When I was at the Folk Fest with Deanna, we sat in on a gospel session and the music set deep in our souls. It made us giddy and reminiscent, and Deanna whispered to me that when she was in church as a kid, she would open up a bible and point out specific words to make up a sentence for her friend to read. What an ingenious way of communicating and making full use of God's products. It was like text messaging well before text messaging was even considered. She ingeniously labeled the concept, "BiblePad" akin to today's iPad. Lucky she was at a Roman Catholic church and not a Ukrainian Catholic church like I went to. I didn't know what the heck was being said or what I was singing. I just knew I liked it. (On a side note, I remember having to memorize everything in Ukrainian for my first (and only) holy communion and confession.....yeah, I should probably hit that some time soon. I remember living in a foreign fog of rolling tongues and "sshhhh-yaa" pronunciations. We were given a booklet to prepare for our holy communion and on the front cover was a picture of God giving a young boy and girl communion. So, being the little imaginative artistic 9 year old that I was, I was pretty adamant that the Big Kahoona was going to be giving me a piece of bread at the end of the week. While everyone played outside the church waiting for their chance to confess their sins (what kind of sins does a 9 year old have anyway?) I sat in a pew in my little mini wedding dress and spongy oversized white shoes, ready to puke. My mom tried to get me to go outside. I politely said no thank you but inside I was screaming, "I AM ABOUT TO MEET GOD!!!! DOESN'T ANYONE THINK THIS IS A BIG DEAL? THIS IS 'THE SHIT'!" You can well imagine my disappointment when it was some old, crotchety Ukrainian priest that I didn't understand. That began my healthy journey of skepticism in the strange world of religion.)
But this blog is not about my skewed concept of religion....it's about undeveloped concepts and creations like Deanna's fantastic BiblePad. Occasionally I go through the process of sorting and resorting my studio to try to Feng Shui the impossible. In that process, I usually find scribbled words randomly placed on ripped corners of paper. They say things like "free send day" and "traceable plastic bags". The brain gets a bit tingly and I go off on a delightful mind tangent of concepts that will never come into fruition.
I was getting some acupuncture done not too long ago and there is something about connecting with my Qi that puts me on a different intellectual level than I usually have an opportunity to delve into. I am forced to meditate and the ideas flow. I lay there looking at the patterns in the blobs on the ceiling and let my mind travel. On one occasion, when the therapist came back into the room to remove the needles, I begged her to please write down these words....traceable plastic bags. She humours me.At that time, I was thinking that it would make people a bit more accountable if they actually had their name and/or contact information placed on a plastic bag. If that bag ends up stuck in the trees at the waste disposal site, or along the side of the road, etc, the last name on the bag is the one accountable to that bag, and accountable to the fine that they would receive for their negligence and littering. When I proposed this idea to Deanna, she said that people will do what they can to not be accountable for those actions, so it would have to be the responsibility of the person who had the bag before them, to ensure that the next person's name gets put on that bag. Good thought. She too has a healthy dose of skepticism. Why are plastic bags still being made????? Who seriously does not have their fill of plastic bags? And I don't know about you, but I don't need anymore canvas bags either. I'm sure we all have a dozen of them. So let's stop making those as well, or at least put your name on it so that I can give it back to you when I find it at the dump. Maybe some kind of microchip tracking device stickers can be made that we just put on all of our possessions. And then when you give/sell that item, the next person to possess it puts their tracking sticker on top of it. (These stickers are wind/fire/rain resistant of course). If this item is lost in transit, it just needs to be scanned and voila....owner found.
So that brings me to my next thought.....a universal free shipping day. It's self explanatory, really. Post what you need on a site like "Freecycle" but like, on a big world level and someone else can send it to you. And I think it should be ANYTHING. If someone in India needs a car, and you happen to have an extra car, it will get shipped for FREE. If someone needs a bag of rice, send them a bag of rice. FREE. Free kittens, free french fries, free beach balls, free swimming pools. BUT people could not be exchanged in this process. And neither should underwear for that matter. There's that healthy skepticism again. I guess this concept would just makes people stop and take note of their excessiveness. What do you have that you really really don't need and that someone else could truly benefit from? Is it important that you make money when getting rid of that object or is it good enough to just know that the item is being put to good use? Kinda existential I guess...Oh, and I think movie stars should give up two things.
On a lighter note, the same concept could apply to socks. We need to all gather up that pile of stray socks sitting beside our dryer, meet on a big field with our strays and do something about this perpetual issue. Or perhaps we need to be more accepting of mismatched socks. It's really not that bad. Maybe we just need to have a Non-Judgment Sock Day.
A few weeks ago I made the mistake of keeping my windows down on my car during a torrential downpour. My friend Stan came over and said, "I have some really, really bad news for you," and then he commenced to telling me that I left my windows rolled down. Holy drama, Buddy! Stuff like that doesn't usually bother me, but the seats were truly soaked pretty bad. I had to sit on a garbage bag for a couple of days, and every time I slammed my door shut, I would get wet legs because there was water trapped in the door handle. And then it just started to get funky in there. I have a dog, and my dog likes to hang out in my car. I had just vacuumed and cleaned my car a week earlier, but that deep rain brought out a smell that is actually funkily unfathomable. It truly smelled like I had stuffed a carcass in the trunk. Invention time.....why the hell don't they make water sensitive windows. Why is it that the windows don't automatically roll up as soon as a specific amount of water hits the windows, regardless of whether the car is on or not. Are we not an advanced society? On that same note, why the hell can't these car companies simply make a coffee cup holder that actually holds a REAL thermal mug. And could it not have a heater in it as well, that automatically shuts off whenever the cup is not in the holder? Maybe that's already being done, but I've never seen it. I'm driving a 97 Chevy Lumina.
But when these types of thought come to mind, I think of how tolerant we are as a society. We put up with stinky cars and unmatched sock and plastic bags in trees. Or perhaps it comes down to incentive. I talk the talk but well, you know the rest....I don't follow through. If I had a bit more motivation, perhaps I'd get off my ass and organize a world swap day. Or make a shitload of sock puppets and sell them at festivals and donate the money to the church. The world isn't that big anymore compliments of the internet. I could probably make this stuff happen. I should go and write that down somewhere and get back to it. Yeah, that's what I'll do.
