Some days I feel more microchip than animal. More analytics than respiration. Some days I’m just a KPI an ROI an RFP churning. I’m making productivity butter. I’m circling back, I’m putting a pin in it, I’m putting it in the parking lot, I’m taking this offline. I’m one big workflow except the work doesn’t flow so much as scrape against my bones. I’m 20 emails away from being 13 Slack messages away from wrapping up a two-hour zoom meeting. Then it’s just a handful of scheduled Tweets until Twitter flickers out and all those stats and followers slip right off the edge of the earth. Don’t worry though, Instagram and Facebook and now Mastadon I guess are there to catch me. Maybe today I’ll remember I’m muted. Maybe I’ll stay muted. Maybe the little green camera light will swallow me whole. A girl can dream.
A plumber comes to unclog a sink and says as he’s walking in the door, “I love my job. People are always so happy to see me.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Thanks for coming to fix the sink.”
“It’s the greatest job,” he says again. “Who isn’t grateful when the plumber arrives?”
“For sure man,” I say.
“I used to make night calls and oh man,” he says, “You wouldn’t believe how happy this one mom was, 8:30 at night she calls me, and I get the only toilet in her house working again.”
“Excellent,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “Greatest job in the world.”
This week someone emailed me at work and said, Humans do not improve on nature and I am really concerned that you are claiming otherwise.
I want to call that plumber up and tell him to hand me the snake and he can have my Gmail account and maybe today we can switch careers. “Greatest job in the world, buddy!” I’d say as I handed over this 1,200-word email in need of a “thoughtful” response.
Look, if I’m claiming anything it’s that Mary Oliver line that “you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Which means maybe I’m claiming that the body is an animal — and I am. And if I’m claiming the body is an animal, I’m also claiming that my body has a home in nature. Actually, I’m claiming that nature does not exist. Not like that anyways. Not like some pure thing on a pedestal. Not like some untrammeled landscape. Not something like that Christian purity that Eve and her womanly wickedness tainted in delectable sin.
Me and Eve are animal bodies. And we’re supposed to be here. I don’t believe in original sin anyway. Gimme that gooey fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
Humans are a sacred thing and I am really concerned that you are claiming otherwise.
My body, my animal, is a temple, is a deep forest, is a holy vow. She and I are deliciously intertwined and we don’t stumble on something as dusty and fragile as binaries: natural, unnatural. I am pure starlight, baby. Me and my animal body, me and Eve, we go way back. All the way to that no-dimensional speck. All the way to that ginormous bang. I am the 93 billion light year diameter of the observable universe. I am the fabric of the cosmos made conscious. I am existence witnessing herself.
I might not seem so natural when I feel more industry than compost — which I do today — but me and my atoms are mingling with every other atom of creation all the same. There’s no stopping that pervasive entanglement.
Don’t worry so much about the natural or the unnatural. Just worry about you, boo bear. You’re star stuff after all.
Thanks for reaching out! We really appreciate your input. Let me know if I answered your question!
Cheers,
Anja
Stuff I’m Reading:
Where it Begins by Barbara Kingsolver — An annual favorite for the changing seasons
Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin — AKA Lyndsay Rush
This Poem in Particular — By Joy Sullivan (I’m really liking Instagram poetry)
Stuff I Like About Where I’m Staying (still Boulder, Colorado edition):
Chautauqua Park — Yeah, it’s basic, it’s where everyone goes when they visit Boulder and I still love it. It’s mountains right in town, not some hour's drive away. It’s a winding maze of trails and mountaintops and views and it’s perfect.
Moxie Bread Co — It’s bread and pastries and pure happiness.
Sherpa Chai — It’s a Boulder company and their chai is amazing. Super spicy, not sweet, perfect for cold mornings, or if you’re feeling too lazy to make coffee.