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0:35

This episode contains explicit language. I

0:39

know what I'm good at and I know what I'm bad at. I'm bad

0:42

at teaching and I'm bad at driving. That's

0:44

pretty much it. No, but like... Wait, there

0:46

was one more thing on Food for Thought recently that you said you were

0:48

bad at. Oh, caring

0:50

for people. Yes. That's

0:53

right. That's right. I, yeah. But

0:56

anyway, so I attempt to be

0:59

useful in other ways. Right,

1:02

right. This is the Sporkful. It's

1:04

not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan

1:06

Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess

1:09

about food

1:09

to learn more about people. Tommy

1:12

Pico is an indigenous queer poet.

1:14

He loves junk food so much he wrote an entire

1:16

book of poetry about it called Junk. The

1:19

opening line is, Frenching with a mouthful

1:21

of M&Ms. Don't know if I feel polluted

1:23

or into it. For a hundred pages after

1:26

that, Tommy extols the virtues of Funyuns,

1:28

Cherry Coke, and Double Stuff Oreos

1:31

while using junk food as a way to talk about instant

1:33

gratification, sex, and

1:35

a bad breakup. Tommy's

1:37

poetry mashes the irreverent

1:39

with the profound. That's also

1:41

his go-to move on the podcast Food

1:43

for Thought. That's T-H-O-T. He

1:46

and his co-hosts describe the show as

1:48

NPR on poppers. Tommy

1:50

starts each episode with something like this.

1:59

a multiracial mix of queer writers gather

2:02

around the table to talk about sex, identity,

2:06

culture, what we like to

2:08

read, and who we like

2:10

to read. Food for thought, a

2:12

thought in the hand is worth two in the tush.

2:14

Oh my God. How?

2:17

You're mine.

2:19

As Tommy entered his 30s, he realized

2:21

he couldn't eat all that junk food like he used to. He

2:23

started thinking more about the future and

2:26

his health. After all, on the Kumii

2:28

reservation, where he grew up, the life

2:31

expectancy is 40. So

2:33

Tommy decided to learn how to cook. That

2:35

process is the subject of his 2019 book, Feed. It's

2:39

about a lot more than that too, and we'll get to all of it.

2:41

But when Tommy came into the studio, this

2:43

is where we began.

2:46

I'd like to ask you to read a little excerpt to

2:48

get us going here, an excerpt from Feed. Sure.

2:50

Page 20. Honestly,

2:55

who the fuck keeps inviting

2:57

pesto basil to this party? I

3:00

say into my tomato mauze breakfast

3:02

sandwich that I only bought because I needed to

3:04

eat something before drinking my green tea, so

3:06

I wouldn't vomit in the airplane bathroom again,

3:09

which Crook Cook said

3:11

it was okay to put balsamic roasted

3:13

red peppers and sun-dried tomatoes in

3:16

every goddamn sandwich.

3:20

Thank you. Tommy, I just wanna thank

3:22

you for addressing this huge

3:24

issue, for bringing this to light finally, I

3:27

was just pissed off about this two days

3:30

ago. I am so glad.

3:32

I try to eat less meat than I used to, so

3:34

I'm more on the lookout for vegetarian options.

3:37

And yes, if you're in an upscale enclave

3:40

in certain areas of the country, there

3:42

aren't many wonderful vegetarian options. But

3:45

it's still a total bleak

3:48

nothing in most of the country, in

3:50

an airport or in the suburbs. Yeah,

3:53

I live far outside the city now. There's a couple restaurants

3:56

are like the vegetarian restaurants and they have some

3:58

good options. But like if you're just at.

3:59

any kind of sandwich joint or any kind of restaurant

4:02

and you want something vegetarian,

4:04

the only sandwiches they have are

4:06

tomato, basil, pesto, mozzarella,

4:09

and the grilled veggie, which always has roasted red

4:11

peppers, as you rightly say, which overpower

4:13

the flavor of the other veggies and make

4:16

it a crappy sandwich. And then the bun

4:18

is soaked in some kind of vinaigrette. Yes.

4:20

And you're just like, it's really, I think it's just

4:22

to make up for the lack of flavor

4:25

in whatever it is. But it's just like, I went

4:27

to one in Vegas because a friend of mine and I

4:29

went there for a weekend to kind of

4:31

crack a script open. And there was a vegetarian

4:33

restaurant there. And the most flavorful thing was the bread.

4:36

It was disgusting. And it was like, oh,

4:38

and people had recommended it to us. I had gone

4:40

into this bookstore and these two queer weirdos were

4:42

like, oh my god, are you Tommy Pico? And I was

4:45

like, yeah. Honestly, if you're a queer and

4:47

a weirdo and you work at a bookstore, that's pretty

4:49

much the only way you know my name. Is

4:52

that why you went into that

4:53

bookstore, Tommy? I

4:55

just wanted to, like, there's in

4:58

Soap Dish with Sally Field and Whoopi Goldberg,

5:00

there's a moment where she's like, Whoopi pretends

5:03

to recognize her in a mall. Yeah, she has to make her feel

5:05

better about herself. That's a great movie. I remember that,

5:07

right. A little bit of a dead situation, but not really.

5:09

They were like, oh yeah, I got to try this vegetarian place. And I went

5:11

there and I was like, oh. But I just want to thank you

5:13

for speaking out about those sandwiches. So,

5:17

Tommy, let's

5:19

get into feed in a little

5:23

more detail

5:25

and

5:29

depth here. All right, let's chomp in. I'd love

5:31

to ask you to read an excerpt. First, just

5:33

to give listeners a feel for

5:35

your work, and also because I really

5:37

like the use of scent in this one. All right.

5:41

Once, I dated a dude who made

5:43

sense for fun. Unlike

5:46

taste, which is largely innate,

5:48

he said, rising up from the foam bed

5:50

and his Hollister skivvies and the taffy

5:53

lofts off classen, smell

5:55

is more associative.

5:57

When he made sense, he

5:59

talked in... metaphors and it made me

6:01

love him more. This one,

6:03

he said, tincture dropping onto a blotter

6:06

then offering it up to me like a prayer. I

6:08

call, the sky is blue and

6:11

mom is sad. His low

6:13

barrel baritone vibrating in

6:15

harmony with the din of the AC, him

6:19

crackling through me. I brewed

6:21

him a jalapeno infused whiskey a week

6:23

before his birthday, but he

6:25

dumped me on text the next day. I

6:28

drank the whiskey, next planet.

6:31

I say, it's fine. I say,

6:33

some things need to be boiled in

6:35

order to release their flavor.

6:41

Tommy's new book is one long epic

6:43

poem, kind of like the Iliad, but with

6:45

a lot more eating. It does not

6:47

have recipes, but it does have a

6:50

series of scenes in his friend's kitchens

6:52

and dining rooms. The friends teaching

6:54

Tommy how to make different dishes, then

6:56

sharing meals.

6:58

Do you remember a moment, the first time when you were cooked

7:00

something and you were like, oh,

7:02

I'm getting good at this.

7:04

Well, I feel

7:06

like this sounds so basic,

7:08

but like learning how to

7:10

tell something is done by the way that it smells, you

7:13

know what I mean? Like being able to smell and be like, I think

7:15

that's ready. People had always told me I'd get a

7:17

sense of it. And I didn't really believe them

7:20

because it just didn't happen. And

7:23

I didn't have to, well, I started to understand

7:26

unlike baking, the recipe is

7:28

malleable to a certain extent. You know what I mean? If

7:31

I don't keep it in for five minutes, if I keep it in for five

7:33

and a half, it's not gonna turn out all that different. You

7:35

know what I mean? I'm not on a competition reality

7:37

television cooking show where someone's gonna be like, this

7:39

could have used a little bit more salt. Nobody's

7:42

yelping my motherfucking cooking. So it's fine that

7:44

I could do it more, like writing,

7:47

do it more instinctually than necessarily have to be

7:49

checking the recipe every

7:51

two seconds and be like, oh, did I do that right? Did I do that

7:53

right? And in doing that, it allowed me to calm

7:55

down because I feel like the idea

7:58

of following a recipe and getting it wrong,

7:59

made me anxious. And so once

8:02

I understood that it's not gonna ever go

8:04

that wrong, I calmed

8:07

down a little bit and in calming down,

8:09

I started to maybe cook a little bit more associatively

8:12

than I did just by the recipe itself.

8:15

Tell me a little bit about the process of

8:18

writing this book. I could only eat

8:20

things that I made myself. I

8:22

made sure to cook with people

8:24

twice a week. These are the rules you imposed on yourself.

8:27

Yeah, it was a curriculum.

8:29

I could only read food

8:31

books. I could only watch

8:34

food TV shows. I could only listen to food podcasts.

8:37

Sporkful being one of them. Oh, thank you. Yeah,

8:39

yeah, yeah. In that, I wanted

8:41

to get, I

8:42

wanted to build not

8:44

only a language around food and a new

8:47

vocabulary for the book, but also just to

8:49

share other people's food stories because I

8:51

didn't really have any growing up. I'm from an Indian

8:53

reservation outside of San Diego. My nation,

8:55

like our whole food history

8:58

was estranged from us and taken away. And so there are

9:00

so many ways of cooking food that are

9:03

just lost, like traditional ways of cooking food that are

9:05

just lost. And so I wanted

9:07

to create, I wanted to have almost like a

9:09

new ceremony. I wanted to have a new language

9:12

of food to replace

9:12

something that had been lost. It

9:15

wasn't lost, it was stolen.

9:18

So for Tommy, while learning to cook was

9:20

partly about getting healthy, he

9:22

had deeper reasons too. One

9:25

scene in his book takes place around a dinner table

9:27

with friends. I asked him

9:29

to read from that section.

9:31

I says to them around the table, I says,

9:34

I don't have a food history.

9:37

If the dish is subjugate an indigenous

9:39

population, here's

9:41

an ingredient of the roux. Aliate

9:44

us from our traditional ways of

9:46

gathering and cooking food. Kumeyais

9:49

moved around what would be called San

9:52

Diego County with the seasons, the

9:55

valleys, the coast, not

9:58

much arable land or business.

9:59

big game, so we followed

10:02

the food wherever it would go. Then

10:04

the missions, then isolated

10:07

reservations on stone mountains

10:09

where not even a goat could live, then

10:12

the starvation, then the food

10:14

distribution program on Indian reservations.

10:18

Whatever the military would throw away, came

10:21

canned on the back of trucks, the

10:23

commodities, the powdered milk, worms

10:26

in the oatmeal, corn syrup he

10:28

canned peaches,

10:29

food stripped of its nutrients.

10:33

Then came the sugar blood, the sickness,

10:36

the glucose meter goes up and

10:39

up and up. I

10:41

says to them around the table, I says, I don't

10:44

have food stories. With you,

10:47

I say, I'm cooking new ones.

10:53

Tommy says growing up, he mostly ate fast

10:55

food during the week.

10:57

Then on the weekends.

10:59

My parents cooked for

11:02

funerals all across San Diego

11:04

County. They're like 13 reservations,

11:06

I think, in San Diego County, which means it has the most Indian

11:09

reservations of any county in the United

11:11

States, but they're all very, very small and

11:14

kind of broken up on

11:16

purpose. And

11:18

because there are a lot of funerals

11:21

in Indian country, I mean, my first memory was being at

11:23

a funeral. They were

11:25

busy a lot, so we'd be out, they would do

11:28

prayers and sometimes cook too. And

11:30

it was like,

11:31

we'd probably be at funerals almost every single weekend.

11:34

So I just want to understand, this was like their

11:36

job or it was sort of something that they did? It

11:39

was something that they did. My father was a

11:41

tribal chairman of the reservation where I'm from.

11:43

My mother was like in the church

11:45

choir and they were both at the volunteer fire

11:48

department. They were very, very, very community

11:50

minded. They're very much like what's

11:52

best for me is what's best for us. So what's best

11:54

for us is what's best for me. There was, it was a

11:56

little tribal society.

11:59

things would they cook for the funerals? Whatever

12:02

they could make that was

12:04

more or less quick and that

12:06

they could prepare for lots and lots and lots of people.

12:08

So it was basically like just like lots

12:11

of spaghetti, you know, a lot

12:14

like, you know, some stew

12:16

with beef in it, macaroni

12:19

salad, potato salad, green salad.

12:22

I remember like peeling potatoes at midnight

12:25

for like breakfast the next day. So it would just be like

12:27

fried potatoes and like lots of scrambled

12:30

eggs and stuff like that. Just like a catering.

12:34

Tommy says this catering wasn't so

12:36

much food as celebration.

12:38

There were so many funerals. It was more like

12:41

triage. I guess I'm

12:43

curious like those foods that your parents cooked.

12:48

Like what level of connection do you feel

12:50

to those foods? I don't.

12:53

That's a thing. Like they

12:55

were there to sustain people, but they weren't there

12:57

to nurture them.

12:58

You know what I mean? It wasn't like something that

13:01

would be it wasn't something precious

13:03

that was like passed down. It was out of a necessity.

13:06

Was there any food that you had growing

13:09

up that made you feel connected to

13:11

your parents and grandparents and ancestors?

13:13

Well, yeah, there's one that that remained

13:16

and it was an acorn dish that my mother

13:18

knew how to cook and it's

13:20

called shawy. And it's you know,

13:22

it's we

13:24

would go harvest acorns in the mountains

13:27

and

13:28

you know, I'd crack them and

13:31

you know, crush them into a powdery meal.

13:34

And you put water into that and you let

13:37

it set and then you would

13:39

put it in the fridge for a little while.

13:41

It's like let it to make it

13:42

congeal or something. Okay. You're actually

13:45

sort of the process. And then you would eat it like that? I

13:47

imagine it kind of like the texture of like fahrina or

13:49

cream of wheat. Is that right? A

13:52

little bit, yeah. Okay, but cold. But cold

13:54

and very, very bitter.

14:01

Coming up, Tommy builds his own

14:04

food history by turning his attention

14:06

to the future. Stick around.

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Welcome back to The Sporkful,

17:51

I'm Dan Pashman. In the last week's episode, we talked about

17:53

the interest of new companies in the

17:55

post COVID era. In the middle

17:56

of a crisis in the Sports Center, BBQ

17:58

Dental opened a new in-store pharmacy, a complicated

18:00

history of Barbie and food. When

18:02

her first dream house came out in 1962, it

18:05

didn't even have a kitchen because Barbie was presented

18:07

as a career woman, not a mom or a housewife.

18:10

I talk with Helene Siegel, who worked on Barbie

18:12

children's books in the 80s and 90s. She

18:14

was pitched from a tell-a-story where Barbie would launch

18:17

a successful cookie business like Mrs. Fields,

18:20

but...

18:20

They literally told me that Barbie would never

18:22

get dirty. She would never dirty

18:24

her hands. She will never sweep. She

18:26

will never wash a pot. Anything

18:29

around food was really

18:31

a no-go.

18:32

Today, however, there

18:34

are more than a dozen chef Barbies. So

18:36

what changed? We discuss and I

18:39

visit the pop-up Malibu Barbie Cafe

18:41

in New York with food writer Helen Rosner.

18:43

That's up now. Check it out.

18:46

Now back to my conversation with poet, Tommy

18:48

Pico, author of the book, Feed.

18:51

So here's something I'm curious to understand. So,

18:54

as you say, your

18:56

food culture was stolen. And

18:58

so you set out to create

19:01

a new food culture for

19:03

yourself by learning

19:05

to cook, by connecting with friends and

19:07

sort of tapping into their family

19:09

food histories.

19:13

It seems to me that the sort of the obvious

19:15

move would have been to go backward,

19:17

to go back. Rather than to create

19:20

something new and move forward, it would have been

19:22

to say, well, I'm gonna go

19:24

back to the reservation and I'm gonna have my mom teach

19:26

me how to make the acorn dish. And

19:29

I'm gonna study whatever there is. And we know the

19:31

chef Sean Sherman, who you read in your studies and who

19:33

has been on this show, who is doing amazing

19:35

work, sort of reclaiming indigenous

19:37

food ways and ingredients in

19:40

a different area of the country from where you grew up. But

19:43

he's doing that work. So it feels

19:45

like to me, like that would have been the obvious move would have been

19:47

like, I'm gonna go into the past and I'm gonna find as

19:49

much as I can and I'm gonna try to reconnect with that.

19:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why did

19:54

you instead choose the path

19:56

of

19:57

creating something new and moving forward? Well,

20:00

Because there are ways in which going

20:03

back and trying

20:05

to pan through the silt in

20:07

order to

20:13

find some of the

20:15

origin of traditional culture of something

20:18

kumya'i, that

20:21

there is a way in which the

20:24

view of tradition can trap people

20:27

in a kind of amber, you know, and

20:29

can kind of crystallize what

20:31

it means to be quote unquote kumya'i. And

20:34

I wanted to show that there are many

20:37

ways of being kumya'i.

20:39

I wonder if also, I mean, I'll

20:41

float a theory to you, Tommy, please feel free

20:43

to shoot it down. Okay, gotcha.

20:46

You guys had a conversation on food for thought

20:48

where you were talking about the future.

20:50

Yeah. In that decision

20:52

to focus more on

20:55

going forward, as opposed

20:57

to going back,

21:00

I wonder if there's also a connection

21:02

there to being queer,

21:05

because queer people are often

21:07

in a position to choose

21:09

their family, to create a chosen

21:11

family, to create a community.

21:13

You know, when your community is determined

21:16

by blood, there's kind of a predetermined

21:19

inheritance.

21:21

Right, right, right. When your

21:24

community is, when you make your community,

21:26

on one hand, there may be a feeling

21:28

of loss.

21:31

On the other hand, it can be an opportunity. It

21:34

can be freeing. Right. I'm

21:36

just wondering if that approach to community

21:39

is being reflected in your approach to

21:41

creating your own food culture. I

21:43

think so. I didn't really put it, I didn't

21:45

put it together that way in my head, but I think that's a beautiful

21:49

interpretation. And I'm just going to say

21:51

that that's what was intended. Yeah.

21:55

So, yeah, I

21:58

mean, it's just,

21:59

I wanted to do something. that made sure

22:01

that not only would

22:03

my family, like that I

22:06

wanted to show the resilience

22:08

that comes along with

22:11

trauma, right? Because when

22:13

focusing on trauma, it seems like the only thing

22:15

we can talk about is the ways in which we've been grieved.

22:18

Because like, I come from survivors. People

22:21

had decided to survive, you know, for

22:23

generations because they had an image

22:25

of me in their mind. There was an image of a person

22:28

who had a kind of freedom that they didn't have. And I

22:30

feel like that's why they survived and that's why they lived

22:32

on. And I think of that as like a

22:34

gift that has been given to me that I want to reflect

22:37

into the future, right? And so, but

22:40

they had

22:41

to, they had a very strict

22:43

way in which they had to conduct

22:45

themselves in order to live. I

22:47

get to choose so much about my life right now. I

22:49

get to choose so much about what my career is. I

22:52

get to choose so much about my family. And in

22:54

that, I feel like I'm expressing

22:56

a freedom that they always wanted me to have, that

22:58

they stayed alive for.

23:01

Tommy used that freedom to build his own

23:04

food history, a food culture he

23:06

can pass on. Over the

23:08

course of the book, his friend Willie in Seattle

23:10

teaches him the proper way to chop veggies. His

23:13

friend Paul in LA shows him how to make a roux

23:15

and they make mac and cheese.

23:17

Then there's Tommy's friend Becky who teaches

23:19

him how to make ceviche.

23:21

So when I was cooking with my friend Becky, we

23:24

were in her apartment in Koreatown

23:26

in Los Angeles in her kitchen

23:29

and it was kind of small. And she was talking

23:32

about how her kitchen, her grandmother's kitchen was even

23:34

smaller than the one that we were in. It

23:36

was a hot Los Angeles summer and she

23:38

was talking about wanting to make something that was

23:41

cool, that was refreshing on a hot

23:44

day. And also that the

23:46

kind of magic of a ceviche is

23:48

that it's cold cooking, right? That unlike

23:51

most of the other things,

23:53

it's magic

23:55

happens through the citrus. And

23:58

I remember preparing.

23:59

all of the ingredients, like ripping the tails off

24:02

the shrimp, putting the citrus into the bowl and all

24:04

that kind of stuff. And as

24:06

the shrimp was changing color, right, as it was

24:08

like cooking in the fridge and she was talking to me about

24:10

her grandmothers and trying to sort of started

24:13

to imagine them in the kitchen

24:15

with us. So she started to talk about how being

24:17

half Mexican and half Jewish, the different ways that

24:20

her family, the different ways in which her grandmothers,

24:23

her Jewish grandmother and her Mexican grandmother

24:26

kind of turned the either

24:29

the kitchen or the dining space into a matriarchy.

24:31

In her Mexican grandmothers home, her domain

24:34

was the kitchen itself. So it was like her

24:36

and her aunties and her cousins and

24:38

her grandmother and she was just like directing

24:41

everybody. She had complete

24:43

authority. And so the taste

24:45

of the food, the flavor of the food, the body

24:47

of the food, the personality of the

24:49

food that her grandmother gave it, that's what

24:51

kind of stuck in my friend's mind. Whereas

24:54

with her Jewish grandmother, it wasn't the

24:56

food preparation where the matriarchy

24:59

was apparent, but it was more she was at

25:02

the head of the table directing the dinner conversation.

25:04

So it was more of a social thing. So she remembers

25:06

like the stories and the conversations

25:09

that her grandmother and her aunties and her family

25:11

were having, but her grandmother

25:13

had complete authority over the flow of

25:15

the conversation. That's kind of what really mattered

25:18

to her. So that was as a recipe,

25:21

not just for food, but also for

25:23

family. That really, really stuck in my head.

25:26

Why do you think that resonated with you so much?

25:29

I just wish that I'd had it made

25:34

me not jealous, but it made me

25:38

to my grandmother, my grandfather, my mom's

25:40

side, they passed away fairly

25:43

early in my life. And then my

25:45

other grandmother, I

25:48

just kind of felt like I wish

25:50

I had seen them in their domain.

25:53

I

25:53

wish I had seen them. I wish

25:56

I had had an insight into where they felt

25:58

their most powerful. You

26:00

know, and I didn't really get to see that. I didn't really have insight

26:02

into that. And I

26:06

like to imagine, I liked imagining

26:08

that they had domains like that.

26:11

["The Why

26:25

do you think you were away for so long?"

26:29

Part of it was understanding

26:31

about reconciliation after a breakup, right? You

26:34

have to go and be your own person before you can come back

26:36

to each other without co-dependence.

26:37

That's

26:40

kind of how I felt, like I wanted

26:42

to write.

26:43

I wanted it to be in the world. And

26:46

I wanted to learn more about

26:48

the world. I wanted to get out, and

26:50

I wanted to travel. And a part of

26:52

that, I think, had to do with queerness, the

26:54

part of that was like, I also wanted

26:56

to have sex a lot

26:59

with different people, for God's

27:01

sakes, and I didn't really see that happening

27:03

on the res. Because I was mostly

27:05

related to all those people. And

27:08

so, it

27:09

just created a kind of hunger inside

27:12

of me. So,

27:14

Tommy, I'd like to wrap up by asking you to read

27:16

your poem, I See the Fire That Burns Inside

27:18

You. Okay.

27:20

Which I should tell listeners, I mean, you're well known for

27:22

your epic poems. This one's an epic. It's

27:24

longer. But I

27:27

think it ties together so many of the themes that we've

27:29

discussed. What should

27:31

people know? What would you like to say to set it up for folks?

27:33

Yeah, so I wrote this

27:35

poem because my

27:38

father had commissioned me to write

27:40

a poem to be read at

27:43

the top of this conference on healing

27:45

from indigenous, a healing from

27:47

trauma in indigenous communities, from childhood

27:50

trauma, from ancestral trauma, all that kind of

27:52

stuff. And by commission, I

27:54

mean, he said, do this or you'll bring deep dishonor

27:56

to this family and also do this for free. Commissioning

28:00

sounds more impressive. Yeah, yeah, yeah in

28:03

my bio. That's what it'll say, but

28:05

between us But

28:08

I'll never forget it because I remember

28:10

sending it to him sending my father and he was like

28:12

Okay. Well, who's Neil deGrasse

28:15

Tyson? What does this word mean? What does this mean?

28:17

And he was trying to give me edits And

28:20

I was like no no hold up And so then I

28:22

just recorded it into my phone and I sent

28:25

that to him and he called back Crying

28:27

and he was like I

28:29

get it. Don't change a thing

28:31

And so when you went back there this

28:33

past spring for the first time in 15 years

28:36

and read for 300 people

28:39

on the reservation. This is the poem you read. Yeah. Yeah.

28:41

Yeah

28:42

So this is I see the fire that burns

28:44

inside you. Yeah

28:49

It's one of those Magical

28:52

early summer Sherbert

28:54

skies on a thin blue

28:56

blanket on a rolling grassy

28:59

knoll with the breeze off the East

29:01

River tempering the city heat as

29:03

the Sun begins its dip behind the

29:06

buildings and all the little office

29:08

and apartment and department store lights

29:10

begin to twinkle a

29:12

sizzle of foam on the water

29:15

I'm listening to this Neil deGrasse

29:17

Tyson podcast where they talk about

29:19

the God gene something

29:22

cellular that makes us look up

29:24

and beyond and wonder at our creator

29:27

and Stephen Hawking talks Religion

29:30

in science saying they both Articulate

29:33

the nature of who we are Where

29:35

we come from and why and

29:38

that those science produces more consistent

29:40

results

29:42

People will always choose religion because

29:44

it makes them feel less alone and

29:47

the debate turns to whether We're

29:49

alone in the cosmos and the guest

29:51

host says she hopes so because

29:54

if not if

29:55

we encounter an alien Civilization

29:58

they would likely be far more technical technologically

30:00

advanced than us. And look, she says,

30:03

how that worked out for the Native Americans.

30:05

And I suck my teeth because all

30:08

we ever are is a metaphor

30:10

or a cautionary tale or

30:13

a spirit guide. Nothing

30:15

contemporary,

30:17

nothing breathing, nothing

30:19

alive.

30:20

They had just spent the previous half hour

30:23

discussing other cellular

30:25

inheritances, saying, for example,

30:27

that trauma could be passed down like

30:30

molecular scar tissue, like DNA

30:33

cavorting with wars and displacements

30:35

in your bad dad's bad dad. And

30:38

what is being indigenous, but understanding

30:40

a plurality of time? That

30:43

I'm here right now in this

30:45

riverside park, across the water

30:48

from the trunk of the city and the golden

30:50

light of the golden hour. And

30:52

that light, that sliver of golden

30:55

light is light unlike any other light

30:57

you'll ever encounter. Nothing we've

30:59

made can come close to that glow. Not

31:02

a filter, not a software,

31:05

not a bulb, a gathering

31:07

of circumstances of the atmosphere

31:10

buffering the dusk light and the angle

31:12

of the earth at this time right

31:14

now in this moment, on top

31:16

of this continent, on top of this

31:18

blue blanket, I'm on top

31:20

of our sacred mountain. I

31:23

scout from the peak, I'm dragged

31:25

to the center of town in chains. I'm

31:28

old women scattered along the creek. My

31:31

little hands squeeze, my little mouth

31:34

shut, drawn into nooks

31:36

within the valley like a sharp breath

31:38

while shaggy men on horseback

31:41

following the water seek brown

31:43

bodies for target practice, strong

31:46

brown backs for breaking in the name

31:48

of the church. Vaye

31:50

de

31:50

las viejas. Blue

31:53

echoes split the early evening,

31:55

split the dusk, they spit and

31:58

ride on. But

32:00

I've held my breath ever since. It's

32:03

like

32:03

one minute I'm on stage and

32:05

the next I'm in fifth grade, ducking

32:08

behind the dash after a cousin high on

32:11

something, points a gun in my face. And

32:14

on stage, I'm a mess of

32:16

tremor and sweat.

32:18

The gift of panic is clarity. My therapist

32:21

says, repeat the known quantities.

32:25

Today is Wednesday. Wednesday

32:29

is a turkey burger.

32:33

My throat is full of survivors.

32:36

It's okay. He clicks his pen

32:38

getting ready for his next appointment. Lots

32:40

of people get stage fright. But that's not

32:42

what I'm talking about because what I mean

32:45

is I've inherited this idea

32:47

to disappear. In the mid

32:50

1800s, California would pay $5 for

32:53

the head of the Indian and 25 cents per

32:55

scalp.

32:57

Man, woman or child,

33:00

the state was reimbursed by the

33:02

feds. I

33:04

am alive. I

33:07

am alive.

33:09

I'm alive.

33:11

This is the gathering of circumstances.

33:14

This is the golden light.

33:16

But when you're descended from

33:18

a clever self, adept

33:21

at evading and occupying force, when

33:24

contact met another swath

33:26

of sick cousins, another cosmology

33:29

snuffed, another stolen sister,

33:32

and the water and the blood and the blood

33:34

and the blood,

33:36

you'd panic too, exposed

33:38

on stage under the hot lights. Now

33:40

I can't stand in front of the audience

33:43

in Columbus, Ohio without wondering

33:45

how that last person felt leaving

33:48

the ancestral homeland for the Indian

33:50

territory. But I'm on the road

33:53

and when I'm in their home, I say

33:55

their names, the Olone,

33:57

Costa Noen, Muwekma. Duwamish,

34:01

Suquamish, Muckleshoot,

34:04

Shawnee, Lenny, Lenape,

34:06

Toko Baga, Po-Hoy,

34:09

Uzita, Lumbee, Piscataway,

34:12

Nikochtunk, Multnomah,

34:15

Anishinaabe, Ojibwa,

34:18

Ottawa, Potawatomi. Now

34:20

on this podcast they have the linguist

34:23

saying that language tells the

34:25

story of its conquests, its

34:27

champions, its admixtures

34:30

while

34:30

moving onward and into new vessels

34:32

that a language is dead

34:35

when its only speakers are adult.

34:38

That in a hundred years 90% of

34:41

the world's languages will be kaput.

34:43

He says the most precise

34:46

word in the world is Mami-la-penizapai

34:49

from the indigenous Yagan language

34:52

of Tierra del Fuego, which means something

34:54

like when you leave a cafe bathroom and you want

34:56

to tell the next person in line, it wasn't

34:58

you who took the smelliest dump in American

35:01

history but you keep walking. Eh,

35:03

just kidding. It means something like when

35:05

two people look at each other

35:08

and the look is that they both

35:10

know what the other should do, but

35:13

neither wants to initiate so

35:15

they sit

35:16

in stasis.

35:18

It's a whole caravan

35:21

of meaning, of feeling in

35:23

a single word like how in Kumeyaay,

35:25

my language you say Chaka for high,

35:28

but the translation is more like I

35:31

see the fire that burns inside you.

35:34

I see the golden light. And

35:36

the show goes to commercial and I

35:38

make the mistake of opening the news app

35:41

in my phone. And it's

35:43

massacre in Palestine and

35:45

in Pakistan the journalist disappeared

35:48

and in Mogadishu a bomb explodes

35:51

in the bustling city center and ICE

35:54

LOSES thousands of

35:56

indigenous children and drones

35:58

fly over other countries.

35:59

and the quote-unquote president

36:02

says, he literally says, we

36:05

tamed the continent. He says,

36:07

we aren't apologizing for America

36:11

and murdered and missing indigenous

36:13

women, never, ever, ever,

36:16

ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,

36:24

ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,

36:27

ever, ever, ever, ever,

36:29

ever, ever, ever, ever,

36:32

ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,

36:34

ever, get an

36:36

article or a shout out or a headline. And

36:40

I've been thinking a lot about fuel sources

36:43

that produce the heat

36:45

of the fire that burns inside you and

36:48

the term resistive circuit and active networks

36:52

and mainly about Kirchhoff's current law that

36:56

the sum of all currents entering

36:58

a node by which I mean,

37:00

imagine you're

37:03

a circuit, imagine

37:06

electricity, imagine

37:08

being fed and feeding, imagine

37:13

getting what you need, imagine

37:16

the fire inside you, imagine

37:20

heat. I don't have much

37:22

of anything figured out, but I do

37:24

know to be indigenous is

37:26

not to be a miracle of circumstance,

37:29

but to be the golden light of survival,

37:32

the wit of the cunning of

37:34

the cloud of ancestors above me

37:36

now on top of this blue blanket,

37:38

on top of this continent, on top of

37:40

this mountain peak existentially, a

37:43

cloud of light from which something

37:46

almost umbilical is plugged

37:48

into my back through which they

37:51

feed me

37:52

and flow out of my hands. And

37:54

bear with me, it's like this, my

37:57

dad grows his hair. Long,

38:01

the black waves cascade down his

38:03

back because knives crop the ceremony

38:06

of his mother's generation in the Indian

38:09

boarding school. And while

38:11

I cut my hair short in

38:13

mourning for the old life, I

38:17

grow my poems long, a dark

38:20

reminder on white pages,

38:22

a new ceremony.

38:26

Pills light up corridors of the mind,

38:29

like food. They call

38:31

where we grew up a food desert,

38:34

a speck of dust on the map

38:37

of the United States, and a valley

38:39

surrounded by mountains that slice

38:42

through the clouds like a loaf,

38:44

where the average age of death is 40.7 years old.

38:50

I'm 35. I

38:52

live in the busiest city in America. I'm

38:55

about to eat an orange. Every

38:58

feed owes itself to death.

39:03

Poetry is feed for the fire inside

39:05

me.

39:06

But what is trauma but a kind of rewiring

39:08

as in I'm nervous where I feel

39:11

most free. But then the show comes

39:13

back on and now they're talking about what

39:15

else we pass on after death. And you know

39:17

what? Too much for me. So I shut

39:20

it off. I crack my neck.

39:23

The air is clear. And

39:25

all across Instagram, peeps

39:28

are posting pics of the sunset.

39:52

That's Tommy Pico. You can buy his book Feed,

39:54

wherever books are sold. Tommy also

39:56

writes for the TV show Reservation Dogs, which

39:58

is an FX show about TV.

39:59

teenager is living on a reservation in Oklahoma.

40:02

He's currently on strike with WGA, as

40:04

he says, for a fair and sustainable future.

40:07

And lastly, Tommy Coa hosts the podcast Food

40:09

for Thought, where a group of queer writers get together

40:12

and talk about a wide range of topics from the very

40:14

thoughtful to the very raunchy to the very

40:16

thoughtfully raunchy. That one's mostly been

40:18

on hiatus the last year or so, but you can still catch

40:20

up on old episodes. That's Food for Thought, T-H-O-T.

40:26

Next week on the show, we cover some of the hottest and silliest

40:28

food news out there. I talk with Amanda Mull

40:30

from The Atlantic and Dennis Lee from The Takeout.

40:32

While you wait for that one, don't forget to check out our episode

40:35

all about Barbie's relationship with food. It's

40:37

up now.

40:40

This episode was originally produced by me along

40:42

with Goffin Poutiboire. It was edited

40:44

by Peter Clowney and Tracy Samuelson. The

40:46

Sporkful team now is senior producer Emma

40:48

Morgenstern and producer Andres

40:50

O'Hara. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell.

40:53

Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful

40:55

is a production of Stitcher Studios. Our executive

40:57

producers are Colin Anderson and Nora Ritchie. Until

41:00

next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

41:01

And I'm Julia from Singapore, reminding

41:04

you to eat more, eat better, and

41:06

eat more better.

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