[ v ] xiv

manifesto

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

How many of us are afraid to age? Every one of us humans, at one point or another. Yet we do not see our animal companions fretting over the passage of time. It is quite possible that they are awake to their mortality, simply accepting their fates. Life and death is an everyday occurrence in the animal kingdom, sometimes from birth itself.

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Just as my moral compass, i.e. practicing honesty (even when it hurts), takes me away from people, places and things that are not mine to enjoy, so too do our hearts bring us toward those life experiences that are truly for us—if only we are brave and wise enough to trust! to choose to have faith in the honest-to-goodness Unknown.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

It appears to me that there are at least two distinct and incompatible qualities ascribed to God. In human form, we assert that Jesus the Son is all good, yet not all powerful. In heavenly realms, the Lord our Father is all powerful, yet not all good. We experience these forces all around us—nature is merciless! and more elegant than we understand…

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion—put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

This time last year, I was volunteering at the General Hospital as a birth doula. Two years ago, my heart was breaking over and over. Three years past? A day trip to see Judy Chicago, followed by a solstice supper for one. Maya and I biked from Santa Cruz to La Honda and back again. Zelda led me on one of our final rainy walks together.

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

I am sorry, Creator, for continuing to murder ourselves in each other. We children have not learned, it seems. Yet there is still time… to love one another, as you have commanded. Time to change our course. Maybe we’ll manage. Maybe we’ll turn back.

“Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” by American activist Wendell Berry.