It Gets OK/To Praise the Day

July in lockdown looks like sweating and stinking and sobbing in the garden planting brassicas _{<far, far past time>} grieving with Our Plague Year. We are, all, grieving. Or hiding from it. When we’re gardening and protesting and worrying and washing more dishes than we ever believed possible. This whole time I have had a lot of trouble accessing any part of this grief beyond intellectually knowing it’s there.

This week I finally touched gently it in two places. I got up the gut to finally listen to Our Plague Year _{<I was really worried it was going to be too much to bear>} and the community it offers is profoundly comforting. I am relieved to be able to cry.

‘It’s so good to learn that right outside your window
There’s only friendly fields and open roads’

I also realized, with a thump, that because of these trying times Sayer is over.

I’m not going to get into a long description of what that means, but it’s a podcast and they were raising funds for its final season just as Crow Flu kicked off. A final season whose primary story arc is about a maliciously deployed pandemic designed to cause a near-extinction event. The last Sayer upload is nothing more than the showrunner saying he’s suspending fundraising due to obvious current events. He doesn’t want to write this show right now and he doesn’t want to take money towards a show whose plot hinges on a global pandemic during the actual thing. He called it a hiatus, but I don’t see any way my murder robot space corporation mass murder show is coming back. A changed plotline would be almost impossible to pull off and it’s hard to believe anyone’s going to want to come back and write about the whole world catching a fatal disease anytime soon. So that’s my silly, unreasonable thing that this disaster took from me that means little in the grand scheme, but I am gutted anyway. I was really excited to know if they stuck the landing or not, and it’s a shitty way for a really great artwork to be cut short.

‘And you’ll sleep better when you think
You’ve stepped back from the brink
And found some peace inside yourself
Laid down your heavy load’

We are finally having rain again after it did not rain a single time in the month of June. Scapes are cut and frozen and the rest of the peas got blanched tonight and put up. In gardening time we are entering the first weeding lull for a period of tearing out interlopers and watering again and again. The pole beans are just beginning to develop tiny fruits under their extravagant flowers. They will be ready next; and cucumbers and summer squashes. After them everything happens all the time, beginning with the garlic aggressively demanding removal from the ground to be hung in the barn.

‘It gets all right to dream at night
Believe in solid skies and slate blue earth below’

Mister bought quite an array of antianxiety medication _{<no, I will not be sharing how he did this>} early in the pandemic because he was, simply, terrified that I would quite literally die of anxiety. And back in March and April it was certainly a real possibility that I could simply go tharn unto death. But I have not really been drinking for some time now. And within a few weeks of having rescue options, I rapidly transitioned into leaning heavily on their temporary peace and then just as rapidly not feeling more than a very occasional need to be soothed. I’m actually not only doing all right, I’m thriving right now. For the first time in my life and at a time like this.

‘It’s okay to find the faith to saunter forward
With no fear of shadows spreading where you stand
And you’ll breathe easier just knowing that the worst is all behind you
And the waves that tossed the raft all night have set you on dry land’

I think tonight I figured out why, or part of. Even when I was working and I wasn’t home all the time, my life was bounded by a series of overlapping rings of structure to my time that went beyond a work schedule. The structure of the year remains the same in a plague year as in a before year. The squash blooms, the garlic comes up before anyone else. Things are ready to plant or harvest. Seeds are ready to gather. The potatoes are ready to be hilled. Harvests need to be frozen or dried or stored. It’s time to start seedlings or plan beds or pot wildflower seeds. The structure of our life with the land is constant and guaranteed, though unmetered and a bit wandering. I have thrived within this structure even at my lowest capacity times. In some of the smaller cycles, chickens need watering and eggs gathered each morning. Dogs need feeding twice a day. The compost has to be brought out 2-3 times a week. My period insists upon arriving every 6 weeks. Dogs need Frontline and HartGuard on the 19th.

Since lockdown began we have added new structures between and over the old: sourdoughs _{<one white, one wheat>} need feeding each Friday. The crock pot needs to be prepped and started by 1 if we’re going to eat before 6. I deliver eggs to a friend’s mom on Monday mornings. Mister is gone four days each week and home for three. We drink and talk about guns and the end of the US on Friday nights on Zoom. Once a month or so, I have to make another batch of _<humming>bird drink for the feeders. Try to make sure I go to bed around 2 and get up by 10 and mostly succeed on both ends.

‘It gets okay to praise the day
Believe in sheltering skies and stable earth beneath’

All of these series of rhythms tell me where I am and when I am and where I’m headed. They are more real and make more foundational sense than the rigorous and arbitrary set of times and places they replace. And they are more fundamentally real and rational. Their effects are tangible.

I have just sort of let go of clock time. Trying to track being shut in my house through the kinds of cycles that dictate our capitalist-oriented lives was causing me a lot of strain. Trying to force hours and days and weeks, etc into the metered, organized structure we’re taught is mandatory was making me panic more acutely than any of the headlines in the early months. It’s actually fine that June was 4 days long and April and March lasted a combined 9 months. That July has been a day and a half but also a month and half so far. It doesn’t really matter that I can’t make reality map to standard intervals anymore; the garlic will still be ready for harvest when it’s ready. There’s no one to ruin my life for not caring about learning that today is the 10th, not in fact the 8th.

‘Walk by faith
Tell no one what you’ve seen’

Today I completed my quarantine haircut plan _{<generous top hair trim, then aggressive trim and reshape, the finale was just buzzing all of it for the first time in my life>} and I am extremely pleased to report that I stretched this hair management effort out to 119 days. I have had something to look forward to in this area for almost 4 months. I guess now it’s time to find a new plan. But I have time. It’s only 3/8″ long right now and as soft as a baby chick’s little fuzz feathers.

I still feel like we’re making gains on preparing for what will likely be much deeper food network collapses. Our local anarchist gardening gang continues to slowly grow. We have been carefully meeting in driveways to distance while exchanging plants and pots and seedlings and equipment and excess from our individual harvests and processing. I was gifted the root ball and a great quantity of fresh rosemary boughs from a friend who had to cull a bush. We planted the hacked up plant _{<which shows no indication of a will to live at all>} and trimmed new growth to clone children from and dried boughs upon boughs of rosemary. We have been sharing spice jars of rosemary to everyone who will take one. There are still a spaghetti jar and half of another full in the cupboard that we can continue to pass around. Next week I will cull an array of medicinal plants _{<violet leaf, yarrow, plantain, raspberry leaves, lactuca, mint, lemon balm, red elderberry if they’re ready, St. John’s wort, thistle, feverfew>} for our herbalist members to use in tinctures. In the fall, we will collect valerian root and burdock for them to use. These are the care networks that will protect us and keep us safe in the times we are entering.

‘It’s all good to learn that from right here the view goes on forever
And you’ll never want for comfort and you’ll never be alone’

Within our household, we are moving into broadening tincturing and very basic herbal productions. Drying more garden herbs and medicine plants alike. I have been funneling portions of some dinners into the chest freezer much earlier in the year than is typical. Every fall, I do huge batches of cooking so that we have delightful food on hand in the dark cold times when I am too depressed to really cook regularly enough. In addition, I have been freezing things we typically do not have in quantity enough to ever consider putting by. First I froze a 25 lb bag of white flour we did not need and which was the result of frustration on Mister’s part during the flour shortage — I had asked for specifically a 1 or 5 lb bag of KA whole wheat; solely to make sure I could feed the starter the kind of wheat flour it likes best — he brought home what he thought would end this ongoing flour nonsense forever and I really don’t blame him. So I froze flour for the first time. I froze milk (for baking) in case of distribution hiccups in dairy. I bought extra rice because I’m sick of buying rice constantly and froze some of it. I have been diverting some packages of butter into the chest freezer. Hard cheeses _{<I should do more of these>} too. I want to make a double batch of dumplings to freeze, now that I have made dumplings and I know it can be done. I don’t have as much garlic chives to work with as I really need, though.

‘See the sunset turning red let all be quiet in your head’

I planted green onions this year and it’s a real source of pride and joy to have them on hand. I never thought much of them because the ones at the store are always slimy and disgusting and I’ve never felt pleased with my choice any time I’d bought them. I didn’t realize they’re utterly different when harvested and used the same day. I’m so glad they’re here now.

I just want to talk all the time about the land that is beginning to slowly love me back. Having a year in which I can just immerse myself in this relationship and actually give so much more than I usually have the bandwidth for is thrilling. And the land is doing nothing but reward our attentions. It’s slow. All the best processes are slow. But it is so deeply purposefully rewarding.

‘And look about
All the stars are coming out
They shine like steel swords
Wish me well where I go
But when you see me you’ll know’
-The Mountain Goats

I love you. I have faith in you that you can burn your local police station. That you can create your own food resiliency. That you can find community that will help see everyone possible through what’s coming. I know you can feed each other. I believe that you’re brave enough, and big enough and powerful enough and that you will win.

[I have been holding back on using this song until it was the right song and I’m glad I found its entry]