BOOK II

---The Letters Continued---

Chapter I

Statistics Revisited: Learning to ask the right questions 

Statistics can be so maddening... too many numbers in all the wrong places. Maybe if we learned to ask the right questions we'd get the right answers. So what of Statistics? Year 1800: irrigated land, 8 million hectares; population, 1 billion. Today: irrigated land 240 million hectares, population nearing 7 billion. 40% of our food comes from irrigated land. Land area planted in grain expanded 17% between 1950-1997 while grain production increased 190%.
Fertilizer use increased by...
Hunger and distribution...
900 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain...
Grain and water used in beef production...
Water and pesticide requirements for cotton...
Less than 3% of the U.S. population are farmers and of these only "8% receive income from farming at or above the average income for U.S. households".

On the other hand, why don't we grow fruit trees in parks? Why is there not a community garden on every city block? Why is gardening not a required elective in school? Why is there not a garden at every school, church and hospital in every city, town and neighborhood? Who cut down the apple trees that once grew in your front yard? So much grass, so little time, so few gardens, so many chemicals, TVs, and hamburger stands.

When I was a little girl, well I guess I was hardly a toddler, my mother would find me in the strawberry patch with a big smile and sticky dirty hands. I wish I could remember the freedom of crawling around on all fours without the jumble of thoughts that now possess me when I'm surrounded by lush growing food.

The first time I visited here struck me like waking from a nightmare panting hard and sweating with absolute horror, fear, and shame. So many people bustling about fighting, honking and strolling through the strands of shopping malls that nearly line the length of the state. But here I'm told—is a virtual paradise like nowhere else. "we grow 40% of the tomatoes produced in the U.S, you know..." Squash piles at the side of the road, rotting in heaps. Tomatoes left for dead, hanging on for dear life to the vines that nourish them—falling to the ground in a desperate attempt to free themselves. "...and all the tropical fruit you could dream of." This is what I've seen and heard for two years now. Interpretation sends conflicting messages to the mind and to the heart by way of different senses; it's a matter of perception, I suppose. The air smells of chemicals (being told there is unprecedented levels of pesticides in our air here compared to anywhere else makes me suspicious and nervous, though remember this is paradise my dear). On bright sunny dry afternoons the skies rain from pumper trucks lifting water from shallow reservoirs in the coral bedrock--washing chemicals and fertilizers downward. Last week I helped pick tomatoes. Shortly after I began I had to take a break to put gloves on because my hands were saturated with the insecticide that they apply every two days. And I thought to myself—yes, such a paradise is this that I may eat and be full.

I miss Tennessee—the hidden world of fireflies and mating calls every spring—dancing, and yes, in the garden on all fours with sticky dirty hands. I twist my hair in a French roll and clip it in place. The ends stick up like a rooster's tuft and some fall red like a cardinal's tail. Pawpaws and toad lilies, daffodil meadows, costumes and parties, lamb's quarters and perilla, dinner by candlelight, music and thunderstorms, chickweed and phaceila, just to name a few delights. Yes, now this is paradise. I'm content to watch; this is my chosen fate. On sunny afternoons I lay curled on the rocks with the dogs and ponder the important questions in life. Questions like... Do frogs meditate?

I saw you sitting there ever so intent—facing, is that south? I thought I might ask you to dance—to perhaps ease your burden of gravity, but then I pondered for a moment and took note of your position. Hours later when I returned, you still had not moved. How would I know if maybe you'd forgotten to breathe? Had you emptied yourself completely of your surroundings and your skin? I wonder what it is that you've learned?

Other questions that keep me up nights are things like... How high do butterflies fly? And why do they not fly higher? Do they choose not to or have they reached their physical and mental limit?

I met a man today in the garden. He stopped and gestured to me, questioning what I was planting. Why sunflower, I replied. We shared our words, not understanding the other's. We were slow and deliberate with our pronunciation while quickly learning how to say sunflower. Hedott sol, I was told, sunflower, I learned is what I was planting. "To turn towards the Sun." I have faith you will grow tall and beautiful—undisturbed by my hand. How is it I've been trapped into believing that this is my effort, giving you space in my flowerbed? So much in life is held prisoner by our learned understanding.

I cast my shadow today. Spots grew from my car. Oh the beauty of something new and hungry for attention. When do little girls learn to dance? Is it predestined, written into their hip hugging genes? I had to say good-bye, a task I must say I'm not good at. I thought about where my hands had been on your body and what it felt like in those moments. The grease of your intricacies and your oxidized paint has left permanent stains under my fingernails. This wasn't my plan you know, to let go of all I held so close. Are you part of me now? Why must we always be seduced by the past when the future is so alluring? Is it what we've not learned or what we wish to repeat? A lot of letting go is learning how to hang on.

Today I crossed the line between these two states of understanding. The answer is simple, he said. They are both about space, arranging matter and hue and this land in which we occupy. Though I beg to differ, that it is more than space but something human, spiritual that is, that brings these two together. Have you ever heard a song on the radio that took you back to a space you no longer occupy? I listened and tried to imagine myself in that moment. When I awoke, I wondered, where had all the pine, fir and cedar gone? Far away from here, daylilies and daffodils... and the California poppy—glorious in its bright orange petals. Space defined by a slice of time. You are constant; they say this is true. Is it the space in which I occupy or the speed at which I move? This combination defines you... defines such mystery as to control me, in my movement and my speed.

I still dream of the bountiful gardens of my childhood, but I cannot free my mind of the agonizing fate of what today is all the same... fields of slaves, acres and acres in pain, smothered in chemicals, soil stripped bare of life. And we study and research and question—how might we grow a bigger better more unified crop? "...and I think to myself," Wait, let me again borrow someone else's words here, "small is tremendous". This should be the answer. But the advent of modern agriculture has freed us from the fields and allowed us to think big! ...work 60 hours a week (mining oil?), sit inside all day (for our master...? Oh, the economy, that is), and carry cell phones (a desperate attempt for human connectedness?) ...freed us from the caress of nature. But, just maybe, and lets hope, not from her wrath.

Where are the bountiful gardens of my youth?

To be continued...