My Car Washed Itself

By Paul Goettlich updated 18 June 2022

I slept so well last night that my car washed itself. In my dream it was shiny and clean and happy. So happy it purred.

Then I reminded that I don’t have a car. However, the dream continued and I drove that car to a seemingly perfect little hilly New England village to buy clothes.

Everything in the store was immaculate. Colours all ordered properly in a split complimentary colour scheme. Everything was clean and everybody was happily clothed in those muted bright colours. Not really pastels but soft, cosy and unobtrusive to the eyes of the beholder. Like the colours Martha Stewart uses, without the baggage of buying from a felon.

Every architectural detail accounted for. Nothing out of place. The clothing shop workers all wore the clothes that were on sale. They were extremely friendly as if we’d known each other for our entire lives. They had a special insight into my preferences by seeing my thoughts.

And yet nothing was right. I didn’t actually want those clothes or any clothes. I didn’t want to do what needed to be done to acquire them. I didn’t like how the material was made or how it was assembled in dark, dreary places by people who didn’t really want to be making them.

And as I drove away from that store, I found I could not get out of the same loop around that perfect little hilly New England village. No matter how I tried to take a different route, it always returned me to the same crossroads.

Awake now, and having had my breakfast, that dream reminds me of how I attempted so many times to change the course of things around me, only to end up in the same or worse conditions. It seems a perfect metaphor for our fight against the evil rule of Trump. Four years later, we’ve just barely fired him. But he doesn’t go away. A bad penny continuing to plague the universe.

Turn your attention now to the presumed new ruler as he apparently resets back to the past we were trying to make better. Well, at least many of us hoped we could make it better.

And to that point of making it better, I ask, better than what? What is better? What should we strive for? Are we actually willing to give up things that we perceive are required for a decent life? Because everything is so incredibly lopsided and damaged. The playing field (world) is so out of kilter that nobody can actually stand, let alone run with a ball in hand.

As we become increasingly aware that what we want and what we should have are two entirely different things, a process begins in which the dissonance must be relieved. The wishful thinkers among us continue on course, telling themselves that everything will go back to normal, in spite of the fact that normal never sustainable in any way.

The new occupant of the white house turned out to be kinder and gentler. But his history of supporting antisocial laws and behaviour somewhat remains as Israelis are still supported in their annihilation of Palestinians. Still, we hope that the Good Witch (non-existent) will magically transform them and their future actions and rulings into benevolence. We hope that “things” will somehow self-correct without any effort on our own parts and that we can maintain our current vision of normal. But they won’t. Not really. I mean, you can continue deluding yourself. Go to Disneyland or go hiking in the mountains. Amuse your senses for the time being.

But those visions are fabrications and never were real. The things most humans do today were never sustainable. Number one on the list of unsustainability is human reproduction far beyond the capacity of the Earth to sustain us. Logically then, all subsequent actions that are described as sustainable are in fact unsustainable. There is no such thing as sustainable development. It ceased being sustainable many thousands of years ago. And again, never actually was sustainable. Human development was out of control at about the time homo sapiens switched from gathering to farming about 12,000 years ago. The additional use of fossil fuels in the early- to mid-20th century exacerbated greenhouse gasses and sent climate change on its way in a straight up direction.

Joe Biden is a simple man. Give him an electric Hummer and he can say he’s an environmental president. But try to get him to take quick action against Climate Change and he ignores us.

There are far too many wrongs that must be righted to list. But without playing an active part in changing things, the new occupant of the white house will assume we’re all good with whatever shite he’s empowered to do.