We are astounded at unprovoked aggression. We startle! It’s like the surprising
attack of an angry and noisy dog, (especially when one is not trespassing.) We
are astounded at territorial imperatives. Like that of a neighbour who measures
the one-inch overhang of your eavestrough onto his property, and then sets up a
letter that arrives in the mail, full of legal complaint. Yes, we do need
distance from each other. Yes, we are wont to protect our property, our view,
our safety, our security, our sense of ownership of a particular space. But how
to mend the rift that can occur in relationships, to repair the neighbourly wall
that breaks between us? How to reach beyond impatience, and to speak to each
other with dignity and grace and care? How not to threaten?
The current of Covid-19 knows no boundaries. Insidious, it has resulted
in our putting walls up, everywhere. In the supermarkets there are taped-distances
for us each to stand. On the pathways we veer away from each other. We do not share
elevators. We do not share transport. We do not touch. And when that month
comes in which we all, tentatively, try to resume the normality of our old
lives, shall we easily handshake and hug and speak close across the fences of
our social conventions yet once more? How long shall we cling to the ghosts of those
so drastically fallen?
Robert Frost, the old poet, in ‘Mending Wall,’ (below,) finished off the
poem with these phrases:
“He moves in darkness as it seems
to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his
father’s saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, ‘Good
fences make good neighbours.’”
Indeed. We resonate by clinging to the past. Indeed, we move in the darkness
of our established conventions. We inculcate tradition and fear and xenophobia
and acculturation as easily as many children once had their private-parts
altered in the name of religions. Many still do! We still set up borders, and vaingloriously
can defend them against submitting to the differences between our expectations,
and that of our neighbour’s. “Having thought of it so well,” we resume and
perpetuate our forefather’s practices. Caveman like, we certainly will not
allow for someone’s unwanted (or even unexpected) presence at our entrances. Self-protection,
and the security of those we love, is quite naturally paramount. And much like
Plato’s cave, in which we face the wall and see the moving shadows and mistake
them for reality, we perpetuate quite easily the suspended-disbelief of our
lives, and presume to squander time, checking the state of our own contrivances,
such that we live in the need perpetually to find yet another object, point of
focus, or belief that may sustain us. We do not easily turn to the light. We do
not easily give up that which went before. We do not easily move beyond the horizontal accretion of our gathered experiences,
“Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in
his head: ‘Why do they [fences] make good neighbours?’” Robert Frost asks.
Well? Why? What is there about our fragmentation and dissolution and
isolation and disconnect that we so readily can resort (in the face of attack,
of fear, of uncertainty, and even of reasonable precaution) to the persuasion to
keep at mending the wall between ourselves and the other? Indeed, as Frost intimates:
“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out.”
Thing is, as the poet said: “Something there is that does not love a
wall.” Then again, “Spring is the mischief in me.” Indeed.
Something there is
that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
I think the answer to your (and Robert's) questions, lies in the exceptions that create the memories in people that drive them to want to want to prevent recurrences of those exceptions. We've all experienced neighbors who abuse our kindness and flexibility to our detriment, taking much more they then give, and making our lives unlivable in the process.
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