good morning ~

(click the link / lawnmower to listen)

My Big Breakcutting a labyrinth while I walk it

the acoustic guitar I bought at the farmer’s market continues to unlock interesting electronic textures

here’s the (extremely sick) flyer for the house / backyard show I’m playing on Tuesday, shoot me a message if you need the address ~

Have you heard this gorgeous Miyaxx album? Really beautiful stuff by my friends Lea Thomas and John Thayer (names you should recognize) - -

On the drive home the other night I saw a tractor hauling a mower cresting the hill. Later I saw that same tractor rattle down the state highway we live on, cars weaving around it. All gone to hay. A little triangle of hill, still for sale as far as I can tell, been that way for months. No house upon it, you'd have to build. But if you stand in one specific corner to the west on most days you can see the Catskills to your right and the Berkshires to your left, that beautiful valley sprawl in-between.

Who was it on the tractor, I wondered, as I set about my labors. Who mowed the triangle where we went sledding perilously a couple of winters ago? I am constantly dumbstruck by how much there is to know about the world and its interconnections. I witness that geometry of land every single day, but never will I be its steward, nor do I know the names of those to whom the land belongs. My dominion is here, within these particular corners, on this side of the line. My place is here, behind the push mower.

Living here marks really the first time in my life I have been responsible for any kind of property. I rented a series of New York City apartments in my 20s and never had to fix a sink or even shovel snow, technically. Although in hindsight my roommates and I rarely successfully got the landlords to fix those things, either. We probably should have been cleaning all those spaces more thoroughly, too. Now it's a different story - when there's a leak in the utility room, I'm in there with the towels and the shop vac. Or we gotta call the repair guy ourselves and pay him to get the new igniter going in our oven.

The place comes with a pretty generous spread of turf. Which is awesome in one way - we're set far enough back from the road where it's really not too loud and there's plenty of room behind the house for a garden and a sculpture studio. But really neither of us thinks a grass lawn is anything other than a wasteful suburban affectation. We'd just as soon rip it all out. But the thing is - grass is super tenacious and not that easy to kill. If you really want to eradicate turf you have to get down under the roots, remove its access to sunlight, and replace something just as hearty that won't get overtaken when seeds from another lawn get blown on the wind over from your neighbors. It's super expensive if you hire someone to do it and a massive undertaking if you do it yourself. So, besides the one re-wilded patch - which is amazing, by the way, teeming with life, bordered on one side by jubilant wildflowers, and home to our friend's massive portal sculpture - we're stuck tending to these little green blades.

Paying someone to do it is cost prohibitive - we're talking like $2,000 plus annually just for keeping the lawn cut. And because of the uneven terrain and inclined nature of our beautiful little hillside spread neither of us feels particularly comfortable riding something that can tip over. I am confident that me owning a ride-on will result in me getting injured almost immediately. Plus, also expensive. But last summer we got a hot deal on an electric push mower. And since we have solar on the roof, well that's just free power, baby. Me pushing those impossibly fast and sharp blades over the land, like shaving a giant's face while he sleeps. The only thing I'm paying with is my time and my sweat.

It takes me between five and seven hours to mow our entire property. This is the first time I'm seeing this written out and it does feel a little loco to say that. But our electric mower's batteries can only go for about 75 minutes at a time, so I end up splitting the labor up over the course of a few days. And it's actually really nice work - there's no gasoline fumes with the electric mower and I have crushed a really remarkable amount of audiobooks. Fresh air, sunlight on my skin that will hopefully prevent me from having another scary vitamin D deficiency this winter, exertion. I burn far more calories pushing this machinery around than I do on the treadmill, and after a whole summer of mowing I feel an appreciable difference in strength and firmness in my ass. I sleep better on the days when I mow. And there are large patches of wild growing mint and thyme throughout, so every once in a while I am gifted a delightful smell as I pass over. Plus I get to see so many snakes, toads, and frogs, although I always feel bad because this thing I'm pushing is probably terrifying if you're a snake, such rumbling in the ground.

Maybe the greatest pleasure of all, though, is just getting to know the contours of the land on which we live. Watching the plants change over the season, noting the clusters of wild grapes at the edge of the woods, seeing where the groundhogs have wreaked their havoc. It feels surprisingly spiritual at times, like I'm cutting a labyrinth while I walk it.

The mow work started getting harder and harder earlier this year, though. Felt like more shit was getting caught in the underbelly, felt like the batteries were crapping out earlier, felt like I wasn't getting a clean enough cut. It was only a month or so ago that I learned that you're actually supposed to get your blades sharpened pretty regularly, something I had never done. And when I took those blades to the mowing supply shop in town they told me they were too bent to work on. Mowing with broken blades, the replacements I put on are amazing. One lesson for you - keep your swords sharp.

But what about you? Of what are you the steward? Have your labors been rewarding you? Heard any good audiobooks lately?