Root System (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
desertroot) wrote2015-04-25 06:28 pm
desertroot) wrote2015-04-25 06:28 pm
Entry tags:
Plant-ness
Being plant-like is an incredibly important part of our system. It's an experience shared by almost everyone in some degree or another, and it ties us together. So we've written a bit about it below:
Sorry for any inconsistencies in pronouns, it happens when shifting between being one and many.
~
Plant-ness – plants may not have eyes, or nerves. But they do have senses, responses. Noticing light and shadow and by chemistry sending messages to grow in a different way.
Plants have a way of being in the world. Patterns which are familiar to me. Patterns of being aware, of responding to sunlight, to shadow, to water, to all the people and creatures and sensations in the world.
There is a time for everything, a time for sun and a time for shadow. I know the sun can burn, both my human skin and my inner heart. But in general, even though I know my human body eats food (and I enjoy that a lot), sunlight and rain feel like joy to me, like sustenance, like rightness.
A while back when I was taking a plant evolution class, the teacher said something interesting – I forget the exact words, but the gist was this: In order to understand why plants do things, you have to think differently, you have to think passively. That's the greatest hurdle to most people understanding. When something bad happens, you move away. For a plant, when something happens – they cannot move, they have to deal with whatever is happening right where they are so what do you do then? But I have a movement disorder, this is my life. If something happens, I can't always run, smooth talk my way out of it. So this is what happens instead - Learning to deal with things right where we are.
We've learned a million ways to deal.
And when I do move – to move is to change. A million cells growing. Chambers filling and emptying of liquid. To move you have to become a new person, a slightly different one that can do what you need to do. Movement is a process and it isn't simple.
So where does that leave us?
Chemistry – changing what exists into what is needed.
Changing scents to colors, colors to feelings, until I find the thing I need to go forward. This is also called synaesthesia. Outward changes, too. Hearing someone's difficulty, listening, taking it in, turning it around in my head until it falls into a new configuration, giving them that new understanding back. Maybe they see something they didn't before. Shaping clay. Making bread - turning raw ingredients into food. That is a familiar purpose to an orchard tree. :)
~
"If you can't find your heart's desire in your own backyard, you never really lost it to begin with"
-Angels in America by Tony Kushner
Sorry for any inconsistencies in pronouns, it happens when shifting between being one and many.
~
Plant-ness – plants may not have eyes, or nerves. But they do have senses, responses. Noticing light and shadow and by chemistry sending messages to grow in a different way.
Plants have a way of being in the world. Patterns which are familiar to me. Patterns of being aware, of responding to sunlight, to shadow, to water, to all the people and creatures and sensations in the world.
There is a time for everything, a time for sun and a time for shadow. I know the sun can burn, both my human skin and my inner heart. But in general, even though I know my human body eats food (and I enjoy that a lot), sunlight and rain feel like joy to me, like sustenance, like rightness.
A while back when I was taking a plant evolution class, the teacher said something interesting – I forget the exact words, but the gist was this: In order to understand why plants do things, you have to think differently, you have to think passively. That's the greatest hurdle to most people understanding. When something bad happens, you move away. For a plant, when something happens – they cannot move, they have to deal with whatever is happening right where they are so what do you do then? But I have a movement disorder, this is my life. If something happens, I can't always run, smooth talk my way out of it. So this is what happens instead - Learning to deal with things right where we are.
We've learned a million ways to deal.
And when I do move – to move is to change. A million cells growing. Chambers filling and emptying of liquid. To move you have to become a new person, a slightly different one that can do what you need to do. Movement is a process and it isn't simple.
So where does that leave us?
Chemistry – changing what exists into what is needed.
Changing scents to colors, colors to feelings, until I find the thing I need to go forward. This is also called synaesthesia. Outward changes, too. Hearing someone's difficulty, listening, taking it in, turning it around in my head until it falls into a new configuration, giving them that new understanding back. Maybe they see something they didn't before. Shaping clay. Making bread - turning raw ingredients into food. That is a familiar purpose to an orchard tree. :)
~
"If you can't find your heart's desire in your own backyard, you never really lost it to begin with"
-Angels in America by Tony Kushner