Defining a day.
Today is dark soup of rain and early evening. It is scrubbing pots at home and not getting a wage. It is also reading a purloined copy of The Art of Eating (that I swear I will return on Tuesdays) and realizing more and more that this is the sort of writing I might be good at. An article about globalization in viticulture and vinification sat bookmarked on Peter's desk and I took the bait. Now, having read most of the mag, the thing that strikes me most is the following quote, lifted from a review of Cooking Weeds: A Vegetarian Cooking Book:
"Some of the most vexing weeds are not wild plants invading our gardens from without. Rather, they are plants that have evolved in partnership with humankind, and they depend on us to disturb the soil so they can thrive. When I leave my fields and walk on the empty rangelands surrounding my farm, I can't find most of the weeds that crowd my vegetable crops. Many agricultural weeds are, in fact, feral heirloom crops that society has forgotten."
What does that mean to me? Last night I met a black woman who was a model. She talked about losing weight and how much she loved food. It was Halloween's eve. We talked about liminality and discrimination. We talked about driving black and beautiful, eating cheeseburgers despite our handlers' wishes. She ordered a salad and I ordered a pizza dripping in cheese and grease, each of us eating as much of each as the other. The group grew and we talked about the guilt of seeming to be a gourmand. She let us know she went as a recruiting agent for the KKK at a Halloween party. We talked about Sherman Alexie. We talked about tricksters and idiots.
And then I launched off. Difference is important. Acknowledging difference is more important. We cannot be complete humans if we do not acknowledge that this is different than that. We ignore every principle of modern academic thought if we don't see that we build meaning by knowing that this is not that. Fork is not Spoon. Round is not Square. We have nothing if we don't have difference. But as moderns we shy away from tasting, seeing, feeling too much and having voices about what we find.
Too often we get caught in the short story, a fear that if we see too much difference, let alone know how to recognize and express it, then we are discriminating. I am here to say that discrimination is good, so long as it is informed. So long as we use our senses, use our minds, use our rhetoric and are held in check by an equally critical group of peers, there are few fears worse than what is happening currently in America. We are not the same, things taste different, places have different cultures, kids can be good and equally bad.
I used to run through cornfields barefoot when I was a kid. Between the rows, arms raked by sharp leaved stalks, my eyes were always on the turned soil one step ahead. Rocks popped up, I avoided. The times where, step by step, there were no thorny bits of geology, there might be thistle, there might be ugly plants. Mostly there was my adolescent indifference to whether I killed what I thought was a weed. My feet went fast, the tassels blurred.
Now I also remember the times where I was not running, where I would sit and rub pasty flowers in my hands and smell liquorice, hazelnuts and strawberry. I remember the lemon of sorrel years before I went and found it and used it in a dish. I remember the spike of an errant step on some nettle almost like I remember my first taste of nettle.
Mostly it means that I would like to know better what are weeds, so I can try to get to know what they are about.
"Some of the most vexing weeds are not wild plants invading our gardens from without. Rather, they are plants that have evolved in partnership with humankind, and they depend on us to disturb the soil so they can thrive. When I leave my fields and walk on the empty rangelands surrounding my farm, I can't find most of the weeds that crowd my vegetable crops. Many agricultural weeds are, in fact, feral heirloom crops that society has forgotten."
What does that mean to me? Last night I met a black woman who was a model. She talked about losing weight and how much she loved food. It was Halloween's eve. We talked about liminality and discrimination. We talked about driving black and beautiful, eating cheeseburgers despite our handlers' wishes. She ordered a salad and I ordered a pizza dripping in cheese and grease, each of us eating as much of each as the other. The group grew and we talked about the guilt of seeming to be a gourmand. She let us know she went as a recruiting agent for the KKK at a Halloween party. We talked about Sherman Alexie. We talked about tricksters and idiots.
And then I launched off. Difference is important. Acknowledging difference is more important. We cannot be complete humans if we do not acknowledge that this is different than that. We ignore every principle of modern academic thought if we don't see that we build meaning by knowing that this is not that. Fork is not Spoon. Round is not Square. We have nothing if we don't have difference. But as moderns we shy away from tasting, seeing, feeling too much and having voices about what we find.
Too often we get caught in the short story, a fear that if we see too much difference, let alone know how to recognize and express it, then we are discriminating. I am here to say that discrimination is good, so long as it is informed. So long as we use our senses, use our minds, use our rhetoric and are held in check by an equally critical group of peers, there are few fears worse than what is happening currently in America. We are not the same, things taste different, places have different cultures, kids can be good and equally bad.
I used to run through cornfields barefoot when I was a kid. Between the rows, arms raked by sharp leaved stalks, my eyes were always on the turned soil one step ahead. Rocks popped up, I avoided. The times where, step by step, there were no thorny bits of geology, there might be thistle, there might be ugly plants. Mostly there was my adolescent indifference to whether I killed what I thought was a weed. My feet went fast, the tassels blurred.
Now I also remember the times where I was not running, where I would sit and rub pasty flowers in my hands and smell liquorice, hazelnuts and strawberry. I remember the lemon of sorrel years before I went and found it and used it in a dish. I remember the spike of an errant step on some nettle almost like I remember my first taste of nettle.
Mostly it means that I would like to know better what are weeds, so I can try to get to know what they are about.
posted by Jassmond at 11:02 PM
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