Bloom Where You're Planted

So this is an idea. There is a nice looking horticulture and landscape design program at one of the city colleges here in Chicago and I feel the motivation to join it. To what end I am unsure at the moment. I have never lived by planning out years in advance or even attempting to achieve some momentary grand scheme. My step-father one time called it faith. That was nice as I used to call it laziness. However, I seem to be getting along alright, or as my father puts it, "you never ask for money and you live on the other side of the country, so I just figure you're doing well."

I have played with the thought of going into a higher level training program in horticulture for the last few years. I had a lot of hang-ups within my own mind ranging anywhere from the fact that I lived in the city and there were no real yards to work with to the fear of what I would do all winter if I truly did begin working full time in a landscape setting.

Before I get too far into this and as I realize that I may begin using the terms "horticulture" and "landscaping" interchangeably, I feel the need to define what is truly meant by "landscaping." Most, when they hear the term "landscaping," picture a guy on a mower or possibly wielding a weed whacker around someone's yard. That is not landscaping, that is lawn maintenance. It has nothing to do with the land or the scape apart from making stock foliage shorter.

I feel that I have been getting around at least some of the fears I initially had. For one, I have decided that I can do as much, if not more landscaping in the city than elsewhere. I Suppose I would look to starting with the Chicago Park District, but even apart from that, there exist many "beautification" companies within the city, whose focus is on urban spaces. My landscaping experience dealt completely with private installations. However, I got to thinking the last time I walked through a quiet, empty, beautifully landscaped yard. I realized it was too empty. Not that I am one for crowds, but it came to my attention that private landscaping is really not enjoyed for anything. For one, often times the most amazing private landscapes are within some community surrounded by other equally amazing landscapes at which point they all just blend together. On top of that, they're all a little different so it becomes utterly clear how individualistic the neighborhood is.

In the city, there are parks. Parks are spaces that can be, and are, enjoyed by everyone; they belong to everybody. I realized at one point that an irony has developed within my psyche. I find myself loathing much of what the city is with its crowding and cramming and square, defined green spaces. And then I realize that it would be amazing to landscape a park, beautify an area that will be appreciated and enjoyed by the public and that is for the public. I have also been reading a bit about Olmsted (for reference, he designed Central Park in New York) and his philosophies and feats of landscape design. Olmsted seemed to have a real handle on what it was to work with plants. One of his key philosophies was the idea that a particular project actually takes years to mature into what it is was originally envisioned to look like by the designer. In a way, he installed babies when he worked and in time they'd become better and better scapes.

This was impressive to me. Living in a time when we want and get everything now and we no longer posses any real foresight, there remains this theme in horticulture which demands that time be taken if quality is wanted. Sure, a landscape can be thrown in and look fine for a while, but what will it become? I find that to be the real question. People think they're putting on siding when they plant a tree, like it's just going to fit just right in that spot never to change. This is seen all the time. Next time you're driving past a new development or complex note the placement of trees in reference to the power lines. Or vice versa, note older trees you see along side roadways and the wonderful holes or "Vs" which have been cut into them in oder to allow the power lines. In a century of development humans have not learned not to plant a tree directly beneath a power line.

This ambition began in college. I was a general laborer for a horticulturalist for two summers and at the end of it I realized that I enjoyed it. I enjoyed for one, being outside all summer, two working with plants and last, it was the first job I had in which I was truly able to witness progress with regards to the work I was performing. It was amazing to see an ugly, boring yard become a lush landscape. It was even more fun to go in and tear out an old, horrible landscape and lay a new one, which was beautiful of course. toward the end of my second summer working for this individual, he began to jokingly ask me if I wanted to stay on with him instead of going back to school. He wanted to expand his business and he wanted me there for it.

I said no, of course. I was too close to finishing school and at the time I was pretty set on going to grad school after graduation for some type of higher psychology or counseling. However, toward the end of my senior year, I remember blurting out in one of my classes when asked what I really felt would fulfill me that I just wanted to plant trees. At the time, my professor looked at me with a smirk and mentioned something along the lines of, "looking back at the end of that, will you really be happy knowing all you did was put some trees in the ground." I had no response. If I were to find myself in that same situation today, however, I think I'd just have to reply, "yes, yes I would be happy with that." And if not happy, who the hell cares, what does that have to do with anything anyways? I think I'm beginning to learn that being active is happiness like to me, and if not true happiness, it at least drains me of energy that would otherwise become silent anxiety. My wife knows what this looks like. She can tell when I've had a boring day by what I say (which is nothing at all).

I don't regret not staying back and helping my former landscaping boss forge ahead with his business. However, the enjoyment of the work has held on. Last year I was at a baseball game with a coworker and he asked me what I would do with myself if I wasn't working as a paralegal (a job I just sort of ended up it, a very common tale). My immediate response was horticulture. Which was strange, because I can never give immediate responses. I always have to think about things and then my answer is in many words in which I am able to include many aspects while committing to none.

I feel that I am a patient person, I feel I desire foresight for myself and respect it in others. I enjoy the slow change of plants. I like what they can teach. That old phrase, "bloom where you're panted." It's silly, but when I really think about it, plants really do do that. It's always comical and impressive to see an amazing plant growing out of/in front of some utterly ugly foundation or next to who knows what. Plants just don't care. They do what they do regardless of aesthetics. I am quite bound to aesthetics. I have a certain ideal I want before I feel I can be productive and this isn't right, it sabotages your life.

Status Quo

To hinge off my last post, which I inadvertently turned into a rant about the USPS, I would like to add to it. Seeing my thoughts written out sometimes helps me realize just what is going on in my head and reading once over the last post, as it turns out, the USPS rant is actually a part of a much larger vendetta I have decided to hold against progress (or the illusion of progress). While living in a densely populated, urban, municipal area, a never ending theme of "not yet, but later" presides over the landscape. Being so close to so many people, so many news papers and billboards, one is constantly faced with ideas of the future.

While on the train, I find myself surrounded by advertisements for what will someday be; that structure that will look so good and be so cool to live in, the walking path complete with an array of swell pocket parks, coming in 2013. I chuckle to myself and silently play with a funny yet scary thought; funny in that I will no longer reside here in this city when this or that is finished, but scary in the sense, but what if I am still here?

I find it easy to become frustrated and quick. I have never described myself as an angry person or even punchy, but in the last few years I have developed this hulk like ability to go from zero to one hundred in seconds in regards to my general mood. This is usually centered around time, specifically, my time. I have never described myself as being selfish with my stuff either, but after living in the city and truly beginning to feel the real gravity of time, the difference between work time and my time has become very vivid and the feeling of others picking away at my time some days makes me feel like I'm running home with a piece of bread and along the way, constantly, there are these birds picking at it and there's nothing I can do to stop them. The piece gets smaller and smaller, until finally, I just have a bite to myself.

Everything in the city takes longer. One time, out of sheer stupidity, I logged onto Google Earth and looked up a map of the house I grew up in and the surrounding area. I measured out one mile. I then pulled up a map of my neighborhood in Chicago and proceeded to measure out one mile. I realized (not that I didn't know this, nor did I need such a vivid visual aid) that a distance that could easily take me twenty minutes to half an hour to cover in the city for years growing up in Ohio, took less than one minute. "Chicago is stealing my minutes," I thought to myself.

Not that this is any epiphany. There's no mystery. More people, more cars, tighter streets, of course it takes longer, you'd have to be an idiot to get mad over it. But I was mad over it. I guess between the more expensive but not better which we've seen exemplified by the USPS and the CTA and the theme of the fact that we all work so hard only to have, on top of our pay, our time whittled down by, what seems to me, laziness and incompetence. Something snaps when I have to look and and listen to ideas of the future and doomsday construction plans for the highway system in order that it might accommodate everyone.

The hard truth is, nothing will ever change about any of this. All the work that is done, all the delays, the construction, everything that slows me down and makes something like a commute take even longer than it should take (which is too long to begin with), only serves to maintain an already pathetically low status quo. Once the freeway opens back up to full capacity, it will still take an hour and a half to drive out of the city. When the CTA finishes its renovations, it will still take forty minutes to an hour to get down town from my apartment (about seven miles). This makes me want to leave. This makes me utterly unamused by any future plan regarding municipal bliss.

I've picked up biking, but sometimes I feel like it's just a matter of time before some lazy fool decides that he doesn't have to/feel like checking his mirror or blind spot, and he's just going to change lanes and that could be my life. One stupid, unthoughtful, selfish move which probably only equals the progress of one car length (and a lot of people calling you a jerk), and someone ends up maimed. I ride slower than I used to.

I guess it's just hard to think of living among such a great populace, which calls itself advanced, yet none of us are looking out for each other. The public transit system has ceased serving the public and has delusions that it's a corporation seeking only profit and self gain. The mail system after being reprimanded for its shoddy service stated that its records were out of date, which, is sort of a paradox if you ask me. What "records" are they talking about? Hopefully not addresses considering the public does that part of the job for automatically (i.e. the address).

I miss living out, away from all of this. As much as a double standard as this is, this is how I feel; I miss just not caring and not knowing. Sometimes I feel like cities are that family that you hung around with for a while, some of their kids were cool, but, ultimately, they were sick and dysfunctional, and as time went on and as you got older you realized that they were never going to do anything to really help themselves or really change anything. They kept their problems because, you supposed, they were used to them. Finally you said screw it and found other hobbies.

Skimming over this entry, I realize that, in short, it's terrible. But who cares? I realize that I'm not always on but I still want to eek this stuff out, yet I don't want this to become some diary of daily events (Steve just got up to get a glass of orange juice, today I realized I suck more than I did yesterday, here's why in three simple, yet quotable ways). To put in just one more double standard, I suppose it's okay for me to once in a while just take that right turn, hard and fast and without checking my blind spot, mirrors or wasting that second to put the blinker on (it's my second, mine, my precious), I want to write damn it, and its' going to be horrible to begin with.

At the very least, I suppose I can count my blessings that one, the city is consistent, which is comforting and it changes slowly, like myself. I can't totally complain about how long it takes them to re-build a train station, it took me a year to buy a pair of shoes.

Bureaucracy: A beautiful Mix of Fraud and Laziness Posing as the Wheels that Run Society

A general theme I think I am coming to believe is the fact that people grow larger in proportion to their surroundings and older in reference to time, and that neither of these highly automatic, completely reactive/passive life facts have anything to do with, nor do they imply, any level of maturity. I usually entertain this thought while ranting to myself about the latest act I have witnessed exemplifying the general laziness of the human race at large. From the pick-up truck who almost ran me over while on my bike because they were, one, too lazy to put their blinker on and two, (and since they couldn't manager to use their blinker) definitely much too lazy to look over their left and right shoulders to check their blind spot, to the court clerk who can't help you, doesn't want to help you and, oh what the hell, doesn't even know why they picked up the phone to begin with, I find the general adult populace, at best, shoddy.

Living in Chicago the last couple years alone the city has seen exploration committees put together to investigate City Hall, the CTA and the Chicago USPS to name the big ones. The media loves to jump all over these having itself its own fraud witch hunt each time around. Though there is fraud uncovered in each investigation and that same fraud is usually, to some level, fact, I feel there is something deeper and far more sinister in the system than fraud alone. At least fraud denotes work being done. To engage in fraud it must take horrendous amounts of planning and creativity.

Inaction and laziness, on the other hand, causes far more trouble and slows progress more than any fraud probably could. Most cases of high corporate fraud, though fun to read about and empowering to uncover, really don't affect most individuals of society on a personal level at the end of the day. A million is embezzled here, a union is fraudulently looked more favorably upon there and the rest of us still go to work the next day. Fraud stories are flash fires in the news, forgotten the next day with the dawn of a new, more corrupt fraud. However, laziness is something us normal folk have to deal with on a daily basis. Laziness is not a flash fire and it doesn't last only as long as it isn't found out only to be torn out, reconstructed and renewed with a nice audit.

Fraud wants to leave the general public alone, it wants to go unseen, to only effect that which will never realize it. Laziness, on the other hand, stares you right in the face, beckoning you, no, challenging you, to just try and do something about it. Laziness is dealt with each day by most people yet nothing is ever said about it and the media could care less what its overall effect is, most likely out of sheer laziness.

This has actually become a real selling point for capitalism as we know it. Not that capitalism needs another plug in America, but when thought through, this issue of laziness and fraud really reveals the wonderful comforting side of capitalism (as opposed to the post-industrial, outsourcing side we're learning to deal with these days). The beautiful thing about capitalism in the context of a lazy, fraud stricken bureaucracy is the notion of competition.

An example of this would be what FedEx is to the USPS. Sure, most of us are going to use the USPS the majority of the time. It's cheaper (for now) and just more ingrained in our culture as the way one sends mail. However, we all know that once a letter is dropped into a mail box it could really mean anything and it assures nothing. The USPS has become low-risk. Not that there is a low risk one's mail won't make it to its final destination, but low risk as in, only low risk mail is sent via USPS (i.e. that letter to grandma). We hope these things get to their destination, but if they don't, whatever, another can always be sent if need be.

One irony about the USPS these days, however, is the fact that they've been steadily increasing their prices except they forgot one thing. In a capitalistic culture, if price goes up, quality had better follow. However, somewhere along the line in the USPS' price raising strategy they forgot to increase quality of service. So now we basically have the same old run-down system at $0.41 instead of $0.32. It's kind of like an old freezer. It keeps things relatively cold but over time it begins to use more an more electricity yet performs the same (or perhaps worse), so your electric bill is going up and you still can't keep two pork roasts in deep freeze at one time.

The short of it is, apparently, at some point the USPS got all excited when FedEx and UPS began charging the prices they were for service so the USPS decided it would raise its prices as well. Not matched by any means, but raised none-the-less. However, in the midst of all the excitement the USPS forgot to really look into it and failed to truly understand the difference in service, which logically lead to the price variance between the two in the first place. We all enjoy fuming at the USPS for raising prices while maintaining poor quality while we praise FedEx and UPS for their smiles and cool catch phrases, and it makes us happy to think that there is an entity out there that will guarantee quick and successful service, but at the same time, none of us are ready to pay $8.00 to send grandma a thank you. Conclusion: the USPS is needed as its existence maintains the position of the skapegoat, without which, we'd end up hating FedEx and UPS and pitting them against one another deciding one day that though delivery may be guaranteed, stamps are more fun.

Therefore, competition remains an intricate part of our society, and as we have seen with examples of FedEx and the USPS, competition still exists between two similar entities even when their quality levels are vastly different. People will always like service, but never high prices, they'll always like a helpful attitude, but also want a collectible. Until FedEx comes up with a stamp like product that surpasses the broad range of the USPS stamp, they'll never truly kill the beast.