a shade west of the eighty-seventh meridian

"however sympathetically or sentimentally a white american viewed the indian, the industrial culture was certain to eat away at the tribal cultures like lye...what destroyed him was the manufactured products of a culture, iron and steel, guns, needles, woolen cloth, things that once possessed could not be done without... "beyond the hundredth meridian" wallace stenger __________________________________________________________ to the very best of my knowledge there are no native americans in my lineage...i am from only the second generation of my mother's family born in this country...dad's family goes back a bit further with roots deep in jasper county indiana ( and my father's mother's mother was from kansas )so stenger wasn't writing about me at all...but i am just as corrupted and even more embedded in the "industrial culture " that corroded the indigenous ones....i was born into it and the only work i can find perpetuates it...so inside the box that i am at odds with what i think i should be...as i look at this second dumpster and say "YES!" finally the stuff is going i am also coming to the sad conclusion that all it's going to do is fucking fill up with "stuff" again...okay..perhaps i can ride herd on just how much and what kind of "stuff" gets in...but some is so ubiquitous that its is preordained...there will be a furnace ( yes there are statutory regulations on wood burning stoves in my town ) and a water heater and a stove and a goddamned phone and an internet connection and windows and doors and carpet and paint and drywall and nails and trim..all of which degraded the environment in some way in their manufacture and transportation...i doubt the building code would allow the deletion of most of the "essential" fixtures...the way my great grandfather lived would be illegal in lake station in 2012 ( or more like 2013 by the time this is finished )...no kerosine lamps or outhouses allowed...sanitary and fire hazards...so i'll keep growing bits and pieces of my own food...and explore edible native plants and try to be more native to the place i live in...and i'll try to stop fooling myself about exactly what's going on here...i'll live as far outside the consumerist utopia as i can manage but without its utter collapse i'll lay odds it's inescapable...more as the "stuff" rolls back in...we'll see how deep it gets.