Parking Lot Observations
Lately I’ve become obsessed with parking lots.
Each time that I pull off the road and approach these chasms of empty metal boxes I begin to feel ill.
Today I experienced what I think was a panic attack as I sat inside my own car.
The loneliness of a parking lot is crippling.
Last night I saw a video online of a child in Rafah, Gaza whose legs were ripped off of their body by an Israeli bomb.
I’m supposed to forget about that and drive to any store and park atop any parking space and spend what little money I have on anything at all.
We buy the cars so we can drive to the places where we can buy the things and drive back to the home that we rent from the bank so that it can buy the power it wants.
I wonder what the land was like before the concrete.
I wonder what traveling the world with others was like.
Anytime I speak with someone about this parking lot despair it doesn’t seem like they think the way I do.
“What else would you want?”
Can we imagine something different?
Must we be consumers and nothing more?
Do we need to travel alone and wander through store shelves in silence or with headphones in our ears?
Is there life beyond the asphalt hellscape?
Another way is possible.
It can exist.
I know it can.
