NEEDS, WANTS, & THEIR COSTS

Freighters

From the park near my house in Victoria, I could watch the great metal shipping containers make their way through the Juan de Fuca Strait. I’d never before given much thought to how most of our goods arrive from China, Mexico, and Japan, although I’ve always endeavoured to buy local whenever possible.

Photo by Chris Pagan on Unsplash

It’s not always possible since what I want is often not manufactured or grown where I live.

Flying

Air travel being too expensive when I was seventeen, I sat up on the train for four days as I travelled across the country. I could do that then. Now, train travel in this country costs more than a Swoop flight of five hours.  

I once booked passage on a freighter that took fourteen passengers. It was to leave from New York and would deposit me several days later in Rijeka. This was partly due to cost but mostly due to a desire for adventure. Starry nights, glistening black sea, a glass of whiskey on the deck, seamen with their tales… But the departure date was delayed by two weeks and would now leave from Texas. In those days I wasn’t in a hurry but did have meet-up dates planned with a friend and a lover I’d met on a ferry to Vlissingen two years before. So I flew Laker Airways. I went standby for one hundred dollars from New York to London.  

Coffee

I like my coffee black. In the seventies, I had a percolator that sat with its thickening contents at the back of the wood cook stove. For years I had a Melita drip, then a small Moka Pot for espresso, an automatic drip coffee maker, and finally now, my French press. We don’t grow coffee in Canada. Tankers and trucks have always brought me my morning coffee.

Photo by Brent Ninaber on Unsplash

Covid

With Covid came “supply chain” issues. People stuck at home went to work renovating and building, so the cost of materials, especially wood, skyrocketed.

Containers full of dry and not-so-dry goods stacked three deep on docks around the world stayed put for weeks on end. Not enough drivers, not enough trucks. In the Suez Canal a cargo ship got stuck for a week and everything from here to there stalled. No goods got through. Ships with things inside that had to get from there to there were in that checkout line for six days and seven hours.

Photo by Paul Teysen on Unsplash

My Cabin

I once lived in a small cabin at the edge of a mountainside meadow. Before the snow fell I packed in flour, rice, powdered milk, potatoes, sugar, spices, yeast, canned meats and vegetables, and nuts along with three bush cords of wood. I had enough kerosene for my lamps and water flowed into the cabin through a buried hose from a spring up the mountain. My portable Valentine typewriter and reams of yellow paper. And my dog, Lady.

THEN…

NOW…

Perhaps I was too young to be that alone for so long. I dream of returning. Except up there on the mountain, there’s no Wi-Fi and no cell service. Not even a phone line.

Life Then

In those days I’d walk the mile or so down to the post office to mail and pick up letters. Remember letters? Those letters to and from erupted with poetry and longing. I’d stop in at the motel’s coffee shop with its wide view of the Kootenay River and sit at the counter with my bottomless coffee in its white ceramic cup with its green striped rim. I’d chat about the things one chats about to strangers with whomever happened to sit at that counter.

Life Now

I shop at Costco, have limitless Wi-Fi for my MacBook Pro, and have electric lights in every room. Container ships bring me my coffee, my replacement bulbs, ink, and god bless Amazon. Amazon kept me in things during Covid. Things I had to have.

Covid didn’t actually stop, but for the most part the world got unstuck. I can fly again even though I’d prefer to take a train. I factor in these elements with every decision: expense, convenience, environmental impact, timing, comfort. It’s like that now. Having choice, I mean.

Yesterday, I wound myself into a frenzied knot figuring out the best way to plan a trip west. Whether to go here or there first, use points, take Swoop or Air Canada, rent a car, how long to stay, the most comfortable, less taxing on my body while paying the least amount of money.

Our Bodies

I’ve grown soft.

Science tells us that our bodies can travel fifteen kilometres an hour without any cell disruption. So what actually happens when we whip across the planet at nearly a thousand kilometres an hour?

The last flight I took across the ocean resulted in elephant ankles and a Spanish hospital visit.

View from my hospital room in Malaga.

I’d still like to cross the ocean in a ship, just not one of the ones that spew their refuse and shit into the ocean, if such ones exist. I want to ride a train across the country again. But I’m in a hurry. So I fly. It’s cheaper than driving when you factor in gas, food, motels. But what about the body? What about the air?

Wants and Needs

I just want to go back to my mountain cabin and listen to the coyotes at night. Drink the water that tastes of stars. Tap away at my small portable typewriter, now long gone. Maybe I could bring my French press – it doesn’t need electricity.

Photo by Sebastien LE DEROUT on Unsplash

Photo by cafeconcetto on Unsplash

That container ship ran aground, others stacked like giant building blocks on countless docks, and the world managed to go on—howling as it did for more, more, more, better, etc.

What do we truly need?

What do I?