Hands tied, mouth open

Recently, I’ve been thinking about a particular piece hanging in Panama City’s Museo Antropologico. The ink print — depicting a scene from Panama’s past, a time when the Spanish Empire had been enslaving Amerindians on the Isthmus and forcing them to work in gold mines — captured a curious reversal of fortune: Amerindians pinning down a Spaniard and pouring molten gold down his throat. But hey, the Amerindians were only giving the Spaniard what he craved above all else, above religion, above family, above nationality, above civility.

The reason why my mind has recalled the ink print is because its brand of poetic justice hauntingly speaks for today. Just look at the Gulf. How we crave oil, that viscous elixir of locomotion! How we worship thee! And it was as if nature listened to her subjects’ infantile wailing, and indulged us. You want oil? Here it is, lap it up!

I wish I were an outsider to the cause and effects of the BP spill, just as I was to the ink print. Sure, my wife and I now buy wind power from our utility company for our apartment. I don’t own a car. I have a small solar panel , although it barely musters enough juice to charge my cell phone once every few weeks. But every time I hop into a taxi, or turn a faucet whose water is heated by an oil-fired boiler, or eat a floret of broccoli that was brought to the market in a truck, I’m still on the oil grid, feeling pinned down and feeling the burning sensation in my throat.

I could bore you with stats we already know, like how the entire continental United States could be powered by a roughly 100-mile solar panel grid in the southwest. Or how both solar and wind power are just so dang expensive, so let’s keep spending money to find more oil instead. I’m not saying a change in our power sources will come easily or painlessly. But I would hope that now, at least some of us will think about where our fuel comes from. In the meantime, drink up, America!