BOOK CLUB: Part 2 - Tending Sweetgrass (Patreon)

[Pictured: CJ's book with its regular hearts and stars and brackets and highlights and underlines]

This is a discussion thread for Tending Sweetgrass, the second collection of essay chapters that Robin Wall Kimmerer has organized. Collated. Braided, even.

The plot thickens! I thought the narrative arc of motherhood woven through this section was profoundly effective (although I didn't much like the perspective switch).

Some assorted quotes and qualms:

Maple Sugar Moon:

The Anishinaabe story of Nanabozho once more articulates some of the same deep truths of the Abrahamic creation story, but with much less emphasis on suffering, scarcity, "a fallen world".

His teachings remind us that one half of the truth is that the earth endows us with great gifts, the other half is that the gift is not enough. The other half belongs to us... It is our work, and our gratitude, that distills the sweetness." (p. 69)

Also developing the theme of Gifts/Gratitude as the fundamental relationship of reality. Such a fascinatingly luminous difference from Give/Take, Buy/Sell, Scarcity/Struggle.

Two lines that killed me on page 70 towards the end:

Reflecting on the 19th century tradition of planting twin trees to celebrate a marriage and christen a new homestead:

"I realize that those first homesteaders were not the beneficiaries of that shade, at least not as a young couple. They must have meant for their people to stay here."

Don't know why that's wrecking me to dwell on. The intention that your people will stay here after you're gone. I want to do things thinking that.

Upon realizing the debt she owes that young couple:

"I have no way to pay them back... Perhaps all I can do is love them."

Gifts create gratitude. Gratitude creates gifts. Flowing in tune with the infinite.

Witch Hazel:

Haha why is this from her daughters perspective? I feel like it doesn't add anything. Like it's mostly her daughter talking about her mother, so it just comes across as Kimmerer writing about herself with an extra step that makes it feel weird.

Anyways, very sweetsad, heartwarming It's A Wonderful Life ending. Maybe u liked this more than me (but Ellen agrees with me).

A Mother’s Work:

Probably the best written, most personal and perfect self contained story so far.

Loved when she started wishing death on her ducks:

"Winter and a daily dose of duck splats must freeze up the part of the brain devoted to compassion for animals, for I began to hope for their demise." (p. 85)

Also the moment she finally snaps and decides to de-muck her pond, because a bird walks on it:

"... it gave a mighty kick and popped up to the surface, where it began to walk on the algal mat. That was a moment of resolve for me. You should not be able to walk on a pond." (p. 85)

I relate to that moment when you try to solve a problem and fail so hard you just start laughing.

Totally enthralled by the bit where she starts taking on the algae, simultaneously trying to defeat it and become intimate with it:

"I'm a botanist by trade, and so of course I needed to know who these algae were.

Cladophora... Spirogyra... Volvox... So much life in a singe drop of water, water that previously looked like scum in a jar. Here were my partners in restoration." (p. 88)

Just obsessed with this methodology of imbuing the problem with agency.

"Transformation is not accomplished by tentative wading at the edge." (p. 89)

Also appreciated the admission of some sort of pragmatic moral hierarchy, wherein human values supplant complete laissez faire swamp manifestation. I found it honest and poignant.

"...it challenged my conviction that all lives are valuable, protozoan or not. As a theoretical matter, I hold this to be true, but on a practical level it gets murky, the spiritual and the pragmatic bumping heads... The best I could do was to be respectful and not let the small lives go to waste." (p. 90)

"So I wiped my eyes and with all due respect for the lessons of Hydrodictyon, I raked it up onto the shore." (p.94)

The way the pond clearing creates fertilizer for the garden... love wins.

"Being a good mother includes the caretaking of water" shout out to the Fremen.

O the cruel ceaseless passage of time. The self awareness in the end that the decade of pond clearance didn't really work enough to charm her children. fajdsjfhks

I have also been thinking about this idea that ideally, age makes our net of responsibility wider and wider. Wider until eventually its more mystic than human, and then you cease to be mortal and become one with the Great Spirit.

The Consolation of Water Lilies:

Heartbreaking! Wonderful! Direct companion piece to A Mother's Work. My own mum has told me much of this kind of soul wrenching experience of motherhood, self, grief, loss. Also Grimes wrote a song about it.

"The entire parking lot erupted in laughter and then we were all released." (p. 100)

I know this.

"When I had exhausted my shoulders so they were as empty as my heart, I rested on the water, closed my eyes, and let the sadness come, adrift." (p. 102)

I am starting to see the truth of poetry, as pragmatic tools to navigate the undifferentiated flux of sensation we are dreaming our way through to the end.

"The young and the old are linked in one long breath, and inhalation that calls for reciprocal exhalation, nourishing the common root from which they both arose." (p. 103)

This is what I was trying to say in my Subjectivity video. I will continue to try to say it.

Allegiance to Gratitude:

A meditation on the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address. It's giving Yes.

"It reminds the whole community that leadership is rooted not in power and authority, but in service and wisdom." (p. 112)

"Not surprisingly, Haudenosaunee decision-making process from consensus, not by a vote of the majority. A decision is made only "when our minds are one." Those words are a brilliant political preamble to negotiation, strong medicine for soothing partisan fervor." (p. 113)

"Thanksgiving also reminds us of how the world was meant to be in its original condition." (p. 114)

As with the Garden of Eden, and Skywoman.

This is maybe the most succinct and potent quote to me so far:

...duties and gifts are two sides of the same coin... If gifts and responsibilities are one, then asking "What is our responsibility?" is the same as asking "What is our gift?" It is said that only humans have the capacity for gratitude. This is among our gifts. (p. 115)

Put it on my gravestone, with everything else.

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The Oneida Indian Nation has made a recording of their Thanksgiving Address, spoken in Onyota’a:ká (Oneida). They Oneida Indian Nation is part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, along with Onondaga, the tribe specified in the book. Despite not being in Onondaga as Kimmer’s ceremony is, this Onyota’a:ká address is very close to the one we read about in this essay for those of you curious to hear Iroquois spoken aloud. It's good to hear the language.

Kimmerer's English translation of the Thanksgiving Address is from John Stokes: here’s he is reading his own words, explaining the project and how it came about.

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That's part two in all of its nourishing splendour.

What Gifts In This Portion Are You Grateful For?

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On May 7th, two weeks from now, meet back on Patreon and talk about Picking Sweetgrass. I and the research team and the teachers pets (leaders, strawberries) will also monitor all previous Book Club thread comments and continue to interact.

I’ve gone back and added book-specific tags to all the book club posts, so it’ll be easier now to sift through and find those old threads for continued contemplation and construction.

But that's the past and future. Here in the present, it's time to play!

Spiritual and Pragmatic Head Bumping Below!