Fortunate Neighbor

sacred datura and father tongue

Jun 15, 2025

Sharing engenders relationships of goodwill and bonds that ensure you will be invited to the feast when your neighbor is fortunate.

~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

0:01

At first, I don't see the sacred datura.

0:13

She's not there in the same spot she was last summer.

But then, under the protection of dead pine branches, I see her.

And then again by a clump of grass, and then again

0:54

to the north of her last-summer spot, up on the arroyo bank's gentle slope.

Gift economies arise from the abundance of gifts from the Earth, which are owned by no one and therefore shared. Sharing engenders relationships of goodwill and bonds that ensure you will be invited to the feast when your neighbor is fortunate. Security is ensured by nurturing the bonds of reciprocity. Margaret Atwood writes, “Every time a gift is given it is enlivened and regenerated through the spiritual life it engenders both in the giver and in the recipient.” (Kimmerer, 2024, p.50)

And then again in my front yard, she arises from her large, fleshy storage root.

raving nightshade, thorn apple, stinkweed, devil's apple, Jimson weed, angel's trumpet

bisexual, complete, regular, pentamerous

succeeded by large, egg-shaped seed capsules

when in flower

is so peculiar

five toothed, sepaloid, hairy, persistent

somewhat swollen below

surmounted by five sharp teeth

surface hairy, white

twisted aestivation, inferior

folded and only half-opened

is funnel-shaped

of a pure white

with six prominent ribs

open in the evening for the attraction

of night-flying moths

anthers dithecous, basifixed, introse, inferior

underneath each fruit is a truncated remnant of the calyx

brown with maturity

they divide into 4 segments to release the seeds

large seeds are dull, irregular, and dark-colored

pitted or slightly reticulated

spreads by reseeding itself

exhales a rank, very heavy

and somewhat nauseating

narcotic odor

this fetid odor arises

especially when bruised

sweet-smelling flowers produce stupor

if their exhalations are breathed

rubbing skin and eyes after contact with this plant is dangerous

white thorn apple which makes mad

fruit is a pendulous, flat-topped ball

They almost always start growing

where ground has been recently disturbed

(giving the seeds sheltered nooks

where plant material can gather and rot

and where the humidity is maintained

by being sheltered from direct sunlight and wind)

Family

Solanaceae

the nightshades

in this family are mandrake (Mandrogora), belladonna (Atropa), henbane (Hyoscyamus), and tobacco (Nicotiana)

many members of this family contain alkaloid compounds which may be toxic or narcotic

coarse, heavy-scented,

inconspicuously puberulent annual

often divaricately branched

petiolate, with large, coarsely few-toothed or sublobate blade

strongly prismatic and narrowly 5-winged

unequally 5-toothed

persistent base and spreading to reflexed

white or anthocyanic

limb 3–5 cm wide

shallowly 5-lobed

each lobe with a slender, projecting tooth

generally covered with short prickles

Paradox in Hedge (path)ology/Growing in Disturbed Ground

(parataxis ahead)

The father tongue is spoken from above. It goes one way. No answer is expected, or heard. (Le Guin, 1986)
Learning spaces that […] are counter-intuitive within the grid, […] emphasize the importance of complex existential questions instead of the search for (often simplistic) self-affirming solutions. These spaces prioritize de-centering over leadership; disarmament over empowerment; discernment over conviction; consent over consensus; pluriversality over univocality; and disinvestment over revolution. (Andreotti, 2016)

As I disinvest in the “father tongue”, I love and grieve my father. When I shared my passions, he said, “yes, that’s possible” and “tell me more”. As a child, he read me stories before bed, and I fell asleep to his gentle voice.

Datura is toxic/Datura is medicinal. What is the “father tongue”? In a rite of passage, a man emerges from hardship with more responsibilities, less rights. I read about a boy who ate datura seeds and woke eleven days later tied to his bed. Devil’s horn/angel’s trumpet. I look in places where plant material has gathered and rotted. Every time I try to say this straight, it goes astray. Awry am I who has so may open tabs: Herbs in History: Marrubium; your quiet Oxford getaway; Trump’s Un-American Parade; How does woke start winning again?; Axillia definition and meaning; The Best White Sneakers of 2025; anthelmintic meaning; Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica; Helichrysum: The Miraculous Plant With Skin Healing Benefits; Untitled design 3 x 4; Monograph on Datura Stramonium; One-ingredient Banana Ice Cream Recipe; Breaking news…

*In a dream, she is chased by officials, and she knows if she’s caught, she’ll be imprisoned in a nearby field, desecrated, surrounded by barbed fence. And she feels terror for what comes after her capture. Moving snake-like, she alludes the captors for a while, but eventually they grab her. She then turns invisible in their hands—an unknown power transforms her, reverses her to bodyless spirit with unseen teeth. She bites the fingers that seize her. With her ghost mouth, she vividly tears through flesh. They lose their grip as she wakes.*

Le Guin spoke of “father tongue” in her 1986 Bryn Mawr commencement address, and I have resonated with her usage because of its helpfulness in describing the unquestioned perpetuance of inherited, taken-for-granted, “expert” language in scholarship. May you not feel so you can prove? Listen to me expert. Mother tongue coos to babies. When in flower is so peculiar. See how good I can expert war. Which tongue bombs children? At all moments, in all places, a mother sings to her child. So, when I say that I'm practicing disinvestment with ruling academic language, it is an intention that I keep and offer as part of hedge (path)ology.

At all moments, in all places, a father kisses a scrape, promises future healing. My father’s tongue could be fierce, compassionate, wounded, anxious, controlling, loving, clear, inebriated, kind, angry, merciful, judgmental, spiritual, jovial, righteous, persuasive, cracked with sadness and brimmed over in the face of beauty, and then it was swallowed by a stroke where it knotted frustrations through him.

I consider the datura closely, but do not touch. It is okay for her to say, in all her ways, “Don’t eat me, eat little of me, but if you are the hawk moth, come in.” It is okay for her to say, “Inhale me with your eyes for a clear-headed intoxication.” Maybe there will be an adjacent possible to how I metabolize and make language and a way to balance the duality will emerge. In OCD treatment of intrusive thoughts, it’s helpful to think, maybe/maybe not; maybe this will happen/maybe it will not. Embracing paradox is necessary for my thinking through/in/with complexity. Security is ensured by nurturing the bonds of reciprocity. Pluriversality contains paradox, and may generate more authentically in poetry

where ground has been recently disturbed

(giving the seeds sheltered nooks

where plant material can gather and rot

and where the humidity is maintained

by being sheltered from direct sunlight and wind)

The mother tongue, spoken or written, expects an answer. It is conversation, a word the root of which means "turning together." The mother tongue is language not as mere communication but as relation, relationship. It connects. It goes two ways, many ways, an exchange, a network. Its power is not in dividing but in binding, not in distancing but in uniting. It is written, but not by scribes and secretaries for posterity: it flies from the mouth on the breath that is our life and is gone, like the outbreath, utterly gone and yet returning, repeated, the breath the same again always, everywhere, and we all know it by heart. (Le Guin, 1986)

security is ensured by nurturing the bonds of reciprocity

we talk now in different ways

spirit/material reciprocity

emerge from the throat of the flower

arising from a large, fleshy storage root

petals are fused into a flaring trumpet

five male stamens and a single female pistil

emerge from the throat of the flower

exhalations are breathed

security is ensured by nurturing the bonds of reciprocity

a mutually beneficial relationship has evolved between Datura spp. and sphinx (or hawk) moths

a fortunate neighbor and in relationships of goodwill

shared in each other’s abundance and feasts

nourished by these gifts and thus regenerative in gift giving

it is good to know that this is still possible, adjacent to what is here

in our shared, disturbed ground

Prompt:

Security is ensured by nurturing the bonds of reciprocity.

Fortunate Neighbor

sacred datura and father tongue

Discussion about this post