Big Oil is sneakier than the sneakiest

Here's a nice little link released by the Sierra Club. It outlines the amount of land already leased by major oil companies in the US. This does NOT include the Arctic Refuge in Alaska.

So the question is: if they already own so much, why are they telling us they need to drill in some of the last remaining wildlife sanctuaries in the US?

http://www.sierraclub.org/bigoil/map.asp

Gap-Toothed Guardian Angel

My faith in the inherent goodness of the universe has wavered of late, admittedly by own doubts as to whether it has a compass to dish out the "good" and "bad" occurrences to those with some sort of moral compass. But this past week, something broke in me. That essence that has long given me that meager light when all seemed lost, I squashed it in fury. Too long, I thought, I had believed in goodness, and too long I had reaped no results.

In my own self-pity, I spiraled ever inward, spitting and hissing at my loved ones, cursing my own self-inflicted wounds, wishing for death not of the body, but of the spirit.

I have never been one to believe in signs. Having been raised in the guilt-nurturing culture of the Irish Catholic church, I rapidly developed a loathsome air toward forced Sunday school, geriatric moan fests (aka "mass"), and poorly recited acoustic guitar renditions of white bread church hymns reminded me for the umpteenth time to feel bad for existing. Faith, in my mind, has always been a farse, a lie, a fool's errand.

A conversation with my sister yesterday evening spurred my inner fires, when amidst a flurry of self-pitying diatribes and "fuck you" rants toward all the accoutrements of the modern world I have grown to believe are against me, a silence came upon us and she whispered: "Philly. Don't give up. I need you. You are my rock."

Lingering in my mind were these words, all evening, all morning, and into the following day. I carried them, for they stung me, not with any sense of hurt, but with the real life wake up and stop fucking blaming yourself because other people need you truth that it represented. Faith or no faith, through my sister's words, the universe was reminding me why to stay alive.

And then, on my walk back from the grocery store at sun down, I seemed to tap into some sort of invisible wave of joy and elation. Crossing the street, a young, beautiful Brazilian girl in a tattered brown Volvo jerked to a stop, then accelerated, then jerked again to allow me to pass. I chuckled to myself, and found that she too was laughing. We shared our moment and the light changed.

Down the block, I pondered my brief encounter with a chuckle--the kind where the joy seems almost unfair to share aloud, so you grin and tip your head to your chest to compress it and squeeze it into you for a moment longer.

"Hey!" cried a cholo voice, the thick accented Mexican/East LA accent called out to me.

"Don't you ever lose your sense of humour man."

I stood and watched, a half-cocked smirk, attentive to my newfound street preacher as he gave me a friendly fist jab and took out his earphones. His curled mullet was tucked behind his non-descript backwards ball cap, his teeth were gnarled and yellow from tobacco, but he stood erect and sharp, his eyes never left mine.

"You may get a lot of shit thrown at you man, but you gotta keep your sense of humour. Cause you know man, people will try and wear you down, but if you can sit back and laugh . . . Fuck, man! In thirty years they'll look back and go, "Shit! We threw all that shit and him and he STILL happy?!" That's cause you got it together, man. You know how to laugh. Don't forget it. Love."

He tapped my fist, grinned, and walked off. How a complete stranger could so effortlessly and poignantly tap into the pursuit that has been plaguing me for ages since my arrival into LA, and perhaps into "Adulthood," I do not know. I've never been one to believe in the presence of guardian angels, but today, I met him, and he came in a form I did not expect, at a time I did not expect, in a moment where only in hindsight could I see I needed it most.

Perhaps a little faith is growing in me. There's a goodness out there in this universe, and it's looking out for all of us. Suppose you just have to keep your eyes open to see it.

Urban Domesticity: The Struggles of the Restless City Dweller

After months of restless nomadic wanderings, I find myself returned to the metropolitan spread that is Los Angeles. It is an illustrious relationship, the one I share with this vast land that at times seems to embody all that is wrong with America.

But Los Angeles is a land of contrasts, primarily those that will not willingly reveal themselves to the passive onlooker, the weekend visitor hoping to get an imprint of city's spirit and essence by placing their hand in Clark Gable's imprinted palm on Hollywood Blvd, only to be disturbed by an overly-aggressive "performance artist" with a criminal record dressed as Spiderman that demands you offer him tips for accosting you. Or the labryinthian freeway system designed merely to test the limits of man's anxiety before he either a) becomes violent or b) inevitably bursts into flames and evaporates.

We urban dwellers are at odds with the world, not just because of the break neck pace of city life, but because the more cement blocks that we place in the soil, the more estranged we become from the Earth and the serenity the natural environment provides. I have countless friends that speak of a pervasive loneliness they simply cannot combat, despite being surrounded by several million individuals. And so the challenge in Los Angeles is to find the hidden joys, the small pleasures, and the every day surprises that help offset the imbalances of the daily metro grind.

My neighborhood alone is teeming with characters ripe for a future memoir, from senile used bookstore owners who only put books on sadomasochism as their "Weekly Feature!" on counter top display, to vintage clothing store employees who openly discuss their plans to visit AA meetings to pick up "hot and vulnerable men".

"I think you should consider N.A.", a male co-worker responds, tossing his angular bangs aside apathetically.

"Good idea," she chimes in without hesitation.

Just a block away from my home I came upon a group of Mexican labor men, artists and photographers who play flamenco together every Saturday. Entranced by their music, they beckoned me into their gated complex, handed me a Bud, and proceeded to discuss the struggles of the Latino population transitioning to life in California and Los Angeles. They sang with whiskey soaked and accented rasps, plucking at rusted strings with fingers callused and marred from meticulous day labor. And as the sun set across the hills, the fluorescent orange and purple rays of the smog-filtered sun washed across their leathered faces, and I was, almost secretly, in awe of my surroundings.

It is rather trying to "settle" at this age, when the restlessness of one's feet seems to occupy all other thoughts. When the yearning for foreign lands and new cultures is the topic of nightly dream scapes and daily ponderings, but even in stillness I find one can be awed by the world directly in front of them. Perhaps, as I am seeing, the only way to persevere in the urban experience is to seek the unknown, to make oneself a vessel for spontaneity and continue to rewrite the paradigm of your surroundings until it has no definition. Then, and only then, it will become an ever unfolding experience of newness.