Angle Parking

I used to think of myself as a liberal. I once had an opportunity to join the Canadian Legion where beer is about 40 cents per glass. Used to be you had to be ex military, the spouse of or guest of same, to enter. But they realized with this policy all the members were dying off, so they were offering 'fraternal' memberships in return for community work like coaching kids soccer, or tending bar down at the legion. Anyway I always liked the legion with it's cheap beer, crypt-like stillness. You could sit there all afternoon reading and drinking beer without anyone coming up saying "Reading huh?". So when I had the chance I thought I might join up until I read the application form in which I had to swear I'd never been a communist or anarchist, and that I wouldn't become one in future. At 24 I was pretty sure communism only worked on paper, but I wasn't at all sure about this anarchy stuff. I still wasn't sure if Kafka's anarchists were the same as The Sex Pistols anarchy. And neither of those married up with what they'd droned on about in 1st year political science. In short, I had no idea if I might become an anarchist since I wasn't sure what they were about...so I didn't get my cheap beer.

Today I could have signed that form in good conscience as I think all forms of political ideology are full of shit. They all pre-suppose the notion there is a 'right' way and a 'wrong' way...and that this can be mapped out ahead of time. An amazing amount of human endevour is concerned with groups of people trying to make other groups of people agree with them. Wars have been fought for thousands of years over difference in belief, but even in this modern western society where we supposedly have all that sorted out, every letter to every newspaper is from someone disagreeing with someone else. We have hundreds of politicians who's only purpose, it seems, is to disagree with one another.

There are an extraordinary number of people talking and flapping and finger waggling. In the news, in the media and down the corner shop. And I'm sick of you all. Me, I'm an adapter just passing through. I'm not interested in your views and causes, not whether Israel should back off nor whether they should put in angle parking on Little Street. I don't care if they put in a crosswalk at the school, I taught my kid to cross without it. If the school closes I'll teach her myself. If the meteor wipes out society, I guess we'll move.

Because when you realize we've (humans) been around for near a million years, and a million years is fuck all, this little thing we've got going here is but a moment in time. In another hundred million years we'll all be gone and the bees or dolphins will be learning to smelt bronze and nobody will care if they had angle parking on Little Street.