The old one sits and smiles under a canopy seeded long before. The shade that grows and feeds. Seeded in soil they created. Bowels and exo-bowels slowly feeding the desert that lays before them.
Soon they will move again. A new canopy must grow. The green tide must lap once more on desert shores, leaving new life in it’s wake.
They climb on the dome, taking care of leaf and twig. They look back at the abundant over-story. The dense forest in the distance largely unexplored, except for occasional forays to check diversity. A life measured in growth rather than the passage of time.
Moving the long city is no small task, yet it’s always a joy to see. The creation of space between the wastelands and the forest. Then the bubbling of the first Domes and scaffolds, born of tree and trash. Fermenting the desert. Already the soil grows darker and some seeds have begin to take hold.
Voices call out from beneath the eaves. A sing song tone harmonizing with the birdsong and insect beat.
Why are you up there old one? We didn’t know the old could climb?
They look down on smiling faces, eyes shining through colored skin. Mottled patterns move, emotions written on their skin in bioluminescent reactions. Their clothes full of life. A walking snack bar.
Just because you haven’t seen something doesn’t mean it isn’t possible young shoots.
There are worlds before you have never seen, that nonetheless have existed.
What worlds have you seen old one, and which do you think we will see?
I cannot speak the truth of either. But I can weave you a story that hints at both. Or at least of my experience and lens.
It’s a story of the spirits inside us, of the energies that advanced and unified and nearly brought about the destruction of all life.
Sit with me and play a while. While I tell you a tale.
The old one grins and hands out some beeswax and sticks. Occupied hands lead to attentive minds.
This is a story of the lizard and the mushroom. Spirits within us all. Both have kept us alive, both are a part of us. Yet there was a time when they fell out of balance. When one waged war on the other.
Who here knows of war?
Most young shake their heads. One sticks up their hand.
I don’t know much, but my body mother says “war is the worst wurst”. I’ve no idea what sausages have to do with war.
The old one laughs.
This old heart leaps that you should know more of sausages than war. This is an old phrase indeed. One from the edge time I will tell of.
All are rooted in the same word. Wers- means Con-fusion.
Everything cut up and mashed back together, without concept of origin or unity.
War is a confusion of self.
The parts of the whole see themselves as separate. They object to being placed together. Mistaking the self for the other. They fight over the pieces of their own body, not recognizing that it is themselves they are cutting.
Sausages are a con-fusion of meat and offal. Everything chopped and mixed together. The dead can all be mixed up without issue. It’s all just food in waiting. But the living must recognize the greater whole.
Both sausage and war start with the knife. Before we can confuse we must separate. Humans were not born with claws, we had to make them.
We made them so well that we no longer had to chew as much, to tear at the fibers and the threads that connect all things. We forgot about the threads of the cloth of being.
Our attention moved from the thread to the blade.
The objects that we made, became words, became ideas. We now had knifes in our heads, cutting and slashing at the threads. Looking at smaller and smaller pieces of our being. Until we forgot there was even a cloth to begin with.
It was the lizards in us that wielded the blade. The part of us that’s greedy and afraid.
This aspect of ourselves had its use. It kept us alive. But a cell that focuses on its own growth is a cancer.
Cancer? A cry goes out in unison.
The old one pauses. The word light in the mouths of children, carries great weight in their mind. There is silence as they remember the words. War was always abstract and distant, cancer had looked them in the eyes, breathed its stench and taken many. War had cut them from the memories of their ancestors. Cancer had taken the living, sapping life bit by bit. They felt the sorrow of all they’d lost, and the joy that these shoots and seeds would never know this pain.
The young sense the sorrow. Without a word they move close and comfort.
Let it go old one. Maybe we don’t need the idea any more.
The old one breathes deep. Their skin rich with surface. Creases and folds alive with life. A habitat of billions. The colors dulled and grey from sorrow, begin to ripple again with light and brilliance.
Alas young shoots, we still need these terms and stories. There are still parts of our being blocked by the separate and ever-hungry. The unnourished spirit seeking material to fill the gaps in the soul.
Cancer is when a part of the body focuses on growing itself, not recognizing its relationship to the whole. As it grows it blocks the flows of nutrition. It grows until the body dies and itself with it.
But let’s return to the frightened lizard spirit.
There were many cuts the lizard made with the blade. Fascinated as it was with the pieces. Easier to digest, to relate, to identify what to run towards and away from.
The mind-knife cut the human from the world. It cut the idea from the form. It severed body from mind and soul.
Man from woman.
Each piece becoming a part to use, or something to be fought and feared.
Separation had power. Separating a human from their community allowed for them to be used without kindness. Kindness was seen as a cost.
On its own the lizard spirit wouldn’t have gotten so far – perhaps a small desert to dwell in, a rock to catch the sun and allowing a couple of plants to survive and nourish.
Yet for every cut wielded by the lizard and its mind-knife the mushroom wove and retangled the threads. At first in clumsy ways. Small connections remained. Family, and tribe. A concept of self beyond self ever growing and reconnecting.
But these bonds and ties just made the lizard spirit more effective. A larger organism. Still separate, but more organised, more powerful, with the idea of a larger separate self. This led to bigger weapons and bigger blades, new ways to deny people from what fed them and kept them alive.
The world gave freely, yet the lizard spirit hoarded and controlled. It blocked the flows. The mushroom spirit helped to connect and regrow. Technologies like the web emerged through its urges and its will. But still the lizard worked to keep the separations in place it used the connections to maintain division.
The lizard people are horrible. I hate the lizard people.
The curse hangs in the air.
The old one hums a moment, a tone that clears the air.
There are no lizard people. Only lizard spirits. That spirit is inside us all. Sometimes it serves us well. But most of those times are behind us.
I was ruled by the lizard once, till I let the mushroom grew inside me. All the old ones were.
Would you believe I once denied the earth my nutrients? I confused them with water and sprinkled them with poison. I cleaned myself with murdered trees.
I helped destroy habitats with every act. I killed and enslaved millions of beings before breakfast, barely lifting a finger to do so.
The lizard spirit kept me alive, but at great cost. It hid my self harms from myself. Yet even once I knew, I could not change, for there was no choice but to do harm or die. The devil was in the defaults.
You should listen to your lizard spirit, but also the mushroom. Recognize the bonds and threads. Feel the fear, but act from Love. If the lion is fed it will not hunt, but rest instead.
So how did the mushroom spirits win?
The ways of the lizard are short term, they can only ever win in the short term. They create fragility. There is always a change they don’t see or don’t expect. They are slow to change due to their disconnect. They have limited their senses as they only attend to themselves. They see themselves as small so their senses are small.
They made most of the world a desert, a broken land. Creating ever greater separation and division. Increased danger and greater weapons. Ever decreasing borders. Shrinking identities. A culture so limited that it could only create on the latest layer. Each layer growing smaller and smaller.
Opportunities to adapt narrowed. Those ruled by the lizard found themselves with fewer and fewer options for life. It fractured and splintered into tiny pieces.
The mushroom by contrast is billions of years old. Our oldest ancestor. The lizard a mere outgrowth of this deeper network. Every time the world collapsed the mushroom feasted. Turning waste and excess into food and habitat.
Where the lizard severs and cuts, fights and flees. The mushroom weaves, connects and grows. It is curious, and nurturing.
The mushroom is in conversation with all beings. The lizard lives in fear.
As the mushroom’s technologies wove the world, we became more aware of the lizard’s foolishness.
With each expansion of awareness the lizard reacted. Each infrastructure of connection bringing foreign bodies and cultures to mind, new ideas to be feared and fought.
Yet the mushroom always wins. Each child is born more curious than they are afraid. With each generation that dies, so do the fears that drove them.
At the lowest point of our despair, we dug our hands again into the soil and found solace. As our fingers entwined with root and worm and mushroom threads, we started to listen again.
The songs of all beings began to resonate in our eyes and ears. The pulsing flows of life showed themselves pushing against the walls we had built and with love in our hearts we let them in.
We changed our ways from desert maker to jungle growers. Our homes were once barren spaces, we kept animals as emotional slaves and plants in pots. We denied access to life and even death – for what is death without rebirth?
We layered habitats over our homes, and helped life to grow. We took the glut of carbon in the air and brought it back into the ever-being.
Now here we sit beneath this dense canopy. Food at our fingertips. Serenaded by life. Everything we now do we do with a sense of connection.
Yet still there is a world beyond, where the lizards still thrive. We are allowed to survive as we are useful – we produce more than we need, and good food is rare in the lizards world. We keep the desert at bay. But you must know of the lizard ways if you want to travel beyond our land. We have made peace between our spirits, but beyond our canopy the war still rages. The healing is begun, but far from complete.
So please my seeds and shoots be present to the lizard for it will keep you safe from harm, but wherever you can, act as the mushroom does. Feed that which feeds. Nurture that that nurtures.
Everything becomes food. I look forward to the day I become a meal for the mushroom.
Now excuse me while I water this trees roots.
Circus of Seeds 