Category: ki

Earth

On By kimtntIn Crone Consciousness, Earth Day, Earth hospice, Earthling, earthlings, ecocide, Garden of Eden, ki, kin, Mother, planetary hospiceLeave a comment

“Do you realize – we’re floating in space?”

Our ancestors were born on a spaceship that never needed refueling, repair, redesign or course correction.

Earthlings have all uniquely adapted to their respective natural, geographical habitats and migration routes — except for the warring and dominant human regimes and cultures — that decided for all Earthlings that they should geo-engineer artificial environments and extract the blood and bodies of the ancient ones — for one species’ sole benefit — until Earth no longer feels or looks like Earth – and has become unrecognizable, unsafe or uninhabitable to most other species.

photo credit : European Space Agency

There are PCBs in the Atacama Trench and microplastics in fetal tissue of mammals – of humans.

Despite all the wonderful river and beach clean-up and tree planting projects on Earth Day, for me, it’s always a contemplative and sobering day.

We all have a stake—equally. Because if we do not save the environment and save the Earth, then whatever we do in civil rights or in a war against poverty will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction and the brotherhood of the grave.

James L. Farmer,
at the very first Earth Day,
April 22, 1970

in the Limineen, on the threshold

On By kimtntIn Arte Bucolia, Arte Ruralia, earthlings, ki, kin, liminality, limineen, Sol, Sun, Sunset, thresholdLeave a comment 
"[S]he said that a [hu]man had to escape to the country to see the world whole and that [s]he wished [s]he lived in a desolate place like this where [s]he could see the [S]un go down every evening like [the] [g]od[head] made it to do." 

~ Flannery O’Connor
Deer and Bird and Frog People
in the Limineen of light and dark
as witnessed in The Great Lakes
of the North american continent
April 11, 2023

Sentience & the exclusive velveteening of pets and familiar animals

On By kimtntIn Animals, Earthling, earthlings, Essay, ki, kin, Narrative, Prose, velveteenLeave a comment

My dog, Woody, wakes up and wants breakfast – not just breakfast, but a very expensive kibble prepared with gravy and a quarter cup of warmed pumpkin (his dinner is more elaborate – it’s offered like a buffet plate or poke bowl). He eats, goes outside to do his business and investigate a little, comes back inside, and stops and sits on the rug to think, “Where is my baby?”

He goes around the house on a search for it, and comes back with a flying squirrel toy, ready to play. He bumps the laptop off my thighs several times to engage me, and we play. Later, he lets me know he’d like to go outside; we head to the basement, but he doesn’t want to wear his coat – he knows dogs don’t wear coats, and he hides behind the full clotheslines; we come to an agreement, and he permits me to put the coat on him.

We walk, but I don’t want to go to the park, so we walk through the neighborhoods; but when Woody gets to an arterial street which borders the park, he stops, looks, then looks at me, and pulls, to suggest that we should turn south right there and go to the park – because he’s actually in the mood for the park.

Woody Guthrie & the Twin Sycamores of Portage Park, Chicago 2016

When we finally arrive home after our very long walk, i dry his paws and legs one by one and also his undercarriage; he kisses my face in an annoyed gratitude; then, he lets me know he wants to be close – he has two comfy dog beds and my son’s vacant bed, but he wants to be near – and climbs into a deep club chair made for one – onto my lap – he weighs 65 lbs.

Continue reading “Sentience & the exclusive velveteening of pets and familiar animals” →

residuum

On By kimtntIn Earthling, ki, kin, Life and Death, nature, Poem, poetry, reciprocity, Survival, symbiosity, wildlife, WinterLeave a comment
“The Distances They Keep”, Howard Nemerov, the blue swallows, 1967

this is no time
to evict
spiders,
centipedes,
the occasional, lone
boxelder bug,
dozens of out-of-season ladybird beetles
or
the almost-always odorless stinkbugs

from
our houses

to do so now means certain death, outside

there is a field mouse
in the dormant compost bin
depositing black “rice”
in washed egg shells and pomegranate rinds/

a mole engineers deeply excavated burrows around the foundation (much too close),
mound-builds in the prairie, and
constructs a minefield for toes and ankles in the remnant, dumb lawn/

the grey squirrels shelter in the woods across the snow-covered dirt road
the red squirrel in the barn is insulating with stuffing from the patio cushions/

black walnuts, please mast next year
oak sapling, pray, grow faster/

i will plant a meadow exclusively of sunflower come Spring/

black-eyed juncos,
black-capped chickadees,
bluejays,
woodpeckers,
and cardinals,
but especially,
the juncos
have learned to tolerate,
and expect my winter presence among them, per nemerov’s counsel,
i don’t wear feathers in my cap – or coat/

the remaining turkey and deer
still grieving, post-hunting season
are tentative,
but returning;
i set out stone salt licks and millet, reverently, repentantly, respectfully, for them/

i count the crows each morning
but truer, i count on them
their steady, regal presence
their voices call to me for sardines, kibble, peanuts
i oblige and always will

[can] we all [can] live here
alongside
inside
and outside together, as kin

i don’t speak
but i telepath
that,
and
this:

i am the residuum here

a wolf spider and their reflection / every spider should be presumed to be an incarnation of Anansi