Ryan Kelly

This is my garden. I was never a gardener before, but in the middle of March when France locked down, something inside me spoke up. Maybe it was just sexual frustration (lol) or a primal need to exercise my body, or maybe a way to psychically connect to my mother despite the difficulty of our communication. Whatever the impulse, this garden has taught me more about people than plants, more about human life than what we think of as nature. Some of those lessons have changed what I think of as home, a subject that has already pressured a lot of my work these past years. Like what it means to be responsible to others, to all sentient beings. What happens to your heart if you value the life of a sprout. It’s a good thing to live with plants. To ensure their survival changes how you think about the lives of bugs, of caterpillars, even the beetles that ravaged the arugula leaves and killed the broccoli. They are just trying to live, too, you know. I thought a lot today while digging up weeds of one lesson from the garden that helped me make sense of the movement we are experiencing right now. Some plants you grow to defend others from harm. Carnations make a barrier to those beetles so that kale can grow. Without the flowers around them, the kale would be torn down before it could spread its leaves. You could say that the carnation is using its privilege to make sure the kale gets an equal shot. Nothing is guaranteed for either of them in the long run. Both will suffer, and both will die. But to know there is friendship in the “kindom” of flora means that we are not the only beings to make alliances and to struggle shoulder to shoulder for equality. What I found in my garden is not so different from what I experienced yesterday at Place de la République for @laveritepouradama and what I’ve seen elsewhere: diverse crowds putting their safety on the line, white protestors making barriers of their bodies in front of police, Black youth risking lives for liberation. I have hope.