13: Our names are safe in the mouths of those we love

Perhaps the most significant reason for coming back to school was to make friends. In one respect a life in academia appears more agreeable. There are less time commitments and in the best of cases, more of an ability to choose your field of inquiry and the people and means you go about exploring it with. This is certainly a factor in getting an advanced degree, without which I’m mostly precluded from participating in academic settings. More than vocation though, I’m interested in friendship, which seems to me the sweetest and most nourishing gift in life. I suppose it’s the relations and their attending rituals that make the world—not just habitable, but meaningful and pleasurable. As Han and Exupery intuited and shared, it is the waiting for the Sunday flower market and lobiani at Little Georgia with Beso’s warm smile that builds a reservoir of pleasure that lasts through the intervening times. It is also why I call my life companion my BFF, a beautiful acronym if we take it seriously, and likely a less coercive institution than some of the other popular arrangements available to us.

The word friend has been corroded by its use in platform capitalism and the instrumental reason that belongs to the telos of power and selfish desire. The friendship I’m interested in is built on deep love, honesty and compassion between beings of mutual affinity.

Dear Amy,

This is such a wondrous message to receive
from up above in the alps

Down to the noisy muddy banks of the thames
and the tube, teeming with its wondrous ecologies

I cannot think of a more thrilling invitation
and contributing would truly be an honor

I am a great admirer of your practice
and this seed journey project in particular
with its loose boundaries and times

My first thoughts go to the humble and resilient teff seed
this tiny wonder opens up into cosmos for me

And I would like to move carefully and humbly
towards the present and history of the
land that this grass grows on

I learned recently that Ethiopia has done a lot
to prevent the commercial export of teff,
so as to avoid the 'quinoa effect' on a population
already struggling with food (and life) security

Following this seed, like any seed I imagine, leads towards
the breathtaking and heartbreaking entanglements
of our common and unevenly distributed experience

A few concerns we could begin to elaborate:
- the ecological promise of this resilient grass
- the flows of 'commodities' like teff
- the ways in which western food fads effect peoples
in the long and unfolding histories of colonialism
- the beauty and community formed in diaspora
- Ethiopia's extraordinary commitment to reforestation

But first, I need to do some deep research into the present crisis

On a personal note, the ritual of sharing a round
of fermented injera with vegetables and legumes
is one of my greatest pleasures and comforts

I'm working on a long term writing project
that departs from the idea of
rituals being to time,
what objects are to space
that they make the world habitable
this is after Saint-Exupery
and Byung-Chul Han

It comes from a sense of being placeless
deterritorialized perhaps
and wanting the world to be more hospitable
for everyone

My grandmother was from Aden in Yemen,
just across the gulf from Ethiopia
These lands were unified in the times of the Sabaeans
and with complex interrelations throughout the
period of the Himyarites

I would like to study this more...

I know almost nothing about my roots, seed journeys
The knowledge has largely disappeared with my family's
deaths and displacements

I would like to humbly propose an open essay
about teff, ecology and personal histories
to be determined by its unfolding...
with lots of stories, shared meals
and perhaps another sea journey

Two songs to share:
A Homeless Wanderer by Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKU7iz9RYV0
and
Yefikir Engurguro by Hailu Mergia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRgNFbOPm0E
which means singing about love
and sounds to me
like two friends
reminiscing together

Sincerely,

Perry