Martin had a serious problem, and so did his neighbor Richard.
Martin's problem involved the half of his front garden that ran between his place and Richard's. Well that was part of it. Martin's problem also involved the Rosedale half of his front garden. Martin was happy with how his bonsai cedars had turned out. He had installed all the elements of the miniature hillside monastery among the rocks beneath his front stairs, but now the time had come to place the miniature pagoda and the statue of the seated Buddha but he still wasn't sure which elements to place on which side.
If he put the miniature pagoda on Richard's side, it would be almost perfectly in line with the front door of the United Church across the street. While there was a certain symmetry to that, there was also too much direct opposition and that seemed to suggest stagnation; things which opposed one another should do so obliquely as it would allow them to continue to move and change.
Martin sat on his front step and waited to see if something else would occur to him regarding his problem. As he smoked a cigarette his neighbor Richard came out of his house. He was talking on his cell phone and though Martin couldn't hear what he was saying - didn't want to hear what he was saying in fact - there was no missing the aggression and agitation in his tone. Richard had spent the fall and early spring removing the old brick from his house and re-facing it with an engineered stone which Martin thought looked too uniform. There was also something hermetic about the windows, as though they wouldn't open, or even break. Martin thought to himself, "Maybe he is arguing with the contractor who did all the work" because it had that kind of a feeling about it, as though there were money and implied violence involved.
Richard concluded his phone call, and jutted his chin looking like he was about to get on a horse as he flung open the door and he slid into his car's tan leather seats. He backed quickly out of his driveway. Martin watched Richard drive two short blocks, then turn in the direction of the restaurant that Richard ran, which was only two long blocks north. As Martin tossed away his cigarette and stood up he said to himself "That guy should walk."
The idea of the pagoda on the right side of the yard, beside Rosedale, still felt right to him so he went into his garage for the small bag if white crushed stones he'd bought at the aquarium supply store. The square of garden that would house the pagoda was about the same size as a sidewalk block. He placed the square pagoda on grass in the center of the square. While that side of the yard was in the shade of the bean tree he used the crushed white stone to make 4 pathways, leading from the pagoda's 4 staircases to the edges of the square. He made a white border at the edge of the square, then he made the pathways wide enough that the 4 squares of grass left between the paths were the same size as the red and gold painted pagoda. The effect pleased him a great deal.
When Martin came back out of his house after lunch something didn't feel right. He looked at all the work he had done in the morning thinking that he must have chosen incorrectly. The relationship between the miniature cedar and the pagoda with its white pathways looked as though they had always been in this relationship with one another - and perhaps they always had. He sat down on his step to think about what might be bothering him. The first of the Saturday afternoon ballet classes was finishing in the hall attached to the church across the street, and a flock of tweeters in pink tulle two twos was streaming out the doors. Some of them broke off to walk the red brick labyrinth under the tree in the church yard, but most were hurried into the cars parked along the curb to be taken home for lunch, or off to their next Weekend Activity. One little girl dragged her father by the hand and across the street, towards Martin's garden, but something inscrutable and Asian in his seated posture made the father shy even as it made the daughter bold. The father hurried his little ballerina past the garden saying "C'mon sweetie, we have to get home for lunch" with a polite nod to Martin. As they got to the corner he promised her that they would have a good look at it next week, and the little girl let this promise join the leaf pile of future promises that was accumulating in the pathways of her mind.
