Tell me about where you live

luka

Well-known member
"...he had happened to recline into the more or less shoulder high fork of a shrub like tree, and in this position immediately felt himself so agreeably supported and so amply reposed, that he remained as he was, without reading, completely received into nature, in an almost unconscious contemplation. Little by little his attention awoke to a feeling he had never known: it was as though almost imperceptible vibrations were passing into him from the interior of the tree.... It seemed to him that he had never been filled with more gentle motions, his body was somehow being treated like a soul, and enabled him to receives degree of influence which, given the normal apparentness of one's physical conditions, really could not have been felt at all... Nevertheless, concerned as he always was to account to himself for precisely the most delicate impressions, he insistently asked himself what was happening to him then, and almost at once found an expression that satisfied him, saying to himself, that he had got to the other side of nature."

This is virtually identical with my first experience of plant initiation in 1999.
 

luka

Well-known member
I do almost always touch a tree or plant when I'm tripping and get a flood of impressions through the contact, or believe that I do, and I don't see what the difference is really.
 

version

Well-known member
The Fangorn thread in Lord of the Rings has always felt quite rich to me, the idea of the trees communicating with each other and requiring shepherding.
 

luka

Well-known member
One of the reasons I called that book vegetable empire is from the same awareness slothrop has, of the very vivid aliveness of plants. Something switched in me as a teenager and they stopped being objects and became creatures.
 

version

Well-known member
My Dad was obsessed with Avatar for a while, he went to see it at the cinema several times. He was also pulling his hair out over people saying stuff like "I wish I lived on a planet like that", he couldn't believe that they couldn't see that they do.
 

luka

Well-known member
My Dad was obsessed with Avatar for a while, he went to see it at the cinema several times. He was also pulling his hair out over people saying stuff like "I wish I lived on a planet like that", he couldn't believe that they couldn't see that they do.

Specially with Stockport being comparatively verdant and fertile I guess.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Did you read that thing in the Guardian about the guy letting a really tall tree live. He marked it not for destruction and so it remained while the rest of the patch was cleared. It was a kind of glimmer of hope in darkness but to me the overall story was still depressing.
 
Did you read that thing in the Guardian about the guy letting a really tall tree live. He marked it not for destruction and so it remained while the rest of the patch was cleared. It was a kind of glimmer of hope in darkness but to me the overall story was still depressing.

There's a long episode set at the top of such a sentinel tree in the The Overstory. A man and a woman, united by fate, are occupying it to prevent it being cut down. There are ponds skirted by vegetation, squirrel colonies, whole ecosystems up there.

Another story follows a botanist who discovers the inter-dendral communication system that unites all forests, and a phenomenon where dying trees donate their nutrients back into the forest system before passing.

I've cooled towards the book a little, picked up The Parade by David Eggers instead, but that was super short (it packed a punch, though one you can see coming...), so going back to the Overstory now.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
One of the reasons I called that book vegetable empire is from the same awareness slothrop has, of the very vivid aliveness of plants. Something switched in me as a teenager and they stopped being objects and became creatures.

I remember being intensely aware of the aliveness of a spider plant once when I was on mushrooms. It actually seemed to radiate a subtle menace, for some reason.
 
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