Blog six: Work, Plays, labour and ambiance

I am sitting in my office looking at a reproduced paining by John Constable painted around 1770-1837. It is called Cornfield and depicts a pre-industrial revolution scene of rural life in England.  There is a man scything a field late autumn, a dog rounding up sheep, a couple of donkeys and rustic/failed attempts to fence and tame the land. This painting reminds me of New Zealand where man has attempted and so far failed to conquer the land.

I have ancestral links to Europe, and have had several trips back to where my folks lived prior to immigrating to New Zealand.  We as a family have always identified strongly with agrarian pursuits, which continue to be passed down the generations. The picture above I realise has little resemblance to modern day England but records the more natural environment prior to the work past generations have put in.  New Zealand is a land with a younger history, a less intensified human habitation and more temperate climate that result in an unwieldy growth rate and more natural environment.

I feel my activity of clearing the gorse falls under the heading of work, as there is a linear idea of time with a definite beginning middle and end, where there is an element of destroying in order to conquer and prettify the land. As Hannah Arendt states in her work the human condition “work provides an “artificial world of things, distinctly different from all natural surroundings” (Arendt, 1958, p. 7) so change in nature is evident but also she adds latter there is an element of futility that despite the work leaving nothing behind (no food or produce resulting) this effort ”is born of great urgency and motivated by a more powerful drive than anything else because life itself depends upon it (Arendt, 1958, p. 87)’. This describes what I am trying to do well.

The gorse has been confronting me over the time we have built the house and lived here.  We have an evening courtyard where we barbeque during the summer months, and the gorse keeps encroaching over the fence line. Unfortunately we found that we own this gorse during the building process. We do not hope to utilise the cleared land but need the gorse to recede for aesthetic reasons. I know my aesthetic sense is dictated by taste (which leads back to ergonomics) but is still dominated by my European heritage thus there is an element of making the familiar in my pursuit if clearing the gorse.

I have naturally glided into plays with my making familiar and conquering the land. This denotes the more superficial type of activity, one that is done for more pleasurable reasons, where one inserts one’s self into the task. Class is a factor I have identified within what I am doing, as clearing gorse has elements of improvement of real estate or elevating ones status  in a social class. The fact that the gorse is in close proximity to the barbeque (socialising implement) is a big factor here.

Labour is about survival or making a living which is not related to my task as I don’t intend to use the freed up land at the end of my task. However I feel the need to do this task because of meditative forces that I need in life.  I have a need to see improvement over time, and while on field work the lack of this was a major frustration. Sometimes I just need to be challenged in a physical way and gardening is a great counterbalance to study. There is no challenges apparent within any relationships in the garden, thus real freedoms from life pressures.

Dave has also pointed out that the gorse is a great nitrogen fixer in the soil, thus another usable factor to be considered under labour.

With regard to aesthetics I have briefly mentioned the encroachment I felt and will attempt to  describe this as a tight and uncomfortable feeling for me. In one’s life I have learned that aesthetics is an innate personal visual representation or sense of what feels right. Thus what I see as aesthetically pleasing may be very different to you, or another. It is about a matter of taste, and my taste states that I don’t want gorse a s a close neighbour.

Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago: Chicago University Press.