I'm just not really into civilization any more. I
grew up in the suburbs, raised on a steady diet of
TV brainwash, obsessed with stuff, concerned with
status. People are at their dumbest when they
think they're smarter than the ads they watch or
the content of their social media feeds. It's not
the individual impressions that matter, but the
totality of the social engineering experiment. I
used to be quite happy in cities. New York,
Prague, Baltimore, Seattle—each had its charms and
excitements.
I liked the noise, diversions, and intensity of
all those people pressed together. Now, solitude
is my favorite thing. To bob on the water in a
boat, smell the salt air, only the flap of sails
and trickle of wavelets along the hull—that's the
best! I don't even like hiking much except by
myself, no talking or keeping pace, alternately
surrendered
to the green light or arrested by
tiniest
forest floor details. Alone at the top of
Eagle Cliff, I looked down
on
a
pair of raptors as they spiraled upward on a
thermal till they were high above me. Below,
motorboat
wakes trailed behind humans in their futile
high speed pursuits....
I say all this, but then it was really nice to
catch
up with Heike and Terry on
Lopez Island later that
rainy
night.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯