Fences separate don't they. On this side lies Me and Mine: on that side lies Yours. Most fences are registered on some map somewhere, and their foundations sit fixedly on some Law. You people who decide that fence-building is to be your trade, are all of you of the same stamp aren't you. Have you noticed it amongst yourselves too? Fence-builders are convinced of the rightness of the fence.
You are clear in your minds, aren't you, of the need for separation, and as a corollary to that you have a very clear sense of trespass. You enjoy helping a man set down a boundary. A man's boundary can for him be the most powerful motivator of them all. You know that don't you. If he cannot work to his utmost capacity and purchase a territory to parcel off - then what's the point? And then what about clarifiers? A long row of these individual boundary fences is a powerful clarifier. Within the obscurity of the crowd, lie several clarifiers surely - tests and examinations and sales-targets and all sorts of applause. All these things show who stands where don't they? Alongside those other clarifiers, these fences delineate those who have decided to throw their energies at creating property - and they delineate those who are better at it than others too.
Trespass. As you bang in the final post, you smile don't you for you have just finished fixing-in the point of trespass. You enjoy putting them in their place literally. I can understand you. With each new fence you poke the embers of a glee that not one of these people living in this endless row of fences is allowed to step and stamp and tip-toe where he will - for the others may well not wish him that close to themselves.
And another thing. It is almost impossible to over-estimate the significance you fence-makers give to the knock is it? Every once in a while two of those neighbours might talk over the fence and one accidentally knock the barrier with his knee. I know that every one of you fence-makers hopes that as you are fixing the final panel in place, you might gaze along the 'straight' and be witness to one of these knocks. You don't miss a single one do you. You register the rarity of the event for fences surprisingly are only occasionally touched, and you see in this 'accident' no accident at all don't you. You see a subconscious urge to blend, to merge, and you know this blind impulse is wrong for them. In the abrupt halt that your barrier has put to this impulse, you enjoy the satisfaction of your own wise governance (for by now, the erection of this fence has become your own idea naturally) and in addition to that you search in the faces of these fence neighbours for some sign of the 'wrong' impulse being spent and replaced with the reassuring comfort of separated territories.
Your work is invariably thorough, I know that, and if only those who commission fences would allow you to purchase the finest materials, it is work that's intended to stand upright for a century or more isn't it.
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