Small acts of communal making give provisional escape from societal toxicity without full withdrawal.

Evidence

All these makings and growings were giving me the feeling that we were healthy and sufficient, that we were learning a little bit at a time how to escape the poisons which sometimes seemed to seep through every pore in the avaricious face of our society, in its polluted environment, its adulterated food, its distortion of language, its discriminatory laws, its brutal pursuit of war abroad. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 211

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is Odell’s key exhibit for what retreat actually means to her: not leaving society but building small provisional sufficiencies within it — directly counters the withdrawal misreading.
• XREF: Feeds the reader’s stated purpose: this scene is evidence for the ‘not-withdrawal’ move they want to defend Odell against the title’s misreading.
• ADDENDUM: The makings-and-growings as concrete counter-toxic practice parallels trees as infrastructure in the ‘Grafting & Growth’ article — both are small sufficiency-making against infrastructural poison.