This is a blog entry that I came across and really enjoyed. It’s by Andrew McMahon (of Something Corporate / Jack’s Mannequin).

What Is Home?

“Wheels up…again

I flew home to the west coast this weekend. Orange County to be specific. And, while it is my home it is also the birthplace of a reality television nightmare. One that has often made me question humanity, as well as how close I choose to sleep to the enemy. I ran from this place more than five years ago to hide and lick my wounds, but as all prodigal sons do, I returned.

Home is a strange concept, one that I have meditated upon from a very young age. I am a true believer in being proud of where you come from. If my travels have taught me anything it’s that places, like people, are a combination of flawed and beautiful, but most are worthy of one’s time, exploration, forgiveness and defense. No place is perfect, but then again, what truly beautiful thing is?

Where I come from is no exception. Still, for every fake breast and botox injection there are infinite grains of sand for me to rest my feet upon. For every strip mall, off ramp and teenage mercedes benz driver there is a kid ditching school in pursuit of that noble, perfect wave. When I left here for Los Angeles I was feeble, injured and shaken. A worn textile with all fraying edges. I had not quit believing in myself all together, but I drifted that direction with alarming regularity.

I say these things because life should be a conversation. I say them because what I choose to project of myself is too often a fraction of my personal truth and it exhausts me. Still, I cannot deny that in losing myself I often learn more about the life I should be living and begin living it. I’d like to think I am in such a moment now. If I didn’t drift so freely and occasionally pack without my compass, this home of mine would be useless and my bones, though weary still, would be without direction. We are where we come from. Shame is useless and running is a fools errand. I am a tourist of this planet but on a cellular level I am a Southern Californian, and I am proud. I take my salt air with a pull of medical marijuana and my jammed traffic with an eyeful of faux spanish architecture. There have been countless moments in the past five years I thought I had forgotten who I was. It occurs to me now that I was simply in the process of remembering.”

- Andrew McMahon

I just found out that my friend’s sister and her unborn child passed away suddenly. When I heard the news, I was immediately overcome with a sense of shock and immense sadness…

It’s strange - we know that people die every day. We see and read about it in the news, of deaths in our town, city, state, country, and abroad. But we are so far removed from it - perhaps we acknowledge it with a momentary sigh - but then forget about it and move on shortly after. Perhaps this is exactly how people will react to this post after reading it. It’s totally natural, it’s human - we can’t possibly take on and feel all the grief in the world, or we wouldn’t be able to function, let alone live.

But the moment it happens to someone you personally know, it’s a slap in the face. A wake-up call. A reminder of the precariousness of this life, and of those closest to you.

” ‘Families earning more than $110k will feel the pain of the carbon tax,’ warned the Herald-Sun, straightfaced. ‘Households face a $9.90 a week jump in the cost of living.’

$9.90.

Cry me the mothertrucking Nile.

Households on less than $110k would be even less affected. Some would have their 10 bucks a week partly compensated, others would be fully or over-compensated.

The tax, after all, was not on people, but on 500 high-polluting companies. The compensation was to guard against costs those companies might pass on to their customers.”

…

“In being part of the luckiest couple of generations of people to yet walk the earth, most of us still like to imagine we’ve got it tough. When you grow up with a certain standard of living, you get a sense of entitlement. If someone threatens that standard, they are depriving you of what is fundamentally yours. To your mind, you have a right to live like this, because you’re lucky enough to have lived like this.

Except you don’t. So if you claim you can’t afford 10 bucks a week, I call Shenanigans, with a healthy dash of You’re a Dill. One schmick dinner would make up your year’s liability in one hit. The less well-off will get compo, but even they could afford it if they had to. One less deck of smokes a week. Two less beers. Leave off the Foxtel subscription.

Whatever it is, remember that you live in a country where drinkable water comes out of a tap inside your house, and the power runs 24 hours a day. This in itself is a goddamn privilege, and if you are going to bitch and moan about having to pay for that privilege, you can bugger off and die in a ditch.

Because you do not have a right to this way of life. No-one does. We just have the extreme good fortune of enjoying it, and that won’t last forever. We should appreciate it while we can.

Perversely, part of me wants to see what would happen if the sea levels rise a couple of metres, the coastal cities get swamped, the rainfall dries up, the power goes out, the militias take to the streets. Part of me would love to see the squawking indignant right-to-luxury crowd learning how to live in the dust, scraping out dried plants from the earth and hoarding their remnants from the Beforetime.

It’ll be a sight if it happens. Dirty red skies will rise up from the ground each morning like a curse. The only creatures that seem to thrive, the cockroaches and carrion birds, will swarm black against the sand and the sunset, rasping dry songs with their throats and with their legs. The water will be gone. The world will not remember ice floes. And for her sins, for ten dollars a week from each and every one of us, Julia Gillard will hang from the garret at the gates of Troy.”

- Geoff Lemon

From http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2794652.html (Accessed July 17, 2011)