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Recorded Reading (6:06): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ayc8kgyq1zjm5aywgpzff/Respectability.mp3?rlkey=ooxat60r96wa3do3fon8jcuk3&st=xczqucw6&dl=0

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Our introduction to this piece begins with the text of an explanatory email sent to an old friend the poet is scheduled to re-meet soon. It’s followed by several historical observations in context, and then by the (relatively short!) poem being offered itself:

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Email to a Friend:

After five years of being pushed to the grittiest and windiest, lowest-to-the-ground locations in our society while not being able to fully bathe at all, nothing will get me light pink again except several long hot soaks in a row, with throw-away towels to dry in between, and without having to go outside again for hours afterward (body temperature regulator malfunctions). 

Mama Earth won’t just “wash off” of me any more ~ she’s ingrained. Any attempt to do so will just make me look like a reverse Dalmatian ~ grey with white spots. Scrubbing makes this skin bleed, anyway, so I end up tricolored. You see, it’s been tried.

It would be unreasonable to expect otherwise by now, really, so I just generally stay out of polite company. 

I do think poor Karly might have been a little dismayed, though she was far too polite and professional to show it. 

Since I can’t shout it from the rooftops for everyone I have or will meet, I thought I’d at least explain myself to you, whose opinion has long been one of the few which matter to me.

At this point the twig does seem bent, as they say, and I fear I am destined for the social perimeter long term. I’ve gotten used to it, I think.

I don’t think my odor offends, anyway, since I was recently complimented upon it by three hospital emergency room security guards ~ hope I’m not wrong about that!

Also to be said, however ~ I find our general societal expectation of never having one single speck of the very planet we live on anywhere on our skin (!) to be part and parcel of the separation which is allowing us rapidly to poison it.

I see the ideal as a balance ~ one that I myself am admittedly stuck in the far side of, but from which my society is stuck equally far in the other direction. 

Anyway, that’s the case made in this post, when you wish to review it.

On the subject of your book: now we have TWO of my readers eager to devour it!

Thanks for reading, hope it’s facilitated understanding,

Much love,

Ana

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Historical Commentary:

Not one, but both, of the world’s most populous religions, the Christian and the Hindu, share a gospel legend:

… That of their deity ~ not only functioning, but eating ~ not only unwashed but in the fields.

Please think about the nature of field dirt.

Our astronauts just came back cripplingly ill from a lack of soil microbes.

Amish children have been found to be allergy free because of the field dirt on their hands. There’s even a catch phrase for it: “The Field Effect!”

It’s been proven for decades that our manic addiction to scrubbed pink vulnerability in perpetually sterile surroundings has been steadily weakening our organisms against encroaching disease. We are the only animal on Earth which requires multiple daily prescriptions to function.

We are seriously crippling our dermal biomes with too damn much soap. Then we try to put the natural oils back with “clean” lotion. Checked that label for stuff you wouldn’t eat? Because your skin is a much larger absorptive organ than is your tongue.

Those prescriptions are coming up in the groundwater, folks. Doping the wildlife.

Every culture on Earth has had things which “everybody knows” which turn out, when viewed from an earlier or later time period, not to be true at all.

The truth is that for most of history and prehistory, in most places on the planet, gravid women have tended to eat dirt as a prebirth mineral supplement.

This poet’s personal rule of thumb (forgive the pun) ~ if it’s not hurting you personally, it’s not worth the energy of your disapproval.

There are better things to do with that energy.

Admire the sunset. Watch people being good to each other in ordinary ways. Create a poem, picture, outfit, essay, startup, smiling child…

“Eating or not eating certain foods, washing or not washing your hands—that’s neither here nor there.” ~ Matthew 15:20

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Respectability

They told Him:

“We don’t talk to those people
We don’t care about them

They don’t even wash
The field dirt off their hands
Before lunch

Obviously
We are very different

We do
Wash our hands
Making us
Of course
Vastly superior citizens…”

Lunchtime came

They found Him
Sitting in the fields
Laughing with the workers
Talking about sin and redemption

With unwashed hands
Also

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