Raking

     I helped a friend of mine with some landscaping work. We drove over to the yard where my friend was working; it was covered in leaves and scraps from a bush that he had destroyed, all consolidated into mountains of green and brown in the middle of the property. It was a nice yard, and I told the owner of the yard that it was a nice yard. Tools were littered throughout the yard. My friend showed me the handsaw that he had intended to use to chop down the massive bush, which actually turned out to be four different bushes that had grown together against the fence. Four different roots. He ended up using a chainsaw instead, which made his labor more efficient. He showed me his recently purchased felling axe, which he had used in an attempt to destroy a treestump: it was broken at the neck. The axe-head was on the ground next to the handle, separated cleanly. The head weighed four pounds. Fortunately it was purchased with a warranty.

    My friend lent me a pair of working gloves and we began hauling black bag after black bag of yard scraps from the yard to the perimeter of the yard, leaning each one against a chain-link fence. Some of the bags were light enough to throw over the fence, others we walked through the gate and gradually piled. I underestimated the weight of one bag and spilled some leaves and splintered branches onto the ground. I picked them up and shoved them back into the open top of the back, leaning over the fence. Other splintered branches were folded up and packed tightly into the back. I missed some of the leaves, and later on they got cleaned up by the couple who own the property.

    The mountains of scrap diminished, became smaller hills as a result of our laborious hauling. When the piles became small enough, I bent closer to the earth and dragged my hands through the grass. I dragged delicately, trying not to tear up the grass that was alive, mitigating collateral damage in my attempt to hold only the decapitated leaves and branches. My friend came over with a rake, a rake with black tines. He swept the rake across the lawn, combining smaller hills into amalgamated mini-mountains again. When he had finished raking the scraps into relatively larger piles, I grabbed the pieces with my hands, making the piles smaller until I again resorted to dragging my hands across the grass, combing the lawn for the smaller hidden pieces of brown and green. We're doing the same thing, I thought. My hands are tiny rakes. The rake, in its invention, is a natural extension of the body. I thought about how many tools were like this: natural extensions of the body for maximum utility and convenience. The tools we make and use are a reflection of our lives. The rake made combing the yard easier, bigger, faster. My hands, smaller by comparison, made the labor of combing slow and arduous. But the rake was the older brother of my hands. An evolution of my body.

    We continued combing and raking and packing the scraps into black bags until the married couple who owned the property signalled– that's enough. Some leaves and young branches were still burrowed in the lawn; the man of the couple said that it would all get broken up when he mowed the lawn. Lawnmower, scythe, pulling weeds out of the ground with one's fingers, letting the world grow and doing nothing about it... The woman of the couple handed us some beers in the plastic shopping bag: "beers to go." I accepted the bag from her and held it, carried tools back to my friend's vehicle. I fished in the bag to ascertain the quality of beer we had been gifted. Natty Bo. Cold brew beer. The couple had gone digging through their fridge: "which beers do we not want?" Those are the beers that I want. Freewheeling beer.

    Later on we went to Target and bought a TV. I thought about strapping it to my head and walking around with it playing all the time, to see another world while living in this one.

Sometimes I hear a song, or a part of a song, or a movement within a piece of music, and my scalp goes numb. That day there was no music.