White Flamingos

As we were passing through the salt lakes of Santa Pola, returning home from a long weekend beach getaway cut short by egocentricity and opportunism and lack of respect for that which is different, I turned to look out the window of the passenger’s seat to about a dozen white flamingos in turquoise water tickled by a gentle breeze. They had not been there on our drive down and had our weekend not been cut short and we hadn’t taken the same road back, I would have missed them altogether.

It’s moments like these when I appreciate where my differences have taken me, bits of beauty engulfed in enduring pain, which seems to become both duller and deeper as time wears on. The illusion of the Garden of Eden masks the harsh realities of the surrounding sights- sharp, arid peaks and a sea blazing under the summer sun, the still threat of an earthquake or a tsunami below. Where a single spark could set off kilometers of furious fires, a quake could bring it all down, a tidal wave could wash it all away.

Lately I have wanted the world to burn, collapse, and be rinsed of us, this plague christened humanity, an absurd aberration that has evolved a consciousness through which to endlessly suffer the knowledge that we will never achieve the solutions that we ourselves have created for our own existential crisis, and instead are damned to watch history on repeat through increasingly luminous lenses. From our perches near the bottom of this beautiful hell scape, we are privy to more knowledge than we have ever been, but there is little we can do with it. The dynamic is the same as always.

As we were nearing home, and I had been contemplating leaving the Garden of Eden forever, a Spanish radio broadcaster briefly reported on the repeal of Roe vs. Wade. In a judicial coup decades in the making, the erosion of a century of societal advancement is rapidly underway. While our collective cheek was turned the other way, the devil was busy making deals. Which way will it face going forward?

Once those white flamingos gorge on enough shrimp and other crustaceans, they will turn pink and resemble the gaudy plastic imitations that dot the yards of mindless consumers who have been fueled and fooled by consumeristic narratives of unnatural production and consumption. While looking down to jam their support poles in the degraded soil at their feet and wondering what they could buy next, those above them are planning what to sell to them next so they can continue to line their pockets with their time. Now that their pockets are stuffed and time is running out, it’s the moment for the next move. What will it be?