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How plants teach platitudes

There's two kinds of "learning from plants". The more mystical approach is to reach an altered state of consciousness and literally hold conversations with them. (Some people don't even need much alteration; plant-whisperers). But plant folk in general, not just mystics, talk a lot about being inspired by example: resilience through flexibility, like the bamboo. Take only what you need in cooperation with your peers and you can survive anywhere, like moss. Offer freely what you can, and in return you get a world worth living in; the seemingly overabundant fruits of a tree are no waste, because a tree is not a seed-spreading machine.

The first kind of learning is liable to be dismissed as hallucinations, random mind tricks at best. The second kind, as empty platitudes. How come the plants never teach you how to cure AIDS, or what dark matter is made of, or why flowering plants took over the world all of a sudden with no clear evolutionary explanation, or why phytoplankton don't seem to care about the exclusionary principle? They only ever seem to teach you, like, that all life is connected and we should be nicer to one another. Ok not really, plenty of cases of people garnering very specific information from plants but on the ‘by example’ type of teaching that's what it normally looks like.

(Nevermind that ‘all life is connected and we should be nicer to one another’ is what we need to avoid the ongoing apocalypse.)

I'm interested in the chasm between advice and action, between knowledge and life. It's one thing to know in abstract that everything is connected; it's another thing to embody and live this knowledge. I think what the platitude charge misses is the role of personal bonds in crossing that chasm. I know since forever that plastic waste is bad, but it took observing someone actively minimising waste for me to actually try to reduce mine. The model in question didn't try to convince me of anything, and I wasn't even trying to learn anything. I just found myself suddenly too conscious that the thing I wanted to buy had too much packaging and maybe I don't really want it anyway? Personal bonds seem to be very good at motivating action. And we build very close bonds with our plants.

If I try to think of what I have learned from growing intimate with my house plants, the first thing that comes to mind is the difference between living and thriving. Plants are more resistant than I had assumed. Most of them can live for a surprisingly long time abandoned in a pot in a corner, with no water and a fraction of the sunlight they evolved for, with a smidgen of dirt compared to the boundless Earth. For most house plants, it's easier to kill them by overwatering than under-. Sunlight is kind of a big deal, though. Human eyes are too good at adapting to a wide range of light conditions; we think a white room with a nice ceiling lamp is bright, like a sunny day outside is bright, even though the latter will be something like 20 times brighter (a problem photographers know well). A 20× difference in water content is very obvious to us; in light, it's easily dismissed. A plant at an east-facing window will be getting a small fraction of the food she'd get at a sunny-side window. Pull her a metre away from the window and you have reduced the light dramatically again. This will quickly kill a supermarket kitchen herb.

Something like a succulent will survive, which is the #1st reason they're popular as houseplants. She won't, however, thrive. If you have an old succulent and you repot her in the biggest pot you can afford with good, tasty potting soil, and you set it by a south window (in the north hemisphere)—what a difference! In a matter of days she seems so happy and bright. Her xylems plump up with water, perking her up like my panties when I see a girlfriend. New growth buds up all over. She rearranges her arms towards the new light source as if offering the sun a dozen hugs, ready to be splashed all over and drink it all up.

Keep her well fed like this, and when it's time, she blooms.

Light and air and soil and sun, most of all sun. Every plant with her own needs, every plant with her own way of being healthy, her own manner of thriving; but all work the same way, you provide her with the essentials and she goes from merely existing to a thing of marvel, right before your eyes.

Sleep and food and rest and take your meds: It's the most basic, most obvious of advices for mental health. Social contact, exercise, time to breathe. Nobody not know this. It is very obvious to my psychologist, to my girlfriends, to my kids etc. that self-care begins with better sleep, with not forgetting to eat. People have been advising me that since forever; and of course I'm acutely aware of the importance of it. Somehow I insist on trying to solve everything mentally, to will myself through emotional and personal difficulties with the mighty power of the soul alone, brushing off nights unslept and days unfed as if they can be willed away. But as I bring my plants from withered stubborn survival to shiny-green life in joy, I find it hard to continue to neglect my own body. It is so clearly withered. How can I look at my dry, old bones, my phloems starved for sugar and my turgor pressure reaching wilting point, and not get an impulse to bring it water and compost and sunlight. How would I weave beautiful flowers for my many pollinators, without the NPK to drip into nectar. It doesn't matter if it's just a metaphor, watching plants closely makes it all so tangible and material that before I realise it, I have crossed the chasm of action.