excavating an ancient world to burn up in the present one.

Plants are anything but passive. They made the world.

The trees were reminders of both our own ephemerality and their endurance long beyond ours, and in their uprightness they stood in the landscape like guardians and witnesses.

(There’s a whole history to be written about bohemian aunts and queer uncles, about those family members who swoop down to encourage misfit children in ways their parents won’t or can’t.)

So did the fact that this man most famous for his prescient scrutiny of totalitarianism and propaganda, for facing unpleasant facts, for a spare prose style and an unyielding political vision, had planted roses. That a socialist or a utilitarian or any pragmatist or practical person might plant fruit trees is not surprising: they have tangible

writing is sometimes brilliant, often useful, famously prophetic, and even occasionally beautiful, within a definition of beauty that doesn’t have a lot to do with prettiness.

If war has an opposite, gardens might sometimes be it, and people have found a particular kind of peace in forests, meadows, parks, and gardens.

It may be the very uselessness of cut flowers, beyond the pleasure they give, that has made them a superlative gift, embodying the generosity and anti-utilitarianism of gift-giving.

“Joy remakes people through combat with forces of subjection [i.e., subjugation]. Joy is a desubjectifying process, an unfixing, an intensification of life itself. It is a process of coming alive and coming apart. Whereas happiness is used as a numbing anesthetic that induces dependence, joy is the growth of people’s capacity to do and feel new