3 T o ‘wear weeds’ at one time referred to a fabric especially woven ( wede - to weave) and worn to indicate an occupation, a situation or a position. Now it defines only mourning. And while that meaning may resonate visually in the somber straight lines of the urban landscape, the key word is weaving. For what we see in the homonymous weeds is a testimony to their occupation as healers, as weavers of green and fulsome blankets which spread stitch by stitch, warp by woof to cover the beaten and broken remains of the natural world. They mend, no, they amend all that is missing in our geometries — spontaneity, authenticity, growth. Whether we come up on them as small gestures of grassy stems with fuzzy ends, or bold sweeps of branches coruscating against stony skies, what we truly come upon, long hidden and obscured by culture, is the genius of the place.The absolute hereness of weeds. Not the here denoted, or the here designed. Not the here of utility, or of property. But that inexhaustible, nimble hereness which arises from a particular, fortuitous swirl of sun, rain, wind and edge. The hereness that creates place. It is the here whose center is not I-standing-here. It is the here where our carefully-hemmed natural order is undone, where unloosened the knots which keep us bound to the things we have created disappear. And it for this reason we fear this or that place where weeds grow, and grind back into dust or concrete their unbidden, heedless therapy. The oak in its box, the palm
tree in its glass. That’s how nature should be, forever indebted, grateful to us for life, no matter how mean, brutal, shallow, sterile and short. Yet here where weeds grow, what nascent beauty is endlessly being embroidered beneath the curling edges of asphalt at our feet; what forests contained beneath the mantle of these small tough leaves; what sudden valley, what shadowed stream? Weeds are the memories of earth. It is their presences, furtive, unwanted and denigrated which connect us, tie us to the natural world, and undo in endless filagree the hard edges of chaos we have created. The cracks of the city are the furrows for their lessons; weeds, persistently ‘weaving the weeds’ of exquisite permutation, of place, of immortality. We are proletarians subjugated to the opiate of rational order, delirious with geometry, forever coming apart at the seams. Weeds are the warn- ings against the catastrophe of perception which continues to generate the monoculture known as the man-made environment. If we continue to see them as destroyers of our order, if we fail to recognize in them the fate of our own shining beauty, the darkness will continue to descend over our wounded eyes.
Ailanthus altissima at 6th Ave & 22nd Street.
Christine Maile is a landscape architect and artist in New York City.
At the Gas Station: Mollugo verticillata Carpet weed Ailanthus altissima Tree of Heaven Elusine indica Goosegrass Veronica filiformus Slender Speedwell Gledstia triacanthos Honeylocust Kochia scoparia Kochia
sans fin de ces bordures robustes que nous avons créées. Les fissures de la ville sont les fissures de leur apprentissage; ces mauvaises herbes tissent, de façon persistante, cette permuta- tion exquise de l’espace et de l’immortalité.
sous plusieurs noms – molènes, choux blancs, pieds de poule, artémises, chénopodes et soli- dagos, pour n’en nommer que quelques-unes. Par contre, tout le monde les connaît comme des mauvaises herbes. À ces endroits où les mauvaises herbes abondent, on remarque cette beauté naissante qui est brodée de façon incessante sous
nos pieds, sous les bordures cour- bées de l’asphalte sous nos pieds. Quelles seraient ces forêts con- tenues sous cette cape de petites feuilles robustes, ces vallées sou- daines ou ces ruisseaux ombragés? Les mauvaises herbes sont les mémoires de la terre. C’est cette présence furtive, insolite et déni- grée qui nous lie au monde naturel et qui vient dénouer ce filigrane
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O n S ite review
S ewing
I ssue 8 2002
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