Rocket

I was looking through an old sketchbook and was really surprised to find this text. I remember it now, it is from last summer just after I applied for the MA, my boyfriend was working in Berlin and I went along and mainly sat in parks reading or writing and drinking beer. It surprised me partly because I hadn’t remembered it but mainly because it seems so similar to what I am doing now in terms of these tongue in cheek attempts to connect with other species, and yet I forgot it for a while and only really came back to this idea through many hours of thought and research. It leads me to be concerned about my partiality and the time I waste on unnecessary conscious thought, but it’s also very fun to see the start and reassuring to know I am being honest with myself about my interests.

I was likely a bit drunk so it might be pretentious in parts..

Wild rocket is going to seed everywhere. The sun which wasn’t doing much earlier is now making my lower calf feel loved, and lonely again when clouds come over. The grasses are sturdier here, so they move rather than sway. I eat a rocket leaf and it is so familiarly peppery. It is still quite wondrous that it tastes so reminiscent of the ones from TESCO. The soil is sandy and swallows fly very low to the ground irrespective of the people. Some of the large trees have been painted with blue letters but you wouldn’t know from their reaction.

The shadows get sharp and the water is glittering like a maniac. There are so many finches around that no doubt they are considered a pest, but they are really great to watch. I wonder if they like rocket. A man touches his belly now, as if reminding himself of his own shape. I think about him as the new centre of the world, and me as a girl under a tree in his peripheral vision. It is so difficult to believe. I am hungry and think about how much rocket I would need to eat to feel full.

To this piece of rocket all that matters in the world is making little baby rockets, and staying alive. If it cannot stay alive then little baby rockets are all it cares about. If it gets too hot and worries about dying of thirst, it will push out lots of flowers to make baby rockets as many of the others have, hastening it’s own demise but ensuring it can live on through it’s children.

Maybe I’m just putting words on rocket’s being. Human’s are more important to us, but to rocket, rocket is the most important and rocket wouldn’t hesitate to kill a small weed in order to grow and become more extensive. Rocket would murder you if it had the means. But you are a better murderer than rocket, you are bigger and quicker with more obedient limbs.