Reality Bites

May 10th

Matilijas in full bloom, Dr. Suess bushes going crazy, arugula gone to seed...

I was going to write about reality. But something got in the way.

I was thinking, and have been thinking for awhile, about the nature of reality in our manufactured world.

So, it's 2006 and you build a Tudor style house in Southern California. A house designed a long, long time ago in merry old England. Think about Tudor. Perhaps there are timbers because that was an affordable way to build a house, since timber was everywhere and made great frames. The whole style of the house was based on the reality of the situation. Much of it was build out of need, economy, and some style. Yet, here we are, hundreds of years later, trying to protect the forests and spending a lot more money to build a house which doesn't fit any bill except that it is pretty and makes us all think of England.

When people come in they think the house is charming. It whisks them back to another era. I don't know about you, but that wasn't a particularly healthy era when it came to living past 40 years old. We are, in so many senses, living in this fantasyland and dreaming about a place we don't really know.

Those people, way back a when, lived more in reality. Hopefully they were looking at their surroundings and acting upon them. When all they had was mud, they made a mud house. Attractive? Maybe not particularly, but it did, and here's the only word I can think of to describe it, resonate. Resonated with the surroundings, with their economy, with their tribe who lived in like houses.

It's exactly the same with the garden. We put 40% of our water into lawns, which remain highly unused for the most part, then complain that the well is going dry. (Okay, maybe we don't complain, but if you read the papers, scientists and farmers are complaining.) Speaking of England, that's where the idea of a grass lawn comes from. A country whose trademark item is an umbrella.

Like I said, I was going to write about it (and in many ways, I guess I am), but walking back from yoga, exhausted, tired, and going by the Korean church with their dandelion garden, I thought, "Who the hell cares?"

Maybe not my best turn of phrase, but I get the point even today. All this complaining and worrying, is it really getting us anywhere? So my neighbor waters his lawn every single night and my other neighbor smothers his grass with pesticides and fertilizer, does it make them worse people? No, they're great people, I just happen to think both are misinformed.

Here's the problem: how do I continue to do what I think is right (in all areas of my life) and not get angry with someone else for their actions?

It's a question I can't really answer today.

But I believe that starting at the beginning, calming myself, working with my hands in the garden, has the answer. In the same way you don't decide to start your diet on the maddest crazy busiest shopping day before Christmas, trying to calm yourself while you're yelling at people just doesn't work.

It feels good.

But it doesn't work.