It's strange how books always seems to offer more than one expects... apart from posthumanism texts which I seldom actually understand and so they offer less.
My latest novel is Happiness by Aminatta Forna. It involves ring-necked parakeets, whom I saw on my walk across Hyde Park, and urban foxes as well as psychiatry. It's one of the psychiatry thoughts that is sticking with me at the moment. The "hero" as a Ghanaian doctor and he talks about how in the West people seem to regard relatively normal life events as causes of trauma. He says that suffering does not always lead to damage. I think the fox researcher is making an analogous case for foxes - how they thrive in states of adversity.
It's a very good book, a lot of research and a vast amount of empathy. It is a book that extends compassion.
That seems off topic... but in a sense, bear with me, I am working toward something. I think of trees, with all their connections to other life - and to the sky and the soil, the elements as providing an example of entangled compassion. Today, on my run, a telecoms guy was kneeling by one of those telecoms boxes. It was open and spilling from it were thousands of cables, many tied into bundles, all snaking around. I thought of mycelium and roots and twigs. I said, "What a load of spaghetti!" and he said "It's a real spaghetti junction!" And I asked him how he knew which one of those thousands he needed and he said, "We can send light through it." At that very moment he found the one lit up cable. He said into his radio, "I don't believe it! I've got it!" Then he looked at me and said, "You're my lucky charm! I need to take you on my rounds!"
The one connection among thousands. And how do you know unless you send light through it?
These trees in the photographs... the light of the moon and the light of the sun. They are as much about the space they are not as the space they take up. Woodpeckers make holes which become homes for countless other birds. The dim light that reaches the ground is enough for moss.
The shape of a tree is created by connections and by light.
On the subject of trees, my narrative non-fiction piece on Conversations with Trees has passed through peer review and will be published in the journal Plant Perspectives later this year! Yes! What an astonishing delight to have the strange experiences of this Dryad Crone recognised by scholars! I am very happy that the piece has found a home, and very grateful to Deputy Editor Dr Isis Brook who gave me much needed advice on the revisions, making it a far stronger piece.
Comments