Zen and the Transcendent Art Of Mowing Grass :: Example Personal Narratives

Zen and the Transcendent Art Of Mowing Grass   As a y starth, I hated to mow so much that unrivaled day I left our push-mower in the grand to rust and became an expatriated Texas framer. My origin story was ab come forward an alien being who, in the end, turned out to be a lawnmower.   By the time I came home again, I had spent so much time in the East that my Texas friends evaluate me to move into a highrise in downtown Dallas. But instead we colonized sixteen miles to the south, in Cedar Hill. We surprised every(prenominal)one by buying a place with an eight-acre yard.   It was during the summer, and I had to start mowing immediately. You just stay inside where its cool, I told Norma, who is afraid of grass. Ill take care of the yard. As I spoke, I was gazing out at more grass and weeds than Id ever seen in my life, besides at a cemetery.   Now whenever anybody from Dallas comes out to see our spread for the inaugural time, they remark on the seclusion, t he spaciousness, the scenic beauty. Then they ask uneasily, Do you fell all this? People dont like it when I say yes. They dont understand it. aged(prenominal) friends say Ive changed, implying for the worst.   But there is a difference between what I do today and the mowing of my youth. Mowing a little patch of front yard is typical outdoor city work boring, undistinguished, pitiable, drone-like activity. But getting astraddle a John Deere tractor and spending twenty hours in two age tackling street fighter thistles, high Johnson grass, giant sticker weeds, and creeper so tough it copulates with barbed wire is the kind of intense activity that, if you survive it, in the end transcends itself. Like Zen or long-distance running, it becomes a path to wisdom.   Ive been at it three years now, and its no accident that I dont write as I used to. All I really want to write about is mowing-and then for only an hour or so at a time between whole days on my tractor. The circu mstance is, mowing and writing fill the same needs, only mowing does it better.   Mowing eight acres every week would drive some kinds of people mad, but it has served to make me tint in harmony with the flux of the heaving earth as it hurtles by dint of time.