Laments for the soil // Compost as sweet as a love song
For Amplify's guest editor run on MdW Atlas, we recruited artist and organizers Lydia Cheshewalla, Alajia McKizia, and Patrick Costello, all of whom have connections to Omaha and the Midwest through land, lineage, and kinships. As a point of departure, we asked them to consider composting as a framework for transformation, renewal, and exchange, referencing Carolyn Goldsmith's Compost, A Cosmic View with Practical Suggestions (1973), a now out-of-print volume that includes tips for composters, gestural drawings, and lyrical prompts, for example:
"Breaking down / is / Building up"
"Digesting is transforming"
"Plants emerge as a natural consequence of / all that is happening / inside the soil body.”
"You / Can Stir the Great Mix"
“Small energies / Acting on each other / Reacting to each other”
In an expanded context, Goldsmith's book anchors composting as a practical and theoretical tool for breaking down certain histories, or certain things we’ve inherited, to situate and carry forward ways of knowing rooted in relationship, understanding, and empathy.
The three artists who made work in response share affinities across geography and discipline in their approaches to multi-species care and embracing ecological entanglements. These practices hold particular resonance in this moment when changes in the political sphere stand to affect how we move toward realizing a more ecologically just and balanced future. We're grateful to them for their contributions, to the MdW Atlas team for their support, and to all those working to "stir the great mix." - Peter Fankhauser, Amplify Arts
Amplify Arts is a nonprofit in Omaha NE, working to build broader connections across our community through public participation, conversation, and co-creation. By championing exploration over expectation, we support creative work that investigates our present and inspires a more just, equitable future for our city.
Laments for the soil // Compost as sweet as a love song
Just as two notes come together: a moment of divine harmony
Is green matter and brown matter perfectly balanced?
Compost reminds me of the human complexity, the left brain, right brain.
The oxygen and carbon dioxide combination, traveling down my trachea
The cardboard box and banana peels, in between two pallets—
waiting to be turned over and over
Waiting to reach my lungs
Once again.
June 19, 2019 | A proud moment—serendipitously on Juneteenth—celebrating my first ever success planting of hibiscus. Hibiscus has a lot of importance to the African and Caribbean Diasporas. I spent a lot of time with hibiscus on my first visit to Jamaica which was a powerful experience of what it feels like to be somewhere where everyone looks like you. I remember growing these hibiscus seeds, and planting them in local compost from Hillside Solutions.
Compost—like human complexity, teaches me about awareness; specifically consciousness
That the things that so wonderfully make up my world:
The mango skins
Coffee grounds
Apple skins
Banana peels
The newspaper
Cardboard scraps from my shipping order
So many Trader Joe's paper bags— I really need to stop forgetting my reusable bags!
The things that feed me, nourish me, provide for me, can be returned back to the earth
To create a new cycle,
a platform of biodiversity to the world that supports
you and me.
Giving us so much life to cease again.
A gift of nourishment.
October 25, 2019 | A capture from a community garden in the Bronx from a visit to NYC for the annual Black Urban Gardeners Conference. This visit made me feel affirmed in what I was doing, surrounded by Black stewards of the land from all over the U.S., tending to the soil while healing generational trauma. I was also fascinated at the time that the NYC government provided compost to community gardens. At the moment, it felt like something radical and I was curious why Omaha, in Nebraska—a farmstate—didn't do such a thing.
Compost—like human complexity, teaches me about awareness; the conscious kind
A reflection of our shadows
And when you don’t do the work to sustain,
to balance,
to harmonize—
The effects are hard to ignore, erase
The notes land flat— a shriek, unpleasant, unforgettable, echoing in my eardrums.
They do say the body always keeps score. Isn’t that saying parallel to the earth? Gaia keeping her score…
I guess that question is rhetorical.
August 2, 2022 | A sweet reminder for me to return to the soil, which reciprocally grounds me as I pour into it.
So every time I eat a pineapple— outer layer spilling from the cutting board on my countertop
A mango skin
Or let the cilantro go bad in my fridge— again??
Forgot about that one half of avocado— really?
Sigh—
My takeout that’s a little past its life cycle
And I can drive
Down to that stop or the other one or
the other one
And put in a code, to dump these cooked, oily matters into a place for commercial compost,
to be nourished once again
Reciprocity— what a gift.
But every time I eat that pineapple
Or veggies sit rotting in my fridge
And instead of taking that drive
Or finding a backyard or garden compost
I press my foot against the pedal— rose colored glasses while dumping these moments of reciprocity,
of returned nourishment, ironically into a pink rose scented trash liner
I am conscious and aware
Rose petals do not exist here
That this oily, cooked matter will take three & a half years to break down in the landfill
And as it could take 30 days to break a habit or create a new one—
The apple core would’ve just started to decompose in hills and hills of the same awareness or ignorance
That every human may have
If they would just compost.
How different our landfills would be
How nourished the plants that plant nutrients in us would thrive
It would all make sense
If every city could have curbside composting
Subsidizing this nutrient soil back to farmers
If every neighborhood would have the knowledge of a backyard bin
Full of matter, combined levels of nitrogen and oxygen perfectly balancing, harmonizing
How abundant our gardens would be
Methane gases lowering in our atmosphere,
Like oxygen traveling down my trachea
Waiting to reach my lungs
Once again
Compost—like human complexity, teaches me about awareness, the gracious side
30 days of a new habit
Awareness and responsibility; the conscious kind
For mango skins
And apple peels
And that pad thai past it’s time to shine
Could bring so much beauty,
Nourishment.
August 17th, 2022 | A moment from the Whitney Plantation in Edgard, Louisiana. This day was hard, this visit was hard. Something about seeing these rows of tabasco, peanuts, and okra gave me so much grief and so much peace at the same time. I could say a lot, but simply: it's a tender message to be grateful for my ancestors and all they’ve done for me and for this land.
An ecological act of love.
If I just took that drive
To that stop, or the other stop
Or phoned a friend with that backyard compost bin, or a community garden
With the cardboard box and banana peels,
in between two pallets—
waiting to be turned over and over—
How it’d all make sense
How different my world would be
I’d be responsible for small moments of
abundance back into our gardens
A teeny amount of methane gas saved from our atmosphere
How my heart would be fulfilled
Pumping oxygen returning to my lungs
Two or more chords of pride creating a soulful song.
Like the body keeps score, Gaia’s counting
Points on the scoreboard.
Like two notes coming together
Green and brown matter, perfectly balanced,
Divinely harmonizing.
Compost reminds me
To breathe.
For the oxygen to reach my lungs,
Once again.
