LOVER

Cinnamon Black, FiYaYa, New Orleans

 

o hello

It's wild how nobody acknowledges Covid anymore while it's spiking at alarming rates, nobody's masking, vaxxes have lost efficacy against the new mutations, & the CDC admits repeat exposure is deadly. It's a massive, collective gaslighting that the world is engaged in & it's so fucking sad.

This pandemic has proven that people are less able to manage trauma, loss, death and change than ever before. No technological or material advances have made us more compassionate, creative, or capable of real change, evolution. The earth was betrayed by this culture & for what? Now the earth is biting back and people are not ready! None of what's happening now - unchecked pandemic, floods, fires, temperatures rising - can be endured in a sustainable way. But people are still blindly insisting on "normal", come hell or high water. Both are here

it's on

few things make me happier than growing food. Not just to interrupt capitalism, not just to eat. The whole process keeps the body connected to earth, and fluid, spontaneous. I'm learning it's like making music, growing things, or a painting or poem. Ya gotta stay sharp, ready to act when the fruit is ripe, to intervene when the plants are thirsty or getting devoured by aphids. That means picking peaches in batches, peeling and slicing them for preserves or freezing to pull out in the dead of winter when everything is hard and cold. Nothing like a peach cobbler to cut through January. Especially when the peaches are your friends. I watered those trees during the long Spring drought, talked to them, labored. It's like with the basil and tomatoes I started as seeds in tiny domed trays on a heating pad while snow fell. Now I eat basil everyday, and make batches of pesto that I'll devour on some gray day to wake the heart up, and pop golden cherry tomatoes warm from the sun for breakfast. Been pickling a lot, too - the fridge is filling with frosty jars of jalapenos, beets, turnips, green beans, radishes, cucumber, watermelon rind. Waste nothing! Food is a gift, growing, cooking, sharing it is my biggest connection to life right now - while everyone and everyone is fully devoted to pretending the pandemic wasn't and isn't real. It's real for me, I still live with it, face and process it. Earth and its cycles keeps me sane while the world around me is not

Tammy died in my arms today, my good big girl. She was such a blessing & I'm so honored she trusted me - it took 8 years to woo her! A tough feral cat having babies in these streets & refusing to let anyone close. But my dog & I won her over, and I was able to give her things she'd never known: safety, sleepy cuddles, soft blankets, toys! She savored all of it and told me how grateful she was, all the time. Calm, soft, solid - o Tammy! My tank. Her illness progressed fast and her death was a mercy - she's not suffering anymore. O it all goes too fast! Too too fast

Hug your loves, it's over before you know it and the end, the end is more finite than we can conceive -