Skip to main content

The Wisdom of the Arroyo

It isn't the warm weather that is the problem.  It is wanting, but not being able, to take a nip of the only sane and civilized remedy to hot weather that wears one down.

 Since we live out toward the edge of known civilization, in a hilly area that probably made the water district worry about pressure at the top of the hills, there is no city sewer system.  Twenty or thirty years ago, when these houses were built--and for that matter, still today--houses have septic tanks.  Everything goes out to the septic tank, where the roots from every plant within sight wait for raw nourishment.  

 Yesterday, our septic system refused to accept donations.  We tried those plastic bottles of battery acid, or whatever it is that Home Depot and Ace Hardware sell, but the system behaved just like the Republicans in the House of Representatives and refused to do anything except mutter and belch.  

 Today the plumber came.  "Where is the septic tank?", he asked.  "I don't know," I said.  "I do know that this little aluminum tag has been lying in the yard, right here."  We finally found the wire the tag was once attached to.

 "Where is the clean-out trap?", he asked.  "I don't know," I said.  We found it in the vegetable garden.  He hauled one of those colonoscopy machines through the garden to the trap, and reamed out the line.  I flinched.  I know the feeling.  

 When he left, I found the beer I had been pretending did not exist, and opened it.  I had not dared to open it before I could be confident of its trajectory.  

 It is not the heat, nor is it the humidity that matters.  It is the wisdom of the arroyo.  It seldom rains, but when it does, it is necessary for there to be a place for the water to go.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Watching a Formerly Sane Man Descend into Abject Religion

If you read the previous post, you know the apparatus, pictured here, is a torture machine. There are ten of them in our house, purportedly to circulate air to dry out all the problems caused by a water leak. We live in Tucson:  it has not rained in Tucson since the Gadsden Purchase. A mudslide the size of the one in Washington State could course through our neighborhood and it would be bone-dry and stone-hard before it quit moving. I suspect it is the CIA, and probably the Border Patrol! We are, after all, only about a hundred miles from the border. I fully expect a large suburban assault vehicle to pull up to the house, and for lots of people with UPPER CASE LETTERS on their shirts to interrogate us, and I will have to explain that all the drugs I use come from Walgreens and Total Wine. But it won't work.  Our minds are going. We are getting short with each other and, if they promise to turn off the fans, I will confess to having invented the Arab...
Post a Comment
Read more