You Could Make Your Own Shed, You Know

You can covet the shed we had yesterday, and you do, as I did, it seems. It shows the hand of nature has been on it. It’s infused with the hand of nature. Sunbeams are captured in leaves and water is wicked from the soil and a creature fashions the remainder into an artifact for the other creatures, and the mower.

But you need only bravery, and time, to make it instead of inherit it. It takes a sort of bravery to acknowledge that everything in this life has a trajectory, and allow that trajectory to be followed. You can tend to a building, but you can’t make it immortal. A structure that requires no maintenance allows no maintenance and so is not “green,” a term I don’t use because it signifies nothing to me. It is disposable, in the only true sense of the word –brand new, until you throw it away.

If you shoot poison in your face you are not young. Who are you fooling? Do you have the nerve to allow the wrinkles to show? Did you have the temerity to use your youth when you had it, and so not attempt to counterfeit it when it is gone, to try to one more time to recapture the reckless courage you squandered? And would squander again, no doubt?

Put that useful thing out in the landscape. You’ll go there to fetch the rake, and be presented with other, more pleasant things, unwonted. The genie is blind and deaf, so your wishes are worthless. But he is still powerful in his caprice, and conjures many wonders. It’s as if you were dragging a millstone to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, and were kidnapped partway there and given cotton candy to carry at party instead.

You forgot your rake.