“But in the dynamic space of the living Rocket , the double integral has a different meaning. To integrate here is to operate on a rate of change so that time falls away: change is stilled…’Meters per second ‘ will integrate to ‘meters.’ The moving vehicle is frozen, in space, to become architecture, and timeless. It was never launched. It never did fall.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

Fence around the campus near my work. With remaining wood that has grown into the fence.

The campus where I work is surrounded by a wire-mesh fence. I had been ignored for decades and was, in many places, covered with various vines that had grown up and expanded until the wire was covered with green.

One day, years ago, too many years ago, a coworker approached me with a request. He was part of a naturalist group that was working to remove invasive species of plants from Dallas and the areas around. There were a couple of nasty species (unfortunately, I don’t exactly remember which ones) living on the fences of the campus. “The berries are attractive to birds and they spread the plants all around,” he said. He asked me to see if I could get the landlord to remove the plants. I did my best, but nothing ever came of it – for a long time.

Finally, last year a crew appeared and removed all the plants. I think they did it more for fire prevention than environmental reasons… but they cut them down, hauled them off. But it had been so long, the thick, tough wood of the vine stems had grown into and around the wires and they could not remove all of it without breaking the wires.

So now, when you drive by you see these odd patterns of old vine wood scattered across the diamonds of galvanized steel wire. I guess they will eventually rot and fall off – but I’ll bet that’s going to be more than a few years.

Wood grown into the fence.