Plastic R Us

Near the end of his terrific book, The World Without Us, author Alan Weisman, considers how electromagnetic waves emitted by our broadcasts and telecasts will be traveling out through the universe until the end of time -- not human time, not even planetary time, but the Big Bang's successor's time.

If the universe started with a Big Bang, from which it still is expanding, I wonder if it will eventually implode, contracting at ever-increasing rates until all stars and planets, all matter, simply compresses back into, what, a primordial black hole? Weisman doesn't address that question, but he does contemplate what an alien intelligence would make of an episode of I Love Lucy, floating far beyond our galaxy.

That alien being would be capable of tracing the wave back to earth, assuming the planet was still intact, but humans would by then presumably have perished. Reading his book is a reminder that extinction for our species is as certain as death is for us as individuals. We never were going to make it here, eternally. That's probably what gave rise to our religions, as Weisman notes, our collective need to have an idea where our spirits go after shedding their frail, biological containers.

***

Today, the security guard at the unemployment office didn't even look up as visitors arrived. He just grunted and pointed down a short stairway, as if to look up at us, the unemployed, might leave him cross-eyed.

In America, land of the Puritan work ethic, there are only two states for an adult -- employed or unemployed. The employed always know where they are going and why. They are on a tight schedule, and are often grumpy as a result.

The unemployed drift here and there, noticing things they never had time to notice before. Who knew there was an alley behind that row of houses? Who knew that a young couple live in the loft above the garage next door? Who knew just how many cats visited my yard each day, one by one. Oliver still comes to check in, but there quite a few others.

Rather than drive, I now walk everywhere I can. In light of a back sprain I've somehow developed, my choices are to either lie down flat, sit bolt upright in a hard chair, or stand.

Navigating around my neighborhood, I start to run into more familiar faces. There are the employed, in their hurried, harried state; and the unemployed, who look sort of lost in space.

Me, what do they make of me? Is he going somewhere or is he aimless? Why does he take so many pictures? Maybe he's a spy. One Latino guy asked me if I was making a record of graffiti in order to help identify the perpetrators. "It's terrible what they do, those young guys," he said.

He looked a bit disappointed when I answered, no, I wasn't trying to catch any perpetrators, just collect examples of what the streets were saying to me. Trash, graffiti, flowers -- they are all the same in one way and that is that they are part of The Mission's story.

Once humans perish, like our broadcasts, our trash will remain. For longer than we were here, the plastics of the past half-century will clog the oceans and rivers and hills and valleys of the planet. Even that exfoliant you use every morning is most likely filled with polymers that wash down the drain into the sewer and into the waterways -- threatening marine life. Look on the label to find out.

There are alternatives.

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