Texas.

Don't mess with Texas.

In fact, unless you're a rancher, tin-hat wearing survivalist, or horse enthusiast don't even go to Texas. Leave it alone.

Sometimes travel opens our eyes to things we would rather not see, for better or worse, and once a thing resonates within the soul it cannot be unseen.


Texas is flat, ugly, and dry. The horizon line appears as a vast sea in all directions, flat and without any concept of distance or perspective. The only punctuations on this blank page are the tall natural gas towers that 'frac' the earth and lines of telephone poles stretching to nowhere. They are interspersed with oil rigs, odd looking teeter-totters on stilts that ceaselessly rock back and forth, back and forth, pulling that black life blood called oil out of the earth. When their well runs dry they are left to be consumed by rust and sand. The air is hazy and cold, and smells of rotten eggs. Everything is rusted, ugly without apology. Unlike other states we have seen, there are no rest stops on the highway. There are only 'picnic spots', obligatory pull outs with 3 or 4 parking spots and no restrooms, no place to sleep. Everywhere we stop, the trash bins are overflowing and plastic bottles are cast carelessly on the ground. On the road, guard rails have been destroyed by impact and instead of being repaired are simply marked with a sign that says 'Caution: guardrail damage." Several overpasses have masses of concrete blasted through the center from misjudged oversize loads slamming in to them. They are left as they are, with no repairs attempted, no apologies made.

I watch this flat, dry landscape roll by as I listen to tuneless hold music on repeat, interrupted by a cheery male voice reminding me that "My call is important! We'll be with you as soon as we can!". The reason for this bone-itchingly irritating music is that I am trying, with no avail, to get my insurance agency to follow through on a claim. We filed the paperwork on the 10th, and it should have been processed by now. Today I noticed to my dismay, that there is no number listed in the little "reference number" column on the form, just a mocking blank space. I've been holding for 10 minutes, with many more to come before an actual human being can be bothered to greet me and cheerily assure me that there's nothing they can do, have a lovely Christmas! I grit my teeth and begin to brood on the state of America.


My feelings on our country are conflicting. I love my equal rights as a woman, my freedom to pursue happiness as I see fit, and my comfortable upbringing. I hate the poisons in our food, our brainless obsession with vanity, the ever-turning cogs of selfish material gain that crush so many, and the never ending screaming advertisements on every surface. Money is king, money is everything. People from all over the world bring their families here for a chance at more of it, lured by the golden ideal of a better place. There are many beautiful things here, but they seem to be dying. The democracy that began our nation is all but gone, replaced by a paranoid government that spies on it's citizens and lies for private gain.

I have been reading 'The Jungle' by Upton Sinclair, a revolutionary book that exposed the horrors of the meat-packing industry in early America. The main character is a Lithuanian immigrant named Jurgis. He and his family were lured to America by the promise of high wages and opportunity to rise above. They moved here and quickly learned the harsh realities of capitalism. The wages were in fact higher, but the cost of living was disproportionately so, and so they could not afford to live even a poverty level existence.  Spoiled meat had poisonous flavor and scent added, and was repackaged as fresh. Employees of the company on the working floor were sped up to the point of dying of exhaustion. Much like the spoiled canned meat, what had appeared shiny and new from a distance turned out to be a thin veneer over a festering reality.

I too, find myself becoming disillusioned. Although my own story is far less extreme, it carries similar undertones. I have worked for a company that spent countless thousands on advertising, carrying out tours and funding websites to tout their cutting-edge facilities, success and happy employees. That same company denied cost of living wage increases to every employee and refused to invest into an air quality system that would suck the atomized petroleum mist out of the air, providing relief to the employees that breathed it in deep gulps everyday, while the bosses sat plush in offices with filtered air. It would have cost less than 1% of their annual marketing budget. The same pattern is shown everywhere, in nearly every business. Profit rules all, at the expense of human life.


Capitalism is the focus point of my disgust at this point. In a place where corporations have the rights of people, where is the sanity? Where is the humanity? It has been swallowed by the vast expanse of greed, which turns green landscapes to barren oil fields and glimmering human hope to bitterness.

The many patriotic citizens of the United States would say to me, "If you don't like it, LEAVE." It is an idea that I am beginning to consider as we press on through the straight brown wastelands of Texas. Is there still a place untouched by this corruption, where the earth is valued without being raped, where a man's word is still his bond, where honesty is still assumed? Only time will tell. For now, we press on and on through ugly, dry nothingness.