You can have years in a life when the seeds of new beginnings are matched by acres of adjacent crops that have simply vanished from the face of the earth. Green shoots in the breeze on one side; ghost stalks in the wind on the other. My 2016 was like that. With winter solstice upon us, I’ve been trying to locate what remains in the wake of such vanishing. Several weeks ago a man named Tete showed me.
My husband and I were watching a new BBC show called Human Planet. It is a play on the wildly popular, David Attenborough-hosted series Planet Earth. While Planet Earth features jaw-dropping glimpses into the flora, fauna, and topography of our planet, Human Planet highlights remarkable ways that our species lives upon the earth. Its emphasis seems to be indigenous peoples who have adapted collaboratively and creatively within the formidable landscapes they call home.
I’ve only seen one episode, and the people in it really put things like Survivor to shame. The episode featured a tribe in Venezuela that lives on the border of rainforest and more modernized settlement sites. Children in these villages play in the forest like a playground, becoming adept at navigating its plant and animal life. In particular, when food is short at home, they supplement their diet by hunting a giant tarantula that burrows beneath felled trees in the forest. In an afternoon outing they are shown catching a few such spiders, roasting them over a fire, and then enjoying their bounty. Attention Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts: You might need to up your game after watching this. I guarantee none of your activity badges cover it.
We also learned about another tribe in West Papua that builds its homes as treehouses high in the jungle canopy. Similar to an Amish or Mennonite communal barn raising endeavor, when a family is ready to build a treehouse the entire community suspends life and chips in until the project is completed. “Treehouse” doesn’t really conjure the right image. Imagine an all-wood, thatched roof studio apartment that is 10 or so stories up in the air. They claimed the height was to avoid flooding and predators. But 10 floors up in the trees suggests to me they really want their privacy. Or, the view.
Everyone in the show was impressive, but its real star was Tete. Tete is a member of a tribe in the Central African Republic that also calls the rainforest home. Apparently his wife likes honey. But, deep in the jungles of the Congo honey is hard to come by. So it has become the caviar of their world — highly prized, sought-after, and rare.
The show films Tete as he walks through the forest with a kinsman. He spots a tree that bears the signs of potential beehive treasure. He and his friend scout out the tree, which is enormous. To their trained eyes they spot features of the tree—way, way, way up in the air—that signal the promise of honeycomb gold. It seems to have something to do with the crook of a branch and a bulge in its bark, a possible hollow in the tree where bees could be brewing. As they observe these visual clues, their attuned ears, alert at the forest floor, can barely make out a persistent humming sound coming from above: BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
Tete lights up with delight at their find. He comments to his companion that his wife has been asking for honey lately and lamenting that it has been a long time since she last had it. To my ears it all sounds like innuendo about sexual satisfaction, but that could just be a function of the translator’s choice of wording. Or, my own preoccupations. Regardless, Tete describes his mission as a gesture of affection for his wife. Honey hoard = Happy wife.
Tete has his sights set on the high spot of the tree where he believes the hive to be stashed. “Tree” might not conjure the right image. Imagine: 20-story tree with a 6 foot diameter. Tete’s destination is around floor 15, out on a cluster of branches that extends far out from the trunk. Here’s an indication of what he’s dealing with: He has to construct a harness system—out of vines—that will tie him to the tree so he can hoist himself up the trunk by notching footholds in the bark as he goes upward. That’s Phase 1.
After busting his ass up the tree in the humid jungle heat, Tete arrives at the juncture where he must then embark out upon the large branch, in the middle of which is the crook-and-bulge feature where he suspects the hive to be. Again, “branch” might not quite cut it. Imagine: 2-foot diameter tree arm that grows out some sixty feet into the forest air. He’s got to make it about half-way across this span. Which means: He has to release himself from his vine-harness and now walk solo out on the branch, suspended high above the earth and one misstep away from falling to his death. So begins Phase 2.
As Tete eases himself out upon the branch, his family has begun to gather at the base of the tree. Word has gotten back to the village that Tete has found a honey hole and his wife has showed up to collect the bounty. His friend has begun to make some kind of basket contraption with vines, into which he places a cluster of plant husks that are smoldering and smoking. Deliberately making fire in the forest; Smokey the Bear would not approve. But then Smokey probably didn’t have to go through all this to get some honey.
Tete has expertly but slowly made his way across the outstretched branch to arrive at the crucial bend and contortion where he believes the hive to be located. As he approaches the crucial spot, he is rewarded with a sure sign of his rightness: BZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! Swarms of bees begin flowing towards him, trying to divert this intrusion into their lair. Welcome to Phase 3. As though being aloft in the air without any safety vines was not enough, Tete must now ward off the onslaught of the bee brigade.
Without losing his balance, Tete must gently wave the bees away. When they do land and sting, he can only grimace and remain immobile amidst the pain. While his family watches from below seemingly unfazed by his heroics, we watch from the edge of our seats, rapt in disbelief at how far one man will go for honey. Tea with honey will never be the same again.
Just when Tete seems close to being overwhelmed by the bee brigade, he gathers his wits to deploy his main weapon for Phase 3. Using his knife he cuts down nearby vines in order to fashion a rope, one end of which he lowers down to his friend. His friend attaches the vine-basket contraption to the end, with the smoking husks inside. Up goes the smoldering gift basket.
Once Tete has pulled up the basket, he lifts out the smoldering husks and uses them to repel and disperse the bees. This ruse will be his crucial ally in Phase 4: Stealing the honeycomb from the honey hole!
Tete considers his movements carefully. In one hand he must hold forward the smoking plant husks, to create a deterrent for the den of bees into which he will be thrusting his hand. With the other hand, he must prepare himself to reach into the hostile honey environment quickly, liberating as much honeycomb as possible in as short a time as possible. And, all the while, he must retain his balance or perish in a fall to the ground.
He creeps forward. The smoking husks make the whole situation look like some kind of treetop ritual or rite of passage. Which, in a way, it most certainly is.
The smoke wafts around his face and spreads toward the opening in the tree, encircling it and creating confusion for the bees. Everything is suspended. And then, with a deft flash of his free hand, Tete reaches into the tree and withdraws a plane of glistening honeycomb, droplets of its nectar oozing down his fingers. He quickly stashes it into the basket and reaches back for more. Once he’s maxed out the space in the basket, as well as his stamina, he retreats. Tete exclaims to everyone below that he has hit the jackpot.
And then comes perhaps my favorite moment of the show (though it is hard to choose just one): Tete lowers the brimming basket to the ground. While he remains dangerously perched on the branch, facing the prospect of retracing his whole journey, his wife and children fill their hands with honeycomb and joyously dive into enjoying the sweet treat with abandon, never once pausing to consider waiting until Tete has safely descended. They eat the honeycomb with pure delight; Tete watches from above with his own contentment. With honey on her lips, Tete’s wife glances up and says simply, though with resonant conviction, “Tete is the best.” I look on, relishing this episode of human improbability and magnificence.
And then, in the blur and surprise that was early November, I forget about Tete.
Until now.
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Over the past year I’ve gotten this question a lot: “So how are you liking being married?” Or, some variation on that theme. The first time it was asked of me, without thinking I blurted out what has become my go-to response: “I love it so much I wish I could do it 10 more times!” People usually think I mean I wish I could get married 10 more times to my husband. No. I mean: It is so cool that I wish I could get married 10 more times to 10 different people!
But, that sort of goes against some of the basis and scope of marriage, depending upon how you approach it.
So, what then do I mean when I blurt out that response? Well, a few things. First, it has been my experience that marriage has opened to me whole new vistas, crevasses, and outcroppings of emotion and sensation. Just didn’t know they were there. Well, actually, they weren’t. They were created through the founding, germination, and evolution of the marriage.
Second, I’ve found marriage to be the ultimate act of freedom. In the short duration of our marriage so far, the singular, primal thing I’ve learned is that there are a million reasons to leave, but only one reason to stay: Because you can! That exclamation point is not mere adornment, but necessary to indicate tone, flair, and existentialist mettle: The “can” is one of wild embrace, flooded with the distinctive thrill and pleasure that rise and merge only in those situations where we choose to put everything about ourselves on the line for the sake of something beyond us.
This brings me to #3, and back to Tete.
It is so easy to overlook, or forget, the honey hive.
I have days when I don’t see the honey that has been offered to me. I have days when I resist scrambling out on the tree limb in order to deliver some honeycomb to my beloved. Or, beset by bees, I get blinded by what isn’t quite right and lose sight of the nectar treasure that lies behind bark but is just within reach.
For me, such days are tangled up in my realities, notions, perplexities, and aspirations as a woman: Am I too tending of something that has gaps of satisfaction or resonance? If I extend this gesture of care am I glossing over flits of doubt and betraying honesty about a source of concern or disappointment? Why do I sometimes feel a tug of sensation to withhold affection, and other times feel a tug of sensation towards offering affection? How can I honor my facets of strength and tenderness, of individualism and partnership, of devotion and audacity within a shared life?
Will loving with abandon empty me? Betray me? Or is it all just the Big Bang, setting in motion an ever-expanding cosmos, a new world experienced as process with no known destination?
And this, the crux of it all: Marriage (and there are many things to be married to!) is incomplete and imperfect because it is undertaken by humans, yet its sustenance depends upon gestures and small acts of love that are complete and perfect simply by virtue of the freeness of their bestowal.
Through these fleeting moments of mundane perfectibility we recreate shared life, we manifest a complete soul precisely because we display our selves to have no boundary, no watchful awareness that is keeping score or playing safe. And, at least for me, trusting the merit, staying power, and glory of such moments of creation has been difficult. It is an orientation within life that goes against so many other tempting currents out there, ones more identifiable and easily recognized by society.
Think of the last time you did one of these small acts of love to create anew your most cherished bond. Did anyone else see it? Was it even something that outside eyes could recognize? Were you yourself even able to fully register its power, its value, its absolute necessity to the continuing vitality and goodness of this thing we call “humanity”? My hunch is that, if we are honest with ourselves, we’d usually have to answer “no” to these questions. It simply is not yet part of the common fabric of cultural value to give such gestures of creation their due. Indeed, their very subtlety and intimacy may mean that they must always, to some extent, remain the secret bounty within marriage.
If you’re out there, do you hear me? What are your forms of such queries, and musings?
For me, they rise and fall, repeat and fade away, continually affecting my ability to GO GET THE HONEY DAMMIT!!!
And then this, regardless of your political leanings or affiliation: The reason the election cycle of 2016 was tectonically upsetting for many (most?) women is because we had to encounter a version of the world in which we—due to our gender—were denied the most basic forms of respect. On all fronts: politicians, media, and all those bystanders so confident in their commentaries upon our lived realities and voting habits.
As for the most egregious forms of disrespect: These were not merely errant or token moments of temporary lapses in moral behavior. We were shown that, in a culture’s regard of women, even in 2016, anything is permissible. I don’t know about you, but when it can already be difficult to muster consistent mojo for honey-gathering and bestowal amidst the flux of normal life, I don’t need further, societal-level indications that all my honey-tending prowess may be lost on a wider world that won’t collectively stand up for my dignity and inviolable worth.
But Tete beckons, and reminds.
Because the 3rd reason marriage is so cool that I wish I could do it 10 more times with 10 different people is also, conveniently, my method for enacting forms of resistance and revolution post-November 8th:
As with Tete and his honey hoard, even the smallest gestures of love can be death-defying, bravery-inducing, competitively courageous ways of yelling a big “Fuck You!” to anyone and anything in the wider world—or, the inner self—that throws shade on one’s imprudent commitment to the greater truth and power of openhearted care for another.
Acts of love are not touchy-feely additions to some other core power of life. They are the core power of life; the antitoxin to the temptations of pettiness, small souledness, and decay.
Love is not best felt as a gentle harmony where all the rough edges of life have melted away in a bliss haze. Just ask Tete. Love is tying oneself to a giant tree with a homemade vine rope and then scrambling up through the heat by hacking out the slimmest of footholds on the upward journey. And then easing out into mid-air upon a branch of possibility that offers only modest hope and huge falls. Towards a merely glimpsed spot of out-of-reach treasure that is guarded by bees abuzz with the reality of stings.
We inch out upon the branch, towards the honey hoard, through the swarming bees and despite the treacherous heights, not because it feels good like a snuggly hug, but because it feels good like an injection of adrenaline when the surge of percolating life is coupled with the vertigo uncertainty of WHERE WILL THIS ALL LEAD TO? Will I fall to the forest floor and perish? Will I reach the honey hoard only to drop its contents, smashed to bits on the ground below, with only the welts of beestings to show for it? Or, will I make it to the secret spot, wafting smoke before me with smoldering plant husks in one hand, as my other hand thrusts into the opening in the bark to lay claim to the greatest nectar treasure on earth?!
I will make that vine rope, hatchet out the required footholds, and ascend that tree. I will tread out upon that branch, undeterred by the bee brigade, sending holy smoke signals to the sky. And I will reach deep into the tree—again and again—laying my hands upon honeycomb, bringing it out into the hostile world, its liquid gold oozing down my fingers, and I will lower it down to my waiting beloved, who will be nourished by its delights as I look on from above, my heartfire blazing with the thrill of the risk and the contentment of unfettered bestowal.
Some people tried to make 2016 “The Year of Grabbing Women’s P——-y.”
I reject that.
Tete and I are here to say: We’ve got a few weeks left to make 2016 The Year of Reclaiming The Honeypot! And in 2017, let’s take over the planet, one brave honeycomb-love-act at a time.
Are you in?