❋ #02 ❋ Thinking on Rest, Connection to Land, Community and Care

(audio)book recommendations & further reading on fungi and community ~

Summer quickly starts to spills over into something autumnal, the signs are everywhere. I see it in the apples swelling and flowers dropping their petals to reveal ripening seedpods. The seasons merge this time of year ~ after rainy days (when fungi push their mushrooms up through the earth) it almost smells like autumn, but then again the calendulas in the garden only just started their blooming cycle.

There is something sacred about walking the same paths over and over and finding something new each time. I’ve been tasting the sweet nectar of honeysuckle, sucking on jasmine flowers and the sweetness of blue borage blossoms. Time has been swirling and swaying and I’m constantly trying to catch my thoughts [to put them on paper] before they are long gone once again. This newsletter is just a mumble of current musings and thinkings on rest, nature and care ~ I hope you can settle down comfortably and get lost in them.

In a way, I've (re)found my connection to the land this year. It never disappeared fully, because I am lucky to be in physical proximity to greenspace and spending time with plant and fungal kin has become second nature to me over the years.

So it was that still the seasonal markers of

Spring: nettle tops, garlic mustard and cleavers,

Summer: elderflower, meadowsweet and linden blossoms,

Autumn: rowan berries, brambles and chanterelles,

Winter: oysters, velvet shanks and jelly ears,

would find their way into my foraging basket and stomach

but I was hurrying and fearful of connection,

of truly settling because of an ever-looming danger

of evictions, health flare-ups worsening and money

and bills and trying to work and burning out and not finding care

and breaking down and rushing with aching limbs and headaches and friends in distress

and all those ever-looming (dooming) societal challenges of being merely a feral creature trying to survive in the capitalist project.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

Sometimes I catch moments where the soft animal of my body (truly) is loving what it loves now. When the creaturely in me is satisfied and fed and sleepy and delighted to be in a body at all (not fighting it or wishing it away).

How deeply precious it feels to find something safe and profound after sensing it slipping away from me over the years. It takes me back to small moments of childhood peace: sitting with the snowdrops in February, counting the wheel shaped fungi growing in the lawn behind the house, filling my pockets with acorns, the texture of the curtains at grandma’s house, granddad letting us explore the attic, the colour yellow, the smell of grandmas soup, fairyrings of Marasmius in front of their little council house.

I find it somehow unpleasant to write these vulnerable truths lingering in memories and physical sensations.

Caretaking requires being taken care of, which requires honesty, safety and networks of mutual aid and I think of Maymana Arefin’s writing, I think of mycelium expanding and shrinking and the importance of decomposition.

How the smallest of actions can go on to support a whole network of people.

I can see how much capitalism weighs down the ability to access rest, how dependent my community is on sometimes far from fulfilling jobs, or alternatively insecure but fulfilling jobs in areas of work that they stay in because of their love for plants, fungi and community gardening.

In reflecting on care, I recognise repeatedly how much connecting to land is a privilege and that connection is ultimately what has saved me from slipping away into darker places. My mind is able to unwrap complex thinkings and play with ideas when I spend time in the nearby woods and hills. In the hardest of times, it is the people that have taken me outside, who I cherish the most. The ones that have driven me to quiet places where I could wonder about the sunlight in the dewdrops and touch thick carpets of moss.

Slowing down is a privilege.

Being able to rest and even just for a moment exit that state of survival can feel dangerous to our nervous systems if we haven’t experienced it for a prolonged time ~

If you have this privilege of being able to access regular rest, what are you doing with it? How can you support others in finding rest?

Sometimes all it takes is to show up in the ‘simplest’ of acts: having lunch together, cooking a meal, taking the bins out, helping with cleaning, picking up prescriptions, bringing freshly picked flowers, sharing a playlist, taking them to a greenspace or maybe relaxing physical touch.

“There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” -Audre Lorde

So at last I find some peace in knowing that kindness and listening and caretaking can go a very long way. While slowly weaving futures we dare to dream of, we can create small sanctuaries in the present time.

In the past years I’ve revisited the book ‘Warp & Weft’ numerous times, it is an exploration of ‘mental health’ or rather ‘psycho-emotional health’ in a political context. I’ve found it transformative and liberating in its decolonial approach to trauma and the ways it unpacks mental health diagnoses. It is the book that has led me to prioritising embodiment practices (which basically means incorporating the physical being in processing rather than the typical approach of theorising our experience e.g. in talking therapy). Connecting to land is an embodiment practice of some sort. Anyway this is to say I highly recommend the book, there’s a free audio version available below.

꩜ Questions for yourself: How can you rest/ restore/ recharge/ recuperate? What types of rest are accessible to you and can you find a feeling of empowerment in that? What help could you ask for?

Perhaps I’m writing this to reassure you are not alone — we can build bridges to one another whether that is online or in community spaces like libraries or gardens, studios, galleries, bookshops etc. It’s in those physical spaces that I have become a being in meaningful relation to other beings. In letting the tendency of isolating myself go, I’ve found so much meaning and belonging.

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I’ve let this mumble of thoughts sit in a draft for a while now. The other day I finished reading ‘LET’S BECOME FUNGAL’ by Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez’ and it filled me with inspiration and ideas. It is a beautifully illustrated book venturing into the world of fungi as teachers in collaboration, non-linearity, death and queerness.

A page from LET’S BECOME FUNGAL

Reading this made me recognise and think on many things. I’ve been practicing to build an embodied knowledge of the local landscape for years and in becoming part of it [through the shedding of my hair or skin, the picking to eat or weave and the dispersal of seeds or spores] I am a part of a system of trees, shrubs, fungi, herbs, flowers and vines.

Something in me has always felt uncomfortable in being an individual anything. Which has to a certain extend manifested in feeling a deep discomfort when sharing - I thought perhaps it might be insecurity, but mostly I don’t have a desire to attach my name to things. I don’t have a desire to be an individual in competition. The work I am most proud of is done in collaboration and can’t easily be traced back to me.

I feel a small part of a greater something and living in this capitalist world trying to make money as a freelancer, I’ve inevitably had push against that instinct and promote my work as me, put my name on things, be a person that is noticed, but it doesn’t come naturally.

I do really like to make and facilitate and create and share.

When I facilitate something I am merely a medium and something is flowing through me coming from elsewhere.

I can feel most at home embracing an intensity in making, a chaotic yet organised feeling of special interests bubbling and ideas unfurling into action. Those moments feel led by something separate from myself.

Truly so what if I’m a sensitive thing? Or so what if I’m just a creature that roams and roars and sleeps and tries to survive and help and weave and break binaries and slowly dismantle deeply ingrained beliefs of patriarchy in my nearby networks.

I like deconstructing and rebuilding.

I suppose here is where I thank the land and the living things I learn from every day. The ways nature heals are immense and delightful. Sorry for this mumble and disorganised chaos of reflections. I’ll be back soon with some more structured writings.

With love,

x

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

‘LET’S BECOME FUNGAL’ by Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez’

Mapping Alternative Futures through Fungi: The Usefulness of Mycorrhizal Networks as a Metaphor for Mutual Aid by Maymana Arefin

Warp & Weft: Psycho-emotional health, politics and experiences