01.24.21I am a grower
I wrote this some time late last year, in November maybe?
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Meaningful relationships for me involve two growing besides each other. Tension occurs when the other doesn’t grow. It takes time to grow, whether together or apart. To come from roots, trunk, branch, twig. Different branches, different sides of the tree. It mirrors the web of memories. Connected from a distance. I aim to grow toward the sun, while some stay at a certain junction, a certain spot on the tree. Then do we choose to become a seed? A deciduous leaf? A broken branch? A stump?
Currently I am often branching, pivoting elsewhere. But it’s impossible to fly elsewhere. You are rooted in the tree, in all its DNA. Without complete death or complete birth can you become anew. There is no starting over, just moving elsewhere.
A branching is also not a series of binary switches, but it is a series of choosings. The directions are just infinite. Not yes/no, either/or, N/W/S/E, but more organic and jagged, at each branching and point of mid growth. Shaped like a funnel as well. Tapered.
Branches are traceable. They imply changes in decisions, points of decision making.
Or perhaps one is the whole tree, growing in all directions, but some branches stopping sooner than others. Some must be trimmed. For decomposition and fertilizer. For other people’s wood and warmth.
This is the issue with straitjackets and stretchers: artificial growth and restraint. How do you care for a tree? Would I rather petrify, be chopped down, or grow forever? Do I have the capacity to be a sequoia?
Flowers have their annual cycles, as I do. When do I bloom? When do I go dormant? Animals have their cycles as well, in coordination with nature. Thinking of the sickly industrialized chickens manipulated by light and feed, confined¹. College is like stunted growth, shortening one’s slaughter date, speed-fattening onself. Prepping for the “real world.” Learning professionalisms… Fuck. I want to be a free, grass-fed cow. Fish sauce that starts off rotting but eventually becomes aromatic. Filtered. Sun fed². We have the ability to not industrialize ourself. Brand oneself. Slaughter oneself. How else can you care for others?