If you live where I do, where sidewalks are rare, you walk on the asphalt as close to the curb as possible; the curb functions as a public/private boundary. If you look ahead as you walk, it represents a clear distinction between what belongs to someone who has landscaped their property for maximum appeal and the public road. 

The curb was most certainly created by the time and labor of workers in yellow hard hats and bright orange vests. Some parts of the curb show the pristine state of this birth, clean and smooth with a certain grace of presentation, an almost breathless proclamation of Here I Am. When the sun hits just the right way, it radiates a bright, snowy luminance. But this aspect of the curb is intermittent, tucked into the longer undulating ribbon of pale grey Portland cement. At birth, the curb had sharp lines, right-angled corners to hold back the soil, and a gentle curve in the lip that stretched down and out to meet the asphalt road. The light grey darkens with time, weather, and accidents caused by metal moving at high velocity, revealing amalgam as the cement crumbles away. The ribbon is imperfect in this decay, ranging from snarling, ragged-edged chasms to nicks with geometrical precision, from wide, solemn, irregular circles to cuts so deep that they break through and rupture the continuum. Indeed, in some areas, the curb has been lost entirely. Disappeared. Failed.

It’s arduous to keep everything where it should be, keeping the private and public separate. The greatest failure is the emergence of weeds, grasses, and wildflowers from the canyons and cultivated greenery from lawns and gardens, merging into unexpected eruptions of leaves, blooms, and tall stalks. The curb can’t help this. Although given perfection in its birth, it is materially the same as everything around it. The curb was built to stay in place, but it is impossible to prevent the riot of life that keeps taking hold. Every crevice and crack in the facade allows soil to accumulate and seeds to take root. 

It’s even more complicated because the very soil it is meant to contain is shifting and moving, resting on the limestone hills relentlessly and inexorably striving to fall into the Pacific Ocean, which would more than welcome new boulders it could churn into the sand.  

It’s materially exhausting to hold everything in place. 

It is an impossibility, this imaginary vector towards stability, this curb, the line you walk, an imperfect and broken boundary between things. It’s exhausting to hold everything in place. It’s exhausting to hold onto beginnings you can only glimpse. It’s exhausting to believe in something you know is transient but is needed anyway. If you keep looking ahead, you only see that belief, thin, broken, disappearing, but always luminous.