August
6, 2018
Greetings from
the meander,
Today I will share
with you three things. I am mentioning
this in case you want to get a piece of paper to keep track.
We are in the
process of shrinking our house and then restoring it to nearly the exact
dimension as previous. We are doing this
by first removing a tiny fraction of an inch on the exterior which will then be
replaced by a virtually identical layer.
The actual shape of our house will not change. At all.
It will be just like David Copperfield was here and made the entire
thing disappear, slightly, and then reappear.
It can be a
challenging process. There are ladders
involved, often poised in precarious positions, and here I am using the word ‘precarious’
as a synonym for ‘perilous’ and not to refer to the Pre-Carious era during
which insects ruled the world. Which
would be ridiculous for two reasons.
And so I find
myself at the top of a ladder, from which height I can vividly imagine
reversing my vertical progress at an accelerated rate ending suddenly on the
ground next to the tool that I meant to take with me when I first ascended.
So there are
ladders and tools and cursing, which are employed to slowly and carefully
remove the epidermis of our house like peeling the shell off a hard boiled
egg. And then, in an even more elaborate
process, putting the shell back on in an almost exact replica of the first
shell. Maybe a slightly less reddish
color, but not too yellow.
So that’s one
thing. Here is the second thing.
Informed
citizens already know there is a bee shortage.
Farmers across the country have raised the issue to a meme-worthy
Facebook post, which clearly shows the crisis in a way informed citizens can comprehend. With the bee shortage many crops are in
danger of not being pollinated. There is
a simple reason for this bee shortage; they are all living inside my house.
The more time
I spend on ladders shrinking my house, the more places I find that bees are
living. Some have formed nests which are
obvious, but many of them, and when I say ‘many’ I mean ‘all of the bees in the
northern hemisphere’, have taken up residence inside.
Like most
things that do not contribute to me getting coffee I try not to think about
bees. I have always assumed they have a
similar attitude about me.
If I find they
have built an elaborate mud fort behind a shutter I am taking off the house, so
that later I can put it back exactly where it was in the exact dimension it was,
but in a slightly different color, I remain ambivalent. Until one of the bees stung me right in my cartilage.
It turns out
bees do have an opinion about my existence and it is not as neutral as I have
often assumed. This rancor, obviously
welling for some time, inspired one of their ranks to stab me in the cusp of my
ear.
What I have
surmised is that the bees resent having to work for farmers for free. That antipathy, buzzing slightly below the
surface of their seemingly carefree existence, can lead to violence. Which for the record I did not reciprocate,
at least not very effectively.
And so because
of this agricultural oppression there has been a mass migration of bees to occupy
the internal shape of my house, which as previously mentioned, I am currently shrinking/growing
from the exterior shape.
It is in this
context I find myself at the top of a ladder, which is swaying from the pull of
the moon and through which I can feel the vibration from the shifting of the
tectonic plates. Defying the laws of gravity
and common sense I am attempting to slice off a thousandth of an inch of the
outside of my house. And in that moment
a bee drifts by, as if to say; ‘Are you sure you want to be up here?’
Those of you
who got a piece of paper to keep track, will have noted that of the three
things I said I would share, only two have been noted so far. And that is the third thing.
Hope
this finds you busy as a bee,
David
Copyright
© 2018 David Smith
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