I live in two worlds I step seamlessly between them daily. In one, the lines are straight Rails extending to infinity Held by evenly-spaced ties Screens and windows flat All surfaces smooth and finished With paint or plastic or fabric Corners trimmed Behind the paint, rectangles of reformed rock Behind the rock, commodified wood 2x4x8, all uniform and alike Far removed from forest origins All static Locked in place Unchanging for years and decades. In the other, the lines are curved, branching Or there are no lines Blades of grass, tree branches, leaves Rivulets and creeks and rivers Bees and frogs and hummingbirds Blossoms opening Berries ripening Rainbows fading into golden sunsets All dynamic Every part in constant motion Renewing, re-creating, rearranging Day after day Year after year. We are built this way, inside Though we may square off our hair And iron our shirts And adjust our ties To broadcast straight edges Our vessels and nerves branch like trees Our blood flows like creeks and rivers Our organs and hormones respond to our environment Our symbionts respond to our diet and emotions Our skin heals and renews itself Our bodies are alive, dynamic And we are afraid of them, We lovers of order and straight lines. We tend to birth and illness and death In austere white rectangular rooms Full of metal and plastic and transactional carers Trained to understand the body as a machine. I live in two worlds, and yet I wish to break down those boundaries To release my fear of my own body To bring more wildness into my home To project less linearity outward. I am grateful for Elza’s ever-multiplying plants On every shelf and windowsill and surface Growing and blossoming in their pots And I am no longer so enamored with straight garden rows Onions and tomatoes spaced by measuring tape Just give them room and water And they will thrive. My Minnesotan father was taken aback by the wildness here Blackberries and hawthorns at property boundaries Climbing over fences and sprawling into lawns Most Minnesotans would not allow that His own garden was rigidly rectangular Twelve tin-lined plots in a grid Fifty-four potato hills to a plot Perhaps that is why, in part, I am no longer a Minnesotan. Perhaps we are releasing our collective minds Or perhaps we are simply running out of resources for control But I am noticing changes More grass growing in pavement cracks More shrubs along fencelines More moss on rooftops More apples left to rot on the ground. Some would call it decay Deferred maintenance Invasive species run amok But if I look closer I notice That is where the white-crowned sparrows are Eating seeds of Queen Anne’s lace and teasel Where the Townsend’s warbler is finding small insects Where the robins are finding food beneath the ice Our straight edges are softening A sort of liminality is growing Two worlds beginning to merge. My next house will not be a simple box Sleeping behind heavy curtains To block the glare of streetlights I wish instead to sleep beneath starlight and raindrops Glass above and on all sides Breeze wafting through in summer I wish to build with real trees and real rock and real earth Not only their refined, reformed, commodified derivatives. I wish to join these two worlds To blur the boundaries Inside and outside Developed and undeveloped Constructed and grown To relax the need for separation To truly become of this Earth.
So beautifully written, of this journey I know many of us are on. Remembering us as a part of the land and not something separate or above. Indeed, the sweetness of life in found in weaving ourselves as a part of its web. <3
I feel thoroughly woven after reading this… woven into everything 🕸️💫