DRIVEWAY MUSEUM CANDIDATE

I'm not familiar with any of the driveway museums that dot the world, never having had a driveway before, but if I were I'm sure that Asobi, my new driveway by Sogyu, would be a worthy candidate for inclusion-- maybe in the minimalist Japanese/Asian driveway section, given the Sengai Zen connection.

It would be quite at home as well alongside Picasso's driveway in the cubist section, since Asobi definitely features cubist elements. Nor would it be out of place beside Andy Warhol's driveway, for that matter; it lies in the realm of Japanopop, if you put soup labels on some of the stones, with a few dayglo Marilyns and Maos scattered around. Asobi transcends genre.

Needless to say, I'm not on the board of any driveway museum, but if I were I would point out to the driveway traditionalists thereon that Asobi would not even be out of place beside Michaelangelo's driveway, as partly depicted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, or DaVinci's driveway - which stretches out into the distance behind Mona Lisa - or among the impressionist driveways of later years, if you blur your eyes a little or don't wear your glasses - I bet Monet had a nice impressionistic carriageway beside the pond at Vernon; Dali's Daliway would be excellent company as well, partly because the title of my new driveway is, as indicated, Asobi, which comes from the somewhat surreal moment at the end of its creation when, in the pro tem driveway studio in front of my house, Sogyu was applying the final touches and I asked him why he had put the circle, square and triangle just there and he said 'asobi' ("play," as in having fun). And so it was-- and is, fun.

I'll have to put a plaque on there somewhere. And mention that it's not for sale, so passing driveway collectors will stop ringing my doorbell.

COSMOS REARRANGEMENT RAMBLE

Sogyu the garden landscaper and his crew are recreating our driveway over these few days - during the slow time of their work year - fixing up the numerous minor but collectively uberniggling problems like the vulnerable subsurface drainpipe along here, the recidivist potholes there, there and there, the narrownesses over there and down there, the unevenness at the back that is so startling in the dark, that stone wall bulge, that property line arrangement-- and those big stones in the way, to say nothing of the accursedly recurring ironweeds as I call them, and the unsnowshovelableness of the whole-- I could go on at greater length, but who has the time I have stuff to do...

I could fix the whole thing myself except it would take about 10 years of random nows and thens, and so would in the end be unprofessional and inadequate, not to say slapdash, or at worst completely undone - I do have other requisites in my life, after all, as I've just indicated - plus if I did it my way I'd have to do it myself, which is perhaps the worst aspect, given my innate disinterest in driveway restoration as a fulfilling personal activity.

Anyway, when you hire a professional the result is so much better in so many ways. In this case, in addition to getting to see Sogyu more often - he's a great guy - one of those ways is a driveway worthy of the name-- a nice, artistically scaped driveway, created in much-practiced fashion. If I did it myself I'd fill in a couple holes one weekend, dump some gravel here and there some other weekends, hope for the best for a series of intervening and subsequent weekends - no man is free who owns a house - then have to do the same plus alpha every couple years, but Sogyu zones right in, bam, knows precisely how to make the driveway say Yes! and stay elegant for a good long while, plus he has all the right devices.

I could as I say do it all myself with my merely two hands using rakes, shovels and picks, plus hours, days, years and my aching back, on my days off after I finish all the firewood that's stacked up all over; one has priorities, and dry firewood is a big one round about next January and beyond, when I wouldn't only be looking out the window lamenting my non-optimal driveway, I'd be shivering for lack of heat and cursing my inability to grasp the relative importance of things, and at my age no less, when I should have known better long ago...

Yes, it is best to keep on with the firewooding, gardening, composting, editing and other things I have on track in terms of my own skills and capabilities, and engage the hyperefficient and artistic Sogyu and crew to create a passage worthy of the World Driveway Museum, a wider, more elegant and eloquent driveway that next January and beyond I can gaze upon from the toastiness of my window and think my, what a wonderful arrangement is out there.

Ongoing secrets to a happy life, these skilled rearrangements of the cosmos...