The Tiniest Things: Billie Best Blog

I heard the crisp leaves scraping against each other as they fell from the trees. They sailed like lost boats in the yellow mist. The spider was gone; only a few strands of sticky silk remained. A hummingbird buzzed past me and I wondered what she was looking for to eat. A robin chirped in the orchard. I saw her sitting on the highest branch of the persimmon tree. She looked lonely. Orange balls hang from the bare branches, looking like holiday decorations. No one eats persimmons anymore. The farmer hung a new no trespassing sign in front of it in case people like me tried to snatch it. I asked him why, but he couldn’t explain it. But I saw the love in his eyes. They were his mother’s favorite fruit; now they reminded him of her. He lives alone with his persimmons. These little things are very important to us.

In between typing, I started a new project in my garden, a small rented area. When the sun is far south, it changes color. The light was deep yellow and the sky was cyan. My circadian rhythm is regulated by light. The new busy job is making soil in containers, wheelbarrows and metal trash cans. I’ve drilled some holes to inject air and water to create a layer of rot cake. This is an old family recipe. I pressed the dried leaves into a pile of old root balls with my fists, much like I would fold parsley stalks into soup. A tablespoon of fish emulsion, a dash of mycorrhizal powder, empty snail shells, chopped Halloween pumpkin. I let it ferment in the winter rains for three or four months.

The pumpkin skin disappeared beneath fuzzy white mold. Mold changes its smell. The smell changed the way I felt. smug. Mildew is my winter crop. During an exchange project, microorganisms swarmed between me and my garden. My cells, my gut bacteria, my immune system, my neurotransmitters, my blood make me who I am. I knelt in the wet and imagined the soil as the placenta of the earth, mediating life above and below, protecting us. The benefits of this idea reassure me. The placenta regulates the immune systems of mother and child, allowing them to live separately in one body. Microbes communicate and collaborate to preserve life. Our cells have intelligence that allows us to survive.

We were exposed to COVID-19 with my family over Thanksgiving and now my partner has phlegm in his lungs; his breath is cloudy. I squeeze a fresh lemon into a small glass with a teaspoon of honey and a few drops of cayenne pepper, leave it in the core for twenty seconds, and serve it warm. He shot it and said wow. We’ll never know if it helped. But I got some satisfaction from the look on his face. Emotionally, I poured pepper on the slugs to mark my territory.

The lesson I learned from this pandemic is that it’s the microbes that matter, not us. We are big, stupid materialists. We can live without the Internet. But we could not exist without microscopic life forms. There will always be epidemics. We are just collateral damage in the ongoing war between biota. I get it. I was once a single-celled organism. I once lived in another person’s body like a seed in the soil. I had an immune system before I had a brain. I’ve been home to germs since before I could breathe. I am assembled cell by cell from other cells that have existed before me. I am an organism’s organism.

In the new theory of everything, we humans are simply the embodiment of microbes. Consciousness is a product of biochemistry. My body is a process that looks like me. There is no separation between my mind and my body. No spirit or body. My body produces my spiritual experiences. This theory makes sense to me. I’m not a religious person, but I do talk to my germs. I told them happy stories and encouraged them not to kill me. So far, it’s working.

I know it’s my microbes that crave my garden and I’m giving them what they want. My jeans have brown stains on the knees. When my hands are dirty, I feel a sense of belonging. My plants know this. Even my houseplants know this. It’s that time of year when we lean on each other for support. I feed their microbes and they feed my microbes. Next year, when I eat the beans from the garden, I’ll be eating the soil I’m cooking in right now. This is the cycle of life, only broken by the porcelain bowl which stopped me from burying my shit in the garden. And dogs. What a mess that would be. I’m all for enjoying the cycle of life as long as it doesn’t leave footprints on the carpet. Call me a hypocrite if you must.

I wish we were smarter. I wish our brains weren’t so slow to evolve from the essentialism of hoarding to the fast and small ways of minimalism. It’s like we’re in a race to wipe out the planet so we can buy more labboobs. Why isn’t there a virus that can kill plastic? Viruses adapt much faster than we do. My partner and I have been vaccinated against a variety of invisible threats. We went to the clinic to check his lungs and found he did not have COVID-19 or the flu. Yet there was a tiny bastard inside him that produced the same symptoms. We douse it with more of my hot shots. We went for a walk outside to get his blood fresh since the pharmacy was out of leeches. I tried to convince him to put less sugar in his coffee to make friends with his gut bacteria. That didn’t happen.

Now I’m in full escape mode, talking to you instead of him, because I get more energy from the alphabet than from Nurse Nancy’s routine. In the meantime, he ran errands and took his dog to the park. He is capable enough to do this. Hopefully in an hour he’ll be singing through the front door. This creates microbial happiness in my dopamine receptors. Persimmons in winter, white mold in fermenting soil, a man singing, the smallest things make a big difference to me. Maybe you do too. I hope you are well. Thank you for reading.