tucson

Today I am angry. I feel trapped in a box with four comfortable walls around me just out of arms’ length. How can I break out of a comfortable box? Where is the impetus?

This is what struck me yesterday in the ice cream shop, watching everyone eat their huge bowls of corn syrupy, factory-flavored non-food with neither the desire nor ability to moderate. There is a particular challenge for those of us born into this era in America. It’s too comfortable a box.

I’ve suspected for quite some time that the obesity crisis our country faces is no accident. There was definitely a motive behind the law that allowed the FDA to accept unlimited monetary compensation to declare a food additive or drug’s safety in 1992. Canola oil itself came with a $50,000 price tag. Why? Because when people are well-fed they get comfortable. They get so comfortable that they don’t care anymore about the quality of that food or how it’s grown or the ramifications for our future. They just care about being comfortable.

I’m no fool. I have taste buds. Ice cream is delicious. So are Doritos. And Cheetos. And sweet cereal and cake and cookies and Rice Dream bars and those lovely blended coffee drinks. Cable TV with its multiple stations is fun. Having a kick-ass fast computer is fun. I could sit inside all day eating ice cream and Doritos watching cable TV and surfing the internet and I’d be really damn comfortable. I might go ahead and drive 5 blocks to the grocery store in my air-conditioned car and pick up some more snacks.

But of course I would worry about the things that might take away my comfort. I might lose my job – that would sting my comfortable world. Someone might attack my country and disrupt my TV or internet or my food supply and make me feel fundamentally unsafe. The price of gas might get so high that I have to take a hard look at whether I can afford my car. These things occupy my mind. My biggest concern becomes protecting my own comfort. I’m not worried one bit about the plight of Iraqi families, where my food comes from and who created it, what will happen to the wildlife and terrain in Alaska if we exploit it for oil, my civil rights to birth where I want, school my children where I want, talk to whomever I want about anything I want, make my own medical decisions for myself, and of course, I’m not worried one bit about the civil rights of my neighbors – especially those who do things that annoy me and get in the way of my comfort. Why don’t they just make those things illegal already?

That is the challenge in this time & place. How can you achieve something great when you’re so comfortable all the time? Revolution doesn’t happen in your comfort zone. My grandma says to me, “I don’t know how to put it, dear. It’s just that you never seem....satisfied.” What I wish I would have said to her, “Of course not, to be satisfied is to be dead. That’s why you were never satisfied.” Greatness is born from connection, discipline & self-denial. Mediocrity is born from comfort.

Tucson is beautiful – more beautiful than Tempe was when I lived there. It is surrounded by mountains, and not in the way my ex J. loves about Portland. Portland has a few nice tall mountains scattered here & there, but Tucson...Tucson is literally surrounded by mountain ranges. It’s this little spark of a city tucked inside four huge walls of mountains. It is a comfortable box, but not one you’d need to break out of. It calls you out. Into the mountains over to the other side. You can almost feel the slow somewhere near.

The Arizona sun breathes life into an otherwise desolate land. It breathes life into your soul. There is nothing more rejuvenating than the sun burning down on you in the dry, hot air. Maybe seeing past and seeing through is the consequence of Vitamin D overdose. Looking at the faces around me, it seems likely.

I am angry because the sun shines its big light on what I already feel in the dark recesses of my mind. Why is my husband working at the f-ing chemical factory? Why are we allowing ourselves to be cogs? Why do I allow him to give this time to his family, these years he’ll never get back? These miserable years in a hot uniform in a building full of the carcinogens I despise?

Why did we have to buy into the American Dream so quickly? Why didn’t we buck the conventional marriage-to-mortgage path? The wheels keep going round and round and we keep flipping over, under, over right along with them. Where is the joy in that?

Ahh....I know where the joy is. The joy is in vices. In alcohol to help you forget. In caffeine to help you enjoy. In sugar because there’s nothing else. Nothing else to do but get eat yourself numb and buy things. Oh, the things we could buy. The things we need. The things we want. A new car. A new lawnmower. A new laptop. A new camera. A new house with a new mortgage with new things inside it.

Beyond these mountains in the light of the sun you know there is more. There are a few people not yet part of the wheel. There are many people buried beyond this city who were always purposeful in their steps.

It’s been my hope all along that our new homestead will get us completely off the grid and off the Ameri-go-round. That’s why I’ve made this push, why I’ve brought this short-term stress into our lives. I will not allow my husband give his years to us doing something he thinks he has to do. I will not let him waste his life on something he doesn’t enjoy any more than I would be willing to waste my own. Who cares about our civil rights when you’re owned for more than 40 waking hours of every week?

I want us to accomplish much in the next 10 years: break free of the mortgage that binds us, learn real skills that honor the land we’ve been blessed with, learn how to use the animals in our care while remaining thankful to them for what they give, learn how to do without convenience and not just survive, but thrive.

Then I want us to make our move – the one we’ve both wanted for such a long time. Make our move out here to the desolate land that isn’t as desirable as the lush farmland in the Midwest. We will buy many acres and many more horses and there we will finally be, on our ranch in the Southwest. And the sun will shine and shine while the heat burns the gratitude right into our souls, and we can hopefully never be blind again.