The Life of a neighborhood

Everything about a place that is different from its price is a gift. The life of a neighborhood is a gift. I know that if you bought a calf from [your neighbor] you'd pay him for it, and that's right. But aside from that, you're friends and neighbors, you work together, and so there's lots of giving and taking without a price—some you don't remember, some you never knew about. You don't send a bill. You don't, if you can help it, keep an account. Once the account is kept, and the bill presented, the friendship ends, the neighborhood is finished, and you're back to where you started. The starting place doesn't have anybody in it but you.

—Wendell Berry, "It Wasn't Me", in The Wild Birds