Lift the stone and you will find me;

cleave the wood and I am there.

Jesus

i went and found the sun hiding in gorgeous Mexico

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i find the notion that we are descended from ant-people who came out of the urine of the sky god when he got out of his canoe at the seventh waterfall to relieve himself more palpable than that we are derivatives of the Big Bang-- a moment when the whole universe sprang from nothing for no reason at all.

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the wild, woolly and late

Terence McKenna

plant consciousness?

back in 1966, a scientist by the name of Clive Backster stumbled on an interesting finding on one of those slow going days. as a scientist employed by the FBI, he was constantly working with lie detectors, to the point where he started having fun and experimenting with them.

he connected a lie detector to a house plant (a dracena cane plant) in order to measure its rate of water consumption. he didn't succeed in this attempt, but he did find something a little more exciting.

normally, when humans detect a threat to their well-being they produce a physiological response that the lie detector is able to pick up. Clive found that plants also produce such physiological responses to potential threats.

he found this by dipping one of the plant's leaves in his coffee. this made the pen on the chart fluctuate. this got him going. he started thinking of other ways to threaten the plant. he thought of burning one of the leaves.

" Then at thirteen minutes, fifty-five seconds chart time, the imagery entered my mind of burning the leaf I was testing. I didn't verbalize, I didn't touch the plant, I didn't touch the equipment. The only new thing that could have been a stimulus for the plant was the mental image. Yet the plant went wild. The pen jumped right off the top of the chart.”

after this, Backster started getting creative with his experiments in order to solidify his findings. he would go on walks, while the plants were hooked up back in his lab (which was also his permanent home) and as soon as he turned around and started walking back, the plants would show a reaction.

after a slew of such experiments, Backster concluded that plants pick up human thinking and emotional responses. he called this ‘primary perception’. he doesn't call it extra-sensory perception since plants do not have the other basic senses.

the scientific community has obviously rejected his findings, saying that they are too spontaneous and not repeatable.

repeatable or not, i think that the land's alive and we humans aren't so superior after all.

further glimpses of such wild ideas:

A Language Older Than Words --Derrick Jensen
http://www.ahpweb.org/pub/perspective/dec%202003/dec03review.html
Archaic Revival --Terence McKenna

a continuation

the most archaic values on earth
the fertility of the soul,
the magic of the animals,
the power-vision in solitude,
the love and ecstasy of the dance,
the common work of the tribe.

-Gary Snyder-

join the dance and help the work along

the ascension

The secret of this kind of climbing is like Zen. Don't think. Just dance along. It's the easiest thing in the world, actually easier than walking on flat ground.

Japhy (based on Gary Snyder) -Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums-
dance along with the mountain, the fish, and the winged angels

photo by Steve McCurry

on that long and windy road, it is easy to lose the way.

listen.
the old hermit along the side of the road whispers,

stranger, pass by that which you do not love.

-phil cousineau- the art of pilgrimage-

As a society, we currently uphold a seasonless, regionless diet in which an average food travels thousands of miles before it is eaten- a practice that wastes natural resources; requires extensive use of pesticides, energy-intensive fertilizers, antibiotics, and hormones; and causes people in developing countries to produce food for export rather than for themselves.

Buying locally produced, organically grown food not only improves the taste and nutritional quality of the diet but also supports local farmers, promotes the viability of rural communities, and creates greater diversity in agricultural production.

Marion Nestle- Food Politics-

BUY GREEN

it may be a bit more expensive now, but with time we can all drive the prices down, the agribusiness corporations out, and those nice farmers back into the picture.