Here We Stray

Twice on Sunday

Mortality is a luxury. I can recall moments on California’s 1 when things were so amazing I thought that I had died and gone to heaven. And then I panicked, thinking what if everything from here on out went this perfect? Perhaps I was dead and in hell, I thought. I nearly scared myself to death.

In a moment I could have been savoring a rare instance when everything was going better than I could have imagined, I could not. I should have switched to decaf, come to think of it, or at least lowered the dosage.

Eventually, the view became fragile as well as majestic. Gentrification and coastal development returned as the financial crises abated. Paradise was getting paved over, and that was all too familiar. I got used to the stronger coffee. I adapted, bliss free.

Now, back here in what remains of New Jersey’s pinelands, the work continues, without the views, or having to watch them “improved”. New Jersey cannot feed itself but still bends over for “developers”, in a system that has always been rife with corruption. So much so that we all just throw up our hands and keep our mouths shut. We will be paying for utility suppled oxygen soon enough. In California our monthly water was nearly three times our electric, and they were still moving people in. Now we have been told we have a water shortage here in Manchester, but they are still approving and building on what remains of these pinelands. Soon we will be asked to pay for a larger water and sanitary sewage system that will accommodate expansion, or our politicians will elect to sell our system to a corporation and wash their hands of the “problem.”

Yes, here I am, back in a place with too much undeveloped land, too close to the ocean, privately owned. What could go wrong?