Last week, I saw a rabbit on the sidewalk as I walked the one block home from the trolley. It was nervously looking around and scurrying back and forth, blocking the path of a kid who seemed to be walking home from school. It freaked me out for some reason. Its ears weren’t as long as that of the rabbit I spend the most time around, and it looked kind of mangy. I hadn’t seen a rabbit boldly hanging out on a busy sidewalk before. I had a moment of wondering if it really was a rabbit, or some large rodent I just didn’t know the name of. In my tired, frazzled brain, the whole scene was starting to take on a surreal and stressful tinge. I stepped off the sidewalk and gave the rabbit a wide berth.
As I’ve started acquainting myself with a new neighborhood and a new route to the farm, I’ve been trying to look around more and get to know the life forms surrounding me. There’s a bunch of mugwort in my front yard that I haven’t had the heart to pull out yet. There’s daisy fleabane growing in empty lots. There’s a purple tradescantia someone put outside their house for the warm season. I find my eyes drawn to the colors of the church building and the auto shop signage I pass on my way to and from the trolley. I’ve been feeling worn down, but these acts of noticing have kept me tethered to a sense of meaning.
I looked at a calendar today and realized it’s been over two weeks since my last greenhouse missive. I feel bad for letting time slip away from me like that. I’ve been told I put too much pressure on myself to follow through with things, sometimes overlooking the very real limitations of time, energy, and health. I think this is true. At the root of this is a desire for connection and care, and a fear that such things won’t be possible if I don’t maintain a certain level of work and production. This fear is longstanding, societally constructed, and useful to those who profit from the labor of the majority. Thankfully, it doesn’t reflect the reality of the relationships I have in my life. I show up to the greenhouse 6-7 days a week, or else the plants will die. I’ve been thinking about the morality often associated with showing up. Being present for others (humans, plants, animals) is deeply important to me. It’s something that is necessary in order to sustain life; our bodies depend on such acts of consistency and attention, and none of us are truly self-sufficient. In order for life to be sustainable, though, we also need to know when and how to let go. When to ask for help, when to recognize that we can’t go on in the same way and our promises are in need of adjustments.
When I think about how to show up without pushing myself past a breaking point, I’m reminded of a distinction my therapist once made between loyalty and intimacy. They described loyalty as akin to obedience; a constant reaffirmation of someone else’s beliefs or demands. Intimacy, on the other hand, is when we find our diverging beliefs and integrate them. Intimacy is recognizing where our capacities or understandings don’t align, and figuring out how to move from there. I want to be intimate with the labors of care that I commit to in this lifetime. I want to practice showing up, and recognizing when I no longer should.
It’s been Mother’s Day season, which means we’ve been inundated with advertisements about loyalty. On every media platform, we have been subject to marketing campaigns that urge our loyalty to hyperspecific notions of love, family, and maternity. As I usually do around this time, I’ve been thinking about how often I’ve been taught to confuse loyalty with love. What if sometimes the most loving thing we can do is to be disloyal—to step away, to be candid about the parts of us that are disobedient, weary, and unable to continue?
I’ve been playing a game called Heaven Will Be Mine, which is about fleshliness, machines, and desire, the queer astrophysics of the cosmos, and trans girls piloting giant robots battling each other in outer space. One of the characters, Pluto, operates an unspeakably powerful robot and is (literally and figuratively) carrying the hopes and aspirations of her faction on her back. There’s a scene where one of the characters tells Pluto how impressive she is, and Pluto responds that she actually wasn’t the most talented member of her cohort; she’s just the one who never said no, continuing to take on the increasingly strenuous and lonely sacrifices demanded of her. I keep thinking about how Pluto’s loyalty to someone else’s dream alienated her from those she loved, putting her on a pedestal she never wanted or asked for. (“I’m small,” she repeats to one of her friends who insists on her resilience. Spoiler alert: her robot self is anything but small.) My favorite playthrough of the game is the one where Pluto refuses the project of colonizing outer space, betraying her faction and reaching for an older and more collective dream instead.
Every farm season has forced me to confront the limits of my brain and body as I navigate various forms of unwellness while caring for the plants and soil. This has been even more true since my bike accident last year, which has affected my mobility and prevented me from driving. Left with no choice but to ask for help, I have been learning how to show up for my commitments in ways that are more honest and less loyal. I struggle to resist the seduction of self-destruction-through-work. I struggle to be disloyal to others and to the myths of productivity and individualism that have raised me. But I know that such refusal is a precondition for intimacy with the land and with other living beings. I am learning how to need, for my sake and yours.
Nursery and life updates:
So many things are seeded and growing and blooming and in need of transplanting and thirsty and demanding fertilizer. My seed crops (siling labuyo, Jamaican pumpkin, and cerassee) are about ready to go in the ground. My friends Amirio and Wallace came to hang out at the greenhouse. My friends Claire and Ty visited Philly and witnessed a fun and chaotic weekend of shuttling seedlings between the greenhouse, plant sales, and my new living space. I went with my friend Onion to a workday at Dirtbaby Farm and it was beautiful! I sold starts at the Philadelphia Orchard Project’s spring plant sale and talked about heritage crops with many lovely people—I was particularly touched to meet so many customers excited about growing Caribbean plants. It was my favorite event of the season by far. I also vended at the second Greensgrow Farm site plant sale of the year, where I connected with some sweet customers and talked to new and old farmer friends. I’m looking forward to the rain.
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"Being present for others (humans, plants, animals) is deeply important to me. It’s something that is necessary in order to sustain life; our bodies depend on such acts of consistency and attention, and none of us are truly self-sufficient. In order for life to be sustainable, though, we also need to know when and how to let go. When to ask for help, when to recognize that we can’t go on in the same way and our promises are in need of adjustments."
So beautiful. Thank you for this one.
i love and needed this reminder on showing up. the distinction between loyalty and intimacy is so sharp - one I was raised on, and the latter I am growing into. exactly as you said, for myself, my people, and the land. tysm <3