A tribute to man’s relationship with the environment

Symbiosis

A Collaboration between Anna Rozwadowska, Christina Ward🌼, Sam Kimberle, Zach J. Payne

“ Swinging my umbrella, like some narcotic dream, I touch the branch in hope, of a relationship between man and leaf ”-Anna Rozwadowska

Laborious~ conundrum between man and nature; living and the living,

both organisms; trading water and light vicariously, lists of substances pass the threshold of normal, crops fed with startling chemicals that we ingest, melancholy and fear persist, grasses are petrified by what our hands consume in the soil, bereft and majestic; a matter to be attended as classrooms digest us~ we ingest our future, blanketed by the thirst of man and plants, alike.

Vibrations of life stir within all, from grass to tree, insect to Thee; the incessant pleading of all things born; for us to do something.

The deep exhale of a weary fight.

Centuries of oxygen relinquish their dance, deprived of songs; lungs charred. Nutrient-churning affairs in blues and greens, circling the sun; varied hungry soils~ the rising up of life astounds.

She, the master of countless minutiae who grew and split again. She, who devised the clockwork plates deep in the underground, volcanoes rising like roses from stone, dancing together, then swiftly apart.

She who dreamed the secret of deoxyribose, the endless pairing of adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine. She, the tender, nurturing from naught, time and again. Aegis against the calamity that grows ever and anon: from within: the anger of the old fires that sleep beneath; from without: The odd flying of rocks, the vague misfortune of chance.

Bathe in the sacrificial; human mortality often softens the blow yet, blame is not blasmophy~ we simply cater to conditioned abscess, reaching for greenery as winter arrives; reaching for greenery, spotlighting ardour, gratitude in blooming buds, living colours, if but for a season; if but for a reason.

Can you hear the roaring of the sea? Mercy, she pleads, mercy, the song of the earth is carried by the wind.

For who are we, to raise our hands against creation; daughter of time, mother of all, she labored under a breaking sun, cultivating a flaming sphere: first to stone, then water and ice, and eventually, life.

Kept in secrets of the recessant mind, one forgets treasures of the wild; an attempt perhaps to unlock the subconscious, the valuing of crops, the vault of fruits, loons cascading in water, perhaps tainted by the influence of man’s incessant drive, what we drive, what we engage in to survive, values beheld though precious, we fail to understand the nature of our dilemma; income remains precious; falter the greed, plant the seed.

Gluttony runs from the corners of our mouths, debt is stricken by alliances of currency, guttural ignorance spews, partially consumed, chewing the cud.

Like sweat from our pores, metallic poison filled with glass, we take deep breaths in secrecy, plastic coating our insides, resistance grows to tempering with false intentions~ pharmaceuticals reign, natural remedies twisted like paper; lost in the pretense of intimidation.

Yet, in pristine waters, all sacrifice is naught; remember what we are taught: to hunt the privy; neither maime, blood in sacrifice drops~ spilling below; but your sacrifice is without a reason, why?

Usurping “natural”‘ with dominance, absolution of heartfelt admiration, it longs to offset chasms, biodiversity left to flourish on its own, in the biosphere’s consistent touch; it’s plea in the void.

Water borne or winged and adrift, life carries itself against the current of our self-serving efforts to contain, rather than heartfelt admiration.

Inhale the sun’s dimensions, while global blues and greens abort leaking oil, leaking defecation, leaking the unearthen into the earth; soils tend to their isolation, but their disturbance leaks human aberration; despite colouring the freshest air with the jagged peaks of liberation; stillness presides as we pay homage to what we pray for; nature unearthed.

Untethered, while begging for spaces untouched by the hands of humanity.

Whispering the story of us out of the far-flung stardust, that, through some happenstance, fell into our hands.

She, the tender, growing us from naught, time and again, but contrition is not enough, we must unlearn the fire that we cradled into our bodies.

We must love her enough to unravel ourselves.

Whispering gentle secrets into the electric storm within us. Not one or two, but all: we must lower our hands and appreciate, that; we intrude far too much; nature, we need to step back and release, nature, our hands from the throat of creation; nature; longing for depth after it’s shallow supplication.

Not to crouch, two knees in the sand, a byproduct of our rage and drought, fingers raised in supplication, begging for mercy with the shallows of our rage, towards the multitude of unheard voices.

The noise is meaningless. It is always meaningless. Calamity was wrought by the action of our hands. Nothing less will undo the damage, and much more is needed.

Oh, this conversation, we have done little to deserve life; all that we have is plastic turbulence, even when your life has become a suit of armour, where one stands deep, fighting for the right natural; it is the gloss of theatrical, the scope of ancient remedies, how do you value a tree or the amber sap that fossilizes, the spiraling notes of a songbird?

Reluctant to hold natural persuasion~ reluctant to hold hands with the one who provides.

We have gone astray.

Anna Rozwadowska, Sam Kimberle, Christina Ward 🌼 & Zach J. Payne 2019

*Note from Anna: Thank you for the amazing authors that took part in this four way collaboration. We knew it would be a difficult task, but working with talented authors made the job so much easier. We wanted to highlight a topic of importance without pointing blame or getting too political about it. I hope we have done it well.*