Eavesdropping, by Gillian

I say the days of eavesdropping are over. Like so many other things, it is obsolete; extinct. Voices yell intimacies into smartphones, while people's every thought, word, and deed, flood from Facebook and Twitter. We have entered an era more of anti-eavesdropping; of trying not to hear the intimate details of everyone's life; their every opinion. Not long after the last Superbowl a friend and I met for lunch. The business- men at the next table were so raucous in their analysis of the game that we had to move to another table. Next to that one, two women talked incessantly, almost as loud as those men, not to each other but into their phones. Eavesdropping, if you can even use the term, has become obligatory.

As a kid, especially being an only child, I loved to eavesdrop. I recall clearly one conversation on a bus. The young couple in the seat in front of me had a very emotional, if whispered, argument over whose fault it was that the girl was pregnant. I got quite an education. The last time I rode a bus, which actually was to get to Cheesman Park for the start of this year's Pride Parade, a young guy yelled abuse into his iPhone the entire trip. Apparently, his girlfriend was pregnant, and, very apparently, he was displeased. He repeatedly called her a 'fucking stupid bitch', occasionally switching to 'stupid fucking bitch', which seemed to exhaust his vocabulary. I really didn't want to hear it. I hurriedly shoved in my earbuds and turned on my iPod. Definitely we are in the anti-eavesdropping era.

I was first taught to eavesdrop by my parents. They listened constantly to Mother Nature, who never stops talking. Through them, I learned to relish birdsong, which of course is eavesdropping. They aren't singing to me - they sing to each other, or perhaps to themselves simply for the glory of the welcome light of morning. Mum and Dad taught me to listen to the whispers of the wind in the trees, or the howling of it against the window panes, and to know what it meant for tomorrow's weather. From my aunt, and later from a wonderful teacher in high school, I learned to listen to the whispers of the rocks. They also never stop talking, but oh so quietly. If you can manage to hear them, they tell the amazing history of our planet, and they tattle-tale on Mother Nature herself. They give away her age. As far as our planet is concerned, at least, she is middle-aged; half way between birth and her life-expectancy of nine billion years. The rocks tell us that dinosaurs once roamed right here, where we sit this Monday afternoon. (Not exactly here, on the second floor, but you get my drift!)

But there's something up with old Ma Nature. She's not as quiet as she used to be. Her whispers became louder. Over the more recent decades she has begun not only to talk out loud but even to shout. She knows something. She wants us to know. But we don't listen.

We are well into the anti-eavesdropping era.

We really don't want to hear it.

We put on our headphones and turn up the music.

Mother Nature is desperate. We must hear her. She will be OK, as will the planet, at least for another five billion or so years, but we must save ourselves. She tosses tumultuous tornado swarms at us to wake us up, and hurls humongous hurricanes to get our attention. We ignore her. In 2003 as many as 70,000 deaths in Europe were attributed to record heat. In June last year London hit it's highest temperature on record, at 103. TV shots showed train tracks buckling in the heat. But this July as I tried to watch the tennis at Wimbledon, (I say 'tried' because it was rained out day after day) London was treated to the wettest month on record. Last year's heat waves in India, Pakistan, and parts of South America broke all records. Australia has had to add new colors to weather maps to accommodate temperatures never experienced before. Climate craziness.

2015 also brought heat records to Alaska and parts of the American southwest. Meanwhile we recently had record rainfall in China, and across this country from Texas to Washington D.C.

And still we hear nothing.

Mother Nature might as well be silent for all the attention we pay.

Flames roar from the forests on every continent. Even as I write this, sitting on the patio, I smell in the air the smoke from the Boulder County fire. Another fire blazes on Hayden Pass, Colorado, which they do not expect to contain before October.

Mother nature absolutely screams.

Still we do nothing.

A few years ago, residents of several Polynesian nations banded together in a desperate attempt to get the world to care about their islands, which were, and of course still are, disappearing into the Pacific. In their traditional hand-hewn wooden boats, they temporarily were able to block the mouth of the Australian harbor from which a huge coal-ship was ready to leave. The coal was destined for the huge hungry mouths of the Chinese coal-fired energy plants, whose energy goes to fill the huge hungry mouths of the endless factories producing goods for the endless huge hungry mouths  of the world's insatiable consumer appetites. Don't blame Australia. Don't blame China. There's plenty of guilt to go round. We are all guilty. I still drive my car, and occasionally I fly on a plane which is exponentially worse for the environment. Those south-sea islanders get it. It's in your face down there; quite literally. When that beautiful blue ocean which once lapped at your feet, starts to slap you in the face, you get it.

Hopeful-sounding treaties are signed every now and then, after endless wrangling, but always making agreements for future goals, not demanding big decisive action now. It all smacks, to me, of the alcoholic who intends to quit drinking once he's finished this last bottle of whisky. No! He has to quit now. Poor out the rest. We are all addicts, hooked on our lifestyles and standards of living. We need to quit now, not when we've smoked that last carton of cigarettes. If we don't start hearing Mother Nature's cries right now, it will be too late.

What if that man on the bus was not shouting abuse at his girlfriend, but yelling to me; to all the passengers? 'Fire! Fire! The bus is on fire. Get out now. Fire! Fire!'

I ignore him. I do nothing. All the people on the bus do nothing.

I don my noise-canceling headphones, turn up the music and go into anti-eavesdropping mode, breathing in the billowing smoke.

We would all say, that is just insane, suicidal, behavior.

Wouldn't we?

© July 2016 

About the Author 

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30-years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years. We have been married since 2013.