Balancing Act, 15

I have come to believe that LED headlights are the sign of the coming Apocalypse. Once you have stopped gasping and gagging, Gentle Reader, how about if I explain myself a little...Feeling better? Have you coughed it all up, now? Okay. LED headlights are the sign of the coming Apocalypse. I was first treated to that blinding spectacle some twenty years ago. I was in those days technically homeless. Three to four days a week I stayed with my father in his rented two-bedroom cabin in Robert's Creek, on BC's fabled Sunshine Coast, but a forty minute ferry ride from the Lower Mainland. The balance of the week I would couch surf with various friends in Vancouver. Not an easy arrangement, but it did work for the ten and a half months I was homeless, and thanks to my father (who came to hate me, or likely always did) and various friends, (almost all of whom now are ex-friends) in Vancouver. One night, following a walk in Robert's Creek, I was walking along the local road, on my way back to my father's. Two menacing glowing eyes from hell suddenly appeared from around the bend and I had to shield my eyes, they were so white, cruel and blinding. In my rage at this unnecessary use of high beam headlights I treated the occupant of said SUV to my best middle finger. Being a remnant member of a primitive species of hominid, he reacted by threatening me and refused to admit that those were high beams. The young woman, who appeared to be one of us, told him to leave me alone. He did relent, probably knowing that, as consequence, he might have to face a night of sleeping alone. Over the years this has only worsened. Increasingly, first at night, it was becoming harder and harder to enjoy a quiet walk without having to shield my eyes every block or so. I need my eyes. I am an artist and I do want to have functioning retinas in my old age. Now it's in the middle of the day. On bright, sunny summer days. And this is everywhere. I can no longer enjoy an otherwise quiet and lovely walk in a leafy neighbourhood without some remnant hominid blinding me with their LED highlights in broad daylight. I just cover my eyes now. Sometimes imprecate: Your headlights, unlike you, are bright!" And now its all over the traffic as other cars, vehicles, delivery and service trucks, as well as buses and garbage trucks (no, Gentle Reader, they are NOT the same thing, and please get your thin white little nose out of the air!) being outside, day or night has turned into a visual Armageddon as blinding headlights make life hell for pedestrians and other drivers. And it's all because LED lights are incredibly cheap and energy efficient. And blinding. We are just waiting for the lawsuits to come rolling in. In the meantime, no one seems to care. Pedestrians make up a marginalized and often cash-poor minority and no one driving those climate changing monsters is going to give a rat's heiny about this, as they drive off in to their very important business and pleasure of the day. They are privileged. They worship and serve the Economy God. Therefore they are exempt. The rest of us will have to simply invest in sunglasses, or go on looking the other way.