My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 4, #44, June 14, 1999

THOUGHTS WHILE WEEDING

Lying in the long grass, clearing back the psychic weeds
The only act of revolution left is thinking for yourself.
Boomtown Rats

It was bad enough for my garden that I was in New York for a week, but even worse that it has been raining steadily every day since I returned. By the time I had both a day off and some sun to work in, the weeds had taken over.

Scratch the idea that when you're gardening you're communing with Mother Nature -- you're fighting the bitch every step of the way.

As I filled one 25-gallon paper bag after another with weeds, it occurred to me that Mother Nature has all the taste and discrimination of my son, who, when I sent him out to weed one day, carefully cut down all my creeping phlox and left the dandelions to propagate themselves in peace. When I reproached him, he pointed out that the dandelions had pretty flowers, while the phlox was nothing but long green fuzzy feelers stretching out along the ground.

It seems clear that if Mother Nature has any preferences about life forms, she is on the side of quantity, not quality, wild and random lushness, not order. Scottish thistle spreads itself effortlessly, with roots that stretch into the earth's core, while corn and tomatoes and moss roses, which have to be planted and babied endlessly, have roots about 2 inches deep.

If what you want is four o'clocks and petunias and phlox, not crabgrass and dandelions, you have to keep working at it, because weeds grow fast, regardless of the weather. They love the same moisture that nourishes your dianthus, but they will grow with equal abandon in drought that leaves your flowers panting on the brink of death. Weeds thrive most of all on our inattention.

Which is to say, a garden is a lot like our civic life. When we nourish it with our attention, and even participate in it, democracy thrives, and our towns and our nation are nice places to live.

But power is a lot like Mother Nature--it doesn't much care about the character of the people who hold it. When we vote for somebody to do our civic business for us, and figure we've done our part, so we can stop paying attention now, bad things start to happen.

Suppose you're an idealistic candidate for office, and just want to do good things for your community. Once elected, you'll find out that the people who pay attention to what you're doing -- the people who want to take you out to dinner, compliment you on your wisdom, pay you to speak at their luncheons -- are the people who want something from government. The folks who elected you, on the other hand, often don't even bother to call or write. Whose opinions do you think are going to start mattering more under these circumstances?

And now that you're an elected official, you start realizing that the title alone means people return your calls, and waiters seat you instantly. You may discover that you don't much want to go back to being an ordinary schlump.

The folks who elected you think you should live the same unassuming sort of lifestyle they do, while the people who want something from government take you to French restaurants and exclusive resorts. The folks who put you into office might not even bother to vote come election day, let alone fork over the odd $50 campaign donation, but your new friends so much want you to be re-elected that they'll donate large wads of cash and sponsor fund-raising parties as well.

Really, if it weren't for the inconvenient fact that ordinary citizens have to vote for you in order to keep this all going, there wouldn't be any reason to pay attention to them at all anymore. But from time to time, they do get worked up about something, whether it's gun control or toxic wastes dumped in their back yards, and so you have to pass some sort of law to mollify them.

Which is OK, because you can count on voters' short attention span. They're not going to keep checking to make sure the law did what it was supposed to do.

This is very convenient for the people who have been so very generous to you. They're going to be just as friendly with the agencies that administer the law, knowing that the public isn't going to pay any attention (and knowing for a fact the news media, who find day to day government boring, won't). Hardly anybody's going to notice that the revised housing code allows cheaper, shoddier construction, that the new copyright law (the Mickey Mouse protection act) extends copyright to works now in the public domain, or that OSHA is more concerned with inspecting toilet heights than dangerous working conditions.

The only act of revolution left is paying attention. If you want a garden, not a weed patch, you can't slack off. You have to nurture the flowers and dig up the weeds day after day. And if you want a government that represents you rather than corporations, you have to work at it just as hard.

The price for flowers and democracy is constant vigilance. It's hot and sweaty work, but you do end up with something beautiful. And it smells a lot better, too.