The plastic film I peel off a paper cup for coffee turns my mind in a direction I don’t want, and instead of thinking about my beloved wife and lighthearted daughter and what I might do this evening to amuse the audience coming to see an old man with a microphone, I think about microplastic pollution, a planet that absorbs 40 million tons of it every year, plastic in the trees, water, the ice in the Antarctic, in my brain, pollution created by powerful corporate interests — men in tailored suits who own three homes have persuaded my motels to plastic-wrap cups and they don’t care about science, only profitability
