“You kill your trees and live in their dead bones.” That\u2019s what she\u2019d said to me as I left the forest. I’d looked back at her with wet eyes and could not deny it. I couldn\u2019t tell her that she was mistaken, that I\u2019d not been part of it, because I hadn\u2019t questioned what we did. I hadn\u2019t thought to take a stand and resist, or to speak up. In the end, I\u2019d gone back to my dead-bone house and sat in my soft skin-chair. Then I reached over and I drank from a bottle. I drank and I tossed the cheap, cheap plastic into the garbage. Finally, I switched on the TV, powered by generators that burned the earth and pumped black soot into the sky.<\/p>\n
She was right, and we were wrong, but we couldn\u2019t change. No, that wasn\u2019t it. We wouldn\u2019t change because we were afraid of what might happen. We were afraid that we\u2019d lose our wealth, or our conveniences, or that we\u2019d somehow have to work harder for what we had. And this fear overrode the knowledge that we were actively destroying our world.<\/p>\n
That night I went to sleep on my soft warm bed and dreamed that the world had turned to dust. Nothing green grew and nothing alive crept across the ground. I walked to the ocean shore and saw a field of plastic bags and detritus that stretched to the horizon and wrapped around the earth. I sat down in the trash and I cried. I wanted someone to answer my question.<\/p>\n
“Why?” I beat the ground, and yelled at the sky, but there was no one to hear me. “Why did this happen?!” And the answer came back as loud as anything I\u2019d ever heard.<\/p>\n
Silence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“You kill your trees and live in their dead bones.” That\u2019s what she\u2019d said to me as I left the forest. I’d looked back at her with wet eyes and could not deny it. I couldn\u2019t tell her that she was mistaken, that I\u2019d not been part of it, because I hadn\u2019t questioned what we did. I hadn\u2019t thought to take a stand and resist, or to speak up. In the end, I\u2019d gone back to my dead-bone house and sat in my soft skin-chair. Then I reached over and I drank from a bottle. I drank and I tossed the cheap, cheap plastic into the garbage. Finally, I switched on the TV, powered by generators that burned the earth and pumped black soot into the sky. She was right, and we were wrong, but we couldn\u2019t change. No, that wasn\u2019t it. We wouldn\u2019t change because we were afraid of what might happen. We were afraid that we\u2019d lose our wealth, or our conveniences, or that we\u2019d somehow have to work harder for what we had. And this fear overrode the knowledge that we were actively destroying our world. That night I went to sleep on my soft warm bed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2161,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.keithbphillips.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Tree-Fern.jpg?fit=3024%2C4032&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p32u0F-yP","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3106,"url":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/?p=3106","url_meta":{"origin":2159,"position":0},"title":"Don’t Go There","author":"KeithBPhillips","date":"April 3, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"One day I was on TDY assignment to a base about 10 miles from my home base. Me and my buddy Bruce were out on the flight-line working on aircraft, and we heard a distant boom. 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They were spotty at best,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1884,"url":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/?p=1884","url_meta":{"origin":2159,"position":2},"title":"The Golden Shoes","author":"KeithBPhillips","date":"January 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The shoes are grandfather\u2019s, and most unusual. When I first set foot in them I was twelve. I didn\u2019t know what they were. They had been handed down, I was told, through generations, and I should be honored to wear them. 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This time even more of my friends attended, and we all got together and had a great time. Highlights of the event were the panels with Jim and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/keithbphillips.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/222818_10150550479920237_856985236_17939078_1072180_n2-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":185,"url":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/?p=185","url_meta":{"origin":2159,"position":4},"title":"The Flying Saucer-1950: SciFi Movie Review","author":"KeithBPhillips","date":"April 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"[rating:.4\/5] The Flying Saucer. Sounds pretty exciting doesn't it? This movie is not. I couldn't even finish watching it; it was so boring. I got about halfway through and gave up. I know that sounds as if I just don't care, and that's probably about fifty percent correct, but it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/?cat=4"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/keithbphillips.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/220px-Poster_of_the_movie_The_Flying_Saucer.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1895,"url":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/?p=1895","url_meta":{"origin":2159,"position":5},"title":"What Ever Happened to Lenny?","author":"KeithBPhillips","date":"February 9, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In a little shop in China town an elderly Asian man known as Lenny, with last name possibly of Wong, sat behind his counter thinking \u00a0about a dead man named Martin Coswell. The dead man had just come running back into his shop, puffing like a steam engine not two\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Stories"","block_context":{"text":"Stories","link":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/?cat=6"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2159"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2710,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159\/revisions\/2710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithbphillips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}