They lost things in the grass. A bicycle. Water hoses. A barbecue. Kiddie pool. A roll of barb wire. Coffee cups. A bag of concrete. A swing set. A tether ball pole.
These things were not discarded or
abandoned in the grass. They were lost.
There had been a first use or non use,
a summoning of some minor or grand initiative (let’s attract ducks
with the pool!) some dollars spent, some effort expended, and
then…and then…the grass took over and these things were hidden
and not remembered. What can’t be seen can’t be remembered. At least
things can’t. Most people, too.
The grass perpetrated no malice taking
over. It was happy grass going to seed, waving in the wind, uncut,
chemical free, occasionally integrated with colors from other
flowering plants. Please don’t call them weeds. Bumblebees rejoiced!
The dog wouldn’t shit in the grass. He
figured he might get lost, too, or host a flea festival.
Richard Brautigan called this sort of
grass The Revenge of the Lawn. He got that right.
Grass just wants to be left alone. And
here it was!
So why does it make me sad to see it? I
suppose it’s because I think first of the people who aren’t mowing
this grass and losing things in it.
Let us ruminate now on the people who
let the grass go wild. Or did they? Was there anything conscious in
the decision? Or what is a non-decision? Maybe they’d read Brautigan
and became disciples. Maybe it was some kind of protest against
mowing, the useless mowing of grass, laboring only for an aesthetic.
All that snarling noise, black smoke and sharpened metal.
If only the people had invested in a
flywheel mower! Now that’s something bucolic and makes a pleasant
trilling sound. A flywheel also misses most of the dandelions. They
escape the blades and go on tilting at attention, like tiny flags in
a groovy country.
Wait! A flywheel mower was also lost in
the grass. They let the handle fall to the ground one afternoon and
it vanished.
You can’t really say people who lose
things in the grass have gone to seed. I used to believe that, but
I’ve changed my mind, my definition of the phrase. People who have
gone to seed are waving in the wind, uncut, (usually) chemical free,
spreading their wild seeds and sharing the field with other plants
and tiny creatures of the field.
They are not part of America’s
manicured lawn. They are not conforming. They will become part of a
meadow! Or a glade! Who wouldn’t prefer that to a lawn?
Most. It’s so much easier being part of
a lawn.
Think about something else, too. The
wilder the grass gets the less likely invaders, such as blackberries,
gorse, scotch broom, bamboo and capitalism, will find a foothold,
then spread, spread, spread and then occupy forever.
Also consider this: a perfectly
operational riding lawnmower stood parked at the edge of the grass,
near a large spruce. Actually there was another mower as well! No,
wait, it wasn’t a riding lawnmower. It was a small tractor with a
mower deck. It could have cut the “lawn” with two passes. Five
minutes.
Both were shiny and new and cost
thousands of dollars each. Give it a couple of years, and they’ll be
lost in the grass, too, near the rowing machine and council of lawn
gnomes.
So if the people in the house who lose
things in the grass have not gone to seed, where have they gone?
They are merely gone.
Americans dissipate. In great numbers
these days. Grass doesn’t.
Once the grass had been a front lawn,
disheveled for sure, but a lawn nonetheless, a lawn at the end of a
long gravel driveway. A home stands there, barely. It would become
lost one day, along with the people in it.
A house lost in the grass is sad when
so many people live in tents on concrete or out of their jalopies. Or
ride a bicycle 10 miles in the rain with a ukulele to play for a free
breakfast.
The grass where things are lost is not
Walt Whitman’s grass. Walt’s wild grass had promise. Every single
spear. You put a spear in your mouth and you feel wild. You walk with
a spear in the mouth, and you don’t feel lost at all.
