Canvas to the Imagination

Coal, for all its foul dirt, helped bring us the creature comforts we enjoy every day. Without the cheap energy of coal the industrial revolution couldn’t have started; we’d be living, but we’d be living in fear of polio and starvation. We’d have to work harder to get out daily essentials, with almost no time left for pursuing our own paths be it arts, literature, or technology.

Then there’s the immediate reward of coal; we’re plundering our vast natural resources and every single one of us, every person living in Canada, is sucking the tit of the earth and living high from her milk. We’re selling our earth’s organs overseas and the money comes back to us through the truck drivers and the plumbers and the miners; back through the corner stores and the gas station attendants and the road workers; back through the artists and the doctors and the secretaries.

And we should enjoy it, because we should be so lucky to be here and now; it’ll be gone some day. The party won’t slow down just so we can enjoy less for longer.

There it was, laid out right in front of me. The machinery and the people and the coal that literally fuels our every day. I’d never been so connected to the dirt that keeps our big party going. I wanted to get out and roll around in that black muck, just so I could really smell it, so that I’d have to scrub it off and love it.

Ben continues to enchant me because what he has to say is almost always unexpected, and always heartfelt and deeply thought…