I know what goes into a field of corn. I’ve watched the sharp plow go through, and that part hurts the dirt.
I’ve seen the cover crop sown, grown, and plowed under, the preemergent spray go down, the hybrid seed go in. Then comes the long season of too much rain or not enough, the blistering sun or the cloud cover that hangs around a little too long.
Somebody goes out to check the field. There are birds, insects, disease, rust, this spray and that spray. By the time the heavy machinery comes through in all that dust and noise, I've been thinking about that corn for months.
I could have bought a field of corn. I bought ascension instead.
I have a theory about crops. Corn is Shiva. Soybeans are Shakti.
The corn stands there in those rigid rows while the soybeans hunch in bunches, entirely self-satisfied, close to the dirt. I’m willing to entertain this theory until somebody puts it on a retreat brochure.
What interests me is how quickly I can change the story. Give me thirty seconds and the beans are people pleasers, the corn has Dark Triad tendencies, and I’m standing at the edge of a Missouri field practicing psychology without the consent of either crop.
The field hasn’t changed. I’ve changed the rubric.
Who auspices the rubric itself?
Who gave me the authority to decide what a soybean’s posture says about its character? It’s funny in a field.
Anybody who has lived through workplace mobbing knows what happens when a roomful of people performs the same operation on a human being.
A group can settle on an interpretation of you and spend the rest of the meeting collecting evidence. You speak up. Listen to how worked up she is. You come prepared, and somebody remarks on your ambition. You keep quiet. Well, apparently she knows she’s guilty.
By then your own posture can be entered into evidence against you. Who gave the meanest girl the authority to decide who is acceptable, and how did everybody else get so comfortable administering her test?
A room can do the same thing to a person that I just did to a soybean. That is, settle on an interpretation, then collect evidence until the interpretation feels like face.
That operation has a longer history than any workplace. It has a creation story.
The rest of this essay follows that inquiry through Tiamat, the body, and the work of deciding what still gets to grow.