Three Tractors and the Problem of Enough

There was no sensible plan that ended with three tractors.

There were only small decisions, each apparently defensible at the time. A job that needed doing. A machine that might be useful. An old engine with enough life left in it to provoke optimism.

The appeal isn’t difficult to understand. Machinery is honest about its refusal. Something is blocked, starved, seized, loose or broken. The problem may be difficult, but it has edges. You can put a hand against it.

Writing rarely offers the same courtesy.

A sentence can be technically sound and still refuse to live. A memory can turn over without catching. A chapter can consume a week and leave no visible work behind. An old tractor, by contrast, will eventually reveal what it needs, even when the revelation arrives covered in oil.

There is dignity in work that leaves evidence on your hands.

Tonight, one tractor is running, one is considering the matter and one has developed the stillness of an expensive garden ornament. This seems, on balance, like progress.