Dustpan Alley (OLD)

The Importance Of Being Seed

I think it's a pretty safe bet that George W. Bush thinks pretty highly of his own seed. I imagine that he treasures his family jewels, maybe even more than his wife does. You can say that people are hard to know, that it's impossible to know what's in their hearts and in their minds. I disagree. While there is a whole universe of knowable things I don't know, there are some things I can't help knowing and one of those things is that men think very highly of their sperm.

If men didn't think their sperm was pretty important they wouldn't dedicate so many hours of their lives trying to plant it somewhere fertile. Or at least somewhere available. Or anywhere, really. And sometimes, unfortunately, everywhere.

These were my thoughts as I knelt on the ground ripping weeds out of the dirt in preparation for planting my medicinal herb and flower garden. Seeds were arcing into the air all around me as I yanked ripe grasses and wild green things out of my fresh soil. Seeds scattered onto my head, stuck to the hideously long hairs on my arms, and fell back to earth to wait for the next rain. Which will probably be tomorrow. The earth's seed is everywhere. It's no more a secret what the earth has planned for them than it is what man has planned for his. These are not unknowable things.

I found myself wondering why Christians often speak as though the seed of man is so sacred. It isn't as though it's scarce. It isn't as though it's wisdomous. No matter how good the sex you're having is, the seed itself imparts no everlasting afterglow of god. Not even if you intend the seed to sprout a tiny human being. There is plenty of seed to be had and generally it is more than willing to travel to all ports of call.

I couldn't get this out of my head. How protective people feel about seed.

About their own seed. These thoughts came to me as I recklessly scattered the seeds of plants I have never formally met before and whose common names I don't know, let alone their formal Latin names. I was essentially performing reproductive services to those that had already produced flowers and were ready to send themselves into the wild wind.

I am the wild wind.

There is almost nothing more important to human beings than the protection of all seed. How do so few people realize this? So many people out there think of gardening as a "hobby". Something all of us shriveled up Mrs. Marple types do to pass the time until we die. An unimportant activity. We fuss around with our flowers and our sweet little veggies and have not realized that we've missed out on shaping the world with politics, or by starting a corporation that eats other corporations, or that we could have been spending all our time arranging charities to milk the egos of rich people so that they can feel alright about the fact that many of them and their friends in their swank mansions and their shiny Hummers are living at a much greater cost to us all than just the livings their companies take away from the small fry.

From me. From me in my unimportant sweet little garden full of seeds.

It's not a crime to be rich. That's not what I spent time in my garden to hear the seed say to me. That's not what comes to me today. I would love to be rich. Bring it on universe! I've got my tiara ready.

What I heard whispering along the soft sheaths of evening sun illuminating my vicious work with flecks of gold is that gardening has become a form of rebellion. It's one of the reasons it feels so good to do it. Seeds used to be a stronger currency than coin. Seeds for food and seeds for medicine.

Seeds are life.

You could not have your mansions and your hummers if man had never learned to cultivate seeds for feeding himself. You can thank seeds for giving you your diamond life.

The importance of seeds is implicit in fairy tales: do you think Jack could have sold his cow for a bag of bean seeds if seeds weren't equivalent to coin?

Some of the most important seeds are so small that once you've dropped them carelessly you will never see them again. Human survival hangs on the smallest breath.

All the power in the world is in that knowledge. I hope you already know it. Nature doesn't accept coin because she can't do a damn thing with it. Money is meaningless if there are no natural resources to back it up. Does anyone remember that? Money represents the commodities that humans need in order to live their lives: food, water, shelter, materials to build shelter, the power to do the work to grow the food (horses or gasoline), and the materials to clothe themselves against the elements. Money stands in place of gold. Gold is good for decorating pretty people, but gold is also used in a lot of other alchemical applications. Metals are used for tools.

On and on it goes. As far as commodities go, food and herb seeds are much more valuable than human seed because finding unpolluted sources gets harder every day. There are more people than the earth is comfortable supporting. That's why we have famines. That's why we have plagues. We don't need more people. We need more resources to take care of the people we already have.

Sperm is cheap. Open pollinated seeds are not. The government wants us all to believe that genetically modified seeds are the answer to world starvation. Partly because no one wants to talk about family planning. Partly because there's not enough money in trying to feed people in ways that protect our resources at the same time. Nature doesn't approve of the kind of human industry that destroys her own. There are all kinds of reasons not to support genetically modified seeds or the foods they grow up to be, but the biggest one is that crushing diversity will rape the earth, not feed it. It already has.

Do you believe that all people should be white? Do you think all people should be black? Is it healthy for people to concentrate gene pools? I direct your attention to the large chinned Hapsburgs if you need proof. Do you believe that it was good that the Nazis tried to obliterate the Jews? Do you think it's righteous that Genghis Khan tried to out-breed half a hemisphere of people and kill most of the non-egg producing people at the same time?

Genetically modified seeds are the Nazis of the plant world. And the insect world. And whose world do we belong to? Are there still people who don't see that the plant world, the insect world, and the people world are the same world? To try to breed a master race of corn is no less evil than trying to create a master race of people. Nothing but bad can come of it.

We survive in diversity. We grow stronger by interbreeding. Every race has something beautiful to add to the earth's gene pool. Every plant has something to offer to the soil teeming with life.

Man's seed is cheap.

I'm out there tonight and I can feel the ground murmur. I can hear the din of life evolving with every breath I take. Man is arrogant. And when I say man, I mean man and woman. We are all in this together. Men, women, hermaphrodites. Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, and absolutely every fucking gorgeous color in between.

This is not my party line. I don't have a party line. I'm too busy working my civil disobedience to belong to a party. This is what I hear, what I see, and what I know.

The most potent rebellion you can engage in now is to grow open pollinated seeds in your garden. Grow food. Grow medicinal herbs and flowers that the insects we depend on for life need to keep on living.

There are moments when I hate George Bush and his sperm that has spawned two really vapid girls. I hate what he stands for. I hate the liberties he is trying to take from us all. He has taken enough.

But when I'm out there grinding dirt into my big knees, getting a grip on hostile weed take-overs, and watching the most beautiful first leaves of seedlings unfold shyly in the late spring chill, what I see is the universe in miniature. It's all right there. All of us. You, me, and Jessica Simpson. I may sometimes hate Bush, but he's human just as I am. He may be misguided. He may smell like evil, but he's like the weeds in my yard. I don't actually desire a yard free of weeds. The weeds are part of an integral system of wildness, of brawn versus delicate balance. The weeds are part of the eco-system just as I am. They belong in the whole melange of life we're living on this planet. They just can't be allowed to choke out the light.

I don't wish harm on Bush. I wish him to be powerless. I wish that he may be cut down to my level. I wish that he may see from a different perspective. I kind of hope his dick will shrivel just a little. But only when I'm feeling really angry and overwhelmed by the stench of war.

My knees are covered with dirt. I have cut a path for the banquet I'm preparing for the bees, lacewings, lady bugs, butterflies, wasps, you, and me. The beauty of us all was right there for me to drink. The bitter, the sweet, the living, the dying, the young, the old, we are all at the same table and I desperately want to share my wealth. Such as it is.

Because even if man's seed is cheap, my life is rich.