-^-for posterity-^-

the man with the bronzed body that dances on metal cylinders is still at it. the swamp across the way from my house has been the stage of a one-man dirt moving crew for the past week and a half. jack and i are amazed.

every day he waltzes out there in either his peach colored shorts or his green colored shorts. they are both thoroughly stained from the mud. he continues to slowly move the earth, one cylinder at a time, over to a neat row by his house. there is a narrow, long pool forming.

the visiting agriculture professor from scottland said he was moving the earth for two reasons. the first was to create a small pool in which he can raise fish during the rainy season. the second is to create a swath of land where he can raise vegetables that don’t like too much water. so much work for a half an acre of fish farming and a half an acre of vegetables.

occasionally he smokes a cigarette. it never leaves his mouth and trails of smoke trail him as if he was a factory. or maybe an earth-grader. sometimes his wife comes out and says something to him and he shouts something back. he never stops working. he keeps his slow, methodical pace up from dawn till supper time.

probably within the week he’ll be done his project. he will have moved all of the dirt from a once barren, mosquito-infested swamp into two half-acres of productive earth. it will have taken at least two weeks of scooping out the earth and moving it, basically a shovel full at a time, to the other bank.

empathy. that’s all i can feel.