Folks talk about trying to map out everything these days, don’t they? Get a diagram for this, a flowchart for that. Sometimes I reckon some things are just, well, they’re what they are. You try to pin ’em down with boxes and arrows, and you just lose the whole point, or make a right mess of it. It’s like trying to explain a joke with a blueprint. Just doesn’t work, you know?
My Attempt at Charting the Unchartable
Speaking of making a mess trying to get things clear, I remember this one time, a few years back. I got roped into helping out with our local community garden. Sounds nice and simple, right? Plant some spuds, grow some beans. But oh boy, the way they had things set up, or rather, not set up, was something else. They wanted a “clear guide” for new members. “Could you maybe draw up something, a sort of diagram?” they asked. Me, thinking it’d be a walk in the park, said, “Sure, why not?”
So, I started by trying to list out all the rules. First hurdle: there weren’t many written down. Most of it was “how we’ve always done it.” Okay, I thought, I’ll just talk to people. I talked to old Mrs. Higgins, who’d been there since the dinosaurs, or so it felt. She had one set of ideas about watering. Then I talked to young Tom, fresh out of college with his permaculture books, and he had a completely different system. And they both swore their way was the only way.
My little notebook started getting real full, real fast. I tried to create a simple flowchart:
- New member joins.
- Gets a plot. (But how? First come, first served? Lottery? Did it depend on who you knew?)
- Tool shed rules. (Keys? Shared tools? Personal tools? Another hornet’s nest.)
- Watering schedule. (Don’t even get me started on that again.)
- Harvesting dos and don’ts. (Apparently, you couldn’t just pick your own tomatoes if someone else thought they looked better on their plant, even if it was your plot.)
The diagram just got bigger and more complicated. It started looking less like a helpful guide and more like one of those crazy conspiracy theory walls with bits of string everywhere. Every time I thought I had a section sorted, someone would pipe up with, “Ah, but you forgot about the unspoken rule of Tuesdays!” or “What about when it rains for three days straight? The diagram doesn’t cover that!”
I spent weeks on this thing. Weeks! My kitchen table was covered in drafts. I was dreaming in decision trees. And the more I tried to pin it down, the more exceptions and special cases popped up. It was like wrestling an octopus. A very argumentative octopus with strong opinions on compost.
In the end, what did I produce? Well, I handed them a ten-page document that was mostly footnotes, and a diagram so dense it needed its own instruction manual. I think they just stuck it in a drawer. Last I heard, they’re still doing things “how we’ve always done it,” and new members just sort of figure it out by trial and error, mostly error. And you know what? Maybe that’s just how some things are meant to be. Some things, you just can’t diagram. You just gotta live ’em, I suppose.
