Feb W07
Books 📚
📣 Deborah Levy’s Real Estate ➰ 💟
awks: ‘my best male friend’ peppered through the manuscript, an odd standout, in an otherwise absorbing narrative.
Notes & Quotes 💬
This is an excerpt from the fifth of Ten Love Letters to Mother Earth by Thich Nhat Hanh:
“Dear Mother Earth,
There are those of us who walk the Earth searching for a promised land, not realizing that you are the wondrous place we’ve been looking for our whole lives. You already are a wonderful and beautiful Kingdom of Heaven—the most beautiful planet in the solar system; the most beautiful place in the heavens. You are the Pure Land where countless buddhas and bodhisattvas of the past manifested, realized enlightenment, and taught the Dharma.
I do not need to imagine a Pure Land of the Buddha to the west or a Kingdom of God above where I will go when I die. Heaven is here on Earth. The Kingdom of God is here and now. I don’t need to die to be in the Kingdom of God. In fact, I need to be very much alive. I can touch the Kingdom of God with every step.”
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Hortus conclusus is a Latin term, meaning literally “enclosed garden”
We have one on campus and it’s going to become an experimental space come the new semester.
——
Podcasts 🫛
🎧 When you teach in Environmental Humanities and have to spend time with terms like ‘Anthropocene’ it’s not hard to drift over into wondering if you, too, should be sour about Anthropos. I am and I amnt and when I am, I don’t want to hang around in that mental space - it’s claustrophobic. These two convos with thoughtful humans offered some shining gems (there was a bit of patience and mining required - a bit uneven) Worth it, though.
- On Seen & Unseen, an interview with Marilynne Robinson “Re-enchanting the Human Story.”
- Mark Vernon in conversation with Rupert Sheldrake On the (potential) gift for the Earth of human consciousness.
Poetry 💘
“Coffee Shop in the late Afternoon” by Nils Peterson …
There are fewer and fewer
native speakers of one’s born language.
You learn to live with translations.
Lent started so, while we are here and it is possible, the turning - TS Eliot, Ash Wednesday
Open Tabs 🔖
- This article on ‘Scaling’ was interesting and attracted me to the Borges story, “On Exactitude in Science,” which I found read, together with a short audio interview with Will Self that’s about 6"ish. It’s about maps and territories and Tanasescu in Ecocene Politics thinks about this quite a bit, too.
Then, coincidentally, this: ‘scaling deep’
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Fascinating, this, on how ecology influences cultures’ norms and behaviours. On the topic of EcoCultural Identity, there’s this article in Nature detailing a new resource for investigating cultural variation via datasets.
P.S. 🫧
I have noticed that this is off the aspirational schedule. Have had head down preparing for a conference. Rough schedule to resume soonest!
