live this disparity

dis ---prefix: 1. reversal; disconnected 2. indicating negation, lack 3. dissimilar; distrust; distaste.

Disparity lived --- 
1. ( Philippines, IRRI) We're both from the southwest. Soon we'll live in the same east coast state and she seeks advice on being hired at a local farm or community garden. What do you want from the job? - I ask. Some type of work related to my degree.- she says. Which is hybrid wheat breeding paid by Monsanto. She argues that companies are right to protect an expensive investment using patents and hybrid seeds and I tell her that companies claim ownership of a communal resource that is not theirs to sell. The lecturer looks flustered; I knew this would be tense - he spats at us. The next day she gets sick and I'm closest to jump off the bus. We're roommates the next two weekends and we discuss baby names for the child she'll mother in 5 months, grad school stress, rice amylase. How is that we work to revolutionalize agriculture in opposite directions and can still be human together?

2. (Philippines, Banaue) Terraces with sufficient length to circle the world built with fingers that shape the mountain, consecrated to cradle rice and water and life; they do not produce enough- says the scientist, says the farmer- there is enough somewhere, out there, but not for me. The scientist wants to know from the farmer -how many months do you eat your own rice? The farmer replies four, but does not ask the scientist how many months she eats her own genetic mapping techniques. After the hour visit we understand the "farmer perspective." There is the indignation that heirloom survives over conventional carried back by the group from the field. Our departing offering are extra snacks mass produced from US corn fetched by combines, cooked under heat of metal machines. Bright green rice sways a goodbye, ascending up the mountain behind us. 

3. (PA, Rebersburg) Thin slivers of cloud in layered excess pin a the drooping afternoon sky to June. I've worn a jacket until evening, discarding layers as I hit wood with a hammer to remove nails. Nearby, a lesbian farmer scooping compost with her tractor, lifting dark organic matter into the Amish farmer's wagon whose titanic horses wait patiently to hurl the load. Decayed vegetables and animal parts in fine pieces sputter into the air to settle on immature grass.

the small hooks that cling to hardened veneers, appended briefly into other people and realities precariously, but not impossibly. it is an offering but not relinquishing differences when two hard places hinge to fold the world open: the softened divisions of humans the fixation points.