How to Keep It Going

Thinking about the maintenance of our mythic lives

Greetings to you on this September full moon, typically called Harvest Moon but which, in honor of the specificities of place, I’ll call Hurricane Lily Moon. Here in my yard these flowers are sending up slender green wands and then bursting into fireworks of color. Most of the blooms are red, but I was picking my way through an overgrown pollinator garden the other day and came upon a Lycoris aurea, which is golden, sent to me as a gift by Jerry Palmer of Lycoris Rose: Southern Heirloom Bulbs & Roses. I had to stop and praise that beauty for a minute.

I’d love to know what’s happening in your place and what you are calling the September moon.

Long-awaited Confluence is This Weekend

I’m headed to Atlanta today for an event called “Confluence,” which is bringing people together to talk about the arts, the environment, and activism. I’ll be at the Atlanta Symphony tonight to hear Steven Darsey’s oratorio of “The Marshes of Glynn,” that beloved poem written by Sidney Lanier. I’m thinking about how we’ll address the deep place-based meaning of the poem and the fact that the poet enlisted in the Confederate Army, was imprisoned for four months as a prisoner of war, and in prison caught tuberculosis. Our lives as humans are incredibly complicated. Nothing is simple, it seems. We have to hold all of the contradictions and tensions. Tomorrow I’ll be at the First Congregational Church in Atlanta at 2 with Margaret Renkl and Dwight Andrews in a great and inspiring talk about art, environment, and activism.

Experience Ocmulgee Mounds and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Festival

Confluence 2022 is partnering with The Georgia Conservancy for a special tour, cultural talk, and picnic on the Ocmulgee River near Macon next Saturday, Sept. 17. The purpose of the trip is to build support for creation of a first National Park in Georgia. You can sign up here.
The schedule is:
9 am—Depart Emory's Parking deck, 1390 Oxford Road, NE,  behind Barnes & Noble bookstore. Charles McMillan leads conversation on the critical cultural and environmental benefits of the new park. 
10:45—Arrive at Ocmulgee Mounds. Muscogee (Creek) Nation Festival offers dances, tours, talks, with 60 vendors from the Nation. Tour the ancient mounds. Explore new expansion of protected land. 
1:00 pm—Depart for private lunch and conversation on the Ocmulgee River with elected leaders creating the new park and preserve.  
1:20-2:30—Conversation with Muscogee Second Chief Del Beaver 
2:45-3 pm—Depart Macon for Atlanta. Return by 5 pm.

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A Writing Prompt for You

#writingwithjanisse

“I saw the strangest thing…”

Start there & see where it takes you. If you’re free-writing, Natalie Goldberg’s rules are to set your watch for a number of minutes, keep your hand moving, don’t worry about mistakes, and go for the jugular. If you get stuck, rewrite the prompt and take off again. Unexpected things always happen.

Speaking of strange (and wonderful), on a walk not long ago I saw, underneath thick live oaks near the prison pond, a thin beam of light striking three leaves left on a small buckeye. The leaves curled into a pumpkin shape, and nowhere else did the sunlight hit, except on these leaves, as if the leaves were a container filled with light, and all of it—the leaves, the light—fleeting.

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How to Keep It Going

I want to offer up some thoughts on maintenance in the form of a poem.

At the moment close at hand is a large pile of laundry waiting to be folded. The dogs have been inside the kitchen because of the intensely hot and humid days we had last week, and the floor needs sweeping and mopping. I need to wash out two large crocks in which I was brewing vinegar, now bottled. The grass is very high outside, and even turning the horses into the yard doesn’t knock it back. I need to finish varnishing two rocking chairs on the front porch.

I could go on and on. I’m sure your to-do list looks much the same.

So much of our lives is spent doing maintenance. Yet we have such ambivalent attitudes about maintenance. Often it’s work we relegate to oppressed people. The tasks of maintenance belong to all of us. It’s good work, holy work.

I explore here why maintenance matters, what the opposite of maintenance is, and how how destructive a lack of maintenance is to life on earth.

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How to Keep It Going

I look at brokenness.

The junkyard.

The trash.

My family. My child. Myself.

The world, mostly the world.

To list all that's broken I will not,

broken being less than whole, less than new, less than perfect,

a reminder of impermanence.

Permanence being what we seek.

~~

The enemies of permanence are multitude:

Billions of bacteria. Fungi.

Oxidation. Rust. Fire.

Insects, those transformers (termites) (moths) (army worms).

Roaches, robber flies, red ants.

Rodents.

Plants with their tendrils and tentacles and tips.

Disease. Wind and weather.

Our enemies in daily and necessary battles against impermanence.

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These battles are called maintenance.

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To maintain.

To keep.

To be faithful to.

To commit.

~~

To maintain our bodies we: Eat. Bathe. Stay lissome. Detox.

To maintain our homes we: Spray. Pull. Sweep. Dust. Paint.

To maintain our yards: Mow. Weed. Replant. Pick up.

To maintain our material goods:

Our vehicles:

Our friendships: Our marriages: Nature:

Much of life is maintenance.

~~

And maintenance is the task that we often avoid,

that we hire others to perform.

menial labor relegated to women, immigrants,

workers, black and brown people.

~~

What is not maintenance is growth—more exciting—

new vehicle, new house, new rug.

We live within an economy based on growth.

In our media, libraries, presses, streets—we honor

the creator, not the maintainer,

the new, not the renewed.

~~

A friend cooks venison backstrap over a hubcap in a parking lot.

He leaves the skillet in the bed of his truck.

In the rain it rusts. He buys another.

My father who ran a junkyard would drive a car until something broke,

something small, even a fan belt.

He would park the car and find another.

It was easier.

More satisfying

that old addiction to acquisition.

Toss and start over.

The myth of resource abundance

tells us we can replace

what is broken.

We are encouraged to do this.

~~

Toss the litter.

Shit in water.

Drive where we want to go.

Fly where we want.

Buy another.

Keep buying.

(It keeps the economy growing.)

Whatever is broken, throw it away.

(Buy another.)

If the car is broken…

If the roof is broken…

If the table is broken…

If the toy is broken…

Buy another, buy another, buy another.

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And also:

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If the climate is broken, throw it away.

If the climate is broken, get another.

If the climate is broken, hire somebody to fix it.

If the climate is broken, glue it back.

~~

If the marriage is broken…

If the child is broken…

If the body is broken…

~~

Once a man told me he'd done little to restore his farm except this.

He would nail back any board that had fallen off.

Only that, he said. Nail the board back as soon as it falls.

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Celebrate the nailer of boards

            the leak-stopper

            the weeder

            the oil-changer

            the farrier

            the handyman

            the handywoman

            the worker

            the home-maker

            the feather duster

            the regular sweeper of floors

            the cook, the maid, the table-setter, the dish-washer

            the skillet-oiler

            the planter, picker, packer, unpacker

~~

the planter of trees

who maintains the forest

~

Praise the maintainer

and the fixer of broken things

who nails back a board as soon as it falls.

~~

Praise the climate-husband and climate-wife

(the climate-lover)

engaged in the menial maintenance

of this irreplaceable home.

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A Photo for You

Lastly, my friend the poet, photographer, painter, and rancher Sean Sexton of Florida sent me this photograph this week. I asked him if I could share it. It’s early morning and his folks are headed out to check on the cows. It’s an ordinary day, maintaining a herd of cows, maintaining a ranch, maintaining a family, maintaining open space in Florida; and yet it reminds us that we’re mythic beings in a mythic life.

All of us.

I hope you enjoy today’s duties and tonight’s full moon as the mythic human you are.

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(I wanted you to see the red hurricane lilies. I photographed these at Andalusia, Flannery O’Connor’s home-place near Milledgeville, a few years ago.)