I N T E R L A C I N G S
A notebook for the imperfect shapeshifters & lovers of life's complexity
One of many lines from my favorite Portuguese writer, Rosa Lobato de Faria, has been living deep in my mind, heart, skin and spirit… She tells us:
“as almas dos seres que se amam não se completam, entrelaçam-se.”
The souls of the beings who love each other do not complete one another, they interlace.
And if the beings one loves are all who inhabit Earth, then being aware of the violence and loss that follows our species poses challenges to our hearts and minds, who witness, withstand and participate in the colonization, the annihilation.
I have no antidote. This pain is old and familiar in me, I feel it since I was little, and it seems not only inevitable but growing. Unless systemic change sprouts. We*, in industrialized and urbanized societies, have had access to awareness of the known socio-ecological consequences of our deranged tecnocapitalism for awhile now. But we*, who dwell in relatively low levels of struggle, seem lost: the more privileged in self-infantilization, the exploited in survival mode… And the collective grief is exacerbated (even for those who believe to be profiting). We* have forgotten how intimately connected we* are with the entirety of the Earth’s metabolism: every human, every organism, every land and water body…. Each of us is one thread in a cosmic tapestry of shapeshifting Life.
I know nothing of cures, but I know something of listening and echolocating… I know nothing of solutions, but I know something of hope. I’m learning to grow an active hope that does not deny the violences, that stumbles toward accountability and reciprocity and respect, sustained by finding belonging and beauty in the ecosystem we both embody and live within… I know of trying to stay here a little while more, without looking away from the dung and from the joy, simultaneously.
I have no answers but multitudes of woven baskets overflowing with questions and uncertainties that want to be voiced and moved through in multisensory community. The only certainty inhabiting my body is a deeply rooted conviction that whatever is necessary for a sustainable life, we will find out together.
If you’d like to ask questions together, read further! Let me know where your love is, what pains you hold and what ecosystems sustain you.
I would love to know <3
Welcome to I N T E R L A C I N G S <3
*Some clues from the context I write from: I am a first generation high school graduate woman from a low struggle, proletariat, Portuguese household, with a PhD in evolutionary biology and emigrant experience. When I refer to “we” in statements of accountability for modernity’s violences I mainly refer to people who identify with similar or lower struggle contexts, in the global North. I also want to acknowledge that there are many, complex and intersectional aspects to anyone’s life that are unknown and unable to be honored by simple labels. All that you read on this page is limited by my current knowledge, rooted in, and biased by, my personal experiences. Including the interpretation of scientific facts. Critical thinking, nuance, complexity and creative inquiry are always invited into this space.