ends and horizons

Boundaries are every where. They mark countries, states, trails, roads, walkways, yards. They can mark ownership, spark wars, protect us, and be broken by others and ourselves. I have the boundary of my apartment and within is my dwelling. There's the boundary of the building it's within and the small area around that is also our domain of dwelling. Then there's the boundary of the neighborhood I live in sometimes feeling perfectly contained, the city itself, the mountain ranges on either side, the state, the country, the boundaries and day and night, the boundaries marking each hour, each day, week, month, year. Then there's all the boundaries below the iceberg. The unspoken or unmapped. The unconscious, or conscious, but not visual boundaries. The boundaries of my mental, emotional, and physical health. These are the boundaries that only I can define, if I choose to.

Swarming through my mind, boundaries are everywhere. Some enforced on me, some historical, some defined by me. But how do define the one’s that are mine for this body. Where are my boundaries? While I’ve never defined them, I know they exist. They appear when I get to a point of saying no more, or when I say yes, or when I decide to stop doing something or begin something new. They appear when I stand up for my values and injustice. This quickly brought me to my garden: real and physical boundaries and decisions. What would that look like if applied to my body giving power to my body? What if I defined my boundaries, instead of at times getting defined for me? Of course, some times situations happen, conflict arises, that helps me find a new boundary I didn’t know about before. I new yes or new no.

In my garden I have predetermined boundaries. There are wide and narrow planks of wood that create a box for my garden. I have two of these in a community garden. One gets more sun than the other. The type of plant and it’s sun needs determine which bed it will be planted. These wooden physical boundaries help to separate another persons plot with my own; helps it from blending in and being overtaken by grass surrounding it (borders only do so much when it comes to grass); it allows me to build up the soil and add nutrients. Then there is the boundary that I apply and create because of my choice. I keep out of my garden weeds and grass and slugs (as much as one can do this). I also choose each year what I’m going to plant, another layer of boundary setting. I decide what I’m going to focus on for the growing year and which plants will take me through the seasons so that there is something growing at all times. I think about the climate that I live in, new plants I’ve never had before, specific things I want to make. I use the boundaries of my garden to experiment, have fun. My garden from time to time has looked very fruitful and beautiful with a walkby and other years has looked almost dismal compared to the other plots in its inability (or mine) to make things grow.

But that’s it, the years the garden doesn’t look as great is because I decided to try something new and different. Each time seeds don’t spark, or they spark but die, or they spark and grow but not fruit (it’s mostly the first one), I learn something more about soil temperatures, my soil health, shade versus sun, thinning. The years the garden looks great and is doing great, I also learn because on those years I also note what I did that may have had the positive impact I was looking for so that the next year I can shift things a little more. I get a little better each year and also hone into what I really want to be growing in the garden space that I have.

This isn’t all too different than how I treat myself year to year. Without boundaries I say too much to the wrong person or take on too much or don’t respect my own body and mind and emotional needs. Boundaries are like mile markers informing me where I have the power for change and where in other instances I may just have to go with the flow. Boundaries are what inform me of what becomes a yes and what becomes a no. Boundaries allow for creative destruction, new beginnings, renewal, and maturity.

Just like the seasons (depending on where you live), but where I am, there are still four seasons. Each dictate what can be grown and what can’t. The external forces I cannot control. So, I plan around them as much as one can and I relinquish my crops to the universe when the climate throws a curve ball. There’s really not a “starting point” since seasons are cyclical so we just have to jump right in like skipping rope. We’ll start with winter. In prepping for winter, I mulch the plants that will not be overwintered into the soil. I may plant some cover crop to add nutrients. I may have collards, carrots, garlic, herbs that I leave to pick at for a few more months or to have at the first sign of warmer weather.

I may only go to the garden a small handful of times in the winter. Most of the work is put in at the beginning and then it rests until April, maybe March. The remaining of winter, I plan for the coming year. I pour through catalogs of seeds and plan out month by month what I will grow. The “what will I grow” is formed by more strategy than it may sound. I think about, and map, what I want to focus on like this past year I decided to focus more on herbs to make my own teas. Winter is the time of creative destruction. It’s a good time to weed out my mind and emotions. I put to bed many of my physical activities and long days filled with to-do’s. I plan for the coming year and what my intentions will be. I look at what I no longer want to be doing. Winter is a good time to practice saying no so when summer and renewals arrive I’ve built my “no” muscle and defined my boundaries.

Spring is exciting. Going in and prepping the garden beds, planting the first seeds, harvesting the winter crops. It’s like someone pressed the reset button on life each April. (except for this current year where my garden has actually floundered amidst the chaos) It’s new beginnings for plants and for humans. For me, this is the time I begin acting on the things I planned over winter. Working on a new book, a set of poems, growing certain skill sets, this is the time where I begin to dig. This tends to be an exciting time. Creativity is high, I’m inspired.

Then we sink into summer where my garden is overflowing with veggies and herbs. I’m making batches of varying pesto’s: erba stella and hazelnut, erba stella and walnut, cilantro and parsley. Salads are an everyday place setting as I try to not let anything go to waste. I’m also soaking in sun rays on my bike, hiking, camping which tends to have a renewal each time. Sitting in a chair feeling the sun warm my skin and flake off the crap from the week or day. Renewal is a time of feeding and keeping myself charged. I have to go to the garden almost every day during this time to care take the garden and make sure it has enough water, make sure the slugs aren’t taking over, make sure I’m harvesting at the right times. There’s a lot of tending during this time. Just like with myself renewal is about tending to my own garden, feeding my body and soul, this time usually means I start taking on too many things. Boundaries become important in this phase. My borage wants to overtake my neighbors’ plot. The blackberries want to take over the garden. My neighbor’s tomatoes stretch over my plot and their cucumbers vine into the pathways. It creeps just like the activities and work in my life begins to creep.

Which takes us into fall and maturity. The garden has succumbed to its fullest state and my projects are post launch and have been getting fed. This is a security phase. A celebration phase of all the hard work and to see where it’s gotten me. The garden doesn’t need as much attention. Plants need some harvesting, but the attention it requires of me dwindles enough that it almost feels like it could function without me. Much like any project in my life at this time: some may not need me as much, others take on pieces that I relinquish. Other projects are matured because of their ingrained routine: like my writing practice or meditation practice. Things that have become patterned and routine are found here in the fall of maturity.

Cycles require boundaries so that we can identify where we are, where we’re not, where we’ve stepped off the path and begun vining somewhere else or where we’ve not provided enough resources or attention for something to thrive. Boundaries help us say no and yes, but for me, mainly no. Boundaries inform me of where I’m outside of them and how I can get back within. This usually requires a cyclical check in with creative destruction. See these can happen in order like our seasons, and then sometimes they can happen out of order. We usually have to step out of order to get something back in order.

What have you said no to?

a slow knot

Normal. Dry. The way my mouth feels in the morning straining from the tip of my tongue to the base of my throat. Thirsty but no desire. This dry strictness stretching around my cramped jawline which at five in the morning reminds me to hold the tip of my tongue to the back of my teeth.

I can’t help but untether the skein of yarn called normal. I’ve never felt the qualities that makes one a normal person, let alone, a normal woman. At the same time, it seems that many people strive to be normal. Perhaps a desire to fit in, to not stand out. But that doesn’t seem quite right. And if you asked me if I wanted to stand out, I would tell you that I don’t. It’s not completely obvious to me what normal is and why, at times, I cannot feel it and, at the same time, feel that I look it. I’m dangerously close to getting the dictionary out and quoting its contents for how normal is defined. But I’ll keep my fingers tucked and focused.

I may refrain from quoting a dictionary, yet a good place to start is what comes to mind without hesitation when I think of normal. First, there’s Normal as every day, as routine, and then perhaps elevated as art. Preparing food is routine. Growing food? Routine. Brushing teeth, every day. I realize not everyone may see growing or preparing food as routine, and maybe, brushing teeth is not an everyday activity for some. But for me growing food is habitual, beautiful, and calming. Using my hands instead of staring at my laptop screen, plunging hands into dirt, and watching a seed become something I pluck to eat with my partner later or give to a friend is anything but normal. It is absolutely every day, routine, sometimes, perhaps, boring. But with my in-the-moment eyes growing food becomes mystical. Preparing food takes me from the mystical to the grounded and tangible process phase. I sway through the kitchen indulging in each ingredient, slowing down each step, intoxicated by the process and outcome. I have to prepare food to eat it and I can make it the most mundane task or the most fanciful where I start to feel like a conductor of ingredients attempting to make the next symphony.

Then there’s when the everyday becomes highlighted with depth and meaning and sub-context – like routine and daily actions. My morning routine falls under normal perhaps (and for the simple fact that it is a routine and every day). I rise at 5am Monday through Friday. I write and meditate for twenty minutes each before moving into getting ready for work. This is a normal morning for me. In pre-COVID days washing hands was just something I did – without my current level of frequency. But now, each time I wash my hands (amongst the 20ish times this takes place in one day) I have attention on the act. I have attention on the act before I’ve even done it where I’m reminding myself. Then, while washing, I’m now counting seconds like a girl playing jump rope. It’s been said that where there is a lack of discernment there can be no awareness of gratitude for a special effort or moment. Other activities fall into this camp of normal, or even habitual behavior, but for other reasons (due to my gender). Walking at night alone can move from the everyday normal into everyday highlighted. I’ve been trained to walk with ears and eyes peeled open and tuned in.

Perhaps, then, a lack of normalcy, is a lack of routine. A lack of the everyday. If each and every day was uniquely different with no routine whatsoever, even that would eventually find a normalcy since the one strain of routine would be that nothing is routine. My early experiences of a COVID life showed what it could be like without much normal happening. My work seemed to change daily being in emergency food response where I found myself immersed in reactivity. Each day was almost like a new day – and that is an exhausting place to exist. Unknowns pranced around and mocked me – and still do if I’m being honest. My partner and I also decided to move into an entirely new neighborhood – so different that it felt like we almost moved cities. But I noticed that after about a month in a place of what seemed constant change, I noticed that I found comfort and routine in not knowing, in the lack of consistency. The lack of consistency and routine really did become the routine. Mind you, the ramifications of this had mental and emotional implications. I slept a lot in those days. I ate less. When the weekends came, I couldn’t move from my home, specifically the couch. There were a few times that I ventured out on a bike ride, and afterwards, my body would fall into exhaustion for several days almost feeling like I was getting sick. Some research states that it takes only three weeks for our minds or bodies to form new habits. We may itch and refuse at first, but our survival instincts find a way to normalize.

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death claws at my eyes

curved spine, afraid to be tree

hazel restlessness

cowed by doubt and stern (man)dates

pummel crisp, precise rain beads.

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If normal is something that has become routine, standard, or usual could it also become art, become beautiful within its usualness? If for just a moment, that thing was discerned out of other things like a spotlight shining down and casting darkness around everything else. I say yes. Visual and prose artists across time depict the routine as something beautiful and unusual. They highlight snippets of life and nature and bring it to life for us. Many artists come to mind here, being that most are doing just this. They take the usual and make whole new worlds within microcosms. Even those that don’t consider themselves artists still see the normal as something extra ordinary. The Appalachian Mountains, Mt St Helens, Crater Lake, Ozarks, Arctic, beaches, sun sets and sun rises. These are, honestly, every day and normal within nature, but for most people, these are seen as magnificent and anything but normal. They’re places, or moments, we’ve deemed special. Every winter I plot out the camping trips, hiking trips, biking trips in anticipation of the warm (and dry) days of the pacific northwest. Every trip, every ride feels anything but usual. I’m taken by the perfectly blue sky dotted with puffy clouds, the regular chirp of birds swirling around me, blooming flowers along the path, and rolling hills of dirt, trees, it doesn’t much matter.

Normal and ordinary are seen as objects, actions, moments in time that have no distinctive features. I could make anything normal considering its subjectivity. I can also make anything not normal. A grand disservice is made, however, when normal is applied to cultures and people. White dominant culture is situated as normal, but to say it is featureless, like normal insists, is a grave mistake. To tell myself, or to white people generally, that I have no defining culture makes us sound ordinary or (subjectively) boring or too plain (“not like those other cultures”). But this isn’t true. I have a culture personally and there is a white culture. It might get tough to see since it’s part of the dominant culture and so is usually all around us. As a white person I may trip over it from time to time or if I’m looking with an anti-racist lens, I might step over it all the time in its pretend camouflage.

To be something truly featureless is to be something other than normal. Defining people, places, and objects as normal attempts to take away its defining features and its potential, underplay its power, or even repress power. Dangerous when talking about humans and disappointing what talking about places and things.

Normal only exists because standards and comparisons have been established to make it so. Ordinary and normal can slip by without notice (typically only for people/places/objects that fall into the deemed normal categories). Normal is a lack of seeing something for what it is or could be. Honestly, I’d like to take it even further and say that normal is make believe. It is socially constructed. Giving definitions and parameters to normal ostracizes and excludes some while giving power to others. Normal allows some to feel good and others to feel bad. Normal creates anxiety to maintain a sense of being normal in front of others. Or what they perceive as what the norm is.

Pushing further, normal creates a hierarchy of perception and standards for hair, skin, brain, home, streets, talking, behaving. It instills good or bad, pleasant and unpleasant, pretty and ugly. Normal is the median between these opposing ends to which we grade ourselves on a daily basis. Normal besets pillars of anxiety and hate. It insinuates a lack of change, a decree of sameness, unchanging non-change. Saying, “I don’t want to be normal” connotes normal as boring. Normal can also be flipped on its head when the radical becomes normal. Here, I think of what has become prescribed resistance (the usual tools in the activist toolbox) or what has turned from a movement to a fashion trend (capitalism at its best). These things can become normalized so that it actually becomes assimilated, and ultimately acceptable for those with the grade sheets of Normal. Part of the fold, it pleats as it’s supposed to.

The power of normal folds over and over again continuing its normalization programming. Horrible things can begin to feel usual (this is usually reserved for those either in a power position or those that have become assimilated into the constant imagery). Warring nations and people killing each other over so-called safety or power, privilege, and identity. Whiteness, misogyny, thin, able-bodied, heterosexual, Christian. Normal is when people fit their pre-disposed characters spoon fed to us by media. Normal is, normal does.

I am normal in many ways. In my teenage years, I strove to not be normal even though I also had no patience or understanding for some not normal dispositions. Then there were times that I went through life wishing the parts of me that were normal were something else, anything else, while still looking down on others not-normalness. I didn’t realize the amount of judging that I was heaping on others, let alone myself. Standards that I strove to keep up with and judged others who didn’t seem to be keeping up slowly took their toll mentally and emotionally, so, I worked to see the world in new ways, laying judgement to rest in the last backyard I officially had. Asking someone or yourself to be normal is subjective to, usually, white dominant, heterosexual, and able-bodied standards. Being not normal is not definable enough given the applied connotations of it: being not boring, or not plain. It’s too simple and even more, is still within the normal paradigm which we desperately need to hop off that merry go round. I do not strive for a not normal. Espousing normal as boring is actually quite normal. Being not normal is another arm of normality and assimilation.

I strive for an anti-normal. Anti-normal is resisting normalcy, and what it implies, entirely. Anti-normal asks for a paradigm, new definitions and ways of being and seeing. Not normal is being against normalcy within the constructs of a normalcy paradigm, while anti-normal is creating a new system and simply doing away with normal.

Anti-Normal. Wet. Empty. The way my mind feels when I’ve slowed down to walk next to the snail. I’m no longer thirsty. I move meticulously, somatically, with hair unfurling ears.

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slow knots push out wails

fully wadded within heart

shaped scapulas stretch

out long tethers rounding and

whooping, “bruising in the dawn.”

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precarious pedestals

Why are these the choices: passive, assertive, or aggressive? How many people, who don’t identify as female, realize the daily twists, turns, and frustration of dancing between them? And why is passiveness generally associated

with being female? If we try to become assertive, we easily go “too far” for others. It’s a frustrating game with seemingly no right answers. And, honestly, what is being passive? Passive could seem easy going or perhaps it’s being nice to others, going with the flow, or easy to get along with. It could also mean passive aggressive or not saying what I really want (or mean) or not wanting to rock the boat or letting people walk over me. A state of passiveness is full of anxiety, anger, indecision, and feeling trapped within myself. This is just from a white woman’s lens. Layers of racism and LGBTQ phobia intersect making the passive state potentially one of silencing and trauma.

Maybe a few warrior poses will kick it out of me. While energizing, the warrior pose has never infected me with courage. Nor have I been able to maintain that energy once in a meeting or, god forbid, an interview. Passivity is steeped in gender and LGBTQ inequality and racism. In professional environments, silence can be viewed as agreement, which in most cases it is quite the opposite. More like fear to speak up for a myriad of reasons (such as: didn’t actually get an opportunity to speak; fear of retaliation; fear of looking dumb; etc). In personal relationships, passiveness could be perceived as being nice and getting along with others when in actuality it could be coming from fear of violence or so much personal anger the only place to exist is in passiveness.

It looks like there is a common thread of fear no matter who may be actively passive. There’s also another thread being exposed that’s only showing the cultural and societal definition of being passive. So far it looks as though culture has given passiveness a bad wrap. Probably more associated with the feminine than masculine and more accepted with women than men. Though, to be honest, there are probably not too many people that would like to be called passive. So I began wondering about other ways in which passivity may show up.

For starters, passiveness may include listening to another person while taking in their facial expression and body language. In a passive state I can, and do, listen to my own body - its sensations, emotions, and thoughts. I’m able to check in with my entire body. See where I’m at, how I’m doing, and if there’s anything that’s bubbling for my attention. Sometimes when I’m being passive, I’m taking in the world around me. It doesn’t actually seem like a negative to be in this state. I’m hearing cars go by, the refrigerator, my extra loud heater, birds calling, a plane going by, and the sound of pets rearranging themselves. I’m seeing my living room, feeling the pen in my hand, noticing the lamp and the morning light beginning to break through the windows.

Sometimes passivity is a forced silence and other times a simple state of appearing less active. For we are rarely actually doing nothing. Even while watching a show or movie, our bodies may be sedentary, but our minds are not. My mind is filing and organizing everything I watch. It’s informing and telling me things whether neutral, harmful, or helpful. Even a bath isn’t a state of nothingness. When I lay in the tub, I reconvene with my body and sensations. And many times, my mind is like a freight train full of thoughts to weed through or just ignore. Anxious thoughts wondering if I should of said something when I didn’t (or even worse, angry that I didn’t say something), if I should have not said something when I did (anxious and worrying thoughts if I should go back to the person), should I of said it differently (also anxious and worrying if I should return to that person), or did I show too much emotion (and if I did, do I feel embarrassed, shame, humiliation?). The passive dance is fraught with this four-step swing on a daily basis. For women of color or trans women this dance careens wildly with racism and transphobia. So take my anxiety and constant questioning and magnify times a hundred at minimum.

This is not an either/or scenario and it feels like being passive is either being fully present in a moment (much less the case) or hiding from and obsessing over it (much more the case). In the latter, I could be passive out of fear of what someone might do or say or even think about me. I could be avoiding a difficult conversation, or even worse, attempting to avoid further trauma. Maybe I’m too anxious to say what needs to be said, worried it will upset someone and create conflict. Maybe I can’t stop wondering about the moment to the point where I become confused on which direction I should even go. I’m worried someone will think I’m not smart enough and then won’t be taken seriously at work.

As a woman, if I’m not passive will I be labeled authoritative or moody (i.e. untrustworthy)? Damned if I act, damned by my own emotions and mind if I don’t. As women we are internalized (by culture and others) to care for others, so not caring what other people think can be a hard ask.

Now, merge all this with the abrupt change into adulthood working predominantly with men and being expected to relinquish this learning. Because now being passive might mean I don’t care, or worse, I don’t know. With a lack of initiative showing, or what appears to be so, and I begin to get passed up at work.

Passive holds cultural significance, trauma, confusion, anxiety, and ultimately, anger. As a woman, if I’m not passive will I be labeled authoritative or moody (i.e. untrustworthy)? Damned if I act, damned by my own emotions and mind if I don’t. As women we are internalized (by culture and others) to care for others, so not caring what other people think can be a hard ask.

So let’s reset. When we are taking time to listen to our bodies and the world around us or simply listening to someone next to us, these are beautiful passive and connective moments. Unfortunately, more often than not, we experience passive as a safety precaution either when in a harmful scenario or in less traumatic states such as protecting what people think about me. Regardless, I can’t seem to find where the state of being passive is being forced on me whether unintentionally or not. I don’t know how many times a day I get paranoid that I’m talking too much in a conversation unless I’m with other female friends. And this isn’t a worry after thirty minutes of talking. I begin feeling this worry just a few minutes into talking. I try to sum up what I have to say as quickly as possible less I am seen that I’m droning on.

You could say that after reading all this, it still looks like I have a choice. And, you’d be technically right. I do, maybe, potentially, at times have a choice. But don’t be fooled. First, this “choice” is wrapped in cultural and societal brainwashing as soon as I’m born and filled with conscious and unconscious expectations that then (second reason) immediately shift as an adult but not really. It shifts on the surface and yet I’m not really expected to be loud. It’s a mind game not a riddle where we hope the emotional fallout doesn’t wash us away. It’s frustrating having to do this dance every day, and as I’ve said earlier, this dance and frustration is only going to be worse, with more emotional fallout, for a woman of color or trans woman. It’s a landmine fraught with unintended emotional consequences that can, and does, affect our physical health.

So, what’s the answer? My first draft of this writing had a positive ending talking about how maybe there are choices that as a woman I can make. But I think it’s only a perception of choice, a mind game, a magic trick. Yes, I do have a choice on whether I’m passive or not as long as I’m okay with, and create a support system for, what will almost inevitably happen afterwards.