microbes & metaphors #5
4 days of process orientation
Process oriented
Dearest you,
I apologize for not writing for the last two months. My intention for these letters was been to write one around every new moon or full moon. I missed the last four, and should probably miss this one, but since this is a way to keep myself accountable to my re-budding art practice, I will write this. It also serves as a journal, a form of record keeping, and for remembering the moon. Today is a waxing gibbous moon. 84% full. Full enough.
We are back in Toronto (Tkoronto), we drove here from Denver. We took four days for the drive, which leading up to, I was completely dreading. I was excited about the prospect of seeing the land, the dirt, water and trees between here and there, but the prospect of spending 22 hours in the car with my 5 and 1.5 year old felt, little-t-traumatic. In the end though, the need for little bodies to take rests from being inside a metal box travelling at speeds that our brains did not evolve to comprehend, allowed us to stop and witness the in-between places. We got to see the way that people any and everywhere care for and nurture their communities. I was able to take time to reflect on the ways in which the dirt and the water run through all places, changing shape as they make home for different landscapes and cultures. We saw a sunset on the Mississippi River, and we got to appreciate the greatness of Lake Michigan. If there were no kiddos in the car, my partner and I likely would have just powered through to get to the destination. The goal.
[Insert: Queue cliche lesson on appreciating the journey. It’s real though. We never really know where we are going.]
This spring, before I got accepted to the PhD program in anthropology at the University of Victoria, I was dipping into the job application process that I knew would be following my master’s program. I applied to several jobs that I wasn’t inspired by, but that I might have been qualified for, and managed to find one that I thought I would actually have fun doing. In the description they said they were looking for someone who was “process oriented” rather than “goal oriented”. I didn’t know what it meant, but I was attracted to the idea of being process vs goal oriented. Searching for the definition “process oriented” gives a lot of different results. In my version of “process oriented” I imagine it as a challenge to the production->consumption->discardment oriented culture that has cut us off from relationships of reciprocity. It’s one were we have to take time to get to know all the lives, beings and nuances, of what is in between “here” and the “goal”.
The four day long, frequent rest stop drive was a good lesson in this. When we fly over 1,500 miles of ecosystems, human and more-than-human communities, we consume space and discard time. There is no way, no time, to start any relationships with all that is in between the airports. Driving of course is also problematic, but I found comfort in driving from the place where I grew up to the place where I gestated and gave birth to my babies. In the car I am at least a little bit closer to the dirt, and can witness the short grass prairie turn to tall grass, to forest to the Mississippi River watershed, to the Great Lakes. A little closer to being able to make a lasting relationship with a home in a place where my ancestors have little to no stories.
The story (my story) is a sort of dirt worship. Being closer to it amidst all of the moving my little family unit is doing feels like an important part of the process. We are heading towards a goal that is always moving through space, but the ground is always here to hold us.
The book is about how dirt is teaching me to un-become, and become in motherhood, I’m still in the process. That liminal, in between destinations space is, after all, where I live. So, no illustration or publishing possibility updates at the moment.
Thank you for your patience and for believing in me.
Love,
Olivia