Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The view from my office window

It's way too beautiful of a day outside. Humans aren’t meant to spend such pleasant days inside; it’s time to frolic, play and go for a picnic. Or put in some hard hours behind the plow, satisfying and sunburnt.
We turned the compost again Saturday, it’s amazing how fast the time goes while we work, and before I know it we’ve been at it for three hours. Ed and I take turns at pitch forking all the compost out of the bin, and rearranging the piles back again. Three piles condensed down to two, and we think the oldest pile is completely done, because it’s not heating up past 85°. We had thrown three dead Koi from Grant’s koi pond, into the pile, and we were both very excited to see how much they had decomposed. They were 99% gone, we came across a little bit of the fish skin, but nothing close to a half-rotten fish head I was expecting to find. The compost is still Ed’s baby. (Until we get our Jack Russell, of course, which Ed said we can once I’m back home full time, (one week to go, one week to go…) We are amazed at how much waste we can recycle in this manner. To join the earth in creating the perfect circle of death, which begets life, which will inevitably result in death. For everything that is living must die. I hope when I die, that they throw me into a big compost pile. Or into the ocean.
I was thinking about modern burial practices, that the plot is lined with cement and the body is laid in a steal box that’s not going to decompose any time soon. Is that how far human’s have tried to remove themselves from the natural cycle? We don’t even want our bodies, after our soul has left them, to return to the earth? We want to preserve them, but we’ll never do as good a job as the ancient Egyptians did. And I was thinking about the archaeologist who might be excavating some graveyards hundreds of years from now, and what sort of explanation they will come up with on why humans buried each other this way. I was also thinking that if all people, from all time and space had buried their dead in this fashion, there would be no usable land left, as it would all be used up for graves.
But for now, sitting at my desk, contemplating the future, I am just waiting, till the end of the day, when I can run out of the office and through the fields. That’s where I’m supposed to be. Running through the fields.

2 comments:

  1. Oh yeah the weather here is awesome too! It's so beautiful! I think I wanna be buried underneath a gigantic ferris wheel, and I'll haunt all those freaked out little kids who are already scared of heights anyway!!! Bwah ha ha! Actually that would be really mean of me, I wouldn't actually do that, but it'd be funny.

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  2. Great post for my birthday the 21st..always look forward to your reads..thanks!

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