Harvesting mainly raspberries at the moment, daily. Figs are nearly finished and olives not yet ready. But tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines ... keep coming. I love Natures abundance and am always curious to learn from her.
My choice too! With this particular piece (which stretched over two weeks, and the fires 'bombing' the writing process in the midst of it all) I definitely felt the generosity of life flowing in and sweeping me along...
Thank you for picking up on that, Kimberly! Always grateful for your perceptive engagement and wisdom 🦉🙏
Fire is a powerful presence ... sounds overwhelming up that close. I love the musing over words, embodied etymology. I keep wondering about Chinese writing retaining its imagery, readable across millennia.
A word pops up in my mind ... 'dependence'. 'It all depends'. I am thinking of the old forest, who depends on who, the river and the lives renewed, we might say 'shared'. I hope.
It is intense and overwhelming. Some of those who have experienced it struggle to break its spell (of trauma)
In this wordcast I had already written a piece on spending when the fires came, and all of a sudden everything was 'suspended' ~ life as we knew it hanging in a fragile balance, dependent on winds and capacities of the fire fighters.
In the aftermath, driving past long stretches of burnt out forests, you can't help but appreciate the mother trees, the old forests, which are becoming rarer. Precious reminders of the renewal of life, and our dependence on them. In the presence of (far too many) eucalyptus plantations in Portugal, we have certainly come to appreciate old forests.
Chinese writing has always fascinated me too. I've never learned it, apart from picking up a few Kanji characters from a Japanese friend... However, we don't need to look that far. Even our Western alphabet is derived from ancient cuneiform characters (see my wordcast The Wild Motherword: https://veronikabondsymbiopaedia.substack.com/p/the-wild-motherword)...
Ah ... thank you, I only 'w-r-d' first to substack last November. 😊
Ideograms. It would be almost beyond coherent memory without the book still to hand now. And I am grateful to others past and present and fortunately still have the Penguin Classic 'Li Po and Tu Fu',1972, by Arthur Cooper. He remarks of Li Po's 'Quiet Night Thoughts' it is possible a friendly Chinese waiter might recite you the poem. Across time and no longer mutually spoken dialects, the poem is popularly recovered. And as Arthur Cooper says, even when there are no words in English we share the human mind that can make sense.
NB Eucalypts. Indeed. Stories from Australia begin to tell us not to manage the modern way. Fire is essential in the bush and variously for many wild woods, but our way is something else. Voluminous oil will plume into gas explosions and extreme heat can sterilise the ground.
Not sure who said it, but when we die we take with us what we have given away (more in line with German spenden, though it's not just money we can 'give away').
The time-money relationship is an interesting one in our culture. By about the age of 15 I had observed that there were 4 different relationships between time-spent-working, and money. (1).Those who worked long hours and had lots of money; (2).Those who worked long hours and had little or no money; (3).Those who worked little and had lots of money; (4).Those who worked little and had little or no money. This told me that time/work and money are superficially, but not essentially, connected.
Your post suggests this range of possibilities of how time and money, {spending (as in depleting resources) vs spending (as in giving alms-resources)} relate to each other can open a door either to experiencing life-as-scarcity with its downward energy pull, or life-as-abundance with its upward energy push. Just a thought, and still somewhat muddled.
I think all this relates to your key question "How are we spending ourselves?"
Hi Veronika, l love the consideration you give to the forest and her inhabitants. It has always fascinated me how resilient the Australian bush is after a devastating fire and to watch the fern green sprouting from blackened limbs in the months after. Glad it seems that the fires are under control. Your exploration of spending is really interesting and has me pondering that anything stemming from teaching us about lack of… (spending)is bothersome in its broader life message. And Maya Angelou … what a legend. 💜😊
Walking under the mother trees soon after being surrounded by fires, and seeing the black skeletons of trees all over the place, was such a stark contrast and a powerful reminder of how precious these woods are. Here it's usually the plantations that burn, not the 'real forests'. When everything is green, people can easily be fooled into thinking that our area is full of forests. Sadly, that's not the case. Portugal is full of eucalyptus plantations for the paper industry.
But yeah, you're right. Nature is incredibly resilient. In a few months, green shoots will be sprouting again from the black ground.
Yes, so what is she telling us ... about our need for experience and our choice of perspective ... about lack and scarcity? And the choices we collectively may need to make to protect our mother trees? So evocative Veronika, thank you🙏
A beautiful reminder of how we view resources, money, and time. I particularly felt like this was one to meditate on, "Whenever we spend anything, it must come from a source or resource."
We sure do have it backwards, don't we? I hope we live to see the day where we see our Earth's bounty as something belonging to all of us, not for an exclusive few to pillage and destroy.
This was a particularly succent and powerful post, Vernoika. xo
Thank you, Lani, for picking this one out. Often (usually?) it takes only a simple question or brief statement to delve deeper. And all of a sudden we find that we've been stuck for a lifetime on a habitual use of language, passed down from our elders or community.
I'm looking forward to that day too. On this note, I'm going out in the garden to fill a new raised bed with compost, ready for next year's bounty 🍠 🥕 🌶️ 🌽 🥦 🥒 🧅 🧄 🫐 🍅 🍆
Thank you Veronika! This is such good food for reflection on whether I come from scarcity or abundance mindset when it comes to time. It's so interesting to see the different German roots vs the English. The video about balance is incredible. Thank you for sharing and going deep, as always. :)
Veronika, this is such a beautiful and nourishing piece.
I can almost hear your voice narrating in a soothing, warm tone. I can tell from your writing that you've been thinking about this meditatively, in connection with your recent experiences, and possibly grieving for Gaia; this is my interpretation of your writing.
What I repeatedly noticed while reading your thoughts was your way of "painting with fingers," which we can easily point out, but you are conveying a tone of inclusion rather than blame. I adore this, even if it is purely my own projection and wish.
Thank you for using "words" to raise awareness. I spent an hour reading and reflecting on your ideas, and it was well spent. I'm looking forward to spend more time reading you!
Thank you Katerina! This is precisely my intention. Not to blame, not to point the finger, but to 'paint with words', to show different perspectives, which allows space for whatever versions of 'momentary truths' to shine through.
I love that you "spent your time" forest bathing. A friend who is a naturalist spent time with a small group of us, poets all, last week for a session of shinrin-yoku. Spending time together on a rainy day in nature and observing the asters, the goldenrod, and sheltering under an overhang of wisteria where humingbirds flitted purposefully among the flowers in a garden in early stages of decay and dissipation in preparation for winter offer us the sense of slowing down, opening our senses, gazing and gathering in, around and with Nature to enjoy the bounties of an early autumn's afternoon. Time well spent.
Thank you, Veronika for delving into the word spend. It is true that in English it is about scarcity. It is more noteworthy that in German the root word is about abundance, of giving and of sharing. This is nearest to my way of thinking. It is nearest to how I see Nature operating.
Another wise and wonderful journey into, under and through the words! A river definitely runs through it. As Heraclitus said ..nobody ever steps in the same river twice. For they are not the same river and they not the same person.”
Intersects your article on time. Kairos vs Chronos.
We are the river. We are time.
What would the trees say after another fire?
Maybe something along the lines of Rumi… the source lies within us and the whole world springs from it. All souls are one. Maybe we’ve all been looking in the branches for what only can be found in the roots.
Thank you Veronika for tending to the roots of words. Bless you. 🙏❤️
thank you for the reminder of Heraclitus and Rumi. And making the connection with my earlier post on Kairos and Chronos... I hadn't thought of that. But of course you're right.
"Maybe we’ve all been looking in the branches for what only can be found in the roots..." great observation. I know what you mean.
Ultimately, all knowledge must be in all parts (keyword: fractals). But tracing the roots of words often brings up a new or forgotten perspective.
Thank you Geraldine for sharing! 💕🙏 🍎
Oh so valuable Lady Veronika, thank you,
I appreciate the way you think. Good medicine, indeed, in a nutshell, I love it!
Happy harvest, Geraldine
You're most welcome, Lady Geraldine.
Harvesting mainly raspberries at the moment, daily. Figs are nearly finished and olives not yet ready. But tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines ... keep coming. I love Natures abundance and am always curious to learn from her.
Oh, and apples, pears and Nashi pears, so abundant this year.
I choose “the perpetual cycle of natural abundance supplied by a symbiocentric universe
which holds us forever in suspense!”
What an important excavation Veronika, and also a reframe on the overflowing and renewable generosity of life itself.
My choice too! With this particular piece (which stretched over two weeks, and the fires 'bombing' the writing process in the midst of it all) I definitely felt the generosity of life flowing in and sweeping me along...
Thank you for picking up on that, Kimberly! Always grateful for your perceptive engagement and wisdom 🦉🙏
Fire is a powerful presence ... sounds overwhelming up that close. I love the musing over words, embodied etymology. I keep wondering about Chinese writing retaining its imagery, readable across millennia.
A word pops up in my mind ... 'dependence'. 'It all depends'. I am thinking of the old forest, who depends on who, the river and the lives renewed, we might say 'shared'. I hope.
It is intense and overwhelming. Some of those who have experienced it struggle to break its spell (of trauma)
In this wordcast I had already written a piece on spending when the fires came, and all of a sudden everything was 'suspended' ~ life as we knew it hanging in a fragile balance, dependent on winds and capacities of the fire fighters.
In the aftermath, driving past long stretches of burnt out forests, you can't help but appreciate the mother trees, the old forests, which are becoming rarer. Precious reminders of the renewal of life, and our dependence on them. In the presence of (far too many) eucalyptus plantations in Portugal, we have certainly come to appreciate old forests.
Chinese writing has always fascinated me too. I've never learned it, apart from picking up a few Kanji characters from a Japanese friend... However, we don't need to look that far. Even our Western alphabet is derived from ancient cuneiform characters (see my wordcast The Wild Motherword: https://veronikabondsymbiopaedia.substack.com/p/the-wild-motherword)...
Ah ... thank you, I only 'w-r-d' first to substack last November. 😊
Ideograms. It would be almost beyond coherent memory without the book still to hand now. And I am grateful to others past and present and fortunately still have the Penguin Classic 'Li Po and Tu Fu',1972, by Arthur Cooper. He remarks of Li Po's 'Quiet Night Thoughts' it is possible a friendly Chinese waiter might recite you the poem. Across time and no longer mutually spoken dialects, the poem is popularly recovered. And as Arthur Cooper says, even when there are no words in English we share the human mind that can make sense.
NB Eucalypts. Indeed. Stories from Australia begin to tell us not to manage the modern way. Fire is essential in the bush and variously for many wild woods, but our way is something else. Voluminous oil will plume into gas explosions and extreme heat can sterilise the ground.
Not sure who said it, but when we die we take with us what we have given away (more in line with German spenden, though it's not just money we can 'give away').
The time-money relationship is an interesting one in our culture. By about the age of 15 I had observed that there were 4 different relationships between time-spent-working, and money. (1).Those who worked long hours and had lots of money; (2).Those who worked long hours and had little or no money; (3).Those who worked little and had lots of money; (4).Those who worked little and had little or no money. This told me that time/work and money are superficially, but not essentially, connected.
Your post suggests this range of possibilities of how time and money, {spending (as in depleting resources) vs spending (as in giving alms-resources)} relate to each other can open a door either to experiencing life-as-scarcity with its downward energy pull, or life-as-abundance with its upward energy push. Just a thought, and still somewhat muddled.
I think all this relates to your key question "How are we spending ourselves?"
great thoughts! I'm sure it's a question that invites us to 'live into' in the Rilkean way, gradually revealing more and deeper meaning
Hi Veronika, l love the consideration you give to the forest and her inhabitants. It has always fascinated me how resilient the Australian bush is after a devastating fire and to watch the fern green sprouting from blackened limbs in the months after. Glad it seems that the fires are under control. Your exploration of spending is really interesting and has me pondering that anything stemming from teaching us about lack of… (spending)is bothersome in its broader life message. And Maya Angelou … what a legend. 💜😊
Thank you, Simone!
Walking under the mother trees soon after being surrounded by fires, and seeing the black skeletons of trees all over the place, was such a stark contrast and a powerful reminder of how precious these woods are. Here it's usually the plantations that burn, not the 'real forests'. When everything is green, people can easily be fooled into thinking that our area is full of forests. Sadly, that's not the case. Portugal is full of eucalyptus plantations for the paper industry.
But yeah, you're right. Nature is incredibly resilient. In a few months, green shoots will be sprouting again from the black ground.
Yes, so what is she telling us ... about our need for experience and our choice of perspective ... about lack and scarcity? And the choices we collectively may need to make to protect our mother trees? So evocative Veronika, thank you🙏
Really like the idea of spending as giving. Simple yet so profound.
Thank you. 💙🙏 Yes, like all the best things, coincidentally 😎
A beautiful reminder of how we view resources, money, and time. I particularly felt like this was one to meditate on, "Whenever we spend anything, it must come from a source or resource."
We sure do have it backwards, don't we? I hope we live to see the day where we see our Earth's bounty as something belonging to all of us, not for an exclusive few to pillage and destroy.
This was a particularly succent and powerful post, Vernoika. xo
Thank you, Lani, for picking this one out. Often (usually?) it takes only a simple question or brief statement to delve deeper. And all of a sudden we find that we've been stuck for a lifetime on a habitual use of language, passed down from our elders or community.
I'm looking forward to that day too. On this note, I'm going out in the garden to fill a new raised bed with compost, ready for next year's bounty 🍠 🥕 🌶️ 🌽 🥦 🥒 🧅 🧄 🫐 🍅 🍆
Thank you Veronika! This is such good food for reflection on whether I come from scarcity or abundance mindset when it comes to time. It's so interesting to see the different German roots vs the English. The video about balance is incredible. Thank you for sharing and going deep, as always. :)
You're welcome, Shelly, I am so grateful for your presence and appreciation. 💗🙏
Veronika, this is such a beautiful and nourishing piece.
I can almost hear your voice narrating in a soothing, warm tone. I can tell from your writing that you've been thinking about this meditatively, in connection with your recent experiences, and possibly grieving for Gaia; this is my interpretation of your writing.
What I repeatedly noticed while reading your thoughts was your way of "painting with fingers," which we can easily point out, but you are conveying a tone of inclusion rather than blame. I adore this, even if it is purely my own projection and wish.
Thank you for using "words" to raise awareness. I spent an hour reading and reflecting on your ideas, and it was well spent. I'm looking forward to spend more time reading you!
Thank you Katerina! This is precisely my intention. Not to blame, not to point the finger, but to 'paint with words', to show different perspectives, which allows space for whatever versions of 'momentary truths' to shine through.
I'm so glad you picked that up.
Much love and gratitude 💗🙏
I love that you "spent your time" forest bathing. A friend who is a naturalist spent time with a small group of us, poets all, last week for a session of shinrin-yoku. Spending time together on a rainy day in nature and observing the asters, the goldenrod, and sheltering under an overhang of wisteria where humingbirds flitted purposefully among the flowers in a garden in early stages of decay and dissipation in preparation for winter offer us the sense of slowing down, opening our senses, gazing and gathering in, around and with Nature to enjoy the bounties of an early autumn's afternoon. Time well spent.
Beautiful. Well spent indeed.
Stunningly beautiful and sacred. A sacred need, for humanity to know.
🙏 🕸️
Thank you, Veronika for delving into the word spend. It is true that in English it is about scarcity. It is more noteworthy that in German the root word is about abundance, of giving and of sharing. This is nearest to my way of thinking. It is nearest to how I see Nature operating.
yes, Nature doesn't spend what she doesn't have. And humans only do so at our/ their own detriment.
Another wise and wonderful journey into, under and through the words! A river definitely runs through it. As Heraclitus said ..nobody ever steps in the same river twice. For they are not the same river and they not the same person.”
Intersects your article on time. Kairos vs Chronos.
We are the river. We are time.
What would the trees say after another fire?
Maybe something along the lines of Rumi… the source lies within us and the whole world springs from it. All souls are one. Maybe we’ve all been looking in the branches for what only can be found in the roots.
Thank you Veronika for tending to the roots of words. Bless you. 🙏❤️
thank you for the reminder of Heraclitus and Rumi. And making the connection with my earlier post on Kairos and Chronos... I hadn't thought of that. But of course you're right.
"Maybe we’ve all been looking in the branches for what only can be found in the roots..." great observation. I know what you mean.
Ultimately, all knowledge must be in all parts (keyword: fractals). But tracing the roots of words often brings up a new or forgotten perspective.