I wonder how as Americans we can be so connected--too connected almost and yet, be so removed from each other. I'm sitting at a coffee house in town, texting Freak while the Gas Fast Tour gets going, surrounded by Zen and Scientist, trying not to think about why there's only twenty of us here. Even as I slide my cell phone out of sight, I'm still apart, one with my camera--metering and balancing, drawn in, instant by instant.
Anna Roland and Thistle are touring the Northwest by bike (hence the Gas Fast Tour), a political
and personal statement about our dependence on oil, a war with no end in sight, and some really amazing folk music. Anna and Thistle are angrier, nervier Ani's, Alanis long before she sold out, the heiresses-apparent to Joni Mitchell. Zen knows Anna from St. Louis. I vaguely know her in the way all of left-leaning St. Louis is never more than six-degrees of separation from each other. Wireboy is beside himself that I get to see Anna. If he knew I was seeing Anna through the lens of my new camera, he just might wet himself.
I used to be a biker chic too--tearing up the Kady Trail, yelling with Critical Mass, biking my way to killer hamstrings and glutes. Long before diabetes, before all the fatigue, before divorce, before bitterness, before Oregon, and Freak, I was a radical righteous babe. Now, I am never
more than a cell phone, an email, a text message away from anyone, never further than my Jeep or Hotwire can take me.
Yet, I know the real distance. The radical activist in me hasn't succumbed so much to the suburban buzz that I'm not aware of how far apart we really are these days. I 've never seen 99% of my food growing, my bargain-clothes come from countries I'm not sure I could locate on a globe, and I know the names of the neighbors on my block and no other. I can walk in my downtown neighborhood and see no other pedestrians. The nearest "corner produce market" is four big box grocery stores, 3 miles, and two huge roads away.
I am so far removed from my life in Vancouver (was that ever really my life?), from Zen's life in
China, from the life of my grandparents. Why is it that this is the first time in two years that I have walked at night to the coffee house? I live with four other people, and yet, this is our first group outing. Board games and chess sets sit idle while Ipods and cell phones hum. Yahoo! shows all four of us online, separately together, alone in our little Internet bubble. I live in one of the most bike friendly states in the nation, and yet, I still can't trust the cars.
I want to tell you how amazing Anna Roland's music is, how you must go see in Corvallis (Interzone, Tomorrow, August 19th) or in Eugene (Mystic Pizza, August 26th), how she'll silk screen her logo right on the shirt you wear to the concert, how her CD's are a mere $5 (which
didn't stop mine from getting lifted from the ladies room), and how Thistle is starting a community in Iowa. But, all I can think about is how I'm not doing enough, how I'm sitting in a circle of plastic chairs, the intoxicating odor of tobacco and apple pie sedating us, and I'm talking the radical talk, and I keep thinking, "This is not my life, I'm not really here."
But, I am here, and this IS my life. I'm doing so much, and yet, still not enough. My garden died a horrible death sometime in July, recycling and composting are sporadic events in our house, and I give too many of my dollars to silliness, and I have to work too hard to do the common sense things that should be second nature. All these "Big Ideas" rolling around in our heads, and to 90% of the world, it's so simple, it's laughable. We need each other.