Looking out the back onto the leaf- and twig-strewn deck
I was thinking about what makes two people different from one another
One person I know would hurry out there and sweep it off
Before the day gets off to its real start.
The other will get it someday, as a special treat or newly found diversion This made me think of mornings along the little rural street in India
Where I spent most of my time there.
Every day, as I imagine happens in villages throughout the land,
While the sun is making its best effort to climb over the horizon,
Women come out and sweep the street, with brooms made
From dried and gathered long grasses. The streets are made of settled reddish earth,
Kicked with similar symmetry into motion by the unified combing
Of the untidy into the neat and orderly.
Once again the earth lays still in tight, patterned lines. That got me thinking of M. Night Shyamalan,
And I don't think it's because of his ancestral home. His "Last Airbender" is coming out soon, and like I do
Every time he has a release I get very excited because I know
That I will love it, even should the rest of the world hate it,
As they did with, 'The Lady in the Water' or 'The Happening.' At this moment, however, I was thinking of, 'The Village,'
Where, as with Beowulf's enclave against the Forest,
The lights were kept on all night in the Great Hall
And the trees cut down to make farmland and a
Safe, orderly world of Humans, which can be defended
Against the chaos in the larger, mysterious world
Out There. *teensy spoiler alert* The Elders of 'The Village' attempt to do this through
Elaborate methods of their own, for a reason only
They can justify.
It's always done for survival of some sort, be it
Literal or figurative.
Physical or Psychological
Community or Individual It's also interesting to me how, yet again, a
Collaborative effort to stave off chaos and the unknown,
Such as sweeping one's deck of a morning,
Can turn into a competitive event such as
Who has the nicest, most well-kept lawns Where do I lie on the continuums
Of tidy collaborator or competitor
To forest/clutter/chaos/unknown
Adventurer or team player? I may not be able to keep the outside tidy,
But in my own introverted and even obsessive way,
Inside my inner walls and mind,
I can see the daily attempts to work with the chaos
And usually in less conscious form, to
Struggle against it so that it can be tamed. For the moment.