Juliet Bennett's Blog

Shopping malls & traffic jams

17 Sep ’09 Leave a Comment Written by Juliet Bennett

Two entries in one day! Don’t know what’s gotten into me but I’ll probably be scaring off any readers if I have any… it won’t happen too often, I promise.

I just got home from Warringah Mall. I was standing in line waiting to return a digital frame to BigW (that said it played AVI files and MPEG4 files and after wasting much of my time creating such files decided it actually would not live up to its specifications) and I looked around to observe the commotion and busy lives of all the people surrounding me. Aisles full of bright coloured junk-foods, clothes, makeup, home-goods, and lines of people waiting to spend their hard-earned money on these things. I know shops play an important role in our lives, and that this “stuff” is what makes our world go round. But waiting there all the good feelings I took away from the pilates class I’d just taken seemed to disappear and my irritation with our capitalistic society began to build up. A pen and paper came out of my bag and I wrote a poem to express it. Random, i know.

Anyway, here it is:

Shopping malls & traffic jams

Is there any worse place to be?

Consuming carbon waste

From trucks to lungs

From aisles to homes

Children in trolleys cry as I wait

I vow never to have more than one

Shopping clerks to scan my items

Swipe my card – more junk is mine

Where does it begin?

Where does it end?

Our addiction to buy

Drives the trucks to deliver

We want more capital

We want more wealth

Our love of things

But do we love our work?

Spend money

Work to earn more

Exploit our earth

Exploit the poor

The spiral of death

Want; Work; Buy; Want; Work; Buy;

Pollute our minds

But WHY? WHY?

What is the solution?

What can be done?

WANT LESS WORK LESS!!!

Enjoy what you have

Share what you’ve got

Love our earth;

Love one another;

Love yourself.

Juliet Bennett – 17 Sept 09


Adventure, Peace
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As a "non-indigenous" Australian living on what was once the land of the Cadigal and Wangal Wangal communities, I wish to acknowledge the inter-generational responsibility that I feel toward the colonial past. As a beneficiary of "White Australia", to the Eora people of Sydney, I request your forgiveness. I stand in solidarity with your rightful demands to self determination and active participation in governmental decisions, and I hope I may learn from your eco-spiritual connection. May we, as Tom Trevorrow of the Ngarrindjeri puts it, learn to 'respect, care and share' the gifts that our planet offers us.

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