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amilliontinywraiths · 4 years

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to the walnut people’s garden.

Blog,

Im starting my post in the way my friend Joshua does, as a letter to a digital realm of writing / reading / whatever u want to say about the cybernetic makeup on the tumblrverse. Mostly, I didn’t know how to start. Insert the meme format, every day I open Microsoft word and write absolutely nothing. Its paralyzing – to have some aspect of my identity wrapped up in “writing,” to be a “writer,” but to really exist as such in bursts. Every few months I’ll write something and lay it to rest in my hard drive, go back to living as a sentient being trying to scrape by eleven dollars an hour.

Its getting colder – the wind knocked over some plants outside, I opened the window and immediately closed it. Im worried about the lettuce dying from the frost. Im doing some reflection because there’s nothing else to do. Im googling depression lamps and silly tips to quit smoking and “psychiatric evaluations for cheap.”

My sister is in town and was asking me about my move, the semi-chaotic summer I lived when plans A and B fell through and my ass tumbled back to my hometown. Its depressing if I read too far into it, coming back to a place I swore I never would, being proof that “you always come back home” (because home is a vapid suburb). She had come to the garden last night, to see the space that picked me up and saved the move, to meet the people that have made this city feel like something new and worth appreciating, and not an exemplar of postgraduate failures. I think the garden might be the only thing that kept me in my hometown, feeling ashamed that I hadnt made it anywhere but here.

Let me explain myself. Im a little sick of the ‘2020 was a bad year [insert sad face]’ discourse, but it was a fucking bad year. So was 2019 and every year dating back to industrialization and colonial exploration, but im getting sidetracked. The year started with a silly (actually devastating and heartbreaking) breakup and months of depression. Of going to aa and spilling my sorrows to a group of gay 50-somethings who hugged me like I wasn’t a lost case. Of later fearing my loved ones, as if they were virus-carrying rascals, or worse, that I was and would infect and kill them all. Of having my visa cancelled but still needing to leave Chicago – fueling myself with the potentially false and certainly romantic idea that running away from ur friends and problems will fix it all. Im lamenting.

What im saying is im as surprised as you are at the success of kc. At the community and love ive found here, all cooked up in the garden squat. The day I met syd and cass and felt really shocked at the ease of meeting the anarchist poets, as if they were just waiting for me. when syd invited me to the garden one night and it all made sense – to take back the land and grow sunflowers. I wont go too far into my gaden-becoming (lol). As it will potentially be ripped away from us by landlord bastards in this next month, I need to solidify some reflections. To poorly paraphrase Audre lorde, you gotta write it down so you don’t forget how you felt. How you thought. Maybe in five years the garden will be flourishing. Or we will be sitting at the track tagging ‘fuck fascism’ as we approach our thirties. Or both.

The endless garden bonfires. Indistinguishable from the next. All the bonfires and cookouts melding into each other. The 200 Hams that showed up one night, maybe 180? The joy of collective drunkenness, peeing behind the shed, grabbing another beer on your way back. We began having movie nights. Thank god cadence brought all of the anime, secretly hoping nobody could possibly want to watch Edward Scissorhands. geeking with syd about poets. Spreading mulch at our first work day, gossiping about sean bonney and wendy Trevino with amalia, the excitement that someone else gave a shit about obscure poets. Later making a book club for just that. picking up two trunkloads of bricks from a gentrifying couple in the northeast, how they wanted to rid their property of the old chimney and practically begged me to take more. Making a path later with neve, I think, and being nervous about becoming friends with everyone. Having met so many people in such a short time. Planning to camp at the garden together, and instead, going to an impromptu occupation. The absolute failure of it all, when the occupiers began to police each other. ‘A world without police’ my ass. The walnut people’s garden tent we squeezed into. Playing ‘never have I ever’ with other twenty-somethings, realizing that the game is only spicy when nefarious activities are taboo—and they’re not taboo to us. Almost winning several games of chess in several different tents, though I think I always lost. That time when Syd’s birthday, when their literal hoard of friends came and went and I watched them from one of the garden beds. That art students look like art students everywhere I’ve been. I think I was talking to cass, about something, poetry maybe, at the garden bed. we were avoiding the group dynamic, that specific stomach feeling that arises when you don’t know anybody. The outdoor space fostering some normalcy, people being able to come and go and celebrate years around the sun. afterwards we went to jail support, a reminder that nothing is normal. “the new normal.” I had just dug up my own garden bed, which if I made decisions financially, was a huge money drain. But it taught me how to grow lettuces and how not to grow cauliflowers. I kept a journal with garden notes, which vegetables liked each other. I left it at the garden one night and it was rained on, completely disintegrated. A sweet first kiss on the garden bench, later, the garden bench showing up in a flash sheet that we’ll all choose tattoos from. the subsequent meme. the continual talk of memes fueled by @dante. A massive group tattoo session. The slew of items always left at the garden after a night of drinking. My debit card, my jacket, somehow always sydney’s backpack. Cullen always finding the objects since he was up earlier than us all. Later, dante’s birthday when I walked from the garden to sade’s apartment, which had a living room—quite literally—filled with only couches. Feeling warm and included, invited to something. Discovering sade is best friends with sue, who lives with Vivian. Facetiming Vivian from the garden, facetiming Vivian from the backyard. Feeling so lonely for so long, and then, suddenly pulled into this weird collective embrace. Pulling up to the the garden and freddy howling. Laying with freddy on the couch. The celebration of life erin and Cullen threw for freddy, when miranda made him this foul-looking peanut butter cake and someone took a bite of it. stealing a thousand cigarettes from bobby or kim or anyone who pulled out a pack near me. meeting syd dante and sade at the garden to break into an apartment complex’s pool. But residents were having a pool party with a vague america theme and we felt out-of-place. When we were driving home from the pool and dante spotted a note on the garden sign, our formal eviction notice. How hard it is to meet common ground with landowners, as a group of ppl who don’t believe in that shit. My dad telling me to just ‘buy the land.’ Are you interested in paying rent? The neighborhood association meeting, the landlords pushing for increased value moving into the neighborhood. Us leaving when the meeting proved too boring, typical leftists unable to sit through bureaucratic garbage. Send someone in our place. The giant saw that looked like an oil rig. How I was disappointed in my own passivity in the situation, letting them reverse screwdrive our land! How sometimes you make concessions for the big picture, but then you feel like a fraud in the moment. How maybe that is just an excuse. Cullen eating a grasshopper, suddenly everyone eating grasshoppers. A grasshopper loose in quicktrip, we considered asking to take it home with us. When we painted the sign and we didn’t like the proposed name, so we made up another one, which was admittedly not very anarchist of us. No collective decision making. The sign was later repainted after a meeting and it looked so much better. The meeting showing that we could fight and come to collective decisions and maybe we’d make it through the eviction. The eviction coming in two weeks, the plans for occupation. A slumber party with demands. A giant slingshot to launch discarded objects at construction trucks. A trebuchet. Maybe we’ll make it through the eviction.

To the walnut people’s garden.

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