I felt I owned the area around my front door. I wanted to control who parks where, who loiters there, what grows where.
I used to look out and see conjoined buildings. When I moved in, some ivy had grown all over an outside wall, and I liked that. But a wood-stemmed scrub tree started to grow near the same crack where the ivy grew. I tried to poison the tree but poisoned the ivy, too. It died. The wind started to take away the dead leaves, but I still knew I made a mistake.
In time—a year or more—the ivy grew back. It started to wrap around to the conjoined building—a restaurant. Someone there—a manager, not the owner—must have thought it unbecoming, so he showed the dishwasher where to cut the ivy, to cut it where it grew. So the dishwasher returned with a big knife and cut the ivy. I watched the leaves wilt again, and a week or two later, it was all dead.
I used to drive about 10 miles to work and 10 miles back. I had to learn the inclines and the declines, the potholes, the best lanes to be in and when. I earned that knowledge, so I owned that experience and in an abstract way even a percentage of that land. But I am a slave to what I own and get frustrated when I cannot control everything about it.
But you travel and go to a place for the first time, you are up against the world and it’s new again.
Note: Who was only a stranger at home?
