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I would like to thank the recent BBQ party on Power Station Beach. You have saved me. Really, you have. Everything is clear to me now. The anxiety is over. The worry has subsided. You guys have made me see the light.
I used to worry about the state of the planet. I was concerned that the world my daughter’s children would grow up in would be a toxic cesspool. But I can lean back in my chair and fold my hands upon my tummy and stare with asinine stupidity into the blank sky. You see, I now know after that walk along the beach that the Earth is truly doomed. Thanks for confirming that for me.
Yes, that is how it is.
We went for a walk on Sunday morning in the rain. Down to the beach we traipsed, wrapped up warm and relishing the solitude, my daughter full of questions – ‘Are rivers long?’ ‘Who made water?’ ‘Why is a cloud a cloud?’– until we got to seaside.
And there we saw the remnants of the party – a blackened patch of sand, some half-burnt branches and…the glory of it… at least 40 cigarette butts. Yes, I counted them. I was intrigued. I needed to know. I wanted to appreciate the message in all its magnificence. I needed to be drawn inexorably closer to the pristine realisation that it is true: the planet is lost. Yes, it is. Why? Because despite the warnings, the protests, the messages, the education, the hand-wringing, the call to arms, the efforts of many people to tell us what is happening to the environment, the message that one should clean up after oneself has failed, it has crashed and burned, it has imploded with a simpering poof. Why? Several humans sometime recently went to Power Station Beach to have some ‘fun’, eat, drink and chat, and to help themselves have ‘fun’ they smoked cigarettes and they stubbed them out in the sand!
What gall! What temerity! These people must know. They are visionaries. They see that it is totally pointless to recycle, re-use, re-new. There is no need to be green or consider the world around them. It is over. The planet and human civilisation are slop. Nothing more and nothing less.
So why pick up stubs? Why bring along a small can in which they could have disposed of their stubs cleanly? Why?
We can all relax, move along, go indoors and make a cup of tea. The world is going to the shitter in a big way.
Enlightened, we made our way home, wiser and thankful. On the way my daughter slipped in wet dog poo and cried because her trousers stank of shit. But this was ok. I appreciated this. I wanted to personally thank the owner who had let his dog freely poo over the path. That owner had offered me the key to another dimension. I was like a convicted killer whose last-minute appeal for a stay of execution had been denied; the inevitable was now welcomed.
We walked past the rubble from a nearby building project that had been deposited in what had been until very recently a pretty patch of grass and bushes. I felt overjoyed and basked in my new-found serenity. Yes, illegally dumped, or legally dumped? It did not matter for I had seen the discarded butts on the beach. All was clear to me know.
I went home, washed the poo off my daughter and while she sat and drew a picture of a blue sky and a yellow sandy beach with children playing in the clean water, I crawled into bed, put on some Bach and grinned.
I am humbled. Thanks for showing me how we threw the world away.
You guys are the best.
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