The animals feed themselves.

I quit the farm.

After Thanksgiving Dinner, my aunts and cousins told me I had to start playing Farmville, a virtual-farming game that is available through Facebook.

"We can give each other gifts," Jessie said.  "I gave Ang and Tom reindeer this morning."  She was snickering.  They know it's silly, but they're all doing it anyway.

"I really can't, guys.  I don't have cable or a gaming system for a reason, I get hooked on that shit and then I don't do what I'm supposed to do in real life.  I have way too much on my plate right now to take up another addiction."

"You can spend as much or as little time as you want" Auntie Lori says, "You have to get a farm!"

"I can spend as much or as little time as I want on Facebook, but somehow I always spend way more time than I want.  Really, I don't need one more reason to be online, I got to like pay bills and eat meals and stuff."

By the end of the night I agreed to get a farm.  Fuck it.  It's just a silly Facebook game.

By Christmas I had a very sweet farm.  I had more crops and animals and "points" than most of my family. Jessica sent me an e-mail just a few days before Christmas.  "Can't wait to see you.  Nice farm.  What's your secret?  I'd like to know"

I e-mailed back:   "Insomnia's my secret."

Which was half the truth.  I had spent many a late night farming when I was too sleep deprived to do much else.  You just point and click.  Point and click.  Point and click.  Then you buy barns and houses and pretty little decorations.  My excuse for farming during daytime hours was that "I needed something mindless," and it sure was.  I even had some free child-labor via the exploitation of my niece, who loved the game.

There was another, much dirtier truth.  I was competing with my most recent ex-boyfriend.

I spent HOURS working on a virtual farm almost entirely to make mine cooler and better than his.  He was competing with me, too.  I knew it.   I could see it in his crop circles.

"The truth shall set you free."  Well... What is the truth really?  That it was a waste of time?  That it was childish and petty?  That that game is totally stupid?

I like this truth: Once upon a time I had a virtual-farm habit.  It was short lived, in the scheme of things, and it's over now.  


I left a sign on my "farm" that says "I've skipped town.  Don't worry, the animals feed themselves."  This was over a week ago.

That same evening, Tesia and I stopped at her plot in the Northampton community gardens.  It was one of the first nights of the year that we could be outside without shivering, and neither of us had been to her garden all winter.  We pulled the car right up to the edge, and used the headlights as lanterns as we went to inspect what the winter had done.

We wandered around the dark plot.  She was looking for garlic and I was just dancing.  Really.  Skipping and jumping and then, just like a little kid, hollered "It's here!  It's here!  It's really Spring."  As Tesia moves into the light from the car I say "I want to farm.  Real farming.  Real gardening.  Real life."

I looked down at the clumpy dirt, waiting to be tilled and fertilized and loved, and could imagine a very very sweet garden.

(photo by Micheal R. Mosall  www.mosallphotography.com)