(m)other(land) ? / return

when i look at the trees,

at the deep forest, i see my

ancestors in the verdance

and i am reminded that

i am not only a descendent

of japanese people

but a child of the mountains,

the rivers, the tendrils,

the sea, the island,

the deep earth

//

my mother was onto

something when she named me

after flower fields

how did she know that

that would be where i

would feel most at home?

//

i find home not

in place   but in

moments

//

escape runs bloodlines

what is it that the harano womxn

keep trying to run from

//

grandma worked her ass off so her

kids could get an education

dealt with the yakuza for them

dealt with the bullshit that her

husband brought home

yakuza used to come to their

home with a knife

demanding $ before my grandma went

to work

yakuza would call the byouin demanding

grandma’s salary

//

grandma was / could have been the

bride of my mom’s cousin’s

dad’s younger brother

but she ended up the bride of my

mom’s cousin’s mom’s younger brother

//

everyone thinks i look like my mom

//

skip a generation,

shift perspective

will i be as

wanting-space-from

with my mother

as she is with

hers?

//

intentional quality time

veers into incidental

time if one is not

careful

//

what does stillness feel like in wind?

//

in rejecting mtherhood in the

biological-function sense

i may be neglecting, dismissing,

discrediting, overlooking

the mothering as social action

that i am choosing every day

i am already mothering.

i choose to mother abstractly,

not biological children but

connections, systems, practices of

nurturance, cultivation, reciprocity.

interspecies mothering.

mothering radically as protection

subversion resistance

---

About Erika Harano

erika harano is a queer, japanese, mixed race, femme-ish dancer, zinester, facilitator, educator, and landworker who practices multidisciplinary, interspecies collaboration to explore complexity and ambiguity. connect with them on instagram at @itteqimasu.