'Grounded'





When is it that effort became embarrassing?

Everything is so smooth right now. Glossy.

Slippery. No seams. Entirely devoid of texture.

Weight. Friction. Zero admissions of manual

labor. Resistance. Work. As if that would

be mortifying. From the Old French to, “produce

death, kill,” or more parochially to, “subdue

the flesh,” lately to, “vex, shame, overwhelm.”

Soft-edged gleaming shapes bobbing

purposelessly. Inoffensively. From nowhere,

certainly not headed anyplace. Nothing

can be in medias res. It’s seemingly all just

arrived. No roots. Bellybuttons. No provenance.

Effortlessly. Mysteriously. Mostly conceptual.

Never heavy. Just unerring, uninterrogated

consistency. Sterile. But in a good way?

Pleasing. Also uncanny. Horrifying, actually.

Violent but with all this plausible deniability.





Then, there is this purely other thing. Which

you and I love. That we’re dedicated to.

That torments us. It is harder. I know you know.

There’s volatility. Tumult. Betrayals. Contaminants.

Death. Again death! Of course death. You

can’t command it or compel it to look, be—stay

—the way you want. It is alive and to be alive,

your idea of it must expire. You’ve made

it to be carried. Away from the original location.

So many variables. The techniques are true.

Old as family. Tradition. Changing ever so slightly

in the transmission. Changing again with

the soil. The leaf. Nitrogen. Acidity. Topography.

The eye, the hand, the maker. The world. Terroir.

The ecosystem. The cultivar. When it travels,

it is already changing. Dying. It is indifferent

to your sovereignty or opinion but invites what

feels divine. Death but also breath.





Each exists as a time capsule. Each speak

to those who made it. Who expended the effort.

Who toiled on what day, at what age, at what

time. The girth of the rhizome. The microbiota.

The microorganisms mixing it up. Glucose

Unpredictability. Nothing will be perfectly

duplicated. Evolution yes but evolution that

doesn’t privilege a finite destination,

maximization, optimization, whited-out ease.

The fickleness of fermentation. The caprices

of other living things bashing against agenda.

Dark enough. Blue. Red enough. The brighter

red culled at the highest sun. You have hand

—

textile hand

—

the communion of nerves, skin,

materiality, exertion, place.





And then you have simulations. Silky simulacra.

And the popularity contest it is winning. It has

a better publicist than the dedication of time.

A life. Because that would be a waste. It would be

old. The relentlessness of same is offered as

good. Unburdened by distinction. Unencumbered

by the human toil of assembly. Smooth and

empty. No pain, no injury, no guilt, no weight. As

if effort is profane. As if labor is tawdry. Craft

even carries a sense of triviality. Why it’s so often

ascribed to timekilling diversions.





But here is chance. Happenstance. Surrender.

Moods. Movement, drama, interaction. All of it

affects this moment of unveiling. The occasion

of presentation. Triumph. Margins of error or

margins of god. It will change as you change, as

they change, as others change it. There will be

death and grief and nostalgia. There will have

been life.





Words by Mary H.K. Choi

2024