johnnyfive

Today I biked around my surburban neighborhood, full of quaint bungalows and tiny, trimmed lawns, while listening to the Edward Scissorhands soundtrack. It was so perfect that I become really drawn to the homongony of our cultures; the way everyone wants to look like everyone else or at least ends up that way. The swaying strings of the orchestra seemed to emphasize the the dramatic staking of political lawn signs and matching garden globes and the percision of the percussion banged out like the lawns with their sharp, neat edges and well pruned bushes. Knowing it was Monday, I could imagine all of the masses, tending to their lawns after attending Sunday Mass; sports program blaring and leaf blower roaring, they march out into their claimed lot of nature and do their best to curb what nature does best: grow and thrive. They fight the weeds with blades and poisons and machines that gust oil scented air at them, selecting some pieces of nature to host and help survive while vanquishing undesirable growth like herbal genocide. There's about one sign for Bush for every two signs for Kerry in my part of town, but if you go across Whitaker Mill you can land yourself in territory that is more partial to Bush, adding some fiscal and territorial distinction between my so-called homogonous neighborhood. Surburia is weird; it looks very little like the places I see in the newspaper; Iraq, Sudan, Timor, and Gaza
Strip and the West Bank. Those places look like they're in another existence compared to my simple life of jobs and relatively free water.