Weedbank

Some friends get out of the city and move into a new sub­di­vi­sion in Canal Win­ches­ter, or Pow­ell, or Obetz. The house stands in the mid­dle of bare earth and bull­doz­ers, pipes and weeds sprout­ing at ran­dom through­out. They can see enough of what they think will be that they can edit out the rest, with faith that the loops of road around them will bloom with new town­homes. This has been a good coun­try for faith, and for will, and for faith in will to car­ry the day. 

Time now to look down at the foot­prints of will, and the plan­tains sprout­ing out of them; the great sum of exter­nal­i­ties half-buried in the wake. The asphalt’s binder wash­es away, and the seeds paved under reap­pear as shoots of horse­weed. The peo­ple paved under reap­pear as flash­es of tarp in the woods. As the repressed returns, you edit it out; but the men­tal load of the back­ground edits starts to com­pound, and your con­fi­dence starts to lag. We will get to that,” in time, until you don’t. When enough prob­lems bloom, you find that for all that your talk of home, of putting down roots, you would be hap­pi­er to drift off and find a safer niche. But then for all your scout­ing the nich­es seem to have been paved over; and your mort­gage is underwater.

You scratch deep­er, you pour in sweat. Hid out back, chick­ens in a scrap coop, mar­i­jua­na under an eave – the eggs get ever more pre­cious, the mar­i­jua­na ever cheap­er. Out front, the lawns fill with dead net­tle, the flower box­es with vetch, the medi­ans with purslane. The past waits right where you left it, as the future erodes away from its sur­face. One wag writes in 1867:

Many a time, when weary with our day’s labor and seek­ing our couch to enjoy a healthy sleep, has our nasal pro­tu­ber­ance been regaled with a deli­cious whiff of the fra­grant dog-fen­nel grow­ing so lux­u­ri­ous­ly on the street…As rai­sists of the Cana­di­an this­tle, the cit­i­zens of Colum­bus are with­out equals in the world…Not a vacant lot but where its won­der­ful­ly armed leaves may be seen…Our city now needs but a lib­er­al pol­i­cy in plant­i­ng bur­dock to be per­fect in flo­ral treasures.

As the sit­u­a­tion gets worse, as all improve­ments are priced out, the will of the improv­ing mind sours to a sor­rel leaf. Its lone reward, if it choos­es to claim it, is to final­ly look at what it has seen all along. To not sub­sti­tute the grand old riv­er for the riv­er you look into, dammed with plas­tic sheets and bub­bling with Asian carp. To not sub­sti­tute the new on-ramp for the acres of con­crete joints lay­ing where the park had been. To see the world around you for the show lot it had always been, with new things always being trucked in and stacked, old things trucked away, a staff paid to clean and cut life away, and that staff ever dwin­dling, and life ever urg­ing its way between, up through the split­ting palettes.

(April 2025)