I am going to try and weave a pattern that will connect an anxiety filled week with the subversiveness of ethnic/immigrant gardening/farming love of the land, and return back to myself and being subversive with my hazelnut milk.... let's see what happens.... and thanks to one and all who rode this week out with me.
This week I had a day where I totally believe that I experienced some kind of anxiety moment. It was like nothing I have ever experienced before, and until today, hoped to never have again. And for those who do have regular anxiety/panic attacks, I won't even begin to assume that I know what your experience is like, but this is what I felt. On Tuesday I was rockin' my shift at work when I felt my normal kind hyperness rise and then turn into something I didn't understand. I became anxious, nervous, unable to really focus, and worried about.... nothing I could name. I felt like my whole insides where in a constant state of tremors, and I wanted everyone to just fuck off! I tell you, that does not add up to good customer service. I made it to to my lunch break where things just kept escalating. I could hardly sit down to eat my lunch. Not long after getting back on the floor, my digestive system told me to fuck off. Crushing feeling outside my ribs. Expansive feeling inside. No where to go except down. It was painful and confusing. I haven't been sick all winter. Not even the sniffles. I drank some ginger tea. Made a note-to-self to make some ginger ale very soon, and eventually calmed down, burped several times, and passed out for 12 hours. It was the most exhaustive emotional experience I had had in a super very long time. It left me on an emotional precipice that I continue to hang from.
At first I blamed this experience on outside global issues, like the bastards who want to expand nuclear energy even as Japan melts down... the list is long. Then I blamed it on needing a vacation... which I do. Eventually I admitted that I still have a great deal of shit to deal with. That this experience has brought me to the very edge of tears, and as close as I've come in a VERY long time to crying, read being vulnerable. I researched, I analyzed, I thought and thought about it over and over again blah blah blah, meaning finding ways to make sure it doesn't happen again. Then today after a great talk with a very good friend, I decided what the fuck. Bring it! I have spent most of my life in a state of not feeling normal compared to those around me. I filter my responses more than most people might believe. I feel like a freak most of the time, or at least I did before moving to Portland and working at the co-op.
And here is where it becomes subversive. If I had decided to "monitor" or not push myself beyond a comfort zone I would not be out as a queer-bike riding-feminist-vegan (especially in the midwest)-anticapitalist-anticonsumer- no t.v.-animal activist-coop shopping- earth loving.... person that I am. Let alone being proud of all those aspects of my identity. It would be so freaking hard for me to live the "straight" life of the dominant culture. I actually tried, well still queer and still vegan, but the rest was in the closet. Every day was hard and a struggle. Hiding my emotions, my love for the world, for my life, my friends, basically that all of the above choices that I just listed out that define who I am, are because I love. I am bursting with love for this world, and all the things that are going on in this world that is causing suffering of the air land water people animals plants fungi view of the stars... breaks my heart. It hurts so deeply. And now that part is out of the closet, well is peaking through a crack in the door. I could go on, but I will stop there, and continue the weaving. The part of this that is most subversive is the part where I let my emotions be my deciding factor and not "logic" not what is "rational". Those are all things that convinced people to go to war, wipe out cultures and ways life, that its ok to kill as long as I have a really good reason. There are cultures who make decisions based on feeling and care/love for all that is. People who see the interconnectedness of us all. And this leads to gardening.
I've been reading the book, "The Earth Knows My Name" by Patricia Klindienst. The prologue is a strong story all on its own. It's the story of the story of a seed, or actually seeds. "What are seeds, that people carry them thousands of miles to an unknown land and treat them as if they were kin? What have we forgotten about food that people of traditional cultures remember when they regard a meal as a ritual offering?"
One question she asks of all the gardeners is "whether they thought a garden could be about justice, every one of them said yes." The stories in the book are the stories about social justice. It could be how Italian immigrants brought seeds to plant to maintain part of their culture even as they were forced to assimilate based on the prejudices in this country, or Native cultures bringing back the traditional crops and foods to heal their bodies and their cultures. To read Vanzetti's letter as he writes about his gardens, knowing he will be executed soon for a crime he didn't commit, is reading pure poetry. She also brings up E. O. Wilson and his argument in "The Environmental Ethic". He warns that "Our troubles arise from the fact that we do not know what we are and cannot agree on what we want to be. The primary cause of this intellectual failure is ignorance of our origins... Humanity is part of nature, a species that evolved among other species. The more closely we identify ourselves with the rest of life, the more quickly we will be able to discover the knowledge on which an enduring ethic, a sense of preferred direction, can be built."
In other words, we need to get out of our comfort zone of the "dominant culture" and return to our interconnected (if that is the right word) of all that is. Subversive actions. The choice of not being assimilated into the dominant speiciest view, and play nicely with all. Well that is what I am taking from it.
What the heck does this have to do with hazelnut milk. Well, I get to buy hazelnuts grown in Oregon. Toss in some very special fair trade vanilla (if I choose), and either a couple dates, or a little maple syrup, and that's it. I have my own jar of hazelnut milk. No added chemicals or preservatives. No GMO soy beans. No Monsanto in my "milk"! I also make a great deal of hemp milk, and to be honest, Tempt does a really good job at not having a great deal of crap in their milks. Just a little vitamin D and B-12; however, I do love mine better.
But, the more we can say "NO!" to those companies that buy crops that are grown with seeds from Monsanto, and the like, the more we say no to a system that says "NO" to all other life forms on this planet... and most human forms too, especially human forms that come in various shades of brown, and all persons that are on the poverty end of the economic scale. To put a positive slant on it, I want to say "yes" to world where all have value, and share in the nurturing of all that is around us.
"The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and in the passive." - William R. Inge.
"To change ideas about what the land is for is to change ideas about what anything is for." - Aldo Leopold.
Thanks for reading
Thanks for feeling
