Earlier tonight I went out to my car to read for awhile. It was about 11 PM. My new neighbors had been throwing a get-together of some sort all evening, and the front yard was full of active kids when I went to my car. For awhile they talked, and then some sort of hide-and-seek game sprang up. For the next hour there was a lot of yelling and screaming without one moment of parental presence or admonition. It seems to me that midnight on a Sunday night requires a bit more decorum and respect for the people around one. I am determined to write a letter to my landlady and express some sort of dismay with the people that the apartment's been let to.
Shortly after the party finally broke up, a pair of recycling scroungers moved through the neighborhood. A quick flash of light from just up the street alerted me to them at first. Then, in the dark, I saw two of them round the corner in front of my driveway. Each had two full plastic bags slung over his shoulders, one bag in front and one bag in back. The lead scrounger used his flashlight to examine the ground along the sides of the street, looking for extra cans or whatever.
I'm accustomed to seeing these people pick through the trash bin in the middle of the night. Sometimes they walk through the neighborhood, frequently they're on bikes. They hit the trash bin and quite often make a mess of things, strewing undesired trash on the ground. Some of them are clean, however, and are very careful to leave all the trash in the bin. I've never seen a pair move more ghost-like or scour more professionally than these two tonight. It was kind of creepy. Immediately after they moved past, it occurred to me that they are a product of the economy we're in, and that I should expect to see more and more of their kind about.
I wonder if there are people more informed than I who are watching our country and noting the changes. It would seem to me that if you know what to look for, you can see shades of last century's great depression taking shape again. You still hear on the news every month that foreclosures are up, and more people are giving up on the idea of home ownership. It would seem to me that homelessness and vagrancy must be up as well. (I use 'vagrancy' to mean a sort of un-homed wandering. There's no criminal overtone in my usage.) Of course, we haven't had phenomena like the droughts and ensuing dustbowl of the time to compound the problem. I'm sure the rootlessness is there but that it's not been spoken of or reported on. My belief is that everyone wants our country to climb out of these problems so intensely that a lot of problems are being 'wished away' or intentionally over-looked.
Well, any time I start talking about the economy or our country, that's a clue that I've strayed into territory I'm not qualified to comment on. So, I'll hang it up for tonight. Keep your eyes open, though, and ask yourself how bad things really are.
Back soon.
"Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts."— William S. Burroughs
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