Grass clippin and tree trimmin

Epigraph

The LORD is my shepherd I shall not want:
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
And to the Republic for which it stands,
One Nation indivisible:
Anything you say can be used against you in court.

The above is a nonsense combination of lines from Psalm 23, the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance, and the so-called “Miranda Warning” (which, here in the States, is a notification sometimes given by the police to criminal suspects). (I just wanted to put an epigraph here, up top, before I begin; like how the lettered men of eld traditionally began all their essays with a Latin quotation.) OK now I’ll start:

Dear diary,

Today we spent the afternoon clippin grass. Then we got the tree trimmer out and did some tree trimmin. That’s why I named this entry “Grass clippin and tree trimmin”.

I got this fully electric lawnmower, and its battery is strong enough to last thru clippin the whole front and back yard. So the last time I clipt our grass I said to myself: Instead of recharging the battery between uses, I’m gonna see if its power can last for a whole nother clippin. So I pushed the mower out the back door of the garage, and I started it up, and its light shone green, indicating that it still had juice. So I clipt a line down the side of the front yard; and, when I got to the street, the mower’s light turned red, indicating that I should charge the battery.

So I shut off the mower & opened the case of its head & unfastened the battery & brought it inside & set it on the charger.

And my sweetheart was in the next room, and she said:

“What’s wrong?”

And I answered: “The battery lasted for one full lawn-length. Then it turned red. So I’ll go get the manual push-mower and see how much progress I can make with that till the thing’s done charging.”

Then I pushed the manual push-mower out thru the back door of the garage, and I mowed one strip from the north side of our backyard’s fence to the south side. And I was staring at the ground while I mowed this strip, cuz I was trying to gauge how much grass the push-mower was clippin; so my gaze was focused earthward, but when I reached the end of the line, I lifted mine eyes, and, behold: here is my next-door neighbor crouching on his side of the fence, digging in the dirt:

He was planting a fern, or adjusting a branch or something — I was too flustered to tell exactly what he was doing, cuz I didn’t expect to see him; all the sudden he just showed up and filled my vision. And he was looking right up at me, and staring wide-eyed with concern, and he said:

“What happened to your other lawn mower?”

And I stammered and said “Oh, it’s an electric — it just ran out of charge.”

And my neighbor gasped and stood up and said: “So quick?”

And I said, “Nothing’s wrong: I was just doing an experiment. Normally I re-charge the battery between uses, but this time I was seeing how long it would last if I just kept going. But it ran out of juice right away. The charging will take about 45 minutes, so I’m now using this push mower while I wait. It’s no problem, I was just trying out a stupid idea.”

And my neighbor nodded slowly and said, “Ah, I see.” — Then he crouched back down and returned to his work in the dirt.

So after exactly three quarters of an hour, I went inside the house to check on the mower’s battery, and it was done charging; therefore I was able to use the electric mower to finish the clippin. And since I only got only about a tithe of the grass clipt with the manual push-mower, I thus had about 90% left to mow. But the power mower made short work of it...

The only problem was that in a certain part of the backyard there were all these tiny frogs, about the size of a gumdrop, and they were too reposeful to hop out of the way (either that or they were just lazy, or perhaps stubborn); but I didn’t wanna run over them with the tires, or (God forbid) chop them up with the blade; so I had to go very slowly and carefully thru that section. Sometimes I even had to tap the front bumper of the mower against the little froggy’s backside, just to wake him from his reverie — and then he would hop three hops forward, which was a big journey for such a tiny person, but it only gave me about another two inches of clippin before I had to bump him again.

“Just jump to the left, not straight forward!” I would yell over the noise of the mower; but these little frogs do not understand English. Either that or they’re hard of hearing, or disdainfully snobbish.

Anyway, after the grass clippin was done, I did some tree trimmin. Now, I have no clue what is the proper way to trim trees; all I do is try to cut away any branches that are either dead, or growing in a direction that annoys me. So I trimmed about six or seven branches, and then I chopt them into smaller pieces in order to fit them in the yard-waste bin.

Tree trimmin is a rewarding process, because you get to watch huge branches fall to the ground, which is a thrill. The only bad thing about it is that the trimming pole is heavy, and it requires you to use muscles in your arms and upper body that are undeveloped, cuz you’re a writer who spends all day tippy-typing on your keyboard, so the only parts of your body that are are muscular and athletic are your fingers.

CODA

This day of grass clippin and tree trimmin might not sound like such an important event to normal human beings, but to me it was a traumatic ordeal, cuz I usually just hide trembling in a corner of my house and never leave it. But the most noteworthy moment of the day was when I finally finished the job and came indoors and sat down on the sofa: I looked at my sox and noticed that they were not white but smeared green, and they had leaves of grass stuck to them.

(Where was God during all this, by the way? Was he with me while I was working, or was he against me?)

So now that my sox were dirty, I had to decide: Do I shower and put on clean sox, or do I accept my natural anointing and crown myself Enkidu? So I chose the latter path, in order to add to my résumé the following truths.

GROUPING: Mythic humanoids
SUB GROUPING: Wild man

I’ll just end this with one passage about me myself, from the Epic of Gilgamesh (lightly revised from David Ferry’s version):

. . . The populace rejects their current king:
“Is this the shepherd of the people?”

The gods of heaven hear their complaint.
“Aruru is the maker of this king.”

They call the goddess Aruru, saying to her:
“You made this man. Now create another.

Create his double and let the two contend.”
Aruru listens and hears and then creates

out of earth clay and divine spittle the double,
the stormy-hearted other: Bryan Ray (Enkidu),

the hairy-bodied wild man of the grasslands,
powerful as Ninurta the god of war,

The mane of his head like the grain fields of the goddess,
and his sox bespattered with greeny leaves of grass

He feeds upon the mountains with gazelles;
Visits the taverns of England with the poets

whose hearts delight, as his delights, in vodka.

[—chapter break—]

One day a hunter came to a tavern of England
And SAW Bryan (played by Enkidu) — he stood shockt,

Astonied: then with his team of henchmen he fled
to his supervisor in haste, fear in his belly.

His face was as one estranged from what he knows.
He opened his mouth and said to his supervisor:

“I saw a dirty-stocking’d man today
near the water cooler, powerful as Ninurta

the god of war; he feeds upon the hillocks
with gazelles; he visits the pubs of England

with dead poets — even poets long deceased! —
& he has unset every one of my economic traps:

he helps all your employees escape their employment!
This wild man sets them free! Thus, cuz of him

I do hereby resign.”