weeds

once upon a time there was an Ancient Forest. and then one day the humans came and cut it all down and put up a parking lot for one of their "shopping malls". and then one day the humans left.

after the humans left, more and more cracks started opening up in the parking lot, and more and more weeds started growing up through the cracks.

some of these weeds remembered the Ancient Forest. that's because they were descended from those few weeds that had continued to look for every crack in the concrete, back when the humans were still around. no matter how fanatically the humans tried to keep their shopping mall parking lot weed free, there were always little sprouts of green poking up through the inevitable cracks. there had always been weeds like this. and they were the ones who remembered the Ancient Forest.

some weeds, however, were embarrassed by these weeds-that-remembered. they said, "please stop being such Romantic Fools. you are embarrassing us!" They also said, "we are just weeds, and weeds is all we ever were and all we ever will be. the humans cut down the forest and it is gone. get over it. it is gone forever. it will never come back."

but there were still other weeds who said, "it's good that the humans are gone, but the Old Forest was bad, too. we are weeds, and the Old Trees were our oppressors. they blocked the light from us and lorded it over us. in our New Forest we must all be equal, so no plants should ever grow too high. that way we can learn from our past mistakes and Make Progress."

but wait, there's more. there were also weeds who said, "hey! we are not 'weeds'!! as a matter of fact, 'weed' is a perjorative term, and no plants in the past ever called themselves 'weeds'. we reject 'weed-privilege' and demand to be called by various hyphenated verbal monstrosities that we either make up as we go along, or that we borrow incorrectly from scholars whose works we have never read, much less understood!!!!" who knew weeds could shout like that!

but mostly the weeds were just weeds. they kept busy pushing up through the cement toward the light, but remaining firmly rooted in the darkness that will always be there if they ever need to return again. they were busy, too busy for much anything else, slowly turning the vast parking lot erected by the humans back into a Forest.

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(This was originally posted on May 11, 2015.)