Ragged Fence
RAGGED FENCE WITH SEVERED TREES
pencil and pen on paper
“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
When I was a kid, my best friend Julie and I loved to climb and walk the length of the fence next to her house. We pretended we were flying. We felt so high above the world. Sometimes we used pillowcases and jumped off as if we were parachuting.
New neighbors moved in and did something completely unheard of, especially in Pacifica which is the coldest and foggiest town in Northern California. They put in a built-in swimming pool. To us, this is as if the ordinary working class home had transformed into a mansion overnight. It was like something out of the movies, not something out of our lives.
The minute the neighbors left for vacation, we jumped the fence and jumped into the pool. Freezing our arses off, we felt vindicated. We were taking a piece of what didn’t belong to us and never would. Always in my life, a house with a swimming pool has signified a class and economic status that would never be my world. That’s okay. When I was young, I was young, fit and limber. I just leapt the fence and got a good taste of that chlorinated blue water.
I’m 55.5 years old now. I’ve never had a swimming pool. I have learned that there are way too many kinds of fences in the world, and they mostly share one thing in common. Fences hurt. Fences are created to keep you out. Sometimes they are invisible. They can be created by someone you love, an invisible fence that says KEEP OUT. So you find yourself on the other side of the fence. When you are invited to go through the gate, the ground under your feet becomes shaky. Fences also cause geological instability. Ground shifts. They sever relationships, sever the heart, sever possibility.
Fence is just another way of saying knife. They will cut you off. Like these tree stumps which have been severed at the neck. They are shoring each other up on this side of the fence, but never in what is left of their life will they see the other side of the fence.
Honestly if a fence has been built to keep me out, I probably don’t want to see the other side because the thing that created it is an ugly and hurtful place. I’m not a kid anymore. If I leap fences, I’ll make sure they’re my own and that I always have a pillow case ready so I’ll be there to catch myself when I fall.
bw challenge