i have seen the future.

ruins on the roadside

last night i caught a glimpse of the future, this morning i realized it. the future is casa grande, arizona. or generally, perhaps the american southwest. there are numeruous factors that are driving this future, they include: globalization, water scarcity, biotechnology, global warming, and fear.

last night i was trying to find a place to park and sleep. the landscape out here is flat, aside from distant mountains and clear. there are very few trees, and most of them are under 20' tall. it is kind of a barren wasteland. dotting the two lane highways are burned out homes and businesses, shells of places that were once inhabited.

what exist out here are strip malls, gated communities and desert wastelands. so, i was looking for a place to sleep and i just kept seeing these long walls of gated communities. i would drive to the entrance and see the gate closed, a guard at the gate. i would have to drive on. eventually i gave up. there was a walmart amongst the strip malls and they allow rv's and campers to use their parking lots over night.

another ruins nearby

i went to it, but this one had signs at every row saying "no overnight parking." so i had to leave and keep looking. eventually, behind the home depot, i found a walled community without a gate. i drove into it, but it was hard to distinguish if you could park on the street. there werent very many cars parked on the street and instead of lawns they have rock yards that blend into the sidewalk and sloping sidewalks that blend into the street. that, and it seemed every block and a sheriffs car parked out front.

the one community not gated was the community that all the cops lived in. great. i found a decent looking place just off of a cul-de-sac in that community, i parked and jumped in back. i put up all my "curtains" so it would be harder for anyone to see me. and i slept. not very easily, but whatever.

a jet plane engine?

when i got up in the morning, i dressed and did some hygiene, then left. it was about 9am when i saw the first temperature of the day: 103 degrees. at 9am. it was 107 degrees at 5pm yesterday. then, as i was driving out of town, i got past the last strip mall and there was a field of green, then a field of desert, then a field of desert, the irrigation channels all dry. and it continued to be desert for the next 19 miles. one or two green fields maintaining.

i dont have much hope for the world. the temperatures are rising, what once was green will turn to brown, what once was water will turn to desert, everyone that can will live in a gated and guarded community, and all those people will be businesspeople managing the assets that used to be here but are now in india, china, mexico, wherever corporations can exploit people.

and then there will be the rest of us. scorching in the desert heat, trying to find some shade under a bush, eating ground squirrels and agave nectar, slowly plotting and planning a way back.