wasteland

I am destroyed, overwhelmed by the power of the will of survival of these people, the pickers at the landfill in Rio in Brazil. Watched the documentary movie, "Wasteland", last night. An artist comes to the worlds largest landfill and creates art from the waste and recycled stuff, posing some of these people as within the "art as trash" or "trash as art" and allowing them to be seen as more than just a part of the swarm of scavengers. It brought tears.

It also brought sleeplessness. We buy stuff that gets thrown away. We are encouraged to buy stuff, especially this time of year, because it is good for the economy. We are conditioned to worship the economy and it's growth, taught to believe that it is some kind of science in the world like physics. It's a contrivance, an invention of philosophers out of thin air, with no basis. We don't have to be this way.

I finally got back to sleep about 4:30 and proceeded to have a dream. I was sitting in a waiting room with about thirty other people listening for my name to be called for my appointment to be put to death. Some of the people were there for other reasons. There was no indication that my death was to be punishment for anything I had done, nor was there any explanation for how I had gotten there. What was very clear, was that I was free to leave, come and go as I wished, rather than just sit and wait...waste my time.

A year ago today, a young fruit vender in Tunisia set himself on fire in protest over being continually harassed by police while simply trying to sell enough fruit to survive in the world. That incident started the "Arab Spring".

Feel free to get up and walk around.