New England’s late May sun was long up,
and yet her laundry began to unfold
and clip onto the droopy clothesline,
while yet to warm into 8 AM.
She wore a light spring jacket
and need not think long
about why and how much of water
she consumed each day
each month
each year.
These numbers are written on ledgers of her mind
and asset hanging body.
Food
and heat
and phone service,
electricity
and water
and even some of her compost.
All off-site store
and on-line purchases.
Balancing thoughts nutritional,
sometimes toxic piles of consuming laundry lists
from diverse and fragrant markets.
This was an easy stroll
down double-entry accountability lane
compared to thinking through what she had produced.
Which reminded her to breathe
and about air.
The good air she had breathed all year.
She had no bill for services rendered,
in large part by the trees,
but the ecology and chemistry are complicated.
Still, no bill.
And what about all the bad air she had produced?
No one seemed likely to repay her.
At least not with kindness.
Yet she had also produced some good air,
and so had her daughters and sons.
And she had produced them,
without as much help as she might have preferred
for so much poopy laundry.
Come to think of it,
no one had sent much of anything
for her investments in retaining this planet
with capacity for self-naming Earth,
or any other name either
as far and deep as she could linguistically foretell.
She didn’t bring home a paycheck anymore.
That could have been a measure of her production value.
Yet she was not so sure
which part of all those hours
and years
would end up on the positive regenerative asset side
of self and other investing income
and how much was more degenerative and toxic.
Both trends paid the same in cash,
but not within her warm-washed heart.
This was her accounting problem.
She could measure consumption with her mind and body
but she wanted to balance her production values
and disvalues with her heart,
maybe only because her mind could not wrap around
the positive and negative productive garnering numbers.
What did she produce in healthy amounts?
Too much clean laundry or not enough?
And what else might she over-produce
in toxic overpopulating quantities?
Is this all her kids could be and hope for?
Her contribution to inhumane overpopulation
to further deteriorate Earth’s healthier climates.
What futures would these well-worn clothes cover?
This must not be enough.
So she talked and listened with other women she knew,
including her mother and grandmothers,
but also her daughters,
about how they cooperatively and competitively approached
their double-entry accountability issues.
One grandmother
made a conserving assumption
that all her breath was wasted,
so entered her heart-felt numbers
on Earth’s negative side–
we are intrinsically bad for other nature-spirits.
But also made her balancing assumption,
all her intakes of cash were sufficient in return.
An even exchange,
positive feedback capital
balancing all her bad breath outflow.
Her clothesline
carried only her own clothes.
Her other grandmother
spoke of a rule
her mother taught and listened to tape-measure through each day.
If she had some negative feedback to invest,
it must wait until she had completely played out
any positive feedback
she could honestly express.
In this way she could predict
her positive productions
at least 0-sum balancing
with her negative airs
and positions,
policies and partnerships,
pairs and repairs of pants and socks
and other relationships;
her economic and political productions
across her project lifeline.
She said her goal was to consume
at least as wisely balanced as she produced,
to give at least as well as she had taken.
Her daughter went on-line
to frame a women’s global cooperative.
And then she quantified her negative consumptions
of mind and body
against and with her positive heartbeats and breaths,
to see and hope and hypostatically hypothesize
thermodynamic ecopolitical balance
as 0-sum WinWin
cooperative ego/eco-systemic balance,
slow-growing her matriarchal cooperative laundry ownership
of this women and allies cooperative
transfer and exchange market
for healthier global climates.
She followed her daughter on-line
to co-mentor with her global sisters,
and allies,
how we can add and subtract,
divide and multiply
our cooperative positive mutual dividends
invested for each other
more than WinLose against.
This did not necessarily resolve her ecological balance sheet
but her daughter’s on-line cooperative intention and outcome bank
of entries,
nested by individual within local bioregion,
did resolve and resonate with her accounting
by double-entry
regenerative v degenerative 0-sum balance issue.
Now what was in and on her heart and breath,
was also expanding out through cooperating breasts and chests,
WinWin more than competitive WinLose.
What continued in patriarchal Washington,
and other capital-consuming cities,
hoarding breath ’til smoke-filled blue
denying Earth’s climating pathologies,
faded back somewhat from terrorizing view
because this hoarding vision of contemporary history
was no longer the only cooperative-competitive game in town,
and across Earth’s matriarchally treed forests,
networks,
embryonic organic networks,
regenerative and decomposing lines,
perennial spirals
recycling productive Yang with cooperative consuming yin-fractal DNA
seasonal 0-sum
WinWin reiterative primal relationships,
double-positive-binds,
not just light
but bright,
not just love
but polypathic beloving matriarchal communities
of and for healthy accounting balance sheets,
hung out to dry
on this sunny warm breeze May day.
