Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Sorry About All the Global Warming, Yo

Have you heard of the movie The Secret? A friend of mine brought me a copy a while ago---thanks Craig—and I found it to be quite a good movie. In it, various experts in quantum physics, medicine, literature and those practicing various disciplines of what was once called “the human potential movement” reveal “a secret” that may or may not surprise you.
The secret is simple: The things you think about the most, and how you act and feel before, during and after you think about them, happen. They may not happen now, or tomorrow or on your 80th birthday, but they will happen. Always, without exception. This method of manifesting, this law of attraction, can yield an unlimited number of experiences and things; it doesn’t matter who you are. Such a thing is simply a natural law, just like gravity always works, or just like someone carrying a clipboard will show up at the door the second I lie down to take a nap. All of this is guaranteed.
Most people’s trouble is that they don’t know the secret. Most of us are constantly focusing on what we don’t want. We don’t want our debt, we don’t want to be overweight; we don’t want to be alone. The law of attraction says that, with all of that attention on debt and fat and loneliness, we’re destined to get more of it. And that’s where I have to admit that I’ve gone terribly, terribly wrong.
This year, after a particularly harsh winter, we moved from our home at 9,000 feet above sea level back to flatter land. We were in the middle of, according to Fred, “The worst wind in thirty years.” I trust Fred—I adore Fred; everybody does. Not only is Fred the town’s amateur meteorologist, he’s the guy who counts the number of garbage bags in your truck and then assesses a totally random number of dollars for you to pay. Sometimes he changes his mind right there on the spot, and those days were my favorite. “Three—no, two—two dollars, please.” He’s outside all year long. At the dump. Fred knows weather.
So Soaf and I are there this winter, at our incredibly sturdy house, the house that might lose a few shingles during the shank of the blowing cold season, but that nevertheless served us well for six years, and all we’ve done all day is look at each other. Because it’s too windy to go outside. It’s actually dangerous to go outside in the 80 mile an hour winds that were blowing for the ninth day in a row. We were looking out the window when the temperature had dipped to a record-breaking 25 degrees below zero, and I said to her, “Dude, this is fucked up,” knowing that I shouldn’t speak like that in front of her. But I couldn’t help it; I was shack wacky. We both had, to use a technical term, cabin fever out the ass.
And while we were all sitting there for weeks on end, the dogs and the baby and I, looking up and wondering when the wind was going to rip the roof off the house, I thought it over and over again: Warm weather. Just after watching The Secret, it came to me that, Oh my God, I caused global warming. Man, when he finds out about this, Leonardo DiCaprio is going to be so pissed at me.