A few things occurred to me this week while I shoveled rocks for what amounts to a six pack of beer per hour (slightly snobby beer, but still) - landscaping is the pinnacle of our culture's hubris. I know what you're thinking (I don't, but that rhetorical device makes my life easier), wouldn't something like a gold-plated Ferrari, or maybe Kanye Wests new hobo-clothing line be a better example? No! *Smacks your nose with a rolled up newspaper* It's landscaping. Lets put this in perspective; if you believe in a higher power - like the Flying Spaghetti Monster - you probably attribute this worlds natural beauty to some seriously cosmic awesome powers. Or maybe you subscribe to one of those other *lesser* theories, like the Universe slowly churning sub-atomic particles into dust, then larger clumps of star matter, followed by the sol, the planets, mountains, rivers, kittens, and then using nuclear-fusion to create all the warmth and light that spills across that really great view you have of the water treatment plant. Guess what, landscaping is your way of saying "F*ck you, Universe/Vishnu!" You look out at all the natural beauty that you blog about (ugh, bloggers) and think "you know what, I really want to cover that 3000 square feet of space in front of my house with grass that isn't native to this part of the world, and I want it to gracefully wander up and down across my line of sight, so we should probably build a G@d-damn mountain right...there. Oh, and I want a bunch of trees ripped out of there home during infancy and put along the street. Yeah.
Is there anything more indicative of our inability to put on fairy wings and sing harmoniously with nature than our determination to have Kentucky bluegrass on every square inch of the Northern Hemisphere? Is our natural human tendency to categorize and organize - like a global Pinterest board - also responsible for our need to make nature look a little more...planned? I guess, in the end, what I'm really trying to say is this; I do not like hard manual labor.
If you're a landscaper, I don't necessarily dislike you or what you do. I like pretty stuff just as much as the next guy. I f@$#ing love meandering paths. Love. I get immense joy out of driving down a tree lined street that has had time to mature to the point that there is a light green canopy shading my way to the local organic/incense/burlap sack/shoes-made-from-re-purposed-elephant-poop store. I do not like, however, shoveling thirty thousand metric tons of rock out of your new yard, which were forged over eons by processes beyond our imagination. I really really REALLY hate working in direct sunlight on any day where the thermostat creeps past 71.6 degrees, especially if my job that day is shoveling forty thousand metric tons of rock (the first 30 took long enough to shovel that the Earth was able to form another 10,000 metric tons). I'm all for "getting my hands dirty," and working in "the great outdoors." But I'm all for those things when I don't have to actually do them myself for more than a few hours, as a side project at my own house with my own view of the water treatment plant. It's like when a friend asks you to help them move; I get to feel better about myself for putting in 1.5 hours of solid work over the course of several hours while I annihilate their beer supply and then drop not-so-subtle hints about ordering pizza. In then end, what I'm really, really trying to say is that I am looking forward to working in an office again, and if I complain about being in that office, I give you permission to bring up this post while I pretend to not know what you're talking about.
Side note: Is it intentional that the "b" in subtle is...subtle? It's a letter that has no place in that word, but there it is, hanging out smack dab in the middle like some poor student that wandered in to the wrong class on the first day, but was too embarrassed to leave. I'm fairly certain that the "b" in subtle is embarrassed to be there, but is too embarrassed to get up and leave because it's been there for like, a long time now, and it would be awkward to get up and walk out....
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