A Rant and a Laugh

Still no rain. The weather predictions for the next week: sunny. I miss the sound of falling rain on the roof, vegetation and stone, the plunk-plunk in the rain spouts. I yearn for the smell of wetness – wet leaves. It’s been so long, these feel only like childhood memories. The air is saturated with smog, vegetation layered with soot. Yesterday, out walking on the city streets, doing my errands, the golden fall colors helped dissipate my negative thoughts. I don’t like living my day with a black cloud lurking over me. But beside a fallen yellow leaf there was a candy wrapper, a coke can, and further along cigarette butts. I once read that litter attracts litter. My observations tell me this is true. Bits of trash litter a weed-ridden, unkempt corner yard two blocks away. People think it’s acceptable to toss a crumpled paper there. I take that back – I doubt they think, which gets me thinking about recycling and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I Googled the phenomenon which is also known as a gyre and the Great Pacific Trash Vortex. It’s all about PLASTIC. 

Grocery shopping takes me longer now as, glasses perched on my nose, I examine the underside of containers. Does the tiny triangle hold a number 1, followed by the letters PET? If not, back on the shelf it goes. But I often have no choice. If I want to eat yoghurt or buy household cleaning products, I must sin against planet Earth. How I’d like to have an interview with the CEO of Johnson and Johnson and give him an earful.

This lack of rain and the thought of all that accumulating plastic on land and sea frustrate me. I feel powerless, even though I sign every green petition that appears in my Inbox, refuse a plastic bag for my box of aspirin at the pharmacy and take my own cloth bags to the supermarket, while all around me customers file by with carts filled with plastic bags.

Experts here say there’s a good chance La Niña will bring us rain this winter. I’ll believe it when I see it, hear it and smell it.

Now that I’ve had a good rant, I’ll admit that, arriving home yesterday, the trilling of the hummingbirds at the feeder in our backyard cheered me up. Then I sat down to watch an entire hour of “The Big Bang Theory”, which had me laughing out loud. There’s nothing like a good laugh to put things in perspective – for a while.