One Man's Meat

Busy busy busy, sorry for slow postings. Yesterday I had to roar into the city to attend a Sierra Club meeting. I do the local group's newsletter. I have to rush to beat the traffic and always get to the Whole Foods store early. I get food, pick up some things (like crystallized ginger, say) that you can't get locally, and people-watch. Lots of people have dreadlocks or piercings or whatever. And they care that their food is organic. I don't, really. Some things aren't food, I agree, but the thing I mostly care about is the flavor. But I do feel alienated from most of the shoppers there, and I always wonder if I'll be stopped and asked for my papers, like a refugee on a train going through Czechoslovakia in 1943. Then we have the meeting. It's held in a cramped, cluttered, ugly little room in the bowels of the store, and when people visit, thinking that if they go to a Sierra Club meeting they're going to somehow be refreshed, to on some level breathe the cool air sighing through the mountaintop pines, they look around, quietly shocked. Everyone talks about reports and petitions and committees and rallies and all that. And again, I just sort of nod seriously. All I really care about is doing newsletters. It's sort of like a sexual fetish that people can't explain—they're into latex or whatever because they just are. I just like newsletters. I think I could do a newsletter for a bridge club or a group of antique tractor enthusiasts and be happy, if the newsletter were a good one. I feel guilty, sometimes, listening to all the talk about forming committees. I wonder if I care about the environment at all, or if all I really care about is the outdoors. The more involved you are with the Sierra Club, the more time you spend in front of your computer. It's one of life's little ironies.