There's been a drop in the amount of bees suddenly. Which isn't all too threatening of a thought until you really stop to consider a life devoid of them, devoid of their occupations with keeping everything else going, keeping things upright. No plant life then, no vegetation. There goes food supply, there goes the produce aisle of every Stop n' Save, there goes the quaint farmers markets and fruit stands we stop at on weekend jaunts to pretend we are still connected, still simple.
She's been thinking about getting into beekeeping; it could be her small part, her small contribution to the big picture, of which there is a lot of talk of these days. She can picture herself dressed head-to-toe in that silly frockery, the netted mask obscuring her face, her hand on a pitcher of smoke, doing her part. She likes this thought for a moment; some return to the Earth Mother, getting back to basics, the simplistic pleasures of agricultural pursuits. She can't have children, not yet anyway, her eggs still sit in their sacs, dropping off only periodically; a suicide every time. He doesn't want them until he's settled into his career. He's still considered a pee-on within his company but he assumes with enough mental elbow grease, enough prodding and plodding, this will change. He wants a son, he's mentioned it in small ways before. Someone to dole out Attaboys and Hey Buddys to, someone to pretend to be proud of. A tiny replica of himself to adore. Its not her, she knows this, she knows that pride is not something he necessarily needs to feel for her. Her worth is in simply being there, simply existing, sharing in his life the way a worm finds a home in an apple.
He has no idea that her mind is drifting off, wavering on past occurrences, past experiences, and also the future spreading out before her like a torn blanket: she sees herself stuck, and not in the good way, the happy way that we are supposed to be grateful for, but instead pregnant, rotund and heavy, as if she's a sponge soaked in water, every part of her bloated and ripe. And there he'd be, elsewhere or else there but only in passing, thinking of her as simply an appendage he doesn't use as much as he used to or else a fixture in the house that's been there so long he no longer notices it. A lamp, a footstool. She is not expected, on these outings to restaurants and such that are becoming less preliminary but more obligatory, as well as fewer and father between, to pipe in much. Just enough to appear content; anything but anger as her anger, he feels, in unfair of her to use, as if fighting with a weapon he does not possess. An unfair advantage. She does her part by nodding her head, inserting sounds of interest, holding up a mirror so that he may communicate with himself. At any rate, anger is not what she feels. She feels untended to, ignored, a garden growing amuck, or else becoming jaundiced, yellow and bleached, brown and dry around the edges, slowly dying off.
This is why she should farm, she thinks. Make a stab at tending to herself for a change. Get out now, get some fresh air into herself, literally as well as figuratively. Tend to a crop, hands in the black dirt, or else on udders, on wool, sifting through chickenfeed or else slowly smoking insects. They won't sting her, they'll understand her goodness, her usefulness, and love her. Love her as much as insects can, this little alien life-force, this little community of exoskeletons; tiny striped robots keeping everything going.
AGRICULTURAL PURSUITS.
