Who will Listen to Me
With my Name, my Background, my Age
It’s only ninety-seven (97) degrees Fahrenheit in Dallas, but I am sweating as I write. My thermostat is set at eighty-two (82) degrees. I am seventy-six (76), an American born in Belgium of mixed Bulgarian, Russian and Ukrainian background. Should set it lower, you say? Well, then my bill will go over three hundred dollars ($300), and I would not be setting what I believe is a good example.
After all, I try, have tried all my life. Have never really wasted food and tried to benefit from what was local. Hey, I have herbs in my garden and in pots. My two types of thyme, English and lemon, date back more than a dozen years. The big oregano bush that I can see from my kitchen window comes from a neighbor’s bush up the street. It has been there more than five years. My sage is a mix, part planted a decade ago, part put in last year.
Even my ridiculous love of sportscars has been tempered by efforts to minimize their impact on the environment. That is why I got a VW Porsche in 1977. It only had four cylinders and consumed relatively little gas. That care went even further with the new VW Beetle I bought in 2003. Turbo with manual gears (could not deprive myself of that), it was even better. Donated it at the beginning of this year as the expense of keeping it up was just not worth it. Won’t mention what I have now. A quasi present from my ‘cousin/nephew’, it is a dream, one that can spew so much into the air as it can go from zero to what I do not dare write down, but I drive it so little that it will not do any harm. It has been less than a thousand miles since I got it February.
Have you ever heard of Cassandra? Yes, she was the one who could predict the future, but no one believed her. Sometimes, I feel like a lesser version of that Trojan priestess. I knew way back in the 1960s that we were headed for an environmental disaster. In fact, the funniest part was that I tried to pull in my first love, get him to build a new type of monastery for the upcoming ‘dark ages’. After all, aspects of Greek and Roman civilization were preserved in some of those in the historic Western Dark Ages. But that did not work out. He was interested in what most people are — a fair life with someone he loved and with whom he would have a family. The one time I came close to that normal life I had a nightmare in which I drowned my two non-existent children, the dreamt issue of another love. I left him for the United Nations and the hope that, along with others, I could help prevent the worst from happening.
Of course, that turned out to be wishful thinking.
Yes, I went through incredible experiences and took part in some heartwarming missions, including the one in South Africa that saw Mandela become president. However, in spite of all the warnings, the papers, the discussions, the calls from the thousands of fellow Cassandras, many so much more powerful than I, we are in a rather challenging situation with environmental degradation and wars at a time when we no longer have the sober minds and hands of those who went through the horrors of World War I and II.
So, I sit and swelter in front of a computer whose time has come as it is literally ‘physically’ falling apart. Should I just forget what I know and put the thermostat down to seventy-eight? Or should I take out my Masi for a ride into a cooler part of the country? Unfortunately, I would feel too guilty doing either. Besides, I have been asked to help with a letter for a close friend who is trying to get some back payments she has missed.
So on to another coffee and another day. Oh, yes, there are draft novels to work on and a presentation next month, hope for a message. Did I write ‘hope’? Isn’t that what was left in the box when Pandora opened the ‘gift’ of the gods and all ills flowed into the world?
