Wisdom From the Soil: Process Matters

Now that I am gardening again, it seems to me that all of the collected wisdom of human existence can be rediscovered in this process of producing one's own food. Every time I reach for the metaphor I want to  express an abstract that I am writing, my hand grasps something covered in soil.  The world tends to filter through me like that–in great gushes of meaning–pounding onto me like monsoon rain, until I am drenched beyond reason, standing in pools of analogy. At some point later, I will look back and think indulgently, "Ah, gardening, was it? How quaint."

Gardening, though, it is. I am sorry if gardening is not your thing. My writing, when I am not attempting to make fun, is the sermon given by a dilettante obsessed with the poetry of ordinary living. Or a preaching of the doctrine of "provoking a bee hive to see what the bees might do." Life is this Bible which is constantly illumining me with its intricate strangeness, causing me to sing Hallelujah. All I want from my readers is to go to church with me.

Today I am interested in process, in means and ends and the ripples that they cause in groups of humans when decisions, like a stone, are thrown in among them. This is where permaculture and other organic gardening practices depart from conventional and it is where communities of intention depart from communities of expediency.

There is a tree in my front yard, a large elm, that has grown too large. I am in favor of elms. They are all to the good, providing natural habitat for faeries, children and compost piles as they do.  This one, though, has grown old and arrogant. It is reaching its crown to brush our power lines, its long, rooty toes deep into our sewer system and is overshadowing a lilac bush, which now fails, almost every year, to bloom. It occurred to my husband that it could be removed and that we could then plant a few fruit trees in the area, which would grow shorter and, of course, produce food. I like this idea, in a practical sense. In an emotional sense, I never feel quite comfortable with the cutting of a tree on my property. It's always as if someone has suggested casually that we slaughter an old elephant. Trees have character. Perhaps I am an animist. I do not feel that one should just cut down trees willy-nilly. I do concede, however, that its relationship to our power lines and sewer are problematic.

My husband's friend, who we hire to do general work for us, suggested that we could cut our elm and then inject poison into the stump to kill the roots. I smiled politely at this suggestion, and immediately prepared to go to war against it. I am not an expert on tree removal. If, perhaps, this is the only reasonable way to rid oneself of invasive tree roots, I am sure we will soon know, but I am not prepared to casually introduce blight into a soil I have treated like a soup gently simmered over the years. The relationship between a plant and the soil is reciprocal. The plant pulls water, draws nutrients, and introduces elements back into the soil. This is why we plant nitrogen-fixing plants in gardens to improve the soil. Knowing this demands that one think further than simply getting from A to Z, on a more complex level than tree to soil. It requires thinking like a system.

It is the same with decisions made in a body of people–in a family, in a community group, in a workplace. Process matters. It matters, in many ways, more than results. If you have loaded your soil with chemical fertilizers, pesticides and weed-killer, if you have farmed it in a way to work the land to exhaustion, you may yield a cornucopia for a year, but your soil will die. And if you make decisions outside of established processes, allow power to collect in the hands of too few, and only inform others later of decisions that have been made without them, you will kill your community. To foster an engaged group of employees, volunteers or family members requires that they know they have a role that matters. Systems of democracy, or systems for input, are built up to provide perspective, to spread responsibility and to balance the representation of different points of view. It is never safe to ignore them in order to get things done faster or more easily.

In the nineteen years of my adult life, I have been privileged to be a part of many different communities, all of which functioned very differently. Some have been groups organized around a cause or common purpose, others around a spiritual need. I have been there to see many of them falter and lose their way, and this always happened when they failed to define a process by which decisions could be made democratically or to stick to that process. The most successful, inspiring community I have ever been a part of was the General Service body of Alcoholics Anonymous, its democratic representation. There are more checks built into that system for valuing the opinion of the minority, for gaining the perspective of as many as possible, and for slowing a headlong dash toward any major change than I have witnessed anywhere. It was thrived for almost sixty years and kept an organization alive that saves people's lives every day, despite being run entirely by people who are fundamentally crazy. Not every organization could, or should go as far, but most could go much further in the direction of what AA has done.

Process matters. Healthy soil is more important than a first harvest. A strong community is more important than a good decision. In the end, a rich soil will yield a bounty. In the end, a macerated soil will kill fruit on the vine. When in doubt, always invest in your soil.

It All Comes From What Died Before.

Photo Credit: Flickr by Vanessa Vancour 

I have been very productive today. The sun is out, my yard seems ablaze with the possibility of springtime, and I am shrieking with childlike delight at each earthworm I discover in the leftover decay of winter. Because I practice permaculture–or try to–piles of leaves that have fallen on everything and degenerated under a heap of snow and ice are not a problem for me. Rather than coming in like a maid after a drunken party to clean up the vomit and broken bottles, I am an archaeologist searching for treasure that was left by the world while I waited, snug in my house. Winter has been sitting on my eggs.

Underneath the thick mulch of rotting aspen leaves which I laid on my vegetable bed last fall, there is soil as dark as coffee grounds. And as I lift a handful, worms thick as small ropes slide out from the loam, tiny soil organisms writhe in the embarrassment of sudden light. I am laughing, jubilant. I get it. All possibility is born of decay. It all comes from what died before. I am full of life, writhing with the inner action of soil-turning worms making my waste into fodder for new growth. The world knows, for the most part, two paradigms–rot and cultivation–but this speaks to another.

Putrefaction. The smell of wasted talent, days of usefulness that lie behind one, dreams that will now go unfulfilled. The necessity seems that I lie rotting on the ground, overcome with my pain. "Tara is ill now. Tara is in pain. She can't be asked to make this difference, contribute this service, offer this opinion. She has fibromyalgia and suffers with it terribly." Born of compassion or born of the easy, simple neglect we often show a friend whose illness has taken them from the sphere of our common activities, these thoughts turn me to something corrupted by my illness, unusable as a piece of moldy cheese left too long in the refrigerator. I want very much that the world should notice my need for a comfortable chair, or a call to ask how I am doing, but I never wish that the world would leave me alone to wane quietly in a corner. I am not ready, at thirty-six, to rot.

Cultivation. The tilling of soil, the turning of earth to loosen it for planting, to add fertilizer, to remove rocks, to rake. We have all been doing it as long as we remember, we know how to do it and know that it is right. The work of it seems somehow to be God's work, in particular. And yet, and yet...Just the same as we know, we know the necessity of a positive attitude, a forceful insistence on taking the bull by the horns, conquering indecision, being the author of our own lives, advocating, pushing forward, coaxing the plants to produce. And yet...

I let things lie. I let them compost in place. I cut down the vegetables of last year's garden and leave them scattered about the soil, as messy as the floor of a child's room. I layer down compost, manure, straw, leaves, water. And I practice faith in Nature, which has been making things grow, unaided by humans, for time immemorial. I simply help by moving Her ingredients to the right place. The mistakes of last year–the odd tomatoes, the funky asparagus, the Brussels sprouts that didn't produce in the first year–they are all still there, making that soil richer and wiser. That soil will have a history that can be read in the deep blackness of its crumbly soft meal.

I let myself lie. I makes decisions slowly, letting all of the scraps of consideration slowly turn into something fine enough to use. I am composting everything I ever was, wanted to be, or planned and failed at all the time. No dreams are swept away, just tucked under a protective layer of mulch. The girl who wanted to act, the woman who first married then divorced, the mother who thought she could protect her firstborn son from the world through her vigilant insistence on wooden toys, the runner, the vixen, the addict, the student. They are all in there, steeping in the mingled history of my terra firma.

Because I have swept no parts of myself into the corner of a landfill, I remember what it was to be a teenage addict, and I love addicts, as well as teenagers. Because I have not scorned the twenty-two year-old child who brought my first son into the world, full of ignorance and theory, I remember that I do not know how hard the parents of my failing students may be trying. Because I remember living through a divorce, I stop, catch my breath and try again in my current marriage, over and over and over. Because I have failed and not forgotten, I have humility in my roots, nourishing the leaves and flowers I dare to put forth anew.

I am not better than I was. I am just a product of the power of sunlight and water put to organic matter. I am proof that humanity always moves, transforms, wakens, alters, when we make full use of ourselves.

I Don't Get It

A recurring theme throughout my life has been that I don't quite "get it."  Despite all my best efforts and intentions, I somehow fuck shit up.

In second grade, I remember first noticing this when my class was playing kickball, as a large playground ball collided with my head. I had been scanning the sky for signs of bird activity that might indicate that the people from the parallel universe from which I was sure I had been ushered were coming for me soon. Several classmates expressed a great deal of irritation at the fact that I was "not playing" when my classroom teacher explained to them sharply that I "didn't understand."

This situation has not necessarily improved.

I park crooked. After carefully aiming my minivan, carefully backing up to straighten out, carefully driving back in again, and turning the engine off, inevitably I get out and see that yes–once again the car has been parked as if by a drunken teenager. I don't even bother to parallel park, except under extreme duress, my relation to spatial matters being such that somehow my car is invariably parked two feet out into traffic.

I have worked at my job for four and a half years, during which time we have used the same time sheets to record our work hours, and yet, I fuck these up. I record my work hours in the leave column. I miscalculate my  leave. I scribble. I cross out. Often, I throw out a whole time sheet and transcribe an entire two week period onto a new one out of sheer embarrassment. Sometimes, I transcribe the errors onto the new sheet, too.

I cannot adjust swim goggles, bicycle helmets or ice skates. I have to get another adult to assist me with these matters. I cannot remember how to tie slip knots. In fact, I cannot tie a child's shoes in such a way that they will  remain tied. When I open a Band-Aid package, I invariably twist the Band-Aid so that the latex adheres to part of itself and sticks on the child in a lumpy way. I cannot fix a little girls's pony tail or braid when called to do so. At least, not unless it's Crazy Hair Day at school. When called upon to perform basic mental math, as often as not, I am wrong.

And yet, I am allowed to instruct your children to read.

My students, who regard me mostly with affection–especially my second graders–often giggle to themselves as I routinely knock over water bottles, drop dry erase markers and wonder aloud where I have put something. I suppose this allows them to feel that, although I am there to instruct them with their reading, perhaps they may be of some assistance to me in coping with my basic life skills, and so the situation is more egalitarian than a normal teacher-student relationship. I am good for their self-esteem.

I am not entirely sure why it is that, although I believe my intelligence to above average in general, I am so sub-par in these basic life skills. It does seem to be an experience common to many recovering alcoholics and addicts. I think the source may be a basic defect in attitude. While most people, when discovering a major defect or deficit in their situations, I believe tend to deal directly with it, alcoholics and addicts tend to try to adapt to it, thus learning nothing.

For example, we have an older dishwasher and the silverware basket has worn a hole in one of its sections. The result of this is that utensils dropped into this section fall partway through and prevent the entire rack from rolling in and out. It is massively irritating. So, literally for months, my husband (also a recovering alcoholic) has contrived a specific strategy of placing utensils in this section just so and attempted to teach this to the five other people who load the dishwasher in this house, with the level of success you might expect, which is quite limited. My strategy, which is even less effective, is to ignore the situation until I become extremely irritated by the blockage caused by utensils in the dishwasher.

After four months, it just occurred to me that I could replace the silverware basket. And for about twenty dollars, and the investment of  ten minutes of time online, I was able to order a new part. Duh.

This, I think, is what is wrong with me. After almost twenty years of continuous sobriety, I have taken on a lot of really important flaws in my character, but I have ignored most of the little ones. I suppose I could undertake to actually learn how to adjust a swim goggle, tighten an ice skate or properly park a car.

But I am pretty busy blogging, so I might not have time.

This too shall pass.

Some days I am inspired. Some days I have a crazy, bold, colorful vision for life, and that vision propels me with a kind of beatific, superhuman force, allowing me to scrape up patience or humor or love from places that were empty before.

On those days, I can comfort three sons, teach six classes, write my blog, make a bad-assed dinner, help with three kinds of homework, and remember I love my husband all at the same time. Some days nothing can fuck with me. Some days no one can take me down. Some days I am an avatar of what I care about. Some days I am someone I'd want to be. Someone I look up to.

Other days, Life is like a piece of sand embedded in a wound. Some days I have no patience, and I can't even remember what it felt like to have patience for my kids. Some days I don't think I even like them.

Some days I resent the Hell out of my chronic illness, and my deep resentment of its constant, never-ending presence makes me irrationally angry at all the people who pass by me, just trying to live, who happen not to offer to set the table or move the laundry over. Some days that resentment gets the better of me, and I quietly hate myself for my bitterness.

Some days the pharmacy that doesn't have my Lyrica and the workplace that demands so much of my energy and the children who have left lights on all over my house and the cat meowing at the door again and the migraine that still won't go away feel like a conspiracy to take me down, and I want to yell at some Superhuman Force of Nature that it is an asshole.

But I don't believe in God, so I get mad at my husband because his shoes are in the hallway.

I have forgotten a lot of what I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous. I have not forgotten this:

"This too shall pass."

Photo Credit: Flickr

King of Pain: thoughts on how pain shapes who we think we are

brain pain by Lukasz Szyszka

Pain is different than I thought it was.

I guess I thought it was just–pain. Basic concept.You step on a tack, pain shoots through your foot, you remove the tack, the pain subsides gradually. Even the more serious stuff doesn't seem very deep, except maybe childbirth.

Over the first thirty-four years of my life, the most memorable occurrences of pain have winnowed down to these three foremost experiences:

• I had a urinary tract infection at the age of sixteen that I so neglected that it went to my kidneys, and I ended up in the ER one night, on morphine for a kidney infection. It hurt in a way nothing, up to that point in my life, had ever hurt before.

• When I was twenty, I threw a match into my gas oven twenty minutes after turning the gas on, resulting in a fireball that left me with first and second degree burns on my arms, thighs and face.

• Over the course of eight years, I bore three children naturally and without painkillers, and the last of them unfortunately had to pass over a tailbone that had been made crooked by my middle child's having pressed his charming little fetal head there throughout my entire third trimester. (During that birth, which thankfully for everyone came last, I believe that I was actually pulling my hair and screaming that Mike should shoot me.) Luckily for me, that part was very brief, and then I ended up with a baby that some nurse was spraying down for twenty minutes with Lysol and a wire brush before we could have him. (And people wonder why I preferred my homebirth.)

All of these experiences felt like a test of courage, in some way. Intense, pulsing, consuming pain makes a worthy opponent. I especially remember the burn. At the time, I was about four years clean and sober, and I had often wondered if I would accept narcotic painkillers in the event that something happened to me.

It turned out to be a really stupid question.

When you feel like you are burning alive, which is what I thought I felt like, the option of turning down painkillers seems, really, like not an option at all. All thought of anything else aside, I was shrieking and begging for morphine and explaining that, due to my history of drug abuse, they were likely to need an increased dose of it in order to touch the pain. They kept giving me more and more morphine and Demerol and the pain kept not going away. Finally, after having lectured me that my screams were really upsetting the heart patients, they released me, still in great pain, but sufficiently exhausted and drugged that the pain felt somehow distant and I could sleep. (The next day, I flushed the contents of the bottle of Vicodin they sent home with me, just as soon as I felt merely miserable, and no longer as if I was constantly being licked by flames.)

Mike, Mikalh, and me (after the disinfection was concluded)

What all of these events had in common was that they were finite. They began and ended. They had a clear cause, and that cause could be addressed by medicine or by allowing nature to take its course. At some point fairly soon after they started, they were over, and the pain was all gone, or almost all gone, and I was the same person again.

In fact, in the special case of bearing children, I would say that I was actually a stronger person. I don't say much about it, because it it so personal and so fraught with issues of self-esteem, paternalism and choice, but I am an advocate of natural childbirth. The birth of my children, although painful, left me ultimately feeling powerful and at choice and taught me to know myself as a woman of more resource and fortitude than I had previously thought, which is exactly what I needed to know, as a twenty-two year-old near-child myself, to parent this tiny boy laid in an incubator beside me.

I could miss the clearly bounded confines of acute pain.This latest horrible bout of fibromyalgia agony that has grabbed hold of me, I find myself thinking that the kind of pain I find myself in these days is so very different from all of those. 

Finding words to describe it is like fumbling after something slippery, while wearing thick over-long gloves.  And yet somehow expressing it seems imperative.

Looking at life through chronic pain is like seeing everything through a carnival mirror. With work, I can still make out what is really there, but I am mentally exhausted from hour after hour of subtracting the distortion from pictures and trying to set them right. 

Pain starts defining everything, in spite of all my little measures to keep it at bay. At some point it just stops being "pain", in the way that "standing" is "standing" or "sitting" is "sitting". It starts to be Pain.

And it starts shadowing everything I do: walking up and down the hallways at work, pouring a cup of coffee, getting out of a bath. At any given moment, it is More Pain, Less Pain, Bearable Pain, Unbearable Pain, and I can choose to try and defer the presence of it still longer, allowing myself to continue functioning. But sometimes it becomes large enough that the deferral leaves me feeling like a zombie. 

The amount of work being focused at any given moment on not allowing that pain to form itself in my lips into a scream, or allowing it to let me collapse in public is starting to leave me feeling Empty, like a sort of carapace of human being.

And Life becomes this: doing things, completing tasks, laughing, watching TV, reading a book, loving my kids, doing my job, but all through a miasma of extreme discomfort, cascading through levels of tolerability from Almost Fine to I Think I'm Dying and back to the middle. 

This kind of Pain can start to change who you you think you are. My mother and husband have both looked at me in horror as I announced that I AM going to work today, although I can barely walk a straight line or stand up without holding onto a wall. But what would happen to me if I just stopped?

If I didn't show up for church?

If I quit my job? Or just didn't attend, day after pain-ridden day?

What would be left of Me, without the person that the kids at school call "Ms. Adams", the person who they expect to teach them and make them laugh, who they expect to be THERE and fully present?

How many people would remember to call or email me if I quit the church committee that I'm on? 

The Assembly Room at my church, where all the good stuff happens.

Here's what I have learned: I am who my community thinks I am. 

If I have to stay home with my Pain, I am afraid I won't end up being anyone but a reflection of that Pain and Doubt and Fear, all alone in my house, with no one to make me forget it, no one to need me or expect me to be there, at least for the hours school is in session.

So my worst fear right now is that I might be headed toward not being able to do my job. Monday I was asked to fill in on a duty, and I had to say that I just couldn't. I knew I couldn't stand for an hour. What will happen if I can't walk to classrooms to get kids? What will happen if I can't get up one morning? I should be able to get some kind of treatment and get better. But how long will that take? What if it doesn't work? 

What would happen if this was My Life?

I will only know the day that I cannot make my legs take me there because until that day I intend to try my damnedest to be the best of who the world thinks I am. If this is just a flare, I can outlast it as long as I hold onto all the important pieces of my life until it stops. So, meantime, please excuse my overly opinionated Facebook posts and my crazy knee socks and my rude humor.

I am going to remember who I really am. And, maybe Pain will bring me closer to who that really is.