Making an egg salad sandwich and thinking about Carol Judy, the time I made her an egg salad sandwich and she didn't believe I had never made one before because it was that good. Thinking about how my most meaningful relationships are nurtured by the growing, harvesting, preparing, cooking, eating, and sharing of food and in that way how food is a vessel for cultural memory. Thinking about how when a member of the community is sick or grieving, food can translate the words that won't find their shape into 'You belong to this community and we love you'. Thinking about Emeran and Abby and women who save the seasons and the stories they hold. Thinking about when I got out of college and moved home with a broken heart and no job and how signing up to deliver meals to folks on the first and third fridays of every month was a routine that felt like purpose, how it made me feel a part of my community again. Remembering visiting my friend Margaret of Todd, NC who lives in the house her father built on the same road her grandmother sowed seeds according to the signs and how she would give me treats even though I was the one bringing her food, but that's just what you do when someone comes to visit. Thinking about 45's budget cuts and how they're doing their damnedest to cut the humanity right out of us in that cutting food & agricultural & art programs & access to healthcare is a tactic to remove the means by which we can connect, organize, gather, sustain and resist. Remembering sitting on the bed with Carol Judy eating egg salad sandwiches and listening to her talk about how we need our 'communities of care' to be able to survive in our 'communities of place' and how only a few weeks later how beautifully her community of care made it possible for her to die in her community in place. Thinking about how caring for one another has a long history of being a radical act and about Gabby and Annie Jane and all the mamas who carry that tradition in their marrow. Thinking about how nobody's gonna take that from us.
P.S. I said I was gonna update this every week, well I ain't but I will update it sometimes.
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I should have been packing up all of my belongings to move out of my apartment, instead I was remembering the chemistry for time travel. An old roll of film in the bottom of a box; I have waited two years knowing that in its silver awaits thirty-s ix frames of "this is how your heart was broken" and 35mm of "see how much has changed". Time travel can be tricky that way; revisiting all my hollow places, for a moment when I hold the negatives up to the light I remember the sharpness of all my arrows: "Oh yes, I remember now, how could I have forgotten? I loved you once..." But that is just a moment and arrows dull and crumble. On a dare I let a psychic run her fingers across my palm and declare that I will have happiness and success in a few years as long as I don't get too distracted, and oh yeah that I should fall in love with a gemini... And all these things can be mine if I come back for more sessions... So I guess there is always that. Time travel is an unreliable method of transportation. Good things come from remembering that "forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past" and my arms only reach so far ahead of me.
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