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I was struck this morning at the airport (where else?) by a beautiful interview with Kim De L’Horizon on becoming un-split and about power with vs. power over. But I was surprised by the ending of the blood beech poem—the part about the alliance. My understanding is that the grandmother recognized a resonant kindredship that felt more powerful and special than the taken-for-granted familial kinship. And that is a beautiful thing to find and recognize. But my surprise was in reaction to the apparent implicit validation of having a favorite tree at all, within the context of an interview about breaking down binary thought training. It’s not quite a criticism. Just a curiosity. It’s seen as a sign of growth in the millennial generation (I always feel compelled to note that I’m on the cusp of Gen X) when we try to become the parents we wish we’d had. In my case it’s more of a case of working hard to say many of the things my parents did. My parents taught me by example to love many things, and I say to my kids “be wary of choosing favorites.” Even the pressure of having to choose a favorite color structurally excludes us from really even thinking about, nevermind holding love for the other several million distinct colors our brains can perceive. It’s a basic way of attempting to break the hold of binary thought that we are assaulted with from the time we’re born. And I don’t think my parents ever used that kind of language with me, but I could see it in their curiosity. In my mom’s endless framing of the world as something alive and wriggling with undiscovered wonders and meaning. In my dad’s interest in other people’s internalities—the way he would activate and become animated trying to unearth the essence or truth of someone’s words or actions, probing for kindredness and shared understanding. Both of these traits are things I have grown to love and embrace in myself, even if at times they are messy and feel chaotic. I guess what I’m saying is that as a generation we aren’t doing anything necessarily new. There are people who parent with love and care and thoughtfulness in every generation. But those of us lucky to have been parented by those people are turning over earth that has been well-prepared for us. Cracking the fertile, loamy soil open and turning that instinct to intention. To words. To purposeful narratives. Sometimes it’s tempting to criticize our parents for a lack of progressiveness, or for holding ideologies that we have moved past, individually or culturally. But I have a weird feeling our parents were doing the same thing in their era that we are attempting now: Doing the best they could to continuously become alive. Being biologically alive is not all that difficult once you’ve overcome the astounding probability that you will never make it there to begin with. But becoming a living thing can be a much more arduous struggle. And that challenge is not something we, or any generation, can claim as our own. It’s seen as a sign of growth because that’s what it is. And I have to be careful to remember that mine is a continuation of growth that came before more, and that will continue after me. I didn’t invent or initiate growth, which I understand is a lucky privilege in the context of family patterns. And thank god that those waves of generation growth overlap each other! That the initial accelerative power that my parents set into motion eventually pulls them along with me. And that I am now in an accelerative period that my kids will take up and eventually pull me alongside them (spoiler: it’s already happening). It feels like waves crashing over each other in cycle as they head in to shore (not that the shore as a destination fits this metaphor quite perfectly—there is no clear or definable destination). Growth is not inevitable. Being an Alive Thing is not taken for granted. But the needle is going to move. It has to. And we can put our hands on each other’s hands and gently decide to move it together. P.S.: Uncoincidentally, I have a little drop-D EP entitled “Living Thing,” and if your brain has brought you this far, perhaps you’ll appreciate it as a little postlude.
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