Machete therapy
On the need for more primordial tools.
This past weekend, after five straight days of rain in which we got nearly a month and a half’s worth of water (oh yes, we measure), the sun came out. And it was just in time for Mother’s Day, which I joyously spent with my mom, planting flowers and vegetables in the raised bed she and my dad made several years back. I’m fortunate to live about 15 minutes away from my parents, which I have come to discover is the optimal distance (when you get along with your family); they are far enough away that I don’t come home to them sitting at my kitchen table or tinkering in my flower beds, and close enough that they are easily able to help out or have dinner.
One of the ways my parents lend a hand is with transportation. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t drive due to the nature of my eye disease, and when Kyle can’t do it or I am at their house (as I was on Mother’s Day), they can. After an afternoon of quiche and planting, my mom and I stopped off for ice cream at Stewart’s, which was doing ninety-nine-cent cones for the holiday. Somewhere along the line of paying for our treats, I left my phone on the counter. (Allow me to briefly defend myself in that I have lost the most vision in my lower periphery. However, I work regularly on what the RP community calls “scanning.” While I often misplace things and require a bit of time to find them, I typically don’t flat-out LEAVE things behind). Anyway, I noticed only after arriving home, and had my mom pick it up for me, henceforth concluding her day in the most motherly fashion possible—picking up after her kid. Thanks, Mom!
I spent that night doing everything I normally do on a Sunday evening—taking a shower, making dinner, watching The Last of Us with Kyle, and cuddling my animals—noticing every so often how much I didn’t think to glance at the phone I didn’t have. One hour turned to two, turned to three, without an impulse to check my messages or emails, or scroll through Reddit, or play a NYT puzzle, or look at my calendar to prepare for the week ahead. When I got into bed and didn’t think to listen to an audiobook or set my alarm for morning, I realized how very easy it would be to give up the phone completely. “Three days,” I said to Kyle before I turned the lights out. “That’s how long I think I’d need before never wanting or needing my cell phone again.”
I must admit this is all part of my master plan to convert to an old-fashioned landline—something I’ve been saying I’m going to do since we moved out to the farm, but have taken no meaningful action toward—and pretend, best I can, that I am living in the 90s. I figure that I can’t act like I’m living in the 1800s without joining the Amish community, and while I have lovingly joked about this with my Amish contractors, the agnostic atheist in me would prevent this from happening at all costs. I also figure that, as American society collapses in real time, I might as well attempt to mock up the best decade I can recall. And that is, without a doubt, the 1990s, when medicine and technology had advanced enough that we weren’t dying of cholera and could watch Whose Line is it Anyway? at 8 p.m., but not so much that we were in-the-know and in-touch about everything, everywhere, all the time.
I digress. After waking up to no alarm yesterday morning, about 16 hours in, I didn’t think to check my phone. Then again, I have trained myself to do nothing more than see if I have messages first thing in the morning, as I concluded long ago that going online upon waking will ensure that I pull out my hair the entire day. I got going with coffee, and upon looking outside at another blue sky, decided to cut down the stems of last year’s flowers. I’m behind schedule with getting seedlings into the ground, but what grower isn’t? Smaller, more delicate plants like Nasturtium decomposed over winter, but heartier stalks like sunflower withstood the cold months and turned to hollow shoots.
Kyle gave me his machete, and I spent an hour going down the line. There is something about using a machete that is so magnificently badass. Simply pulling the knife from its canvas sleeve made me feel like I was at the jungle’s edge, ready to take on whatever wildness came between me and my mission—which was really not so different from the task at hand, given the number of plants that needed to be cut.
After I finished with the flowers, I moved on to the corn stalks left over from fall. I was high on the whooshing sound the blade makes when slicing it through air, and the repeated motion of left-stepping, gripping, smacking, and placing a stalk into my pile. After five days of rain (and what has, thus far, been one of the most emotionally trying winters of my life…I know many of you feel the same), it was as though I had been released from captivity. I felt unbound and free, but not in a sweetly spiritual way; this was a primal, rugged release. My feet were muddy from the still-soggy soil, and I grunted at each encounter of a rough root. I carried my bundles and tossed them aggressively into the compost pile before picking up the machete again for more whacking.
This sensation is not exclusive to the machete and is likely to be found when using any hand tool. Not long ago, I read Alexander Langlands’ book “Cræft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts.” My friend Neal—whose writing is so splendidly eerie and moving—recommended it for a book discussion, and I was immediately in, as the cover features charming squares of folk art. In addition to exploring specific crafts that I enjoyed learning about (like basket weaving, hay making, and stone wall building…again, I’d explore Amish conversion if not for some major caveats), there is an emphasis on the tools employed when pursuing these crafts. The scythe is highlighted as the kind of tool once common but now largely forgotten, more likely to be associated with the Grim Reaper than a farmer.
Pursuing lost skills and having the accompanying hand tools, like scythes (Kyle owns one, but of course he does), is kind of an “f you” to capitalism and industrialization. This resistance to assimilation is part of the release we feel when using them. The tools’ primitive nature allows us to proprioceptively connect with both our ancestors and our child-selves, who knew the power of simplicity. I found this all to be true when using the machete yesterday. Tapping into my primal nature was personally therapeutic for two reasons: (1) it ignites those lost connections, and (2) it fortifies my confidence as I continue to witness my independence wane.
Living here, I spend much less time thinking about my diminishing eyesight than I would if I lived in a setting with more traffic, navigation, and obstacles. I often tell people this is one of the reasons I prefer it here—that, and the fact that I can walk out my front door with fresh coffee and bare feet and chop down plants with a large blade before starting my workday. But, when I do think about my growing disability, it is often in the form of what I will or won’t be able to do in time. And, because I’m not out and about, it’s usually to do with mundane things: will I be able to clean the kitchen, or at least do a halfway decent job?…will I be able to bake my favorite chocolate chip cookies? Or things I love: will I be able to paint—and will I even want to if it gets increasingly hard?
When doing something as tactile and powerful and true as using a machete on a Monday morning, I’m reminded that, right now, I can do THIS, and this is pretty awesome.
I’m telling you, get a machete if you don’t have one. You can thank me later.
Just what every Dad expects to read, your daughter loves playing with a machete. You will never cease to amaze me…love you so much.
DAD ❤️