This weekend we put on our "Shop Outside the Box" parade downtown. It was great--we had a full police motorcycle escort, the city blocked off the streets and we marched our little selves, along with our floats, bikes, dogs, and not so hellish hellfire and brimstain on down to the City County Building, where we heard brief comments from local business owners. We also heard me reading this on the steps:
I put a lot of work into my garden. It's mine. It's mine. Not because a piece of paper says I own the land. I mean, can a person really own land? Just because I stick a flag in a pile of dirt—dirt that was there for thousands and millions of years before my great-grandparents were born and will still be there for thousands and millions after my great-grand kids are dead and buried in it. Dirt that will eat me like a cowboy eats beef...like a poet eats life...like an empire eats the cowboy and the poet and then eats itself.
Just because I stick a flag in a pile of dirt, does that make it mine? Did I create that dirt? Did I earn the dirt? Was I given the dirt by some all wise dirt-distributing genie that looks over the deeds of everyone great and small, then deems them fit or unfit to have dirt? What? The bank? The bank gave me the dirt? Who gave the bank the dirt?
I can't make dirt. My great-great-grandpa Orville Redenbaucher “Dirt Head” Thatcher, a prominent rancher and corn farmer in the young days of the West, could not make dirt. Chief Wabi Sabi Oatmeal Pie Head who walked these Salt Lake streets 2000 years ago, could not make dirt. Neither Adam, nor Eve, nor Steve could make dirt.
I think, generally speaking, if I make something then I can have it. If I make a sandwich, I can usually eat it. If I make a joke, I can claim it as my own. If I make a bust sculpture of the president's head, I can keep it. Unless that bust is made from a petroleum-based substance, in which case the president will surround me with armed soldiers and confiscate that bust. He will then take it to his Oval Bathtub, melt it down, swim in it, and then drink it down until there isn't a drop left. Not one drop.
But otherwise, generally speaking, if I create something then I can have it.
I can't create dirt. I can't make land. So when I say that this garden is mine, I don't mean that I own it. I mean that it is mine like a friend is mine. Like a song I used to listen to growing up is mine. I mean it is mine in the sense that I have spent hours working in it, with it, inside of it. As I have covered it, it has covered me. Its fruit has entered my mouth, turned in my stomach, spread through my veins, and come out as energy that I have used to till its surface, plant its rows, harvest and eat its fruit. It is mine AND I AM ITS.
I am this garden, and this person is mine. This person is me. This garden is me. I am this garden and I have spent hours working this man. I have opened up and swallowed his shovel, his water, his seeds. I've covered him in my dirt. I've planted in him my fruit so he would have the energy to plant in me his. I've planted in him peace, when he couldn't find it elsewhere. I've planted in him a sense of pride and accomplishment and work and rest. I have fed him like a baby, and he has fed me. My seeds are in him and his seeds are in me. We are one and we are married—but not legally.
This garden is mine. This neighborhood is mine. I grew up here. I swam in the canal, I crashed my bike on the hill, I made a dirt fort in the field. I played with every kid on ever block. I kissed some of the girls, ate dinner with some of the neighbors, door-bell ditched thousands of houses and played football at every park. This neighborhood has made me, has raised me. It is mine and I am it. THIS NEIGHBORHOOD IS MY GARDEN.
These mountains are mine, and if you have spent enough time in them to know what I am talking about, then they are yours. WE belong to them.
And I don't want Energy Solutions to build a huge sports arena on top of my favorite backcountry ski peak, even if it brings in millions. Millions of what? Who cares? I don't want to put an electric vending machine in my garden. I don't want a shiny, neon-lit with metal stuffed-animal grabbing claw, filled with plastic wrapped waxy chocolate and unnaturally bright and colorful candy pellets, eternally humming box in my garden. I don't want to hear Louis Armstrong play covers of all of Britney Spears' songs BECAUSE THEY GOT NO SOUL. THEY GOT NO SOUL!
They have no soul. They don't have any soul. They have no breath. If they do, then it's bad breath. They don't come from a garden, a neighborhood, a mountain.
I don't care if they will bring in MILLIONS of dollars. They are without SPIRIT. They are shells without turtles. They suck and drain and pretend to give back. They are the turkey dinner from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Remember what happened when Chevy Chase cut into the turkey?
No. This garden is mine and I am its. I will plant only seeds that will bring only beautiful delicious healthy fruit that will make me an my family and my neighborhood and my mountains beautiful and delicious and real and healthy.
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