Thinking about binding

I've always loved honeysuckle. I used to suck out the nectar as a kid and I imagined riding on a horse to my own wedding with honeysuckle bound in my hair. The wedding would have been at Honeychurch, a stunning, ancient and tiny church just a couple of miles from our family home.

The link takes you to a wonderful photo-essay about the church. It's a place that feels enchanted. Talking of which, I am listening to Erik Jampa Andersson's Unseen Beings: How We Forget the World is More That Human. He speaks from an animistic perspective (a particular school of Buddhism) and champions the re-enchantment of the world, so, as you can imagine, the book ticks many of my boxes. Turns out he is a Tibetan healer and practices here in London. He looks at the current crises (warming, extinction etc) as a doctor would, considering the causes and prognosis, the symptoms and cure. Andersson believes that stories could be an important part of the solution.

Anyway, binding, and this has been coming up for me regularly - the idea that stories are meant to weave us together, not tear us apart; that we are always and already entangled; that our minds benefit from being loosed from the idea of detached, objective straight lines and instead encouraged to twine themselves with the minds of others.

I have written about the difference between being seen as a threat by my garden companions and being seen as a person by a goose and a crow at Kew. What about being "seen" by a plant? With the trees, I always feel like a person... but the trees feel more... open to connection?

How about the rose? Am I background or foreground?

And does the daisy even acknowledge me as she communes sun-to-sun?