Plastic Universe

Yesterday, after spending most of the day researching the blog post I wrote about plastic debris in the ocean, I felt I had a good grasp of the problem and a reasonable list of steps to take. Satisfied, I got into bed, put in a movie, and abruptly noticed I was feeling nauseous. "What's up with that?" I thought back to the frozen meal I'd had for dinner, it's plastic tray still part of the litter on my desk.

Plastic.


"I don't need frozen dinners. I'll eat sandwiches," I resolved.

"Bread comes wrapped in plastic," whispered an evil voice suspiciously like my own.

"I'll learn to bake bread," I countered. The nausea worsened, and not just at the thought of eating my own cooking. The bread machine I would want to get would be made of plastic. ("I'll make bread from scratch!") The turkey for the sandwich comes in a plastic zipper bag. (I'll get it at the deli without a bag!")

I got up and opened my fridge. Yogurt - plastic container. Blueberries - plastic container. Vitamins - plastic container. (Don't ask why I have vitamins in my fridge.)

I took a deep breath. I can give up yogurt, buy apples, get vitamins in glass bottles. It's fine. Go back to bed.

The evil voice became a gnarled finger pointing accusingly at the hairspray bottle on my dresser. Plastic.

"No, no," I told it. "This doesn't mean I have to give up hairspray." Does it? While the evil voice/gnarled finger shouted, "Down with the unreasonable beauty standards created by the cosmetics industry!" a vainer part of me was appalled at the idea of spending the rest of my life with hair that wouldn't stay in place.

I pulled the blankets over my head. They brushed against the plastic lenses of my glasses. In defeat, I picked up the plastic remote and turned on the movie I'd picked up from the library. "I'll figure this out tomorrow!"

The movie was "Into the Wild." After five minutes of watching it I realized what it really means to flip the board

"Am I ready to do that?" I asked myself. "Maybe not go live in the Alaskan wilderness, but set my money and my I.D. on fire? Give up everything to find what's real and true?"

"Yes! Um... ok, no. How about I pretend to do it and then come back to my regular life at the end of the day?"

I'm finding that as much as I yearn for it, as much as I must have it, change is scary and unsettling. Even small changes like resolving to have messy hair and to eat apples instead of blueberries. Maybe Christopher McCandless was on the right track by giving it all up at once, diving into ice cold water instead of dipping a toe first.

I'm not ready to dive in. I was always the girl who got into the pool one inch of skin at a time. It may be time for this to change too, but today it's enough to step into the water.

I don't have to cross the English Channel. I can just get my feet wet. I can buy some canvas bags. I can look at alternatives to plastic packaging. I can get a cookbook.

Tomorrow we'll see about learning to swim.