The Far Left & the Far Right Both Enjoy Gardening
co-authored by Ser Templeton, willa beale, Nashoba-tek & the Orthonym
Introduction
In the evening, I scan the emergent silhouettes at the borders of the land I occupy and look for the low glowing code of the horny firefly showing all eyes their lazed lagging dance across the dusk. When I catch the soft effulgence on my retinae, I am happy knowing that one still dwells among us, as my father saw some night previously, and that the small traveller has enjoyed the sanctity of the untainted rosebushes where so many small things are living.
This observation happens one week before the United States of America, under the guidance of the administration of the forty-seventh president, Donald J. Trump, drops thirty thousand-pound bombs on uranium enrichment facilities in the middle of Iran. That morning, on the day the week prior, when I will see the firefly, I read about a cohort of MAGA republican devotees who have begun to realize that, in their fear of foreign dictators and of foreign flesh, they have put their faith in the wrong dictator altogether. I listen to Tucker Carlson ask Ted Cruz correct questions in a snide manner, and I read tweets from Marjorie Taylor-Greene that I can only describe as personally shocking, given the vapidity of the woman who I know has written them.
After and before all this, I spend the afternoon gardening.
I. Ser Templeton Identifies a Tension
The far left and the far right both enjoy gardening, I know, because I saw them both gardening at their rallies, selling books detailing gardening after the apocalypse, after war, after gardening isn't safe anymore; these books on gardening tell you what to do when gardening isn't safe anymore because gardening is an UTTERLY necessary, UNASSAILABLE fact; gardening is the Great Human Pastime; gardening is what happens when animals get cozy, guarding their coziness and growing beyond their means; gardening is what happens when invention invents itself, garnishing conscious thought with a means of subsistence. The far left and the far right both enjoy gardening because they are both against hunger, one for all and one for one, against hunger and so gardening becomes a revolutionary act by way of gardening to escape dependence on the State; gardening to free us from the dysfunction; gardening as community care, as solidarity; gardening as a way station for morality; gardening to understand the ecosystem, to give way to new old systems of thinking; gardening to combat the changing climate, to get over the unanimous hurdle of the Anthropocene. I know the far left enjoys gardening.
Interlude I
In California, we had the water on a system. There, in the desert, water is often a system. When I was there last, no public fountains functioned. The water was controlled, diverted for the greater good of access, and so no one could admire the pretty fountains or satisfy their thirst on a whim. When I was young, we had the water on a system: black hoses that wound from the faucets down to the garden beds where they rested in the old horse paddock, where the soil was fair and the heat considerable. There are such gardens in the desert, eclipsed by the eucalyptus, where growth seems quite unexpected, and the site of a wilting tomato stalk is not uncommon.
In Prince Edward Island, the water is abundant. Islands tend to be this way, never parched but quite friendly to the blue-loving greenery. This Island is humid in the summer, and so it is not uncommon to seek the water where it festers on the coast and to let the sprinklers run over the garden beds until the tomato stalks bead with holy droplets of mirthful moisture. It’s not uncommon to see yellowed leaves and composting piles of extricated organics. Such is the abundance that the weeds proliferate and the garden suffers if the heat is often broken by dense rainfall. The soil is black where it is beautiful, and a beautiful red where some darkness should be encouraged. Our yard is filled with creeping thyme and plantain and dandelions.
Sometimes, I miss the strange flora of California. I miss foxtails catching on my cuffs, the painful goat’s heads, and the small pepperomia-like edible succulent that felt so soft underfoot. I miss the invaders, too: The tall, ineffable eucalyptus that menaces over so much in the countryside where I was raised. I do not miss California, though. After 2016, California became a place I once knew, not a glittering memory but a distant childhood. Our memories of childhood, good or not, are just memories of memories. They offer little substance, only a false comfort.
When we first moved to the property where I now seek the fireflies at dusk, I would see at least three in the evenings hovering over the tall unmown grasses. I have memories of these memories: the intermittent ringing of the three travellers seeking sex. They do not bring me comfort. These are haunting memories.
In the garden, I wonder what can be done about the degradation of nature.
ii. willa beale discusses a tension
the far left and the far right both enjoy gardening, i know, because i saw them both gardening at their rallies—selling weapons and gardening while men spoke and women sat quiet, guarded, before the war, before it was unsafe to be gardening, before you needed books to do safe gardening, before the Earth changed, here no gardening because a desert is not a fit place for gardening, no, and neither is a perfect lawn. where to garden? they would not for the planet ever do gardening that way, not the way that gives purpose, gardening for more than mere sustenance: they will garden because they are afraid of dying without a garden. the far left and the far right both enjoy gardening because they are the same animal that invented gardening. while one hocks ideology and the other mocks it, gardening takes the role of intermediary between the natural world and the world that we have invented through gardening: ancient sacred act of animal domesticity. gardening was the herald of division: need versus surplus; gardening gave us kings and killers alike, made the meek inheritors and the mighty a legacy of murderous mythmaking. gardening is not only the great emancipator but likewise the haunter in the dark, decomposing sensibility while fertilizing progress. i know the far right enjoys gardening. i just don't think they understand why, stubborn mammals.
Interlude II
At night, I am lulled by the cold erotic scent of the creeping thyme, unfurled from the small purple flowers crushed by my pacing. I sit on the cushions around the dying bonfire and inhale all of the night. Impossibly above, the stars shimmer in a clandestine language of time and light and throughout their great canvas weaves a spectral glow of great distant gases. Blinking satellites flounder close to Earth. My face is likely illuminated by the sterile human glow of the smartphone I’ve had for four years. The US has just bombed Iran, striking the Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant. The news has come about hours before, while we all sat around the fire, and I had thought first to say nothing until that seemed too disingenuous to the moment, and so we all discussed briefly the warmongering southern neighbours and the wretched wiles of warfare, the concerns for nuclear armament, and how the only thing one can do is invest peace into community.
A bonfire is a shared experience of investing peace in community. Such have bonfires always been. Before me now, the enraged coals cool in the iron ring and the silence is accented by the insects and animals ignorant of human concerns. Whenever I am confronted by a bonfire, I always think about how human language may have developed and whether it was owed in part to the habit of young, wise animals gathering around such fires they’d mastered and trying to share some information, some knowledge, with their fellow animals. How do you even begin to transmit meaning? Our ancestors are fascinating. It is impossible to overstate how much we owe to them.
If only we could figure out how to use language now to build bridges again, as we did so long ago beside the fire.
This evening, before writing, I briefly watch a slug march a murderous path along the red-packed earth, across the fractured road that runs the length of the wood. The slug is carving along but leaves no trail of ooze as they may along some grass or a garden glove. When I am young, I recall the tepid mornings in the blooming desert where the slugs and snails all leave glittering trails of ooze wherever they cross along the stones or sand. They can be a blight on gardens. Some murder them to keep them out.
On the Island, the worst garden pests are the potato bug and the cabbage moth. These are curious insects, inoffensive but for the ravage they put upon the crops. When I refer to the potato bug, I do not mean the Jerusalem cricket—gods help us. They were in California, and to see them sets me on edge—among the few bugs that do so. Our Island’s potato bugs are the Colorado potato beetle, more gentleman than wayfarer. They decorate the potato plants, underscore them. I did not enjoy killing them in the past, as the fat round grubs they are before pupation. When they are mature, they are quite beautiful, so striped and bulky like a broad-chested dandy. The potatoes suffer, though, like the cabbages ravaged by the cabbage moths, known as cabbage loopers for one reason or another. They are another matter. The young are impetuous, insufferable, wretched things that infest and overcome a crop. Then, they mature and become mystics, drifting scraps of light over the sites of their innocent destruction. They confound me.
Pests. All gardens have pests. And weeds. And everyone enjoys gardening, even if they don’t realize it. It is unpleasant. Of course, it’s unpleasant. But, something there is in the soil that feels familiar and correct. We are the animal that does this.
Around the dying bonfire, I smoke and stress a bit and read the news and wonder what our ancestors might have thought of thirty thousand-pound bombs falling on an uranium enrichment facility. After encountering the slug, I write a bit about garden pests, and I stress and read about how Donald J. Trump has declared a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. I wonder about the opposing sides of everything and wish we could come to better conclusions collectively.
In the future, I am sitting on a solar deck naked and everything is perfect and everyone has a healthy relationship with their suffering. The trees cast long shadows over the solar arrays and my wind turbine casts a longer shadow over the large garden where the cabbage loopers have their own bed to disturb and a dozen other beds grow lush, beautiful food in the blackest earth we’ve ever made. The sun draws low and the wild creeping lawn is a darkened carapace that soon releases some dozens of sexual pilgrims that flash their lovely solicitations at the quiet, unbroken silhouettes surrounding us. Surely, it smells of smoke and creeping thyme.
III. Nashoba-tek regards the Tension and hopes for a Revolution
Gardening, but gardening, but gardening. I wish we could just focus on fucking gardening. I wish we could harness the wind, harness the sun, harvest them. I wish we could build infrastructure cohesive with natural aesthetics. I wish we could herald the Earth, accelerate our humanity, gardening, gardening PCBs and wires and sensors and water and the wind and the sun. I wish we could follow the party line of the fecund matter in the soil. I wish we could rally around the divine machinery of the photosynthetic organelle. I wish we could protest the horrid things we're doing, those we call 'comforts'. When the grey apes of the future think of us, what will you be? What will any of us be for the great grey apes of the future? I am waiting for a lavender sky to swallow the politicians. I am waiting for a mossy overhang to smother the world. For black earth and red to overcome the awful effort of us. In the starling, in the garden, hunting for worms, I know I am. That is why I garden. I don't have to hunt for worms. That's all. Why can't we just garden? Must we hunt for worms also? The far left and the far right can't decide on anything. Can't even overcome their differences. They are like cabbage loopers and potato bugs, burrowing and infesting in their own ways, surviving terribly. I pity the one, amused by the other. Both concern me equally. The far left and the far right both enjoy gardening. Perhaps they will someday put away their guns and get to work. Get their hands clean; get their hands dirty. Perhaps they will someday see the community for the trees. The world is like an untended orchid rotting in the crevice of some ancient sickened jungle wood where the animals are senseless and the weather is trying to kill us. The orchid, untended, is blooming.
Coda
After writing, I go outside and light a small joint and walk across the yard. My journey is impeded by a small flare I detect near the trampoline, a small flash of light. Watching, I see them again: the firefly. Tomorrow morning, the ceasefire will already be violated, and the boys and girls will be back at it. Tonight, the firefly marks an intermittent path across the yard, hovering over the children’s pool and twirling around tree trunks. After they cross my path, I move on and watch them drift behind the greenhouse and over the garden.
The seed of light dances in the garden. There are no cabbage loopers yet.
Fireflies may have originally evolved their bioluminescence as a means of thwarting predators, to inform them that they do not taste good. Later, this defence mechanism was co-opted for their mating ritual. In nature, most beautiful things are beautiful because they’re either trying to survive or trying to have sex. I can relate to this. I haven’t had intercourse in fifteen months, and the last sexual encounter I had, ten months ago, was a casually traumatizing affair. I should like to have some bioluminescence that aids in sex and survival, but instead, all I have is language and a will to power.
In every place, there could be a well-developed betterness that supersedes all current doxa. Yet, few are concerned with the betterness of systems, only with self-betterment. That there are problems is the one thing on which everyone seems to agree.
Over the garden, the lecherous firefly survives and the tomatoes gather dew in the twilight. The garden beds are devoid of weeds and the nubile scent of the creeping thyme gathers around my face as I walk across the yard. Tomorrow, it will be quite warm and the war will be on hold and the garden will have grown slightly; my orchid will be blooming and the dehumidifier will have to be emptied; the two sides of everything will still be at odds.
Everyone will enjoy gardening, but no one will see themselves any better than they did yesterday.
Thank you for reading.
Art by Daniel Clarke.
Edited by Will Edgcomb.