The pond. Bill seems to like being next to it when the three of us sit out there before dinner. It has metaphorical possibilities that I wish I could explain to him.
In its small way, our pond serves to keep me mindful of Freud’s analogy to explain psychoanalysis. Freud compared analysis to draining something in the Netherlands called the Zuider Zee swamp. The more you drain the psyche’s swamp by chatting with your shrink, the more you expose what lies below consciousness. This means more of your cognitive real estate is made available for–whatever. Experiential agriculture, you might call it. Our little backyard pond serves to remind me of just how much of my own mental real estate is either buried deeper than the Marianas Trench, or lying fallow topside.
When we bought this house, the owner explained what I would need to do to keep the pond functioning. Of course she concealed the more disgusting features of the job, focusing instead on the simple draining part.
This would be accomplished with the quaint, old sump pump she would leave for me in the garage. Just stick it in, turn it on, and let old mister pump do the rest, she said. Good, I thought. That’s simple enough for my skills level. But as someone both wiser and less habituated to apartment living might have known, nothing good or simple would figure.
But that first spring, I did manage to get the sump pump working. Effluvia gushed from the attached hose. It was very satisfying to see. I had noticed the pump’s wiring was partially exposed, but since the thing worked, good enough.
Who can know why things turn out as they do? It’s like taking a walk, turning to see a skinny stray dog following you, deciding to walk home with him, and as a result changing your life.
As the pump chugged along, it exposed more and more of the Zuider Zee. I could tell all the water wouldn’t be gone, and when it stopped flowing, I took off my shoes and rolled up my pants. With a rake I stepped gingerly down into the chilly water, and began scraping up rotted leaves.
The whole thing stank and seemed to move. That I now saw was because of mosquito larvae. I dumped loads of this stinking sewage into a bucket, stepped out and threw the contents on waiting flower beds. As I moved back and forth into the water, the oddest tingling played about my feet, even in my hands as I worked the metal-handled rake.
Who can say how long it was this went on before it dawned on me–the mister, the professor emeritus, defender of the higher sublimations of literature, scourge of the dangling participle and tireless enemy of the passive voice–that where water and electrical current are present, humans should be absent?
Hearing all this later, my friend Bob, an electrical engineer, just stared at me. He has no beard, but at the moment bore a striking resemblance to Freud. After a long pause, he shrugged. You should be dead, he told me. Never do it again. You’ve used up every piece of luck you still had coming.
Just Bill and the Mister 