girl I'm so tired
In this issue...
big thoughts | little updates
thoughts
I'm watering dirt in a few different places. I can easily convince myself that there are no seeds just under the soil and I'm wasting my time. I'm acting a fool, embarrassing myself, and others are embarrassed for me.
It's easy to think that. It's hard to remember that the day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit, especially when it's just mud and unending effort.
In the most literal sense, I've been hauling mulch from the front yard to the backyard for several days. I'm sunburnt and strung out, but there's still mulch to be moved. On the other side of the yard is my dirt, raked over and seeds sown, I've been watering it for only a few days. It's dry only a an hour later. Sometimes it seems pointless.
Metaphorically, there's other dirt patches I'm watering. Like meditation, journaling, learning guitar, and surely there's other things I've started "for my health" and wholly given up on. Day by day it's hard to see progress, but I'm hoping that eventually I'll see little sprouts from the seeds I've sown.
I'm reading Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. When it was written in 1993, it was a look into a possible future were seeds of injustice and greed were watered. Butler's imagined 2026 isn't far-flung from the one we're living in. This spring has been the hottest I can remember. And I feel helpless about it.
But I do have a patch of dirt. And some seeds. And access to books about native plants and pollinators. I've seen butterflies and bees hover over the mud and sadly fly somewhere else to rest. I know I'm projecting. I feel I can't rest in a world like this either. With its war and sweatshops and pollution. But what could I even do?
I have my patch of dirt. I have an uncrushable spark of hope. All I can do right now is water my dirt. It's at least something.
I made a playlist about it? It's more productive for me than word-vomitting about it all.
The things I've been reading, watching, celebrating lately have overlapped in an interesting way. I can't yet pin it down in all it's webby interconnections, but the intersection at its center is humanity. Homo sapiens outlived other hominids in part because of their adaptability to changing conditions. We could talk about stone tools and hunting and cooking meat and so many other vital parts of being human. I want to talk about mending. Mending bones, mending clothes, making bags. Author Ursula K. le Guin in The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction emphasizes the bag over the spear as what made Homo sapiens human.
Not killing and dominating, but sharing resources and caring for the sick.
I'm not an anthropologist; I know it's much more complex. I don't think there was ever a perfect state of humanity that we could reset to, like the last good save in a video game. But it's not whatever this is.
All of this to say, our life is made up of the things that we put into it. Your efforts, your attention, your time is what largely makes up your life. And you have the free will to do what you want with it.
In Parable of the Sower, our protagonist Lauren grows up at the end of a cul-de-sac in a small, walled neighborhood. Outside the wall, people are dying, starving, and money has little value. It's not much better inside, but they have a community where they can trust one another. One night, people climb the wall and rob Lauren's house while everyone in the cul-de-sac go to help put out a house fire. In this future, firefighters charge exorbitant fees for their services. The thieves stole food, detergent, and a sewing machine.
The sewing machine. Needing thread, needles, oil, and regular maintenance, the sewing machine was still worth something in this decayed version of society. Throughout the novel, basic human skills are what lead our main characters to relative safety. Mending is one of them. Other skills under threat of extinction are reading, writing, farming, cooking, map-reading and way finding.
At the root of these thoughts, a root living off my very bone marrow is one repeating phrase.
I want to be alive. I want to be human.
updates
In other, more palatable news, I've been making shorts for lounging!
The dogwood tree out front is blindingly green, and I'm gearing up to plant 10 more saplings plus two crepe myrtles.
I hemmed a sequin prom dress for the first time, and as a result, broke two needles on my serger. It was terrifying but I learned how to change the needles and take the dress slowly through my regular machine.
Coming out of winter makes me want to rush and get to the end goal of whatever I'm doing. Spring tells me that, even still, things have to happen in their own time.
Comments ()