Beets on the Asphalt

The beet hit the asphalt and rolled just a little. It was still (barely!) attached to the bleeding red stems and wilted leaves that had left marks on my shirt. The beet was fine. I was not. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream Fuck This Shit into the hollows between metal and glass and dirty ground otherwise known as Jersey City. When the bag that was carrying my groceries broke in the middle of the street, it seemed like too much. My arms were getting bruised from attempting to carry five overflowing shopping bags from the downtown Manhattan Whole Foods to a marina in Jersey City. 

Technically it was only 1.8 miles. 

Technically I could have walked this is 30 minutes. 

But technically I was across a major river, in a different state really, and about 30 pounds heavier with beets and organic milk and bottles of champagne vinegar (the latter of which bounced and cracked on the street). 

I plodded along for 15 minutes to the ferry from the store where the cashier had asked if I was getting a car and I had mumbled Or Something.  Blocks of concrete and avenues with cars and sidewalks with people looking at me like I was crazy. I felt crazy. One guy commented, “You got a strong back lady, a Strong back!” I took it as a compliment and huffed on. Crazy and determined and strong, that’s me. 

On the ferry, across the river, off the ferry, into the streets of JC, back aching. Crazy and not so determined and tired, that’s me. Fuck this, I’m getting a cab, I thought. But there was no cab in sight. I started stumbling towards the light rail hoping there would be more traffic. 

That’s when the bag broke in the middle of the street, beets rolling, glass cracking, me swallowing back tears. I just let the bag drop as I walked to the corner to put the other bags down. A man on a cell phone stopped and shuffled the beets and bottles back into the torn bag as he chatted about his weekend in the Hamptons to whomever it was who was on the line. He didn’t get off the phone or really look up but he did in fact ask if I needed any more help. Which I appreciated. And at the same time in my frustration I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself for not getting off the goddamn phone. Was that wrong? Misdirected anger? Projecting on him as a product of the city where people generally ignore one another and food comes in little plastic packages in brightly lit aisles and there is no way of knowing where it came from or who the farmers are or how much they are paid or whether the drought is affecting them this year or if the Begradas have finally moved north or do they use worm castings in their fields? This was not the man’s fault. He was connecting with Someone on the phone. He might have visited a farm stand himself out on Long Island that weekend. How was I to know? Even if he had been off of his cell phone I might not have asked him anything because I was so angry. 

Feeding the disconnection.

I want to feed the opposite. I know that cities can be amazing places to connect with people, with art, with food. But all these connections feel to me as manufactured and out of reach as a high-couture gown, me in my stained shorts and salty Converse. There are processes and barriers and some invisible scale on which we (I) compare one another and All This Stuff. This art, this conversation, this packaged and plated food. This yacht life feeds right into this weighted world that feels so foreign and plastic-wrapped. I want to step off the scale and just enjoy what I have. I can appreciate the effort and ambition and I also know that right now in my life I crave the simple. I want to shed all the pretense and drop down into the basic. Ground myself in place and community and converse about how we survive. I mean really soulfully survive. I want to make art in a falling down barn with the swallows flittering overhead. I want to go into the garden and pull out onions and carrots that I planted and watered and weeded, brush the dirt off their living backs and chop and cook and devour with gratitude, no plastic wrappers in sight. At home I have a chest freezer full of a cow I passed on the road everyday on my way into town. At home I eat eggs from chickens down the street. At home I have a closet full of dresses that have mud on the hems and I have shelves of dog-eared books on farming and soul. 

(And I am calling it Home! That is new. That is real. That is a connection I want to feed and nurture.)  

I also want to appreciate the now and all that this now is teaching me about what I actually want in this lifetime. All that this yachtie life and the city and its people can teach me. Absorb all the art and music and passion that I know is here. And then be grateful for the opportunity to choose my environment, to choose what and where I call home.

I rip off the bleeding stems of the beets and leave them as an offering to the lamppost on the corner. The concrete is simply sand and dirt and water. The city is a living thing, too, worthy of nourishment and gratitude for all it has been, all that lies beneath, all that will become of it as grass grows in the cracks of the sidewalk. 
Life doesn’t end, it is just the energy that changes form. 
The beet goes on.