Airplane

It smells like cream of mushroom soup in here.

And we spent the weekend (ed: Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Felt like a weekend) in New York running errands, eating pizza and scoping out neighbourhoods. When we met up with Heather and Daniel, Heather described finding a fruit-filled garden paradise where they happily gallivanted for several hours one day. We didn't find any fruit, low-hanging or otherwise, but in Alphabet City in the lower east side of Manhattan we did find community gardens, two of which were open to visitors. Basically converted dull and unused city spaces, these gardens were filled with flowers, used patio furniture, and jugs of water. There was a hammock in one. We rested there for a short while. The gardens made me feel happy and optimistic about public space amelioration. They're not expertly landscaped or particularly pretty in some cases, but they're comfy and welcoming and a break from roasting city summer sidewalks. An organization called GreenThumb works on them. I don't enjoy planting or growing things or planning gardens myself, but I sure reap the benefits.

Myles wants me to point out that he thinks airplanes are more interesting than gardens. That's where we are as I write this. Several thousand feet in the air, five hours from destination. More than a hundred years of innovation and research and tireless technological development and infrastructure and investment went into all of this so that I can take a giant metal bird to Ireland for $600. My ecological debt is certainly more deeply entrenched than that of my student loans. I have evidence that I am not deeply concerned with the hole in the atmosphere or climate change or any of it. If I was, wouldn't I feel more than a shred of guilt?

Making an effort to not contribute to demand for unethically-farmed meat, trying to support local businesses over box stores, bicycling and TTC-ing instead of driving (not so much because of worrying about carbon dioxide omissions and mostly because of my own selfish economic reasons, granted, but also for the sake of attempting to contribute as least a little to a clean and healthy downtown core) -- these are all things that I feel happy about doing, and would feel worse if I didn't. But not flying because of environmental reasons? I would be lying if I ever said I'd seriously considered it. Perhaps if in order to go abroad in my life I had to somehow also have cows killed cruelly, buy buy buy everything from Walmart, and drive a city-air-polluting SUV at thirty-five kilometres per hour to work every day, I would also do these unsavoury things. But I somehow doubt it. These would be things I would experience directly, and be affected by!