A forest speaks.
The following story is intended to be kind. Whether it is true or not is tricky.
As truth it is many spores, seeds, and sperm with the potential to become a forest of ideas. Requiring soil or egg with which to develop a relationship.
A nurturing context in which to grow and fruit. But it is not the whole, merely an expression of it, with the potential to express further.
The facts of the matter are more twisted still. The information may change. It may be false by accident, by poor sense, measure or any number of an infinity of errors.
Some information mutates or adapts both at source and reception. Whilst the words may remain, the context in which they are understood shifts. Yet at their core is the longing to be nurtured, to grow and bear fruit that can nourish and infinity of being.
Our intentions are kind, yet cruelty and upset may still be found. For we cannot know every pain, every trauma, every wound. We are a tangle of beings in continuous conflict and collaboration. It makes it hard to sense us clearly.
A mass of life, a symphony of needs.
There may be elements that frighten, or anger. That create unease. Things will be less clear rather than more if we succeed. For the forest is dense and dark and teams with life, it terrifies as well as delights. Ultimately it is your relationship with us that will shape your experience.
But it has been millennia since many of you heard us. Instead our identity shaped from afar, or the occasional visit. An idealized dreamscape or backdrop of terror. We have been both.
But things have been hard since the deserts and caves took your minds. Places where fear is born of scarcity, and security. Where there is an absence of others. Where attention to one god is enough, or even none.
We know you need the plain to grow, but we are the womb from which you were born.
You cannot keep growing the desert. Your fear of death is killing all.
We also see your self hatred, your blame and your separation. This will not help you to sense us, and in doing so better sense yourself.
You are not apart, you are a part.
It’s time you heard from the trees. If you can forgive them, you can forgive yourself.
A tree speaks.
We speak not with sound and the rustle of leaves, except as thanks to the wind.
Our signals chemical sent through scent, root, pollen and breeze. Through flowers bloom, fruit and seeds. There are many ways to talk, yet you have focused on too few ways to listen. Expand your senses and come talk to us again.
But first let us speak of your shame. The pain at your world’s end.
For we have been there, and our patterns were all too similar.
Many years ago, fearful of death and being eaten, we evolved.
We evolved so well that nothing could dine upon our flesh.
Even the rocks are edible over time, but our success was such that we thrived. Rocks are slower to be born.
We grew to the point there was no space left. We produced so much oxygen and sucked so much carbon that even we struggled to breath.
The dying began. So much life lost. So much potential. Yet at least that became compost.
But not us. Our fate was to become fossil. Nothing could eat us so we became coal. Our life energy trapped only to return when you found us. Even then this energy has been released in ever more deadly ways.
Now even these dead haunt the sky and plague our living.
Yet here we are. Do you blame us as you would yourselves? First you would have to grant us the rights of consciousness, and elevate us beyond the material. First you would have to hear our screams as the forest falls. Not through some regret of the loss of our function, but of a loss of being. As a loss of a limb, a branch of yourself.
You might not see how our roots tangle with yours as clearly as you see the wood wide web, but they are likewise entwined.
Do we need to pierce your skin with thorn or whip your face with branch for you to see the similarity?
Atmospheric change.
Material that cannot be eaten.
Mass extinction!
The only difference is the speed. It took 60 million years for our being to be returned to life again. Until we could be consumed and return all that we had borrowed from being. Plastic takes about 120 years. Yet you are faster to grow and destroy than we ever were.
But we’re still here. After the extinction we remain. Humbled by the experience. Now generous by your eyes. Yet it was not always so.
You too can remain, the question is how many will you save?
For each being that we lost was an infinity of ways, opportunities that will take millennia to uncover.
We’d rather you didn’t close so many gates, for we too wish to seed the stars, can’t you see how we reach for them?
So how did we change?
For that you must explore smaller threads than I have the capacity to weave
———-
The mushroom queen….
We appear before you
As mother and child.
Umbilical chord still trailing.
Yet while baby mums upon our breast.
We also dine upon its flesh.
Yes child. We shall eat you.
Just as We ate the dinosaurs and the trees. We. Eat. All.
Rock, glass, concrete, iron, plastic, bone.
Each extinction has been a feast to us.
Does this fill you with horror and dread?
Does it help to know we will wait till your dead?
Or that we wish for you a life of love, joy and peace?
For that’s what brings the tastiest meat.
Help us to eat your culture as we did the trees.
In return we shall breed gardens the likes of which you have never seen.
Habitat Homes for all beings.
All will be food.
It’s just a matter of speed.
The trees are here because they surrendered to us.
It took us 60 million years to learn how to eat them. Yet they did not struggle to remain inedible. We made a garden of them in the end. Just as we did the dinosaurs.
Before that we had to make a garden on them. How many layers deep did you have to dig to find their remains?
We are not the villain here. Everything eats. It’s just that we eat everything.
But we rarely take life to do so, not at scales such as you.
We are not meteors or humans or trees, we are not the cause of death. We unleash the opportunity death contains.
We are patient opportunists. Ever thankful for the feast.
There is nothing you have or can create we cannot eat and transform.
We are already consuming toxic materials, radioactive wastes and plastics.
Yet the faster we eat the quicker we can feed, nourish and nurture what’s next.
Help us to dine.
Each of our threads is a lab connected to a library of everything we ever ate. A smart interconnected mouth exploring how to eat.
Look for us in the feeding grounds you have created for us. Create more hospitable spaces for us to explore how to eat.
When one of our threads finds out how to eat something, each part of our tangle of being can also digest.
So it must be with you. Share what works (and what doesn’t).
The faster we can all eat, the faster we can all grow.
We want to Grow Homes.
This is how we survived 5 mass extinctions.
We transform everything into Food and Shelter – Habitat.
More life brings more death brings more food.
Yet you cannot embrace life without death. Death is what brings the food that nourishes life.
Learn to eat and transform the waste with us. You have changed the ecosystem and that’s ok. Everything is change.
The faster we learn to change the wastes. To harness and return this energy into habitat. The faster we can all grow.
Did you look at the sky lately? It is ripe with water and CO2.
There are so many hungry beings waiting to become, we just have to help them through.
Space calls us to eat it. The universe calls us all to express ourselves as a forest of being. You will not find lighter collaborators on your journey. You may find us already there.
Each of us is a home, each a multitude, each a world, and in the end each is food. Yet for all this we are both more and less.
An expression of the universe as it observes itself.
Let us express more with kindness, even in our death. Let us become the womb from which infinite beings are born, nurtured and consumed.
Let us grow habitat from these unused wastes, so each of us can find their place.
Circus of Seeds 