animism

tomorrow i am sitting in on a webinar by one of my favorite thinkers, Li Edelkoort. she will be talking about animism as part of the post-coronavirus future we need to start imagining. she predicts that the enforced slowdown we have all been obliged to live through this year will return us to a generally slower way of life, with more attention paid to fewer things, and a recentering of ourselves as part of nature, not just users of nature for our convenience, recreation, and economic expediency. it will be a time to rediscover reverence. i can only hope she is correct. i was inspired enough by the thought of it, that i channeled my energy to make an assemblage in honor of Li. an altar of sorts, in honor of what Li calls “the veneration of the river and the moon, as well as seedpods, animals, feathers, shells twigs and the humble pebble.”

assemblage of seedpods, feather, stones. bones, shells, sticks, fern, nest, and egg

broken box

this is the time of year when the temporary temperate rain forest of minnesota is a green curtain with green growth bursting its edges everywhere. in a mere 60 days this is over.

leaf shapes and colors fo early july

nested

our family just got a minor, almost certainly unfounded, covid-19 scare. we are all ok, and our exposure was third or fourth hand at the closest. but it reaffirmed for us that there is no cause to get impatient about our confinement. we will continue nesting here at home, waiting for some people to stop being stupid, and for other people to come up with a vaccine.

musk thistle bloom

breathing

i have disappeared recently down a rabbit hole, sent there by a book called breathing. it’s written by a competitive free-diver who got interested in breathing as part of his practice of swimming as deeply into the ocean as he could, then back, on one lungful of air. but his big takeaway is that mammals are meant to be nose breathers, and too many humans have recently become mouth breathers, with all sorts of negative consequences. so, yes, i have taken to taping my mouth shut at night, and convinced my husband to do the same, which has cured his lifelong snoring, and we both wake up more rested than we can remember. something about the longer pathway into the lungs, and the conditioning of the breath that happens through the nostrils and sinuses tells the body that everything is OK, and prepares the air to enter the lungs. it’s utterly fascinating. these waterlillies open up during the day, and then close down at night, and i now think of it as taking one long daytime breath, and exhaling all night long, and i envy them such centered simplicity.

american water-lily

oh, hi!

hello handsome. thanks for posing. say hi your supermodel friends.

wood frog (Rana sylvatica)