Hey, it’s Cleo… For thousands of years, across multiple cultures, older women have been the designated berry tasters for their tribe. For example, if you’ve ever wondered who figured out that this mushroom is simply delicious and this nearly identical delicious mushroom is deadly poisonous,* you can thank a berry taster.
Berry tasters have identified medicinal properties of tree bark, curative effects of minerals, invigorating effects of leaves, and consciousness-altering effects of mushrooms. Of course, there are lots of dead berry tasters in our shared histories, but that’s a topic for another column.
As men age, they often are given a free ride ‘till the end. They can tell stories, advise boys how to do everything from catch a fish to find a mate and get an heir (lots and lots on that ‘heir’ topic, eliciting embarrassment, interest, then looping back to embarrassment as their audience ages). Sitting around the fire, smoking their pipes, eating and sleeping, doing all of this until they fall over. Then it’s out with a grand finale, on a flaming boat into the sunset. Nice job if you can get it, right?
As women age, well, it’s not quite as cushy. Once she can no longer bear children, she becomes a designated child tender. Not given quite the distinction or self-determination to actually raise them, she is simply the live-in sitter on constant call. Then, first her hearing goes, then her sight becomes cloudy, and finally she can’t stoop to pick up the babies anymore – that right there my friend, is a berry taster.
That period of her life is a win/win for the tribe. She tasted the berry, and she lived! So now we know, and by the way, instruct the girls on just how to find these! Or, conversely, she tasted the berry and now she’s dead. Another win for the tribe, everybody, don’t eat those berries! And in a pure form of male Darwinian selection, if you weren’t paying attention, you won’t get to have any heirs.
She has nothing more to contribute to the tribe and becomes the most expendable member, so the tribe plays dice with her life in a game that eventually always ends badly. For her. But wait, reconfigure that thought and eliminate the patriarchal tribe context.
The other side of being a berry taster is being someone who dives into the unknown and comes up with a glowing, lustrous pearl. A pleasure pearl, a pearl of enlightenment, a fulfillment gem, if you will.
I think about this because I have always been a berry taster, which actually was a very good thing for me in the 20th century, and let me live a full and adventurous life.
To backtrack…
What would happen if I spent the night in this VW bus with two guys I was into?
There was no advice on the subject forthcoming, for a 17-year-old girl in San Francisco in the 60’s. Pre-internet and pre- Deep Throat and more mainstream sex media, It seemed like it could be a little dangerous, in the sense I really didn’t know how everything could resolve itself, but I wanted to see what would happen.
As it turned out, there was some initial awkwardness between the guys which in hindsight I feel was simply a fear of (or a curiousity about) crossed swords, but very quickly we all got into it. Me most of all.
Later, when I told a couple of girls about that, they were a little shocked because I was smart and well-bred, and confused because this didn’t fall anywhere near their idea of promiscuity, it was like Mars behavior. It was alien, unknown and unvisited,not easily categorized. Welcome to the Summer of Love, baby.
There’s also that time where after taking one tab of acid, I took another tab four hours later. What would happen if I did that? – so I did that, and the answer was that after a serious of mind-expanding realizations, I hallucinated fried eggs all over the place. That was a really curious answer, and how could I have known unless I had asked?
I’ve been this way my entire life. And it has made for incredible memories and an understanding of myself that is deeply satisfying and still evolving. Non, je nais regrette rien, me and Edith.
Be adventurous but not reckless, and be fearless and informed. Develop an abundance of curiosity, tempered with caution. Love yourself by putting yourself in situations that challenge you and defy your preconceptions.
Because berry tasting has a whole new freedom now. What would you like to try?
~Cleo
*note: Cleo references mushrooms frequently because she is a trained mycologist. Yes, she knows which ones are tasty, which ones are poisonous, and which ones might get you high. The ones that get you high are also poisonous to varying degrees. She advises you to never – NEVER – eat a mushroom you find unless it has been identified by a trained mycologist, and they will in all likelihood advise you not to eat it and go wash your hands. Bad stuff out there, not a berry tasting adventure!