Tired of staring at the cheap imitation wood paneling lining the walls of my basement apartment, I decided to take a break. I reach for my “pleather” (plastic leather) shoes, think twice and decide to venture out into the world with only stripper red nail polish protecting my feet.
I walk barefoot out into the grass and stand there. The perfectly manicured, lush carpet poking between my toes is the key ingredient in the magical recipe of illusion. Foreign plants and millions of gallons of fresh drinking water have transformed Colorado’s arid grasslands into an East Coast City Park. A stone birdbath stands in the middle of the tomato garden, but it is not stone; it is pure synthetic nature. I imagine the birds are looking at me and wondering if I'm safe to poop on; after all I could really be made of stone.
I take a deep breath, but the smell of dryer sheets permeates my nose, wafting over from the neighbor’s dryer exhaust. We think it cruel to keep animals captive in zoos, and yet we live feet away from our neighbors in cookie cutter housing developments. We pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to live in glorified apartment complexes. None of the utilities are included, you can not change the paint color of your house, and you have to park in the street because your oversized vehicle will not fit in the garage.
My mind wanders back to my brain and with it comes the message, this is not natural. We as a country have evolved into beings who no longer can survive in nature, therefore it is no longer our natural setting. SUV’s, computer screens, and cell phones are our natural habitat. The air conditioner is my wind; the washing machine is my pond. If the roof leaks, I panic. So obviously rain no longer belongs in my natural world.
When I think of the word “natural”, I envision a health food store. I think of the 100% organic, all-cotton, non-chlorine bleached tampons under my bathroom sink I paid a small fortune for. Natural is bottled water from Fiji and the neighbor kid’s pet rock. It is my yoga class in a windowless, dank room filled with fluorescent lights, exposed pipes and ductwork.
The local Wal-mart is as natural to me as breathing, so therefore it must be real and the tree in the parking lot is merely a garnish. Everywhere you look there are twig-like trees being kept afloat by ropes anchored in puddles of river rock and cigarette butts. Their scrawny branches incapable of providing shade; instead they merely tease your dog’s bladder while she is locked in the car. Unless you are parked at a pet mega-mart, in which case your companion is allowed to scent everything as she accompanies you in perusing a colorful array of copious nonsense. All of which is marketed towards humans and not your four-legged friend, who would get just as much enjoyment out of a two-liter pop bottle as she would a squeaky five dollar hotdog. But this matters not when you can strap your hamster into a hemp harness and take it for a walk around the block. Dress your cat up like the Easter Bunny, or feed your canine vegan dog food. Because what Fido really wants at dinner time is a nice juicy chunk of organic carrot.
Reality is merely a topic for me to ponder while I ask stressed out people if they would like their groceries in paper or plastic. Which translates into, “would you like to kill a tree or a fish?” I have always left those thoughts at work with my apron and name tag, as if they were not cool enough for me to acknowledge while out with my friends. But try as I might to avoid them, they have found me, and pretending to not know them no longer works. Nature is not green foliage and blooming dahlias; it is canvas shopping bags and recyclable beer bottles. Nature is all around us; it is in the exhaust we breathe and the latex-free condom on the sidewalk.
My thoughts are more than mere cognitions; they are real. They have taken the form of the average Middle American, and as I look our culture in the eye I notice we’re all wearing rose colored contact lenses.
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