Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

"And what there is to conquer...
has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate..."

One of these men is Wendell Berry. His words follow.


Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion-put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

In Gratitude

To my brothers and sisters
Of brittle bones and fallible flesh
Who,
Despite the nay-sayers,
the wish-scoffers,
the sunshine-blockers,
the song-stiflers,
the witch-hunters,
the better-days-doubters,
Grow their roots deep
In ancient soil solemnly tilled, generation upon generation, by the
sky-kissers,
the earth-listeners,
the freedom-ponderers,
the new-flavor-makers,
the fear-scatterers,
the masterpiece-inspirers:

Thank you for making me brave.

Untitled

Weathered old man, I study his type:
The Automaton.

Creaking and clicking into his seat within the chanting Mass.
But no – his soul decries his context.

Don’t waste your sympathetic smiles;
What need has he for your instruction, Voltaire?
What unfamiliar lesson could you teach him, Diderot?
Gaia is teacher and muse.
What you have detailed in sundry volumes of high and mighty word,
He inauspiciously gives living form, under her discerning eye.

At your invitation to the perfumed salon, a polite declination:
“No, thank you, I ought to get back. Horses ha’int been fed.”

He sees his smallness, taught him by a life wrestling the earth.
He knows his fallibility, taught him by solitary, dawn-lit walks home after weary nights spent by the side of a dying calf.
He understands life, its instrumental purpose, taught him by solemn slaughterings and his own broken body.

He sees his smallness; I see a crown of humility.
He knows his fallibility, and so keeps his sword of judgment sheathed.
He understands the instrumental purpose of life, and so mocks the approaching dragon,
Death.

He touches my arm and tells me my skin is beautiful and brown like my mother’s
And that my heart knows best,
And I remember blackberries so ripe they could be gathered with concentrated breath;
I remember the tulips, my compass, every spring returning to spell out our heritage;
I remember racing -- downy legs on hot horseflesh -- through tobacco fields toward the place where copper clouds meet Kentucky bluegrass;
I remember the land, something so secure – something that will outlast us both,
Enduring despite our limitations, our forgetfulness.
Line by line, I see the impression of his soil-stained hands on my heart.
I see us on different sides of the semantic chasm, bridge-building, plank by tender plank.
As we cry together, understanding the misunderstood.

I Think You Must Be Savage

“What have the Christians brought us? The concept of hell and the fear of death.”
-- Anosy elder

My family has a painting of an Anglo-Saxon Christ on their mantel. (Their conduit to salvation looks suspiciously colonial).

My little sisters love playing with my hair and my mother loves braiding it. They tell me it is beautiful and glisse (just like their poupees).

My mother plays me high church canons that she has saved on her cell phone. (Why are they un-translated and why are there no original Malagasy hymns to sing on Sunday?)

I was expected to make a contribution (a significant contribution) to my grandmother’s charity – the object of which is to build a new Lutheran church in a “poor, remote village”. At the charity luncheon, I was the only vazaha.

The good vazaha who is expected to nonchalantly present 10,000 ariary to the dear people of the poor, remote village to help them find God. Bring the babies to me, let me hold them and kiss them. The vazaha with the silky hair and the slender nose and the lacquered pout lips will bless the babies and good fortune will be upon them. Would you like a picture? I would like a picture to remember those I have pointed to salvation. I need it for my newsletter, which I write to inform the brethren of my Good Deeds in the Lands of the Lost, the Lands of the Possessed. Did you know you were possessed, sir? Possessed with deamons sent from the Devil to trap you in your loincloth and lice? You must be possessed, because you think that the earth gives you life, which is the creed of the Blinded Pagan. Don’t be a disciple of the Devil, good man. It will land you in hell! Be a disciple of Christ.

You don’t know what hell is? It is a place for the wicked; a place which cannot be described it is so frightful. Christ will keep you from the flames, if you cling to Him. How? Invite him into your heart. Repeat this prayer and be baptized. Hone your faith through memorization and practice of the Scriptures.

Well, some of them. The Old Testament is a little dusty, so we’ve made for you a list of the pertinent rules…pork is economically important and quite delicious (as are shellfish), so disregard rules concerning the avoidance thereof. We don’t have priests anymore (only the Catholics have those, and they worship Mary and the Saints – should be avoided), so don’t bother yourself with discussion of the sons of Aaron, et al. However, if the rule is in regard to sexual relations, you ought to pay attention. There is a small chapter on the subject we have chosen to respect in Leviticus – be careful you find the right one…it is hidden deep amongst other silly passages that are irrelevant to the modern man and you wouldn’t want to make a mistake. Additionally --

What have you heard? Ah, love for one’s neighbor. Loving your neighbor is important, you’re right, but saving his soul is paramount – that end cannot be compromised. Don’t be soft, man!

Speaking of which: sir, what do you do for a living? You grow manioc?

I think you must be poor, sir. Can you afford a dress comme ça for your wife and daughters? Can you buy shoes? What, sir? You wife makes your clothes? You share shoes? Tstststststs. That, sir, that is what we call poverty in the United States, my land which flows with milk and honey (mind you, it’s all privately owned, the milk and honey, not owned by me, necessarily).

You know, sir, I have shown you the One True God with my 10,000 ariary, but I can show you wealth as well. I can show you prosperity – for that is what the Lord desires for His Chosen Children. Thrift and industry! Efficiency and progress! Modernity and morality!

See that yonder mine?

That yonder mine, where the minerals are scraped out of the earth (Remember, the earth is inanimate. Cast off your Pagan sentimentalities!) – that mine is where you will find prosperity. Leave your paltry fields and turn toward the sun. You will make enough paper money to buy your manioc…and dresses and shoes and butter and televisions and taxi cab rides.

You don’t want to leave your paltry fields? That is what we call sloth in the United States, land of milk and honey. That is what we call a poor work ethic, lack of gumption, not appreciating Western technological benevolence. Do you want to be poor forever? Do you not want dresses, shoes, butter, televisions, taxi cab rides? No?

Then I think you must be a savage.

“Maintenant, tu peux voir que les gens de Madagascar sont trop pauvre, oui? Pas comme Washington. Nous sommes très pauvre ici. Tu dois être très content que tu es une Américaine, oui ?” my host mother asks me. Yes Neni, these people are poor – poor in spirit, in intelligence, in amenities – I am so glad that I am an American. I am so glad to have the truth.

“Poor wretches,” thinks the vazaha.

Growth and Subsistence

I've been in Madagascar for two weeks and two days now.

I was encouraged, before I left, to "absorb now, process later". It's impossible. 'To process,' for me, is synonymous with creation. We absorb and then create -- using different media, of course -- I use language to create an image of the personal evolution I sense transpiring as I see (the sunsets at Acouba, the sand at Libanouna, the street vendors, the port at dusk, and the sunken ships), feel (moist heat, hands on my waist at L'Hotel Gina, mosquitos, the trade winds, my burning lungs at the summit of Pic St. Louis, a new cockroach friend down my shirt), smell (mofo akondro, her sweat, his sweat, my own sweat, the outhouse, ylang ylang blossoms, aloe), hear (Tay be!, incontrollable laughter, zebu, roosters at 5am -- Transylvania should invest in a couple and let them run around back circle...fewer students would miss class -- Salame vahaza!), and taste (zebu, rice, rice, rice, brown rice, rice water, lentils, dust, hint of mint -- not my own). I become despondent when I can't enjoy my process, enjoy my creation. I become despondent when my words cannot make known to you the effect of these miracles, all around, that are seeping into me, that I am photosynthesizing, like the peeling trees, through the skin and into the unknown places, changing the composition of my head and heart.

For this reason, I'm finding it incredibly difficult to transition into exclusively speaking French and Malagasy. My desperate and battered words can't evoke anything but laughter...they don't draw pictures...they do not synthesize subtle, nuanced sentiment...they turn my heart into something almost vulgar and incoherent. I cannot focus on theme; I must focus on conjugations and articles and sentence structure. I cannot create with these words...I can only cling-for-my-life. I can subsist but I cannot grow.

And that hints to a more fundamental problem, perhaps. I become despondent when I feel I am not growing.

But I know that stillness is not stagnation...I talk about it all the time. One can certainly experience a swelling of the spirit within physical subsistence. Have I told you of the marriage of two halfs, yin and yang, the arrow and the orb? Have I told you how much I want to realize this union in my person? Have I described a picture of God, balanced and whole, fully empowered and how I want to understand?

Ironically, Madagascar is, both for logistical and cultural reasons, forcing me to be still. It's forcing me to spend a lot of time in my head. I have not been able to hide from things that I hoped would remain stateside. And it is clear that those things from which I'd hoped to hide are hands-down the most critical to explaining who I am.

I didn't leave bad habits or insecurities. I must have hid them, subconsciously, in a invisible zippered pocket in my enormous internal frame backpack. My security blankets.

I didn't "leave my past behind". I am the product of twenty years of roll-with-the-punches "past"...and I couldn't very well leave me behind. So along the past came.

No conclusion here. Only a final observation: I am both growing and subsisting. I don't understand it entirely -- a clever trick that the Divine can pull -- but I have faith. Specifically, I have faith that subsistence isn't a punishment and that the growth it stimulates is of an unfamiliar type. I have not experienced this type of growth, and I feel the pains of it (remember when we would wake up howling, clutching our legs when we were eleven?), the pains of mind and body shifting and grinding into new positions, shooting through my whole body. I am malformed, I fear, because I haven't known growth through subsistence. Not malformed forever though. I'm confident my body can correct itself. Our bodies are all so resilient, you know.