peaknix

One aspect of peaknik personal transition is that idle moments can become fertile ground for imaginative theories and thought lines.

On occasion, I will meditate on how oil touches the environment that I am walking through at that moment.

Every morning, I wake up to the cries of my toddler, no electricity used on an alarm clock. We are using electricity on the bedroom fan though.

The next hour includes electricity for lights and TV, morning news (hardly worth the energy cost there). I rush out then, to work, and really begin to hog the oil.

My commute is just over some 40 miles into work. The lights at the toll booth, the toll both machine that spits out my ticket, the lights and oil consumption at the pike rest-stops I whiz past. The street lights along the way. Other people’s cars.

Work is literally awash in electricity. From the fluorescent lights to the computers to the printers to the on-demand coffee makers.

My job relies heavily on email and phone communications - all deeply embedded in a complex energy usage matrix.

If I eat lunch at the cafe, abundant amounts of energy is used there to light, cool, and heat foods. The cashier pings in the prices, electricity flows through to give her the amount due. If I use a card, whoosh, electricity is used across the world.

All those food miles, all those petrochemical fertilizers, those factory farmed animals and veggies.
Even if I wanted to get away from it, stand out on the lawn and contemplate the moat-like wet-lands that surround my suburban office building, I would be standing on grass that is tended and trimmed using gas-guzzling machinery.

After the 40 mile commute home, more electrical use to get supper cooked and then TV at night.

Bed time, quiet after the TV is switched off, is filled with the white noise of the fan. This noise, this electrical residue, I need to fall asleep.

Some nights, even that white noise isn’t enough so I turn to my iPod that has zen teisho talks loaded up. I listen to tales of Dogen and other ancient zen monks, contemplating existence, compassion and attachment.

I fall asleep and then repeat and rinse the next day.

These thoughts are with me, as I wait for the elevator door to open at the end of the work day.