The Democracy of the Dirt
About a month ago one of our residents was hit by a car on his way to work. He died. The next day one of our staff members wives had their second child: one goes in, one goes out.
It is not unusual in violent media as well as in life to hear dead people referred to as "compost" meant to imply in a nihilistic way that when it is all said and done we are essentially little more than dirt. I think this is a true statement but nothing to despair over. As human beings we are part of the human and eco-culture we are born into and die into. We are humans (humus beings) grown out of the fertilized dirt of earth and society.
I have little memory of either of my two grandfathers but they are a very real part of me. They are compost lying in the fertile field of the two family's (the Lyke's and the Keilty's) out of which I grow. They are also a very real part of me because they decomposed back into the earth which gives me shape and life.
My friend Byrone is always trying to convince me that I need to be more "self-reliant". I understand his general point that I have a tendency to let others do things for me, but I can't help but think that the category is completely asinine. The only way someone could be truly self reliant is if they were some sort of being existing in a formless void in which none existed before, after, or with them. This beings knowledge would have to be completely self contained it wold have no inherited language in which it had been taught to describe the world nor narrative to help it understand the void it is in. Our rugged individualist would not find that necessary because to be truly self reliant it would have to create, consume, and dispose of its energy in its entirely self contained reality.
Compare this to me. I eat food grown and prepared by others, I sleep in a building which was built by a bunch of low german anabaptists from Lancaster county 75 years ago, I process my world through the english language a pidgin tongue whose roots are far from elegant, I use this language to read books written by people who with few exceptions (David Dark and Stanley Hauerwas) I have never met. My energy most likely comes from TMI although plenty of it comes from the natural gas drilled in the gulf of Mexico, I came into the world because of a choice wholly independent of myself (the choice of James Lyke and Claire Keilty to marry and have children) and will leave it as the result of choices wholly independent of myself, and to top it off every interlocking particle of the universe only has existence, meaning, and purpose through Jesus Christ (and he who is three is not self reliant).
So we have a choice my friends, we can perceive ourselves as self reliant individuals (a physical impossibility) or we can know ourselves as members of the democracy of dirt. And stand fast on that equitable of all political credos "I am from dust and to dust I shall return, Alleluia". I stand knee deep in good compost hoping to husband the body, knowledge, piece of earth and possibly some day wife and children I have been blessed with. Hoping to some day become good compost for children who may or not remember me but who are upon me as well as everyone else wholly reliant.
posted by Matt Lyke at 7:42 AM
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