The Violence Continues


Dear Eugene,

I find artificial turf a very disturbing idea, one of the more unsightly anti-creation project of man.  (Wow, where does that rancor come from on a pleasant Friday morning such as now?)

I don't mean a ball field.  I can see the function (though still have great reservation about the rude juxtaposition of human's spirited playing upon a blanket nonchalant to the baptism in blood sweat and tears.)

I am talking about artificial turf for a home, what a person does to her "home turf."

It is one thing to make things neat.  There is nothing more pleasant to my sight than the uniformity displayed on freshly mowed lawn, especially mine.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and my eyes were opened by sparkling fairies (with beautiful names like Endorphins, Adrenaline, Dopamine and Serotonin--bless the poets) descending, honoring me for my good hard work.

Still, uniformity is not forced conformity.

I am aware of--have nightmare of damaging my lawn mower by--shrub stumps from the many bygone yesteryears, hidden in different parts of my lawn, front and back yard, various corners.  I smell them out in fear.  I dance with my mower around them.  I leave blades of grass surrounding them, a berth of sacred radius, let little shrines pop up.  (Until judgement day, usually once a month, when I use a string trimmer to cleanse the temples.)

There are areas I am bound to miss.  A blade sticking up here and there.  Bands of outsider too defiant to fall.  And I let them be.  For by tomorrow morning the uniformity shall be no more anyway, even before the sun has fully risen.  Some beautiful new disorder would have been given birth overnight, even in darkness.

Hello, beautiful stranger, have I met you somewhere before?  You look familiar...but not really...

Imagine someone you haven't met for years saying to you, "Wow, nice to see you again!  You look, talk, walk, and even smell the exact same way as before, or have grown into my exact imagining of how you would grow over this set number of years.  You really live up to my expectation, not a blade too tall, not a blade too short!  And what quality control, a long-lasting product that makes fool of extended warranty: You've kept your green top to bottom unchanged, unmoved, undeterred by all them dog's business going on around or literally landing on you!  Your entire being must have been entrenched in a predisposed goodness so early on (family background? education? read the right books? plain lucky?) that you give being a cliché the bling, the glamour, the eternal justification to stay put eternally..."

OK I am being really unfair to artificial turf.  This bitterness must end before the sun going down on me.  Hope you can tell I am not talking about the turf but the impoverished imagination that does violence to beauty.  You bet when the turf loses its color he/she is going to spray paint it.

They sell guns for that.

Yours, Alex


Comments

  1. KartiniMay 12, 2018 at 5:17 PM

    Dear Eugene,

    This past week, we have embarked on an epic journey starting with “a long bus ride” to the “edge of water” in the quest of life “to the fullest" until at last, we encounter face to face on home turf the inner “crouching beast", which guards with uncompromised loyalty against this hostile question:

    “If it makes you happy
    Then why… are you so sad?”

    As the beast within me perpetuated its growling, I drifted in reversal of time to 2012. At the time, I was a student living reasonably close to Huntington Library in Southern California. I had never been to Huntington Library since the word “library” conjured more scholastic stress than leisure in my mind. But my cousin, who lived nearby, had visited the estate multiple times & insisted that I go before the end of school. It was not be missed, I was advised.

    So on a breezy day in May, just a week before my plan to leave the area following the completion of my studies, I arranged for a half-day tour at Huntington Library. Upon arrival, I discovered that my half-day visit was not enough; I should have scheduled for a full day. This would be one of my grandest regrets in life!

    Huntington Library was most certainly paradise on earth within my reach. Among the gardens & museums, I was entranced by its extravagance: poetry & romanticism carved in the realism of architecture & design; botany, art & space raptured in symphonic climax; dragonflies & dreams weaving among lovers & loners in the flight of fantasy. How could I have endured 30+ years of life without any knowledge of it?

    But in the midst of extreme beauty, I knew happiness - soon after its discovery - would be fleeting like everything else in the same way a glass of Coke would lose its fizz after the lid is opened. If quantifiable in “Endorphins, Adrenaline, Dopamine & Serotonin”, happiness exuding from the gardens would require the perennial care of a legion of gardeners, engineers & trustees within precise enclosures.

    And if I had reexamined the gardens more closely, I may have even detected violence against beauty: roses dressed in blood ; daggers of grass rising in envy; leaves & vines poised to slit throats & tongues; & thorns like teeth ready to bite the beast itself! (Wow, where does that rancor come from on a pleasant Mother’s Day weekend?)

    At the end of any garden encounter, buffet, travel or concert, before transitioning to the next activity for the diverted self, the growling beast, which has fattened over time in the wilderness of cliches & conformity, will devour my heart & identity unless the beast is arrested on my home turf in the name of Truth. When the beast is conquered, then the initial question becomes irrelevant.

    Happy Mother’s Day to all!

    Yours, K





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