a memory of theory
the old maps fade and crumble
The books are important, the library I want to read when life settles down is still there — there’s not much else I can do so I try again. I re-read the same paragraph and go back to the beginning of the chapter, lose context and thumb back further to the last thing I remember, but nothing sticks, everything is everywhere in my head, mental roads washed out, on the way to get there but the terrain shifts. Things to do, errands, keeping up with household accounts, do we have cat food and coffee? Are the kids okay? What was I reading, what does it mean? I pre-ordered this book, anticipated it, and nearly a year later when it arrived I just … couldn’t. Maybe I don’t care enough anymore, or maybe my eyes are tired. Start over, forget, start over, drop book, dream, shuffle through maps of routes drawn for … complication? combination? cooperation? consideration? consarnit. contemplation …
couldn’t remember the word “contemplation” microseconds after finishing the above sentence in my mind, distance between thought and a marginally decent typist’s hands — though typing has improved as cognition has become more challenging — my hands remember places, meaning is within sight but out of reach, hands windhovering above keys, brain librarian shuffling through an ancient card catalog through wrong words out of order on butter-colored rectangles typed on an idiosyncratic Royal 10, words ringing in memory like faraway typewriter bells, “combination … concentration … combustion … consternation …” she pushes up glasses, blots sweat from her face with the edge of her scarf … light through the tall windows hits ancient dancing dust motes above her head … she plucks a card and holds it up: “contemplation? How anticlimactic … there has to be a better word … consumerism? commissary? commiserate? communion? communism? I did like “consternation …” She takes a square of scrap paper from the stack on top of the catalog and with a short, blunt pencil she writes the addresses of words to the flat files where maps live, “contemplation” plus a few other likely candidates, just in case they lead somewhere, and shuffles to the map room …
I took for granted I’d live to be 100. My great-grandparents were centenarians but under current circumstances I’m not so committed to that idea. I change pictures on the walls, clean the floors and wash dishes, water plants, feed cats, practice languages I might never converse in on Duolingo, make music playlists, try to pay attention to a whole podcast, struggle to make things easy around the house, to get ahead of things I may not be able to do later, to word things so I don’t worry my partner too much, to keep up with family. I don’t know what to say or what there is to say?1 The bills are paid on time and we will catch up on other debts and obligations even though I buy more prepared food than before2 and order groceries.
Clear memories flash when I touch objects, packing panniers at the checkout with a week’s menu of food surrounded by ice packs, locking up on the porch after biking home with groceries, hanging my cute helmet over the handlebars. I feel hot and tired from doing stuff, we cook outside3, have cold beer and sodas from the ice chest. Fireflies, butterflies, ladybugs, orb spiders. Green plants full of flowers and sometimes food. Book after book passing through my hands. In the library, maps fade and crumble but some memory persists, with rice starch and micro-thin tangles of mulberry tissue maybe I can knit them together, redraw faded forests, dry rivers, eroded coastlines …
… and then grief. All-encompassing grief, planetary, microcosmic, the health of the tiniest mitochondria struggling to make ATP while being whipped by a virus, the destruction of all that is Gaia, the suffering of the living, reeling from the disappointment of the best of our ancestors, heart torn apart for descendants, every sweet little face of people I love most in the world.
I am not ready to die, not strong enough to watch the world collapse around us, and not sure what will happen first, but so far, life on Earth and I are still here, we continue to struggle and endure as baselines and thresholds push back.
I start with symbiogenesis, how mitochondria co-evolved within the cells that make animal and fungal life, how it lives within us and has its own DNA, and how the mitochondria in our cells are being hijacked by the virus, so they’re too tired to make ATP, which gives us energy. They look blank. Exasperated, I apologize for being lazy and incorrigible. Lynn Margulis herself had a hard enough time explaining this shit to actual scientists, life is short.
I had to stop buying pico de gallo though. I made gallons of it almost daily as a cook, but to cut prep time and save my energy I have been buying things I used to make from scratch, and that was one that didn’t work out. I think offering pre-packed pico is a great way for produce to use up some of the overripe and fading veggies, but it’s still kind of an afterthought, often too heavy on onions, not enough lime and salt, needs more peppers and tomatoes and cilantro … basically it’s an overpriced tub of onions with a dash of color. I figured if I am healthy enough to be mad at the pico from the store being expensive and terrible, I am healthy enough to put it on my household food prep, just go slow and make sure the knife is sharp. I am much happier with it, and happiness is healing.
we were under fire restrictions and I’m a little forgetful, so for many reasons it was a bad idea this year. summer was such a bust — climate change, covid, capitalism, creeping fascism, and being able to see where we are now from miles away, decades ago — not my cup of tea.
maybe use the pre-made pico to throw into meals for flavoring?
Feel so much of this essay myself.