I read: “Composting is defined as the biological degradation process of heterogeneous solid organic materials under controlled moist, self-heating, and aerobic conditions to obtain a stable material that can be used as organic fertilizer.” [1]
I have been using the word compost and composting often recently. Both metaphorically as in how can we compost colonial histories? And literally as in what happens if I bury these books and documents full of colonial and racist images in my garden? It turns out the process of composting your organic waste and composting an archive has much the same results, you just need to think about toxic inks leeching from the racist images into your organic humus. It seems that some toxic material is very hard to get rid of.
“Natural recycling (composting) occurs by the disintegration of organic wastes by microbes, being consumed by invertebrates, and returns to the soil to provide nourishment to aid plant growth”…it is “carried out by microorganisms and…soil detritivores like earthworms, millipedes, centipedes, snails, slugs, ants, sowbugs, springtails, mites, fly maggots, nematodes, beetles, spiders, etc.” Fungi also play a role. [2]
I have been grateful for this magical process both in my garden and in my artistic practice. There has been rich new growth. However, something happened In the middle of Sunday night that makes me wonder if I am romanticising rot.
What about the darker side of rot? I do not like slime or sludge. Clumps of worms clinging to bin lids or hordes of nose hole seeking fruit flies make me hold my breath and want run back indoors. Although I find fungus fascinating, I am afraid of their devouring intelligence. The actual process of composting reminds me with my own decay, of death and dying: the sweaty oozing of illness; long tired non-linear recovery from operations; the vulnerability of my aging hands that look more and more like my fathers every day. Although compost is fruitful both literally and as a metaphor, being confronted with actual pain, suffering, illness and death is terrifying and makes me long for slime free surfaces, scrubbed tiles, lightness and a complete lack of bugs.
What brought this on? The sudden middle of the night bodily crisis of the person I love the most in the world. She is vomiting, animal, seeking cold floor tiles in the hospital waiting area, writhing in pain. I am helpless, grabbing clothes, calling taxis, repeating ID numbers to receptionists, waiting till someone gives her painkillers. She is spewing bright green liquid, fluorescent light on loved skin. I am thinking, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, please don’t die. She is crying, which she almost never does.
The pain killer kicks in and she can breathe again. We are both suddenly so grateful that at this moment of acute pain, suffering and fear, there are people and a system that can help us. We are both thinking of hospitals being bombarded in Palestine, of the horrors of what Israel is consciously doing in Gaza to other human beings, in positions much less powerful, let alone at moments when you are so vulnerably human and so in need of help. it is beyond our experience, it is so so unbearable to think about. So we try to sleep. She sleeps, exhausted. I wait till she can get examined, till we know what is happening. The echo follows, then an emergency operation and less then 48 hours later she is home, without a gallbladder, resting, drinking tea.
I am writing this in the last few days of October. It is getting darker, you can smell the rotting leaves in the canals and parks of the city. The damp decay before the frost arrives and cleanses the air and hardens the ground. If this death-like dormant part of the seasonal cycle actually arrives in this confusing changeable weather we have now.
I don’t want my lover or my family, or my friends to die. But sometimes they do, I mean they have, and they will. I don’t want to die, but Its bloody obvious I will, at some point.
Death seeps into every little vulnerability, every new age-spot on my hands, every step further into the menopause, every grey hair and young person gasping at my age, like its an unimaginable thing. Aging seems to rub something out, in how people see you, in how society sees you. And yet there is this life, this messy, clumsy, vibrant, wrinkled beauty we breathe in and out every day. This ordinary thing, this pumping heart: oxygenating blood, processing waste, sweating out toxins. This living, composting process that our skins hold together.
We hold this living-dying-life and we are held by the darkness.
[1] M.G. Lobo, E. Dorta, Chapter 19 – Utilization and Management of Horticultural Waste, Editor(s): Elhadi M. Yahia, Postharvest Technology of Perishable Horticultural Commodities, Woodhead Publishing, 2019, Pages 639-666.
[2] Manyapu, Mandpe, & Kumar, 2018; Manyapu, Shukla, Kumar, & Rajendra, 2017 in Vivek Manyapu, Ayush Lepcha, Sanjeev Kumar Sharma, Rakshak Kumar, Chapter One – Role of psychrotrophic bacteria and cold-active enzymes in composting methods adopted in cold regions, Editor(s): Geoffrey Michael Gadd, Sima Sariaslani, Advances in Applied Microbiology, Academic Press, Volume 121, 2022, Pages 1-26.
