1.) a fir tree from the Tennessee mountains that represents a time to relax, I dug it at the site of one of the cabins I stayed in on a relaxing week off with my family,
2.)a tiny gardenia bush my mother bought me last week at Home Depot. To me there is no better smell on the planet than gardenia flowers on heavy air. We had a large one in our front yard in Louisiana when I was a kid. I want one or ten of my own.
3.) and a rhododendron that my sister and I dug together in Blowing Rock, NC. Once again I had taken a week off with my family to join them in their relaxation. When I was a kid in the deepest south, a week in the mountains was the single best vacation you could take. As kids we developed a deep and abiding love of the Smokies that continues today and hopefully will always be there. And this plant reminds me of that love.
They are sitting on the porch, living in pots until I move for the last time. I have a crazy dream at this late stage of life. To buy a house for cash, or close to it, and to move for the final time. To live in a place until I die, to plant my own shrubs, hang my own art, chop down trees I don't like and plant ones I do. To develop a compost pile.
Trouble is, most people do that without regard to finality. They call it "life". To them it is not special, it is just Wednesday. They have a mortgage because they have kids, cars, crap, dog. But they have never been nomads. They can't grasp how a person can bounce from town to town and put down no real roots, because whatever job they are in is not a career, but a job IN A CAREER FIELD that is a means to an end. That end is "not working". The end is to have a home no one can take from you and working just hard enough to pay the tax man. It's a crappy goal, but it's mine. And to that end, I have developed my little family of shrubs. They are killing time, rootbound and waiting to see their their final resting place where they, like me, can just relax and put down roots. Where they can make friends, and be responsible, voting human beings.
I told my sister the other day that I finally figured out why life for a kid plays out in such slow motion. It's because of payday. When you are a kid in a hot classroom, summer seems as if it will never get here. You desperately PUT OFF things you dread; tests, first dates, vaccinations...you mentally move them off into a future that will never come. You hope. And time moves in slow motion. A school year drags out seemingly forever, and the vacation is far too short. Because kids are GOOD AT IT. Masters of time manipulation.
But then you become an adult. At first you work any job just to get out of the house. My first job was at age 14, as a cook in a fried chicken restaurant. It was for money. Not to get out of the house. It got me away from a lot of the things most kids do. I did not go to parties, I went to school all day and worked all night. I didn't date, although I had the money to. I started a very early, very sad path towards responsibility. Before long I was in the service, living the wild life for the first time. Money? Ehh, not so much of that, but fun, hell yeah.
And then after college I was a worker drone again. But this time I had to get out of the house to prove I was not a burden (intentionally), that my education had not been in vain. It was a horrifically slow start. But after a time, I never had need of anything but love in the support game, and I was pleased that I was self-sufficient. But never rich. And this is the crux of my argument. The modern world moves so fast because we are so close to the edge, we the 99%, that instead of focusing intently on DELAYING time's march, we focus a willing energy on the calendar, moving with our minds the proximity of Friday...payday. I actually get paid on every other Monday, but the effect is the same. We watch a little TV, do the laundry, and whatever extra you poor married saps do, and we MOVE THAT NEEDLE ever forward to payday, the only thing that sustains us in our efforts to pay for all the endless things that need attention. And hopefully it will buy us a place to stash all of our crap, that no one can ever take away from us. And sure, a lot of people recently lost that 'thing no one can ever take away from us', but not because the banking system is so unfair. There are a lot of people who lost homes that had no business being home-owners. Those people lost homes because they believed the big lie, that everyone gets a trophy. Everyone should own a home. It's not true. America has retreated in it's vast economic strength. We won't be doing better than our parents. We will struggle to make it happen and be lucky to leave anything to our children. Not everyone needs to own a home. Some people, like me, should RENT a place to live until such time as they can afford to buy a home safely. It must be tough to lose a home to foreclosure. But to me its even tougher to be so dumb that you believe what your predatory lender told you. That you could afford a home, 'no problem'. That gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach was not the bad clams. It was your brain trying to tell you that there was no possible way you were going to be able to guarantee your steady employment and uneventful life such that you'd have 1800 bucks every month laying around for 30 years. Come on. And naturally, there are people, even some who might read this and disagree. Congratulations, you are one of the lucky ones.
If we are going to survive to reign on this planet for another 5000 years we are going to have to start paying a bit more attention to our brains and a lot less time listening to what the man on TV tells us. Leave your phone on your hip until it rings. Better yet, leave it at home. Surf the web at home, if at all. You don't HAVE to buy into the hype. Tend to a couple of plants, smoke a few cigars, live within your means and live long enough to find your reward.
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