tidy slum - ok, so this should be on a different blog

It isn't a new complaint: that of all these street sweepers and blowers are a waste of civic funds and earth's resources. Consider this as well however: if we are so committed to the illusion of order, of keeping the "city" looking like everything is under control - including nature, which only appears intrusive in the cleared spaces humans have attempted to preserve for their squandering of the plundered bits of earth they've dug up or cut down elsewhere - if we can commit so much effort to this denial of earth, to the belief that we have any natural riegn at all, we should not be surprised to find that the affirmation of the natural wilderness, living sustainably, and such too have become subsumed by the very commercial habits that maintain the illusion that we are separate from nature in the first place. If we buy a rake instead of a blower for instance there is still the valid question, "why do we care to clear away the falling leaves?"! I like the look of leaves in a natural breeze, and I for one know that leaves provide some nourishment for the soil. Trees apparently must suffer for the sake of the well-groomed lawn. And so we must now look for an environmentally friendly fertilizer to replace the leaves' gift, yet we've already been unfriendly haven't we. Perhaps we will never undo what we began when we cleared away the first forests. But we continue to behave as if our attempts to beautify the cities is an act of conservation. It is not. But apparently beauty still resides in the ayes of the stake holder. But no amount of levys or lies will keep the real intruder from making the same mistake over and over.