Commonplaces

A few years back -- actually, quite a few, considering memory's power of compres- sion -- we asked the guy working for us, Danny, to clean the bad vines out of some woods and leave the wisteria, which were wonderful. Around here, they can grow like weeds. Down the road, at the Bowater plant, they were a magnificent acre until the company leveled the trees holding them up to stave off pine beetle. So much beauty, gone so soon.

But I digress. Danny was relentless against every damn vine he could find, which of course included those we loved.

Only now are they coming back, draping their purple panicles at the little corner of the woods down near the edge of the lake. Lovely.

So when I was taking the car in for service the other day, on a perfectly ordinary errand, and I saw a specimen that as was so obviously cultivated and nourished and so beautiful, I had to stop, with flashers going, in that perfectly ordinary neighborhood, in front of a perfectly ordinary bungalow, to get out and capture it. There it is, off on the right.

And I've been thinking: Just as some people cultivate beauty as a perfectly ordinary part of a perfectly ordinary part of town, some people have been cultivating torture, as part of a perfectly ordinary armory that our perfectly wonderful country needs.

To some, the extraordinary is so banal. And in such opposite directions. Hannah Arendt, where are you when we need you?