“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
— Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heartfelt Advice for Difficult Times
***
Something happens when we come together, something greater than the sum of us. When you arrive, I am on the ground, in my body, watching you. I watch you tumbling out of cars, exchanging shoes for boots, donning hats, zipping coats. You walk toward me with the tools for our work, loppers and clippers and shovels and open hearts. It fills me with such joy that my body cannot contain it, this coming together simultaneously a falling apart, the empty space in my cells exploding beyond my body, shooting away into the air around us.
We stand, six feet apart, and beam at one another. Sometimes even this distance is too much to bear and our bodies press together for a fleeting moment that feels like everything, the warmth of your body becoming mine, the illusion of our separateness shattered.
And then we are apart. I am hovering somewhere above, watching the whole of us. I see something magical, a synecdoche, the universe showing up as us, us as universe. We are electrons and protons falling around a nucleus, the moon attracted to the gravity of the Earth. There is no difference, it is all the same, and from this great height I can see a great coming together.
The night before I had been standing on concrete, watching people stream by, called out into the darkness to enjoy luminaries and each other in this season of receding light and stillness. How are you? you asked, one, two, three times. You look happy, you said, and I realize that I am. I am happy. There are challenges with parenting, with work, with the world, and yet. It is all there, jostling about inside and around me, finding a shifting, sometimes–often?–uncomfortable coming together before falling apart. Sitting in this space, I turn over the happiness I have found in my hands. It is full of cracks and tender spots and bumpy scars. It is mine, and it feels true.
Our work is coming to a close. The first drops of rain fall, the wind folds the tattered blue tarp we use to drag blackberry roots and canes. I look to the south, the sky approaching a velvet wash of steel grey. Do the last thing you need to do to feel done, I suggest, and then we walk to the parking lot together and I look into your eyes. I hope you come back, I say. We fall apart as the rain, cold on my skin, picks up.
You linger, arguing with me about the handling of the blackberry canes we cut from the earth, arguing that our nitrogen-rich soil will gobble them up greedily, arguing that they are not zombie canes that will regenerate if left to compost in place. You argue with me about the barrenness of our sheet mulched areas, calling them apocalyptic wastelands. You tell me that you talk to trees and that they are not happy with how humans have handled all the things. Why would they be? I reply. On that we agree, and then you argue that I don’t take enough selfies. You need to show that you are with the trees! You are a force, look at this badass fuckery you are responsible for, you say. You gesture broadly to the restoration area, to the park, maybe to the world. I stand taller.
And then we fall apart. There is room for it all.