free digger
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
The World, My Garden, pt 1
I’m reading a chapter or so every day or so on my loooooong new commute into town out of a book called The World Is In My Garden by Chris Maser and Zane Maser. The co-author bit is strange—it’s written in the first person singular in in the book is Chris, the guy, who actually talks a lot about Zane, the woman, his wife. Whatever. It’s a philosophical book, as you can tell by the title. Normally garden books that wax philosophical make my skin crawl. They’re typically just a half a skip to a greeting card. Just give me somebody bitching about fungus on their roses; at least that’s real. But the Maser book is actually getting me thinking.
Of course my big issue these days is a sense of displacement. When I first moved to Park Slope, the neighborhood was off the map. Abandoned buildings, a bustling drug trade, street crime. Practically the only restaurants were diners and the rent was cheap rent. It was fine. The neighborhood did have a strong grassroots activist tradition. It was known as a center of Lesbian culture—whatever that is. The Park Slope Food Coop was an integral neighborhood institution. But at that time it only had half a building, as opposed to the full two that it has now. No shopping carts, or even baskets. Instead, you grabbed a shipping box and kicked it along the floor. Wheels were for the suburbanites.
But the neighborhood gentrified, with rents shooting more and more quickly. I could have hung on, but by last year I was feeling like a scenic attraction in my own neighborhood. A specimen of Park Slope eco-activist. Wasn’t I quaint.
Ok, what does that have to do with the Maser book? Well, the Masers deserves a more structured review than I’m giving them here. And I promise one later. But for now, let me just reference the following passage:
There is no competition—as I learned the concept—in this whole process [of plant succession]. Instead, one group of plants lives out its time in a given area and changes its habitat in the process. It cannot do anything else. Nothing can live without somehow changing the habitat within which it lives. This is equally true in my garden and in human society.
So Iived in Park Slope. I, and so many others, brought flowers and fresh vegetables and a greater sense of cohesion and hope to an embattled neighborhood. We changed it. It’s imperative that we bring awareness of the need for affordable housing and other forms of social equity to our participation in society. But awareness dawns. It seeps in, like the morning light.