FollowThe title came to me on a swaying New Jersey transit coast line train, heading to New York City from Matawan. On the next seat; a shoulder bag, straps tearing away from fake black leather, ready for strategic duct tape; a final act of repair before a new retailing adventure. Large head phones, resembling a pilot, relayed Simon and Garfunkel’s best. ‘Scarborough Fair’ drifted me out window, facing east towards Raritan Bay. It was 1967. ‘The Graduate’, Ben Braddock, Elaine Robinson and Anne Bancroft, Mrs. Robinson, gritting her teeth. Dustin Hoffman was banging on a church window (to rescue Elaine), then seconds later, swings a large crucifix before jumping on an old General Motors bus. Yes, I’ve got a fantasy about earning enough money someday to buy an old bus for my front lawn, pissing off at least one of my neighbors. I know who.
The sky was stunning, no clouds and planet earth looked magnificent. My forehead rested on the window. The conductor asked for the ticket; I was absorbed. Passing South Amboy with backdrop of bay and ocean, small water conduits everywhere; brooks, ponds and puddles. Occasionally a duck floated and there was worry if water was polluted. It looked it.
I imagined what New Jersey looked like when General Washington crossed the Delaware and then an epiphany; surrounding the beauty of Jersey’s coastline, were factories with a myriad of smoke stacks; every shape, height, girth, some active, with plumes reaching skyward like a mini erupting volcano in Iceland. Coastal Jersey was filled with smoke stacks. I imagined buying a camera and doing a coffee table book; Jersey Smoke Stacks.
Smoke stacks made me think Stanley Kubrick, director and filmmaker extraordinaire, and about how he used symmetry in his art and strange smoke stack symmetry outside my window. What are stacks sending into the air and what happens if particulates from one stack intermingle with nearby particulates and form something evil that no scientist could predict?
I bought a cup of coffee before the train; pouring skim milk and using a thin red plastic stirrer and throwing it down the hole in the counter for dead stirrers. And here it is an hour later and the thought of 25 million Americans daily using/discarding stirrers bothered me. There is so much waste on earth – a way of life, an addiction. I wonder if other Americans are concerned about the millions of stirrers being thrown away after meaningless mixing revolutions. “Use your fingers,” I thought to myself. Maybe someday they’ll have to.
A few years back I was in Sedona, Arizona on a jeep tour, raving how much I loved everything. The driver turned around; he never heard anyone rave about Sedona as much and why don’t I move. I said I couldn’t move to Sedona because of my addiction to the smell of New Jersey car exhaust in the morning. Everyone laughed but I was serious. We are addicted not so much to the smell of exhaust but the energy (fossil fuels) creating it.
“Tower of Babble” means words of insincerity, dishonesty and futility. Every country on good old earth has an own agenda and language. Rich versus poor countries. How are we ever going to build a tower to oversee climate change and global heat if we’re so different? Difference means “what’s in it for me?” It took 17 years for nations simply to define what they meant when they pledged in 1992 to avoid “dangerous” human-caused climate change. It will almost surely take at least a few more before they sign any binding deal moving to achieve that goal. Yes, I remember the tower of Babel from Sunday school. Yes, my coffee table book will be long published and the world will still be trying to define. And yes, for all perspective tourists; New Jersey’s got it all. Every kind of smoke stack there is. Have a nice weekEND. Oh by the way, if you like the content and style here, perhaps pick up a copy of ‘Vichy Water.’ Same free wheeling.