Jerusalem Analogy

First light is breaking for the maintenance of the natural. Last year's hatchlings were overcome with a swarm of ants. We have now a load of topsoil and materials and begin a new habitation, a likely place against a wall with a high spot put there years ago as an island for tortoises to stand on in case of a big flood, for some run wild, irrigation comes every two weeks. Beneath a red oak sapling and a Mexican buckeye, climbing rose, ruella and mallow there is an area once entirely claimed by a giant chinaberry which, with a giant oleander, was completely taken up by the root. When you are four feet down the job is easier.

First you hardly see her. Out of the spot in the center of your vision she emerges though you have stared fixedly for a minute. Then she appears, lifts a head, lifts a foreleg, pauses, puts it down, lifts its opposite, pauses, puts it down. The peace of her slowness, the pace takes her in contemplation, stopped action, pause, wait, but then you look up and she is gone! A walking meditation without intent.

All pruned up, ready for yearlings, I need my son, day labor to arise, thinking of Milton where God exact[s] day labor, light denied. There is light. This labor is light. Milton's blindness is affecting Samson. He revisits every day of his life. The scenes of paradise play in front of his eyes at night. He wakes seeing but unseeing to write them down in the day. Who does not know it? Dark, dark, dark amidst the blaze of noon. Samson pictures the time. One day we will wake to what we've done. Work now, weep later.

I go wake the help. It took only an hour with the budding biologist to clean old mortar off cement block, mix new dirt with old. Logs are good, but the ant inhabitants of the old world need convincing. Pyracantha above, earth beneath, what more could a tortoise want? Four yearlings took off under a log without looking around. Now they attend to the empress' grape leaves, nopalitos, hibiscus, dandelions.

Ants of the world are still loose. What shall we do? No poisons allowed. Vinegar the top of logs surrounding the large pen? BD comes over to talk, lifts an inquiring mind. Happily he loses interest. We have the theory, the practice and we have the reflections.

Those tortoises lived veritably on top of an ant hill it turned out. Ants had usurped their home. They were huddled under rocks out of the way of the ants whose territory went down a foot. It's a fight with no purpose than survival? Nobody at 7-11 thinks that. Nobody at home thinks that. They think there is a right, just apply it to the behavior of others. Themselves they indulge. New Jerusalem is like the tortoise den, outside the gates are idolaters and dogs. Pharmkoi! Astrologers. Fortune tellers are living on an ant hill. The solution of paradise restored is work the ground.