On Mowing the Lawn
By Ezekiel Fugate
Starborne: The Journal of Autocosmology, Issue 1, can be read in full at the above link. Each individual contribution will be shared here as well, one every week.
On Mowing the Lawn
By Ezekiel Fugate
Just now, I’m mowing the lawn. My hands encased in leather gloves, my feet covered by old maroon sneakers, my ears tucked inside bulky protective earmuffs.
Just now, I’m walking briskly to keep up with the lawn mower as its internal combustion engine turns a shaft that turns two belts: one to propel the mower forward, the other to power the spindles onto which two metal blades are attached.
Just now, the metal blades slice off the tops of the blades of grass.
Just now, the grass—mostly fescue—is eating the Sun’s light.
Just now, the Sun is exploding hydrogen to feed the grass.
Just now, I am exploding hydrocarbons—mostly stored sunlight—to keep the grass at bay.
Just now, I’m walking briskly, subtly squeezing the lever in my left hand, then the lever in my right.
Just now, I’m working the edges of the lawn, tracing the perimeter that marks the boundary between mowed and unmowed: here, I slice the grass; there, the grass grows freely.
Just now, my body is bathed in Sun and sweat and fumes.
Just now, I’m walking. Slicing. Breathing. Tracing. Being bathed. Attempting to tame the wild green carpet that longs to unfurl itself toward the source.
Just now, something is longing to unfurl itself in me, stretching toward the immense future that is nowhere and everywhere.
Just now, as I’m navigating the bumpy terrain of this south-facing slope that I call home, I’m working to remember that somehow, beyond all possibility, I have emerged from the vast Earth process that brought forth life;
that my body—my eyes, my fingers, my lungs, my two gangly legs—has been sculpted through an age-old dance between Earth and Sun, a dance that has called into being blue whales and sugar maples, blue-green algae and elephants, butterflies and fescue;
that this roaring machine that I guide like a chariot in the ancient Olympic games was also gathered up out of disparate bits of Earth’s body in a process unleashed by the strangest of Earth’s creations: the human imagination;
that the human imagination is so easily deformed by its blindness to its own embeddedness in the Earth process;
that even now, even here, as I enact this silly ritual of mowing the lawn, perpetuating the feudal impulse to manicure wildness, something new is trying to break through.
Just now, I’m reminding myself that how I pay attention matters.
Just now, I’m imagining my own belonging.
Just now, I’m mowing the lawn.
Ezekiel Fugate is the co-founding director of Deep Belonging, a co-founder and former director of Springhouse Community School, and a co-editor of Starborne: The Journal of Autocosmology. He is currently completing his dissertation in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where his research focuses on the intersection of evolutionary cosmology and human experience. He received a BS in Mathematics and Engineering from the University of Virginia and an MS in Engineering from Yale University. He lives with his wife and two daughters on a permaculture homestead and native plant sanctuary in the Appalachian Mountains of Floyd County, Virginia, where his ancestors have resided for nearly three centuries.