A garden is a happy place. A green, and warm place. A place teeming with life and possibility. Gardens take work and love and patience. You have to be willing to get your hands dirty, to spend hours hunched over in the hot sun. There is a particular pleasure that comes from having a garden. There's a beautiful harmony that comes from coaxing nature to do its thing in precisely the spot and way that you want it to.
A garden state should be simple yet interesting. It should take earnest work and diligent upkeep. A garden state can't grow amongst corruption, so it has to be WEEDED out. Yeah, I went there. But seriously- corruption and greed eats away at society. It may be natural but we have to keep it from growing out of control so that the beautiful and bountiful can thrive. A garden state should be small and thus easy to manage. The tending of the garden state should be done so that the state can grow as healthily as possible. Despite all of this hard work being done by the gardener, most of the work is being done by the garden. The plants are working hard to grow, while the gardener helps the plants along with a little water and a little weeding.
The garden metaphor doesn't work out with every detail- like the gardener just gets to rob the garden of all its tomatoes and basil and whatnot. That's not cool. And does the state just kinda die and whither in the winter? I dunno maybe the garden is some place snow doesn't exist. Still, it's a pretty cool metaphor. It conjures up images of a neat, happy little place where hard work and patience is rewarded.
Bye, Candide.
I think the last sentence of your 1st paragraph is very interesting. Nature can clearly do its thing without us, but somehow there's "beautiful harmony" when we manipulate it to be the way we want. When we weed a garden, we try to eliminate the corruption and greed, but isn't it a little ironic that we do this so that ultimately we can enjoy the garden's output? Maybe our greed simply eliminates another's greed and that's why it continues to "eat away at society."
ReplyDeleteYour imagery in extending the metaphor is beautiful. I really like the paragraph about weeds and how even though weeds are naturally occurring, they aren't beneficial. It definitely speaks to the societal belief that since competition and self-preservation (greed) are naturally occurring we should not attempt to eradicate them but instead cultivate them. But no. How it is is not how it should be.
ReplyDeleteInteresting perpsective. Your approach of the seasons changing just seems to be a metaphor for the fact that your life/garden will not always respond in the most favorable way- even when you're doing everything right. An essential part of the human experience is hardship.
ReplyDeleteGardens aren't always perfect and beautiful and require a lot of work. If you are trying to tend a garden in the winter, it's much more difficult and the results are usually not worth the work at all. I really liked your use of an extended metaphor.
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