What does it mean to be truly a roaming herd of amorphous group-think beings, a part of the ecological web?
I’m working on something. For myself, but also for the community I have around me far and wide. I’ll tell you soon. What does religion have to do with ecology? What does racism have to do with conservation biology? What does the agricultural revolution have to do with capitalism and private land ownership and disjointed eco-flows, hodgepodged about splattered with cattail corridors, monterey pines falling to pieces or russian olive groves? What does permaculture have to do with patriarchy? or the insatiable pull of manifest destiny, westward ho?
These are all layers and web-threads I have explored over the years on the Ground Shots Podcast in verbal dialogue with real humans in the world who weave a particular thread they hold taut and clear. I don’t always pick sides. I ask the questions. I keep people wondering. I am genuinely curious. I can listen deeply (I am also told I am a terrible listener, ironically and talk over others and am quick to jump in and say ‘my’ part of things, certainly. yes. I do that too, I admit to my own fault) Mainly, I look into the ideas, see the connections, and facilitate conversation in dialogue with others that give depth, add questions and heart to these softened worlds. I say softened because in my spacial-color-focused brain, what image comes to mind, reminds me of a sound wave, where the dip down ‘into’ depths reveals more glory, more information, more detail, color, dancing beings, which informs the next dip that will form later. Which informs the whole essence of the song itself. My brain makes connections. I see when two people need to meet. I see lessons one can learn from another. I see where two ideas merge. I see where multiple crafts become a story of making and creating and story generating. All this to say.. there has been a lot of sharing over the years, of the conversations you have been able to be witness to, but not in participation with, exactly. Not able to add your two cents. I hide a lot. Sometimes I come out. Sometimes you tell me what you’re up to too.
What do YOU think about wild-tending, art as activism, or invasion biology? What do YOU think about how impossible it feels to live in capitalism in a world that glows with sacred urge to not commodify, or perhaps the dance with commodification is a place to not demonize but look at with deep curiosity? I have lots of folks email or message me about how much the podcast has affected their lives. Or my botanical research pieces have helped them understand a group of plants together, better, and therefore help them understand a plant in context of culture and place.
I’m working on something, and I hope it will make sense. I want to dialogue with ya’ll. I want to shape this thing together, in little pieces. I feel lonely for connection here, to dissolve my individuality in all of this. I’m not here to create a thing that I’m known for. I’m not here to boost my ego or get a name for myself. I do appreciate when I’m seen and appreciated, but often I feel most seen, when I am invited into collaboration, merging, forgetting self, spun up into unity and seeing together what I couldn’t see alone. Just as I invite others into collaboration, and invite the ideas into collaboration so we can all see better, the plant genus beings together into collaboration, rub our eyes of dust and crud waking up in it together, so we can wrap out vine tendrils together and create stronger hedgerows of windbreak against the storm of what we all feel is too much— I too need pull from outside this arbitrary self this just as much as I create this.
We don’t know what to do about it. My blog writing is often about the me-ness, the experience of my individual self, but really that self wants to dissolve into the collective co-creating of seeing something else outside of trauma, outside of humans acting upon humans in a world that wants drama and horror and tragedy. Even if we don’t know where we’re going.
We need to continue to see different ways. or try. I think. It makes sense to me. It’s why I do everything I’ve done. It’s why I feel like giving up sometimes because the pressure is so great to conform, to crumble. The weight of feeling like dissolving is really the other side of wanting to merge into unity with others, the big cuddle puddle of web weaving AGAINST our capitalist inforced, social media narcissist pushed self-created image beings into the world of ‘i am important and alone in this’ —- its the push against this that grief can submerge us into. Grief is wanting of unification, of witness. We grieve the earth who dies by our shortsightedness. We grieve the hopelessness we feel when we see mountains blown up around us, rivers dry up from cotton being grown in arid Arizona, mountains being erased in West Virginia, gas being fracked and water that lights on fire in Oklahoma where the Cherokee has to forcibly walk hundred and hundreds of miles to live against their will—-this is the de-animism, which also plays out right damn here, in our individual lives.
We don’t want to really be some ‘one’ self playing it all out in the world, we want to roam as a herd of amorphous group-think beings, better collectively, the illusion shadows dancing on Plato’s allegory of the cave walls telling us that we are indeed separate but really we are not. (Plato’s allegory of the cave story and teaching, has changed my life in a matrix eating the red pill kind of way for a long time, read up on it in the link above, or perhaps I can tell you how this story is related to ecological connection myself at some point)
So what of this? How do we become a part of ecology, how do we sift through the lenses that cloud us, or give us only one way to see, and ask good enough questions— workshopping our way to the connections we seek?
We can apply it to anything. Especially those of us who don’t want things to feel so black and white, so bleak. What can we really do about the compartmentalization, the compaction, the disassociation, the distance, the objectifying and push against animism, against life. We can ask questions together. Unpack together. Becoming a part of ecology, is an unfolding work of artistic and experimental discernment. Dissolving, reimagining.
That’s all I’m going to say right now, but please do comment on what you think, here in substack or in email form, and if these weavings, existential anxieties and ecological conundrums affect you too. Or if you’re seeking some way to explore with others about this too, I want to know.
Although he ended up constructing a palinode, I want to marry Norman O. Brown's "there is only poetry" with John Cage's "everything we do is music". Some thread joining the olden forms of ritual expression- poetry and music. Dance would naturally fall in? Love to you, Kelly- may you always be you.
this resonates completely. I was raised conservatively mormon, so trying to untangle the threads -- of patriarchy, community based not on worthiness but reciprocity and ecological interconnectedness -- has been a spiraling journey. I'm obsessed with the idea of dissolving (or decomposing?) this individualistic ideal I've been fed and morph into something better: like a slime mold.
as a plant person, shifting my focus towards understanding invasiveness, 'restoration' and disturbance has been a way to assuage grief and find purpose. i guess im trying to embrace the change? since i know it is our inevitable future. Like what can i learn from the pupating bark beetles that will soon emerge hungry and gnawing at the cambium of my favorite grove of pinyons? the needles are turning ghoastly without their green. woodpeckers visit often. do i cut them down? do i grieve?