging around to find water that’s not contaminated. It’s a start, I think.
