I live in Little Texas. I am surrounded by people whose worldviews are very different from mine.
Some are libertarians. Some are likely neo-cons, and even neo-libs. Not very many true libs. I'm not sure how many true conservatives populate my region, either - old-time conservatives. The ones that really want to conserve things, as opposed to just steal them.
It's hard to work it out. People get so confused by the ongoing changes in nomenclature. And rightly so.
(Crossposted from FireDogLake and RightofAssembly)
Meanwhile, I'm down here in what passes for a remote..suburb? Industrial area? Sacrifice zone? of West Texas, and trying to survive, socially, which isn't easy, what with all of this label problem.
I read comments by locals in the Topix forum at times. Our local newspaper subscribes to Topix.
Only too frequently, they don't know what they are, either, these commenters. My neighbors, in many cases. The incorporated area of Carlsbad is about 16 square miles.
They attack...everybody. Right and left. There is no sense of looking for alliances. I get some sense of people having been sold the "purity" myth; i.e. "We Know We Are Right And Everyone Else Is Bad," etc.
So sad. And so destructive.
It's a little scary living here. I don't ever blog under fake names. I use my own, if only my first name. It's a matter of principle on my part.
Meanwhile, I spent a few hours this afternoon weed-whacking my easement. Well, it's not my easement. It belongs to the city. The right to grow things there, and the obligation to keep any of it down to 18", belong to me.
(The easement is the part between the sidewalk, if there is one, and the street.)
The right to cut it down, herbicide it, or dig it all up and turn it into asphalt, with no notice, belongs to the City of Carlsbad.
But if you don't beat your easement back into submission, at the very least, you'll get cited. Ticketed. Billed by the hour (and quite a lot by the hour) for city-hired people coming in with brusheaters and doing it for you.
Except, it's not your easement. You have no real rights over your easements.
I own a double corner lot. I estimate the whole thing is about a fifth of an acre, if you count the easements and don't count the 1600 sq feet of buildings.
Except I don't own the easement. The easement is about 18 feet deep.
That's a lot of easement.
But I must keep up appearances, because I live in Little Texas. So I occasionally go out there and cut stuff down with a line trimmer.
I also occasionally seed it with interesting plants.
I never take away the clippings. That would be poor soil management. If they're going to make me manage their property, I will do on my own terms, best I can.
It's been turning into a pretty attractive easement, over the years, especially in the spring when the wildflowers start doing their thing, before the Bermuda grass gets going too much.
My neighbors have a lot of ugly Bermuda grass stub, mostly. Either that or shorn easements. Dust, anybody?
But I must keep up appearances.
I have some cosmetic things I should do with the houses, too. Paint, mostly. Exterior preservation.
Those would be good things to do for other reasons.
But I must keep up appearances. I got to thinking, today, that perhaps I should get some of those little flags, and staple them to one of the fascias. The pieces of wood that come down from the edge of the roof.
And maybe I should keep tidying up, and planting new and improved strange plants, and perhaps getting involved in strange metal art.
A good friend of mine wrote recently that she trolls reality, like many people troll the Internet. Trolling is a funny concept; poorly defined in many cases. People who just go around attacking people aren't really trolls of any quality at all. They are just meanspirited.
A good troll will lure people in, and then try to confuse them. The point is to get people thinking. The point is to challenge preconceptions.
Little Texas could use some serious trolling. All of Texas could, for that matter. But I must work with what I have available.
A friend who lives in Albuquerque, who is from here, told me awhile back that there used to be a woman in Carlsbad who grew squash on her easement. Right out there in front of Dog and passing vandals and neighbors and everybody. Rampant squash vines going everywhere.
Squash is shallow-rooted. If one watered such plants a few times a day, with a bucket, who knows what might happen?
And they won't get tall, without supports.
So many people in Carlsbad just see their easements; that, of course, aren't their easements; as something to be killed. Why bother, otherwise?
Okay, so what if I plant squash on the easement next year, after I've spent all these years building up the soil via proper land management?
And then I'll have the little flags on the fascias. And people will perhaps ask, just what is this thing with the squash on the easement about? (assuming they fruit, it's always a little hit and miss with squash vines, but they can do very well in this region).
Then I point at the flags. "This is one of the latest American movements," I tell passersby. Maybe make some reference to WWII and victory gardens.
As far as trolling reality goes, though; this absolutely will not work without weird yard sculpture, and probably one should dress strangely, and use foreign words as well.
As Derrick Jensen has put it in his writing; look for the fulcrums. Where are the fulcrums?