If you’re like the sidewalk, happy you woke up above the ground today, can I get an amen?
Now that you find yourself above, now that you find yourself here, now that you find yourself able to wake up, lemme ask you: Are you able to have dreams? Keep your dreams alive? Don’t forget the dreamer?
John Reeves 50s at the meeting point of dreams and permanence. Photo: Grant Brittain
Huh?
You don’t dream? You only sleep in the darkness? Well, my friend, this cannot be true. For it’s the doctors and the scientists and the philosophers and the thinkers of heavy thoughts who have told us, “You all have dreams. You may or may not, however, remember them.”
I, for instance and for the sake of this one-way conversation, have woken up to the dreams of others and then stolen them. Grass, for instance (a soft, under-footed fantasy for many) is holding back the growth of man-made solids—stopping the forward march of smoothed over terra firma. And this fussy obsession of America’s non-dreamers with their golf courses, gardens, and lawns is impeding the growth of our beloved impervious surfaces.
This was a drainage ditch; now its all covered in daises. Thomas Campbell Smiths for ground control, Major Tom. Photo: Xeno
Acres, nay, miles upon miles of fescue, Bermuda, and Kentucky blue are racing for ground control, Major Tom—a sprint to be remembered by our sleepy global culture as the most advanced grass cultivators in the neighborhood. This aggressive growing misses the point, though.
It’s just not a sustainable existence.
Buildings, on the other hand, never grow; parking structures will not expand, and I’m starting to understand the whole vibe of skating rocks.
Beatrice Domond realizes that the universal dream of crooked grinds sometimes ends shove-it out. Photo: Jonathan Mehring
These things aren’t living, so saving their lives is not an issue. Instead, surfacing over the lush surfaces with inanimate ease is our dream—pave the whales while you’re at it; pave our lakes and rivers; pave the spotted owl; pave for the future; take stock in pavings and loans—for its the furious mixture of gravel, sand, water, and concrete that our great society is literally built upon.
Cover it all and let Allah sort it out.
Mowers, fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides are all tools designed for enabling the bad habits of a junkie organism. The edged, trimmed, and water dependent ground cover is nothing more than the status symbol of the dead who upon forgetting their dreams, struggle to keep grassy knolls alive.
Shocking urban growth can lead to very big, blue bars. Kenny Hughes knows one thing: Equally big, blue tailslides run the world, the world nuh run we. Photo: Pete Thompson
New and effective urban growth—the most durable of goods—runs the world and it doesn’t require the world to run it. And if you build it, we will come; our low, grumbling wheels and harmless scuff marks being the only sign that we may have passed over this spot while living our dreams.
After all, “The grinding wheel only knows one thing,” they say. “That it must grind.”
Burn the grass away; pave the path-a-way.
Listen to Thomas Campbell’s Peedeep Playlist.
