You Pull, I'll Push

And Other Covenants With The Earth

Slowly I have been waking to the world around me. I lived before caught up in a mad current created by this drive for acceptance and success in the guise of happiness. I am learning to let go. Part of that process, the most grounding part of it for me, is reconnecting with the Earth. I feel richer knowing what healthy growing soil looks like. I feel more alive breathing in honey suckle and knowing that I am breathing in honey suckle. I feel more connected to where I am when I recognize birdcalls. I feel. I just feel more. But very trickily it slips into knowing. I know that when my tomatoes begin to rot on the bottom they need more calcium. I know that garlic helps my health if not my breath. I know that the gravitational pull of the full moon may help induce labor. It becomes haughtiness rather than holiness. Again, I find myself possessing rather than appreciating, which keeps me striving after something that is ultimately fruitless and an illusion.

My good friend was full term right around the full moon. I thought for certain, knowing a little something about nature, that the gravity would in fact induce her labor. A “You pull, I’ll push” kind of deal. I looked up at the moon, getting ready to crest, and spoke to it as a woman, expecting her to aid my friend in labor. I couldn’t believe it when I found out that bitch ignored me (the moon, not my friend). And I came to realize that I have this false sense of control by coming to know nature. I have felt that growing my own food and knowing the land around me offered some sense of security. But the whole reason humanity has spent so much effort detaching from nature is that it is completely unpredictable. I can add as much calcium to my tomatoes as I want this year, but l am not going to get them to produce. I have no idea what went wrong. And I can down garlic clove after garlic clove with tongue-burning fervor, but I might still catch a cold and not be able to see my new baby friend until it passes. The thing about nature that separates it from the concept of a God is that this world doesn’t give a shit about us. Nature is completely indifferent to our desires, even to our health and individual survival. Which is part of what makes it so grounding. It puts me in my place, so to speak. It crashes through my lofty aspirations like a wave crashes over a sand castle. And I realize that my life’s work is just sand, powerless in the swell of the ocean. Is the point to enjoy the ride? Or to try and build something any way?

On the Nature of Understanding

Say you hoped to

tame something

wild and stayed

calm and inched up

day by day. Or even

not tame it but

meet it halfway.

Things went along.

You made progress,

understanding

it would be a

lengthy process,

sensing changes

in your hair and

nails. So it’s

strange when it

attacks: you thought

you had a deal.

-Kay Ryan