Blog post alert: Terry Windling's Myth and Moor post on The Language of the Earth explores with Robin Wall Kimmerer the need for English to fashion language that recognizes the animacy of the world and integrates humans into the continuum of life instead of dividing "us" from "it." The post is illustrated with many images from Catherine Hyde's new almanac, The Hare and the Moon—which I have just ordered for myself.
Thinking of the gradual movement and change of mountains as a very slow form of life or the rapid flow of water as being just as animated as it looks is one of the ways I am trying to widen my understanding these days. Another is to try harder to experience graphic arts and music as primary in and of themselves, not as things that must be put into words to be understood or have full value. Yes, there will be words in Hyde's book, but, oh, what stimulating, animate pictures! And although I don't think Kimmerer's suggestion of a new pronoun, ki, to recognize the personhood of everything in nature is the answer to the objectification implicit in it, I do love her proposal for a plural: kin.