"Praise to the ground unfastening To every earthworm’s bristle & every seraph’s six wings entwined in songwaltz of welcome To the body relenting solely to dust the spirit ascending straightway to stars Praise to all who rejoice in becoming To all who transform in return from "Nevertheless: An Ecstatic Ode" by Airea D. Matthews
The trash stinks, no matter how frequently you take it out.
Leather and metal leave shallow indentations in your skin, scalding to the touch.
Every public bathroom is locked, overflowing or egregiously unusable except for that one by the lake that reeks of neglect.
Ah summer. How I couldn’t forget you even if I tried.
It usually goes like this. My partner and I are on a walk, either to get vegan donuts or try our hand at urban foraging (i.e. recognizing that most fruit falls on the ground so who cares if we take a lemon or two or a handful of yellow plums from the neighbors’ trees), when we stumble across a grass lawn. Our respective neighborhoods in West Oakland are filled with pollinator gardens, water resistant plant beds, busted asphalt and shrubbery, but occasionally we’ll come across a swath of manicured lawn that starkly contrasts the rest of the neighborhood's greenery. Eww we’ll say half-jokingly, as either of us rattles off a couple of alternative uses for the space. Imagination is our grandest aphrodisiac.
As part of my job, I talk a lot about remediation. My partner gestures to cracked soil and half-dead grass and asks me about how long it would take to make the soil tillable. I think a little, and respond, well, it depends on the nutrients, heavy metals, pollution, chemicals… he says give me a ballpark estimate. I respond, well, for this particular plot, in a traffic heavy zone, I would say anywhere from a couple months to a year. Potentially a couple of years depending on the soil contaminants. I lead him through the process, and he shakes his head in disbelief peppered with curiosity.
When I began learning from growers and agroecologists in the Bay Area, I was ready to dive in head first and watch these projects take off like a rocket. I was emboldened by the urgency of the climate crisis, but also my own desire to have physical manifestations of progress. I wanted to bear witness to our power. In short, I wanted to be victorious.
Alas, in this era of instant gratification, garden projects and scientific pursuits are reminders that the real work takes time. Plants failed, experiments yielded confusing results, nobody showed up to the event, the grant was denied, the punitive ordinance went through. This is a training in resilience.
alancing the short term with the long term, during an era of unprecedented environmental conditions could be considered the Lord’s work. Sometimes I’m like yeah, it’s above me now. But then I remember how I asked a Black gardener in Bayview how his garden’s kickoff farmers market went, and amidst a smattering attendance, he reminded me that “change doesn’t happen overnight.” It seems cliche, but after months of planning, setbacks and sleep deprivation, Bayview now has a thriving farmer’s market with numerous vendors. All while remediating the soil, cultivating a pollinator garden and making connections across the Bay Area. This is a training in resilience.
Climate crises and political turmoil go hand in hand. It is all interconnected. As we endure the hottest summer of our lives (so far), many of us are reminded of how fragile existence truly is. Many of us are diving deeper into despair, unsure of what the coming months (much less the coming years) will bring. Our minds are preoccupied with survival, with the grief of living in a world obsessed with forgetting, and this is but a part of a larger narrative meant to crush spirits and separate communities. To be perfectly honest, it’s been a long time since I felt at ease. The COVID-19 pandemic awoke a rash of human apathy that I didn’t think we were capable of (at least on such a large scale). Perhaps that’s my own naivete, my own delusion talking circles around me. On the flip side, the uprisings of summer 2020 inspired hope beyond what I thought was possible: a novel way of thinking about our relation to each other and the earth, a latent anger lent towards social change, reclaiming space and time that I thought would continue into something greater. And then it just stopped (or was crushed). Now here we are.
Usually after a left-leaning uprising (that I won’t say was “unsuccessful” but short-lived, lacked follow through, was fragmented and purposefully disrupted), right wing pundits double, triple down on their fascist policies in a torrential effort to discourage further protest. Further criminalization of protesters and gender nonconforming communities, both groups that are seen as threats to the American Empire. Amidst all of this backlash, so many of us are exhausted, simply trying to make it to the next day. We can’t bear to hear the news spew its evil, so we spend what little free time we have pushing down the pain until we can pretend it doesn’t exist anymore – or we lean further into fascism, ready to accept whatever laws proclaim our “safety.”
Even the climate scientists are tired and have little left to say. We know Antarctica is melting, the coral reefs are slowly boiling, drought and floods, two related extremes, are worsening. The alarm has been ringing for some time now, and we are finally experiencing the results of capitalist greed and unfettered growth. At the same time, uprisings are happening all over the globe, folks are blocking , people are creating new materials out of old ones, learning how to grow their own food, striking, unionizing, keeping each other safe. We know our “masters” have abandoned us (or are criminalizing us into extinction) and we are taking on new frameworks of relation. Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes the crop burns in the sun, the police come and raid our joy. The tipping point becomes ugly. A new world is emerging from the carcass of the old, and it’ll take years and years of consistent care to bring it into fruition.
I tell my students, it's not a problem we created, but it’s our responsibility, when discussing climate change and environmental concerns. When we go out for a restoration project or a clean up, there’s always the thought in the back of my mind it’s just going to get dirty again. I am standing at the crossroads of grief and gratitude. We are all tired, and we know that we’re just going to get more tired. There is no “end,” but maintenance that will make our futures livable and inspire calm. But then a couple months later, we’ll return, throw on some cumbia, and make a dance party out of taking our future into our own hands.
On a personal level, I see environmental setbacks reflected in personal ones. This summer has been one of mild disappointment, self criticism, disillusionment, abject failure. The other day, a friend remarked that this time period (these months following the publication of my first book, Heirloom) must be “nourishing” for me. And I responded, nourishing like the goo a caterpillar turns into during metamorphosis. So I am now calling this the “goo” era. Signs of the goo era are as follows:
A complete and utter reevaluation of self and your place in the world
Numerous setbacks, some minor, some earth-shattering
Creative cursing
Reinventing your desires
Working through individual and collective discomfort
Lots of disillusionment that eventually gives way to action
Our desire for a world beyond this one is evident in our inability to cope with the current conditions. Our mere presence disrupts any false assumption of “natural order.” If you too feel like you are losing your mind, I invite you to lean into that “hysteria.” Let the goo work its transformative magic. We’ll meet on the other side.
You can order Heirloom directly from me on my website.
I’ll be reading as part of the Poets in Pajamas Series with Bo Hee Moon at 7 pm Eastern (4 pm Pacific) on Sunday, July 30th with two 15-minute live readings, immediately followed by a short Q&A.
I’ll be tabling at Smokey Stallion in Atlanta as part of Black Writers Weekend on August 5th 11 am - 5 pm EST — come say hi!
And as always, I’m keeping my books open! Let’s grow together ~