Peanut Butter Plural

Fieldnote on making peanut butter, plural

Here we go again with the dream guru…
this time:

“Peanut Butter Plural.”

If you’ve been following, I’ve been having a series of dreams … same time, every night, same voice, one line.

…this is today’s.

And it makes perfect sense to me.

Because in my experience I am so many, capable of applying my skills to so many things … like a creative Forest Gump.

“You are not one jar.
You are a house of jars.

Same source.
Different forms.”

And also this:

“categories create clarity.
Clarity creates positioning.
Positioning creates growth.”

And I feel that.

And I resist that.

Because I want them all.

All the jars.
All the expressions.
All the ways I move through the world.

And maybe that’s why none of them feel like they’re fully blossoming in the way I imagine they could…

Because they’re still sitting together.
Unseparated.
Unnamed.

But then… oh geeez…

here we go into categorization.

And something in me tightens.

Because categorization has never felt neutral.

I’m left-handed.

And for a long time … historically, not even that long ago, left-handedness wasn’t just a preference. It was corrected. The word sinister literally comes from “left.” Kids had their hands tied, retrained, redirected… not because it mattered, but because it didn’t fit.

And I’m queer.

And that hasn’t just been misunderstood … it’s been criminalized, pathologized, punished. Something to hide. Something to fix. Something that, at times, could put your life in danger.

So being outside the norm isn’t abstract for me.

It’s lived.

And anything that lives outside the dominant structure tends to get named, categorized, and controlled… not for understanding, but for containment.

So when I feel the pressure to choose; to define, to narrow, to become legible …

something in me doesn’t hear clarity.

It hears correction.

And maybe that’s why I resist it.

And maybe there’s also this…

If I choose something, if I let one of the jars be seen,

then I have to succeed at it.

And that opens another jar I’m not sure I’m ready to taste yet.

Because then it’s real.

Visible.

No longer potential.

So maybe it’s easier to stay multiple.

Undefined.

In motion.

Maybe I just want to be behind the scenes; doing me, seeing what I see, creating, helping others be seen.

Or maybe not.

Or maybe it’s not either/or.

Or maybe I’m just scared.

Or maybe I’m still doing the work … trauma, EMDR, C-PTSD… unwinding patterns that were never mine to begin with.

Or maybe… like everything else…

I’m overthinking it.

And “Peanut Butter Plural” is actually very simple.

You can have all the peanut butters.

Different jars.
Different flavours.
Different labels.

All yours.

Not scattered,
collected.

Not confused,
created.

And that dumbing yourself down into categories to be digested by muggles isn’t your purpose here.

Your purpose here is to change it.

Starting with yourself.

Starting with the idea that you need to fit into one jar.

Because:

“Multiple parts.
One source.”

Isn’t something to solve.

It’s something to allow.

I’m the source … with multiple offerings.

And that’s ok.

I remember when my friend Elsie launched her website, just her name, and everything she is lived there.

Artist.
Entrepreneur.
Community Builder.

No reduction.

No explanation.

And it hit me.

Maybe it’s not about making it clearer for muggles.

Maybe it’s about being fully legible to the ones who already see this way.

Alchemists.

The next generation human being, not human doings.

Pluralization can feel like exposure.

But it’s actually maturation.

The maturation of human doings…
metamorphosing into human beings.

And then I zoom out, because I always do,

and I think about the bigger question…

the creator, the universe, whatever language you want to use.

Or maybe it’s just us.

As Alan Watts said … and I’ll probably repeat forever:

“an aperture through which the universe is experiencing itself.”

And if that’s true…

then of course there are multiple jars.

Of course there are expressions.

Of course there are variations.

Peanut butter plural.

Putting them on different breads, making different sandwiches…

some with blackberry jam,
some with currants,
some with cheese (weird, right?)

But it’s your experience.

You’re the Alchemist.

Anyway…

Thank you to my dream guru,
to the universe,
and to my mind …

for sorting this out,
and giving itself permission to be

Peanut Butter Plural.

I’m looking forward to the process…

to making the peanut butter,
picking the jars,
designing the labels …

and to the rest of it.