hgka

“Ask the blossoms of the hibiscus or the poking carmine amaryllis why they stand so brightly against their green leaves. Ask the rose that newly blooms in spring. Ask the holly in the blessed ivy. Alarm, arrest, alert, adjust, admire, but in any event: Attend.”

1/2 In today’s performance-based work society, which presents features of a coercive society, everyone carries with them a field, a battlefield. The specific characteristic of this field of work is that everyone is at the same time inmate and guard, victim and executioner, master and slave.

2/2 We exploit ourselves. The one who exploits is at the same time the exploited. It is no longer possible to distinguish between executioner and victim. We optimize ourselves towards death, in order to be able to function better. Functioning better is inevitably interpreted as improving oneself.

Panels 1 and 2 Interior. "I love autumn!" Says a book to its owner. "It's so romantic! Let's put on a big scarf, go to the park, and read on a bench as the orange leaves fall around us in the low sun." Panel 3 Caption: Soon. Image: they are now outside sheltering under an unbrella in torrential rain. "Shall we go home?" says the reader. "Yes please. I'm getting soggy." says the book.

...and another.

Amazing!

A microscopic tardigrade going for a stroll through some algae.

Credit: Sinclair Stammers

From @victoriachang.bsky.social's book, The Trees Witness Everything. Get it here: bit.ly/treeswitness

#poem #books #writing

What the Trees Are Telling Us - JSTOR Daily Markers of both environmental change and periods of stability, trees have a lot to tell us about nature—but also about humanity.

Markers of both environmental change and periods of stability, trees have a lot to tell us about nature—but also about humanity. https://bit.ly/3K14u9u

“By considering archival outliers and invented ephemerals … this series argues for their potential to offer narratives that highlight the challenges of writing histories… If parts of a narrative cannot fit in the broader claims or arguments, does the narrative foundation still stand?”

Congratulations!!!

Looking up through a canopy of trees to stars in the night sky.

'Tree Scene 126' - Namiki Hajime, 2007.
#JapaneseArt #FolkloreThursday

Congratulations, Katia! 🥀

Delightfully ingenious travel journal which uses “hieroglyphic” plates to recount an 1814 voyage to the Caribbean: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/hieroglyphic-journal-of-a-voyage-to-the-caribbean-1815

“Atomization is advancing not only between men, but within each individual, between the spheres of his life. No fulfilment may be attached to work, which would otherwise lose its functional modesty in the totality of purposes, no spark of reflection is allowed to fall into leisure time,

(1/3)

“That is to say, ikigai is somewhat ambiguous, but quite one-dimensional in comparison with other (Western) philosophical ideals. More expansively, ikigai implies that the meaning of life can be found through purpose, and that purpose can be found by starting small.”

The graphic shows cultivated lands bordering on a river/wetland and collections of trees (credit: AXIO-IMAGES from Getty Images) in the background of text bubbles. The text summarizes key details of the conference. Please read the description and the full call on the RCC website for this information.

We are looking for multidisciplinary panels to be presented at our upcoming conference "Beyond Dualism—Thinking Creatively Across Worlds," which takes place in July next year.

The full call can be found in the news section on our website: www.carsoncenter.uni-muenchen.de/news/news_ev... (1/?)

A tree lies on an enormously long couch, talking to its therapist. "I fell in the forest just as some hikers were passing by. I know they "heard" me fall, but I don't feel they really "listened" to me fall."

My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com

“Multidirectional flows were recently observed in mycelial networks, but these are unlike flows through the cosmic web, which, like a river, are essentially one-way.”

Brush and ink drawing

Enjoyed inking this

Quote 2/2
“The log itself is breathing. The carbon dioxide emanating from the microbes in the log is almost instantly absorbed by the pellucid leaves of mosses, who are interlaced with fungi…
It’s a dizzying circle of inhale and exhale, reciprocity between living and dead.”

…Does the tree hold some memory of the bear that slept beneath it? It does. Not in a visible ring, but in the body of the cells. Every exhalation of that bear, or the chattering squirrel—or the kneeling scientist with a clipboard—released carbon dioxide into the misty air.

A large tree stands in a field with some much smaller trees nearby. The sky above is filled with stars and two comets cross the sky.

Night of Stars and Comets - Namiki Hajime,2005.
#LegendaryWednesday #JapaneseArt

“…humans do live in something like an intertidal zone: the turbulence and inescapable betweenness of our lives as we move in and out of the ‘virtual’ world… secondly, we encase ourselves in exoskeletons more literally every day as we become increasingly supported and defined by our technologies.”

Someone asked…

Movie you've watched more than 6x using a gif (no Disney, Star Wars, LOTR, or Star Trek).

#MythologyMonday #JapaneseFolklore

Often, people’s attention towards plants is only captured when their (over)growth becomes inescapable and starts to creep into our lives—when tree branches trip on power lines, or when the weeds in the yard start attracting pests and crowding out other plants. 2/2

… Due to our vastly different timescales and rhythms of living, the growth, movement, and activity of plants is often invisible to the human eye unless observed with a great deal of patience and documented over time. 1/2

For long I've had a dislike for the concept of "ecosystem services" and here Arne Næss perfectly expressed it in his book Ecology of Wisdom: "Opponents often argue that we defend nature in our rich, industrial society in order to secure beauty, recreation, sport, and other nonvital interests 1/2 🌍

… It requires a questioning mindset that looks to unsettle what we take for granted. It means connecting everyday life to broader historical processes, structures of power and inequalities.

Murray Bookchin: “Social ecology is based on the conviction that nearly all of our present ecological problems originate in deep-seated social problems. It follows, from this view, that these ecological problems cannot be understood, let alone solved, 1/2