Yelling at the Clouds

… so people can have the same looking house within a 15 min drive of a Home Depot Power Center.”

It’s a story we all know. Americans want their space, but cannot afford to make those places charming, unique or lively. No nation can afford to make these incredibly space inefficient places charming, unique or lively. And yet, it is codified in our city ordinances that the only thing we can build are inefficient single family houses.

To make these vapid, uninteresting places, we destroy inconceivable swaths of pristine habitat. Habitat that was the culmination of millions of years of evolution, evaporated within decades. All so we can have a house indistinguishable from another on the other side of the country. 15 minutes away is the Walmart tucked in the Power Center, the only option for miles. Taste is decidedly not local, taking form in whatever the conglomerates say is the ‘hot new item to buy’. Good thing they have layaway now, I’ve been struggling to keep up with the Jones’.

As we destroy, building more of these places, we lose sight of what the real world even is supposed to be. Just a few steps from door to car, a podcast or two in between. Repeat. Lack of experience with the beauty, silence, breath that was there reduces the pain, fading away into memories of our ancestors. Numb to it all, we destroy more. Until the entire world is uninteresting and corporate. The most efficient use of land, some would argue.

It hurts my soul that we have allowed this to happen.