Dirt (July 2013) by Renee

Sterile Environments

I was excited to write about dirt with a focus on the land, a desire to feel rooted, or the uncomfortable recognition that dirt is made up of the dead and the living. But what really comes to mind is the padded half-walls of my office building, and all the negative gossip I hear riding on the recycled air. "Give me the dirt on that one".

The word gossip comes from Old English God Sibb (God Relative), and refers to the community of women who would come to a house during the birth of a child.

This word has morphed from a way of treating people around us like family during the most vulnerable, intimate, and painful moments of life to a toxic presence that has filled any office or neighborhood I have ever inhabited.

And we spend most of our waking hours at work, in these stilted relationships that have strict boundaries, vaguely explained by words like professionalism. Afterwards we return, tired and distracted, to our God Sibb.

Geophagy is the practice of eating dirt. Literally. Animals do it. People do it. Likely because they crave the minerals in dirt, and their culture has made a practice of ensuring sufficient mineral intake at key times, like pregnancy.

I will draw a cheesy comparison and say there are essential minerals in the lives of everyone we encounter, and we crave it. Even at work. Especially at work? We are hungry for community.

But...there is a difference between talking about someone's 'dirt', and literally clearing it away as they push out life.

           -Renee

Dirt (July 2013) by Keith

-Keith-

Dirt (July 2013) by Joy

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In the summer

at day’s end

we notice our salted skin

(how it clings and crusts as silt deposits)

touch lightly the tomato-red sheen in that space just below the eyes,

at cheek’s peak

deep lines of chocolate brown beneath fingernails

and plastered into the creases of our necks

Wearied bodies.  Sticking flesh.  Warmed and weighted eyes.  The smell of ourselves.

We are caked and moistened from the soil that draws up seeds to plants

and the damp places that quench them lavishly.

The water runs murkily off us and we watch its browness against the porcelain sink.

Who was it that likened sin to dirt?  Who declared purity a vast white void?

Who never noticed the gospel of a body

in the summer

at day’s end?

                 -Joy

Dirt (July 2013) by Josh W.

Truth

There is truth in dirt.

In dirt there is life.

Also death.

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

Plant a seed for life.

Bury a body in death.

Know that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

Living soil.

Dirt brings forth life.

God formed Adam from the dust.

Bury me six feet deep.

Bite the dust.

Dirt poor.

There is truth in dirt.