Perpetual Leisure

Thinking about my neighbor's fourteen year old still-staked Crepe Myrtle tree led me to conclude that what we've done with our living environments accelerates the myth of perpetual leisure.

Look, fifteen years ago every homeowner mowed his or her own lawn. Edged it, trimmed the bushes, and ran the mower over the grass. Today as I rode the bike up Franklin Blvd., I was passed by what must have been half a dozen pickup trucks with mowers and blowers in the back and two or three Mexican or Vietnamese workers in the cab. You will never see one Mexican and two Vietnamese, or one Vietnamese and two Mexicans in the same truck. That would be impossible, because these ethnic groups never assimilate with one another. You would think that racism exists only because of white people like me but I've seen the systemic hatreds minorities have for each other. I will never, never! be convinced that white guys are the only demons. Racism exists in every culture, white or otherwise.

No, today we farm out our lawn chores to landscape maintenance engineers, primarily people who do not look like us. Apparently we are so involved in soccer practices, NASCAR viewing, DVD pirating, ballet recitals, dining out, porn surfing, barbecuing and taking Sunday drives to Pittsburgh that we cannot devote any time to our own environments. We are a nation expecting perpetual leisure.

I thought about tree-stakes from my very first pedal this morning and before I even got to Franklin Blvd and I found eleven trees that still have their training wheels still on. Eleven! Homeowners plant a tree and expect it to grow all by itself; they don't want to fucking think about it anymore. They expect it to provide shade in a few years and when the tree fails to develop correctly because it's girdled by a wire noose, they think it's just the tree's fault.

Landscape maintenance engineers also don't know shit about trees. Most of the time they destroy the cambium layer with weed eaters, dooming the tree to a life of perpetual weakness at the trunk. And why would they give a shit? They are paid to trim weeds, collect leaves and to mow the lawn, not to care for trees...it's not part of their service contracts.

The only reason we can farm out this labor is because cheap gasoline underwrites the hundreds of thousands of trucks needed to support this enterprise. And because we've now grown accustomed to having brown people do our dirty work, we'll never return to such menial labor.

"Yard maintenance is a form of work. And I never work."