Farming in July is something that I couldn’t imagine until the heatwave hit I’m feeling faint while cutting lettuce at 10 AM. Working outside in a burning world is intense.
Thankfully, the farmer that I work for is sympathetic to my weariness and the heat. I have been finishing my day by lunch and starting earlier in the morning. My state of mind is sinking—I am alarmed by news of the southern wet bulb, the hottest day globally. I have felt heat of hopelessness settle into me.
I am ever so grateful at the end of the day that I can return to an artist’s house that I am taking care of. The house is lovely, the studio hallowed and the land ever so wildly tended to create a feeling of Eden. I have been reading both The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry and the Care Manifesto in the meantime and thinking about caretaking in regards to ourselves, communities, land and practice.
Care is a forgotten thing
Care is one of the most bastardized words to enter anew into the capitalist lexicon. Some others include real, community, health, environment (eco-friendly etc), and offshoots of these concepts. Corporations have turned these words into ways to convince us to buy their products. Something especially discussed in the Care Manifesto is how the language of care (especially during the pandemic) was promoted even as public care turned apathetic and health care systems were stripped down, stretching far beyond their limits. Having just been to urgent care for a minor infection, I can attest with timeliness that the goal of the healthcare system is not care at all, rather getting patients out the door as fast as possible on whatever medication will make them be able to return to work the next day. Not a single moment of my five minute interaction with the nurse practitioner focused on prevention of the infection or care to alleviate the infection besides another pharmaceutical.
I learned recently about the difference between individualism and individuation. The former is our pathologized version of the latter. Individuation is the process by which we distinguish ourselves from our group and is always in flux between being unique and blending in. Individualism is a thought process to separate oneself entirely from our environment and communities. Within our individualist culture, we have wholly forgotten how to care for other beings. Our care is currently stretched thin over the world with NPR (also known as the Doom Voices) broadcasting lists of constant global tragedies. The deep care that we have the capacity for almost dissipates without a geologic grounding. We have forgotten how to care for large groups of people of differing politics, backgrounds and beliefs within the locales we reside in.
While walking through the trails of a 10-acre property with the artist who has been tending to this land for the last decade, our conversation comes to the cul-de-sac. There is perhaps no more distinct image of individual un-caring than the structure of suburban neighborhoods. Having grown up in that context, I can recall the strained isolation I felt among the neighbors. Seldom were there close relationships—issues were only discussed in gossip rather than from a helpful point of view.
Care is difficult. It is hard to sit with difference and discomfort to work toward resolution and understanding when the internet has given us digital space to gather a chorus. Care takes a lot of energy. In a society of burnout and obligation, it is hard to cultivate. And yet it looks like many different things: making a meal for your friends, buying someone groceries, having multigenerational community, using garden herbs for health and healing, playing with children, creating space for people to create in, or checking in with people about their pain points in the words of Esther Perel, the way they are hurting or the way they are harming others. I can’t get into all the complications of community accountability but I do firmly believe that healthy communities have a process for mending even though I am still searching for ways to get closer to this.
Caring through teaching
There are little cracks in the concrete of an uncaring society and I grow in them.
I have found over the past year that caretaking is a vital part of my creative practice. This realization became clear through talks with my artist friend which recontextualized my substitute teaching job not as a flexible yet draining side gig, but a way of caring for my city’s children in a subtle way. By sewing in front of them, I expanded their creativity and understanding of what is possible. I hope that the seeds I have planted have started to take root and the kids I’ve had in class are able to explore their creative brains by whatever means . I hope to work with children in a more direct and sustained way—indeed I already work with two amazing kids in a home school setting. My dream is to be involved in an alt school and in library programming. Well, really my dream is for the structure for public school to loosen and expand to accommodate creative practice and different ways of learning.
While the largeness of care in education is daunting, I am making classes that interrupt rigid learning structures. I am overjoyed by the cohort in my Dairy Barn class this season. All five of these students are so special and come with widely different backgrounds and interests. I feel honor to steward a space in which we can come together and explore our ideas in a creative way. In multi-week classes, I encourage my students to care for and tend to their own lineage and identity through their making practice.
I’ve been sitting on this draft since the wildfires were raging so in lieu of writing more, I’m just going to release it into the world as an apology for my absence. I’ll be starting a graduate program soon so I do believe we will soon be getting back into the thick of history again.
I hope you have a wonderful and care-filled week,