American Fez

Noise Annoys

Last week, I attended the grand opening of Quiet Place: A Human Sanctuary, which is a small local park newly built on the site of a decommissioned gas station. The event was celebrated with performances from three rock bands followed by a "guided community meditation" conducted with the aid of a megaphone. So much for being a quiet place. And, judging by the cosplay-inspired appearance of some of the participants, I'm not entirely sure it was entirely human either.

The rock bands had all arrived in tricked-out transit vans. I hoped they had enough gas to get them home again, as the decommissioned gas station whose grave they sang upon was the only gas station for miles around. Nowadays you need to drive about ten miles out of town to find the nearest Shell or Sunoco. We joke that you need a full tank just to fill up, which is why I drive an electric car these days. I charge its battery at the EV-Go outside the library, another supposedly quiet place full of rambunctious patrons playing loud video games on the free computers.

Fortunately, from time to time, I can now claim access to an almost inaccessible beach; a hidden cove whose inconvenient geology defies the best efforts of sunbathers and swimmers. It's far away from home but worth taking the trip whenever I can. Walking there, however, is a risk, as you must clamber around slippery rocks and slalom between piles of flea infested seaweed. But I love the peace it provides and soak up the relative silence like a budding flower soaks up the sunlight. The sole disturbances are the occasional cries of the cormorants, the crash of the waves, and the crunch of pebbles under my feet. Ah yes, how typical of the modern world that to bask in a quiet place and a human sanctuary I must move as far away as possible from the Quiet Place: A Human Sanctuary.

The Free Range Manifesto

The state of the world, I feel, may be likened to an egg being fried in a skillet. This egg once had the potential to hatch into a fecund chicken, prancing and clucking around the farmyard in feathery splendor, laying yet more eggs from coop to shining coop. Alas, its current fate is to become breakfast for some avaricious, ungrateful child, who devours the egg in a high-chair while we hungry multitudes are forced to watch.

And it's not as if we haven't hear the sizzling of this egg being fried all along. We even applauded the cracking of its shell. We approved the addition of salt and pepper. We ordered 'sunny-side up' but the cooks weren't listening. They had other plans: lots of processed cheese and greasy bacon in what they call an omelette for everybody. But all most of us get is trickle-down drips of fat. Is it any wonder we are unwell? If only the egg was allowed to hatch, then at least we could nurse ourselves with chicken soup. But hatching takes time and time is money and plutocrats are greedy.

Obviously, my egg-as-world analogy does require the existence of a chicken-as-world that came first, a self-perpetuating chicken that I believe was slaughtered crossing the road from an agrarian to an industrial society. But did this original chicken only lay a single egg? If not, where are the others? Is there an egg box hidden somewhere in a secret vault from which a fresh egg is drawn whenever needed? If so, how many eggs are left in the box? Alas, these are the important questions only a conspiracy theorist with a podcast and much time to waste can answer.