I believe in worms

I wrote this for the Traveling School, in accordance with an assignment that the girls had...

I believe in worms.

Pink and striated, fattened on dirt and rain – a healthy diet of mud. Sometimes plump, round, and sated. Other times, stretching long and thin as though to exercise - to roll and squirm contentedly in the earth which cradles them.

I believe in worms.

One basic function, one instinct deep ingrained. To eat, process, poop. To leave what is richer than it was before. Thankless task – pooping. Rarely noticed (perhaps better that way?) unless the rain comes and the thousands of worms swim along our impermeable pavement.

I believe that worms do, every day, what we struggle to technologize, invent, create: some way to take the detritus of our society and do something other than pitch it. They are the crank that turns the wheel, transforms the disgust into the very stuff of life. From the poop of worms grows the seed that grows the food that feeds the babies that grow to be the adults that change the world.

Worms don´t have very much to say. Eat, process, poop. Eat, process, poop. Yes, the kids are fine. Eat, process, poop. Jimmy had diarrhea yesterday. Eat, process, poop. Sally´s appetite´s been a little low lately. Eat, process, poop.

In contrast, I do a lot of talking. I try to get my mind around the problems of the world. I philosophize. Sometimes I cry in desperation. Sometimes I read about revolution. And most days, I just don´t know where to start. My life is not big enough, it seems, to swallow a global food crisis and war and rising gas prices and climate change. My big brain ties me in the knots that the worm never finds itself in, despite the obvious difference in body type.

Therefore, I believe in worms. To recycle before someone coined the term. To compost simply because the material was there. To engage in the politics of simplicity, and stand in the revolution of renewal. Eat, process, poop.

We cannot wait for our stomach to grow big enough to swallow the entire climate crisis, or our intestines to swell to war capacity. A worm just takes what is in front of it, and does what it can. When it has eaten, processed, and pooped that section of mud, it moves on to the next, and then the next. And soon enough, apple cores become dirt, and cow dung becomes fertilizer. Egg shells, paper, tea bags, leaves. Waste reduced to its most nutritive parts, spread judiciously to give life to some next generation.

I believe that if we try to swallow it all, we´ll never digest any of it. I believe that maybe we´ve been thinking too hard. I believe in the politics of my own backyard.

I believe in worms.