Every year I make plum jam, the past two years the plum tree has been getting sicker and sicker, it doesn’t make enough to jam anymore. I didn’t get to eat a single plum off the tree this year. Driving back from Trail we stopped in Keremeos cause I saw a sign: “Peaches 20lb for $10”. They were the ugly peaches, still tasted great, but looked funny so wouldn’t sell well at the store (this is a weird phenomena), but they would taste great as canned peaches. I went through the process of canning them, documenting the process thinking it might be my Terre project, but they weren’t the plums from the tree in my backyard. I had never canned peached before, it didn’t feel like this was it… however, Bill got excited to eat the yummy peaches, and I thought they might taste good with oatmeal for breakfast the next day, Bill gave me a big thumbs up! Oatmeal, now that is a special meal, especially the way I make it. I think I had found my terre.
After action 1, I was still thinking about my discomfort with borders, my canadian national identity, and this feeling of disconnect from my families history, ancestry, and connection to place. For the oatmeal I knew I could take a very historical path, and maybe even connect with my heritage in some way, I went to the bookshelf, and next to the book I intended to pull out was Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Unlike last week I didn’t do a reading, but it did spark a memory of one of the stories she had written about, that seemed relevant to what I was feeling. She spoke of camping with her father, and how every morning he would pour the first bit of coffee off as an offering to the the mountain they were camping next to. She percieved this as an important ritual. When she asked him about it later in life, he laughed. He was showing gratitude to the mountain, but it wasn’t an elaborate ritual, the grounds always floated to the top, he poured them off onto the ground before filling the mugs, and along the way started to give a cheeky little prayer to the mountain. It was a ritual that had emerged, it was a blend of humour, grounds, and gratitude. For me as someone who is untethered from my past, this way of approaching the action made more sense. How do you ground yourself when you have been untethered. Sometimes you have to start from where you are. Unbinding the book solidified this frame of mind for me. The book was a going away present from work, it was beautiful, but also, it was a symbol of cultural appropriation and commodification, I thought it was weird parting gift especially because we had had some big conversations about systemic racism in those last few weeks. It was sitting next to the other books on the shelf, so I took it down, looked at the lacing, and started to undo it. I didn’t cut the string, but patiently undid the knot, and began to unlace it. It felt good. I didn’t have to accept the gift as it was, I could deconstruct it and turn it into something else. So this was my starting place for building a set of instructions for Kimia. Knowing that I am disconnected but that I can still build meaning and gratitude into my life and that connection can be emergent.
I had a lot of fun constructing this for Kimia! part analog part digital, it reminded me a bit of stop-motion animation, the way it came together. The ritual and experience of it centered around time of day, feelings of comfort and warmth, and preparing oneself for a day of action and activity. Click on the link below to see the booklet instructions. One thing I noticed while I was making the oatmeal diagrams, I used fabric to represent the oats, in action 1, it was the linen that connected me to ancestors and place. Here the oats are again place specific – they grow well in cold wet climates. I wasn’t sure if Kimia would be able to find them in Iran, but I learned that Barley was indigenous to Iran, and still grown there, and that nutritionally it was actually better for you than oatmeal, and could be cooked into a porridge the same way, but that it didn’t grow as well in the colder, shorter, wetter growing seasons in Canada and Scotland.
