When Humanity Only Survives Within Driving Distance of a Shopping Mall
The city can become an addiction. Live in it too long, and your body will reject the outdoors. Over the weekend, I got up early-ish to catch La Strada at the Brattle (part of the free Elements Of Cinema series.) It seemed like a good Saturday morning thing: get coffee, watch a smart film, maybe browse the dress shops and get coffee again.
But as soon as I opened my eyes, they started to burn. I left the window open that night and the airborne pollens — ragweed or whatever it is that Zyrtec normally takes care of — drifted into my room and into my eyes like evil pixie dust. I shut my window, got dressed, and did what I normally don’t do trying to get to Harvard Square: I drove.
The whole “pahk the cah in hahvahd yahd” thing is a joke not just on the Boston accent. Driving in Harvard Square is kind of like pushing marbles through straws. Saturday morning isn’t much of a problem. Well, any Saturday other than yesterday.
Due to construction, the two and three hour parking spots within eight blocks were unavailable. The open spots were limited to one hour. Hardly enough time to attend a movie and a lecture. No going around it: the meter maids in this city are busybodies. After circling around several times, wishing I were on my bike, I ended up parking much farther than I intended and came smack in contact with exactly what I’d been avoiding all morning: the outside air.
It was a beautiful day. Low 80s, clear skies, perfect for biking, running, reading under a tree, anything outside. But rather than delighting in the weather, I was cursing it. Lightheaded, my eyes feeling like sandpaper lined the rims, sneezing, I was just a mess. I thought wearing glasses would make it better but it was just the opposite: contact lenses shield against these allergens. The sunshine was bouncing off the lenses, only making the situation worse.
This is urban New England, I’m hardly Lawrence of Arabia in a sandstorm, but it bothered me so much, and realizing I was already twenty minutes late, I returned to my car thinking, “how far to the Cambridgeside Galleria?”
I was looking for refuge from the outside world in the form of a shopping mall. My body was rejecting nature in favor of the sanitized, always-68 degrees shopping center down the street. So I watched the sky from the Whole Foods cafe, waiting until I could blink again without discomfort.
Just as domesticated pets can’t make it in the wilderness, city people, according to the “hygiene hypothesis,” live in such clean conditions their immune systems weaken. Preschool peanut bans are so prevalent and contentious, I wouldn’t be surprised if the DEA gets involved eventually.
In addition to increased sensitivity, cities produce more ragweed due to CO2 levels — increasing with climate change. There are additional ripple effects on tree pollen, fungal spores, and other allergens. And warmer climate means the allergy season is much longer than it ever was before.
Years ago, people with severe allergies found relief in the mountains. But “increased human activity such as building and other disturbances of the soil, irrigation, and gardening, have encouraged ragweed to spread to these areas as well.” We’re building our way unhealthy.
Damien Atkins’s play “Lucy” (Kurt Anderson interview here) is about an anthropologist with a 13 year old autistic daughter. She comes to the conclusion her daughter “is perfect. She’s the future,” making a stunning hypothesis that autism is evolution. Mankind is protecting itself from the devastating environmental consequences of modern living. (A little Kumbaya, but quite a lot smarter than whatever M Night Shyamalan was going on.)
Wall-E so radically tackled devolution with the future human race portrayed as gelatinous blobs. More accurately they would have sneezed uncontrollably at contact with the plant.
Todd Haynes’s 1995 film [Safe] was a great comment/parody/prophesy of the modern age fraught with yuppie ailments:
“Safe” has been described as a horror movie of the soul, a description that director Todd Haynes relishes. California housewife Carol White seems to have it all in life: a wealthy husband and a beautiful house. The only thing she lacks is a strong personality: Carol seems timid and empty during all of her interactions with the world around her. At the beginning of the film, one would consider her to be more safe in life than just about anyone. That doesn’t turn out to be the case. Starting with headaches and leading to a grand-mal seizure, Carol becomes more and more sick, claiming that she’s become sensitive to the common toxins in today’s world: exhaust, fumes, aerosol spray, etc. She pulls back from the sexual advances of her husband and spends her nights alone by the TV or wandering around the outside of her well-protected home like an animal in a cage. Her physician examines her and can find nothing wrong. An allergist finds that she has an allergic reaction to milk but explains that there is no treatment for that sort of allergy. She sees a psychiatrist who does nothing but make her nervous. In the hospital, Carol sees an infomercial for Wrenwood, a new-age retreat for those who are “environmentally ill,” and leaves her husband and stepson to try and find salvation at this retreat: headed by a phony, grandstanding, “sensitive” individual named Peter Dunning.
I remember watching it in high school, thinking “just get over it!” Likely someone is thinking the same thing reading my opening paragraph. It’s embarrassing, but I’m not alone:
Ragweed pollen and mold thrive in the opposite conditions. So when it’s dry and windy, you get ragweed; when it’s damp and rainy, you get mold.
Here’s the other cheerful news, you might want to prepare for a worse ragweed season next year. Dr. Mark Dykewicz, chief of the Section of Allergy & Clinical Immunology, at St. Louis University School of Medicine says that next year’s ragweed crop will be from this years rainy, fertile conditions.
In Europe, they are putting up “Wild West ‘wanted’ posters” advocating burning the ragwood (”ambrosia”) plants, which climbing north to Germany, and even Scandinavia.
‘Some gardeners naively think it is an attractive plant and give it water and fertilizer in their front gardens,’ says Susanne Schwarz of Berlin’s Health Department.
‘They should be eradicating this menace instead,’ she adds. ‘Best thing to do is pull it out by the roots and burn it, since the seeds can remain fertile for up to 40 years.’
In case you’re wondering, yeah, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment this week. In the meantime, a friend advised me to take local honey because the pollen in the honey acclimates you to the pollen in the air. Sounds unlikely, but I appreciate the concept as a narrative. Maybe if The Happening hadn’t resigned itself as a joke, Mark Walberg would have hunted the wilderness for an antidote. A lab set up in the fields somewhere. The twist ending M Night Shymalan forgot to write, like a riff on Dorothy’s discovery: the answer is “no further than our own backyard”
Until then, closing my eyes is as heavenly as a dive in a pool full of feathers. And I’m thinking allergies are nature’s way of reminding us to pay attention.
Photography by Julia Fullerton-Batten.
Previously:
Who Needs Sleep?
An Apology for Idlers
Related links:
- Hygiene Hypothesis on PBS, Evolution: “The Evolutionary Arms Race”
- Architects take Beijing’s smog into account, LA Times (via.)
- Ragweed Allergy Heats Up With Climate Change, Medical News Today
- Take Me Out To The (Peanut-Free) Ballgame, Channel3000
One of my favorite parts of any novel is in The Drowned World. When the city of London is finally drained, the characters aren’t pleased, in fact they’re horrified. They can’t believe people lived in these structures and streets so far removed from nature (this isn’t a spoiler by the way, it happens in the middle of the book.) So it’s funny to see that these images from squint/opera, so obviously inspired by the book, are getting a largely positive reaction: “Look at what these people are doing; fishing, swimming, DIY, playing and tinkering within peaceful contexts. All positive things within buildings that have seen their day within this scenario,” says one comment. “That water is crystal clear. Looks like a wonderful place to live,” says another. You must take a look at the images by the way. The film and media studio’s “Flooded London” set is part of the London Festival of Architecture.
Northward, Ho! Here’s a blog all about polar cities, “are we really headed north as global warming hots up the planet? You decide. Meanwhile, be entertained here, if nothing else.”
“The shocking story of nuclear uncertainty in the film The Beginning or the End, was given such a Hollywood aura of unreality that the a-bomb was transformed into our friend…By the time Mad Max (1979) came along, the endgame had turned into fashion that looked suspiciously like the clothes Vivian Westwood was making for the Punk scene….Wouldn’t it be nice if we could go back to the days when fiction was not fact.” – Design Observer
“In rural Tanzania, murders of elderly women accused of witchcraft are a very common form of homicide. And when Tanzania suffers unusual rainfall — either drought or flooding — witch-killings double” – NYT (via)
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