ahh infrastrucutre.....

I was just watching the History Channel the other night on a program about the US’s aging infrastructure and the current challenges to it. In the program they made note of the electrical junction boxes on transformer poles that have been known to melt in the hot sun, the storm sewers that are being overwhelmed with the current rising levels of rainfall in certain regions and the 100 year old levee systems in California that were created by farmers and are now eroding from beneath. A whole new layer to the concept of ‘burning up the wires’, which originated with telegraphs is now in the colloquial lexicon of computer geeks everywhere.

Perhaps it is meant to be? Perhaps if we are as interwoven into the natural fabric as ants then our structural creations, however hubridistically we envisioned them lasting forever and congratulating our advancing civilization, are destined to be folded back into the earth like ingredients in a batter. Maybe the dawn of the electronic age is in fact a new phase for our outmoded construction methodologies and our imagination needs to be freed from the speed at which we progressed and take a breather, look around and say: What the hell can we do with all these bits and pieces we cut off and defined as trash simply because they were attached to, but not primary to our understanding, of something valuable? I mean plastic leeches toxic stuff but we did not create it out of thin air now did we? We reassembled ingredients.

Maybe I am being a Pollyanna; all optimism and hope in the face of a crushing end. Perhaps it is my lazy human spirit that says, “we’ll figure something out! We must!” If not then I best get training like that woman in Terminator who has those lovely biceps and wields a gun ‘cause the end is neigh. At least I’ll be able to forage a few more decades if I train for a marathon now and stop playing Solitaire until the wee hours while fretting over how to visually express the components of a neighborhood within the confines of an 8’ X 8’ X 8’ volume.

I think we as humans are endlessly interesting and that is our blessing and curse if one is to value judge that I try not to do often, but I fear it is an ingrained knee-jerk reaction. Imagination and curiosity and a desire to have a happy bottom have lead to cars, computers and fancy toilets that respond to our approach. It is what, I believe, sits at the base chakra of all creative endeavors and I value creativity highly. I love reading poetry and looking at art and watching people dance around one another. And music! It brings me joy and that is why I continue to live.

Maybe our next phase as a people and a civilization, after the infrastructure meltdown that we will have to actually look at instead of pretending our shiny happy electric friends are magic, will include a more aged and weathered outlook on our inevitable deaths and will let us then enjoy our lives more in the here and now, knowing for certain that whatever we build to try to outlast our mortal coil is really simply another ay to spend out tie and maybe, just maybe, it might be better to be dancing instead.

An interesting aside: not sure about these, will have to actually look at the built version, but I liked the idea: http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/10/06/brad-pitt-unveils-floating-house-for-make-it-right-foundation/

Also, I loved the layout and graphic quality of the ‘me, myself and Infrastructure’ piece, not to mention the content. And the tiny tips on fingers on the Xerox machine utterly charmed me, given the content.