Hellebora's story
Hellebora walked out from her door, into her home-range, parched with thirst, grim self-talk lodged like a fog over her ears. Drawn along ways she could not see so far along, Hellebora strode uphill, and, from asphalt to beaten path, to green turf, time began to grow. Gusting branches way over there gave shape to the wind in a ponderous semaphore, messaging the outgrown hedge until Hellebora sighed too.
Plants shape and grow by what wind blows, what lies around them and what comes by. They are not so much at the mercy of the wind, but grow up into it so as to use the wind as a speaking trumpet to sing to neighbours of growth or shedding. When the wind blows a song from leaf, branch, and stem it is a shape-song of self, a signature song. Some of this is radicley empirical plant science: Plants sense and make sounds, send messages on the wind, grow differently next to kin or strangers.
The wind brought rain. In wind and rain, volatiles burst from things that grow as a language of gradients with a vocabulary of one thousand, seven hundred scents. Volatiles, from volare, to fly, used to mean birds and butterflies, then things that are so light they might fly, then things prone to sudden change like geosmin. Mugwort was very volatile. Hellebora drank her in.
Hellebora knew she was moving because the Mugwort patch ahead grew larger. The Mugwort patch grew larger and then as she came closer and then very close, the details of silver-lined leaf and floret spur grew more precise. Hellebora gently pressed her lips to one long spur in order to know its shape better.
Mugwort watched the loom of Hellabora grow. She watched Hellebora’s looming until the touch of flesh lips on one spur sent phloem pulsing through vascular pathways in anticipation of a bite. She watched the pattern of Hellabora’s looming across days. Mugwort watched the pattern of Hellebora’s looming and the pressure on one spur across days and seeing that no bite came, ceased to pulse, though she grew shorter and stockier and the volatiles she let fly were stinky to aphids, and not in a good way. Some of this is plant science: Tendrils sense the loom of the pole before they touch it. Plants who have been touched tend to grow stockier and are less attractive to aphids. Plants observe patterns across time and use them to make decisions.
Maybe you don’t need neurons and a brain to know who and what and where you are and to make the right decisions. When your going is not locomotion but growing, you need to be sure of growing in the right direction.
With her human proclivity for things that move at certain speeds, Hellebora watched Mugwort, lively in the wind. Though plants move with intention and kinship this is not usually on a human time-scale so humans forget how lively they are. Hellebora watched Mugwort in the wind, with lively attention and began to feel how it was for Mugwort on the hill.
In some accounts, knowing is always in motion at whatever speed and so growing is a form of knowing too. In some accounts, knowing is a to-ing and fro-ing between what one expects to see from past experience, checked against what is coming through, from the bend to the wind and the circling tendril, to scanning saccades of the eye and feeler. Knowing is moving-while-deciding from every part of you at once, not watching representations of the world inside your head.
All around Mugwort waved a susurration of patterns repeating inside themselves, and as there was less to predict, and less to worry about, Hellebora began to let more real in. Gossamer from volatile spiderlings shimmered like wires tripping her further into the liveliness of her home-range.
As she pondered how Mugwort, and how she herself had experiences and knew herself as continuous across time, Hellebora expanded to the hill like a sailor to a ship alive in wind and water. Walking often on the hill, finding thin places to stand for a while, to see what other livelinesses were up to that day, she took them all onboard.
The to-ings and fro-ings of Mugwort in the wind comforted Hellebora. She bundled it all up and took it home like a hand-woven rug to tuck around her sisters.
Plants shape and grow by what wind blows, what lies around them and what comes by. They are not so much at the mercy of the wind, but grow up into it so as to use the wind as a speaking trumpet to sing to neighbours of growth or shedding. When the wind blows a song from leaf, branch, and stem it is a shape-song of self, a signature song. Some of this is radicley empirical plant science: Plants sense and make sounds, send messages on the wind, grow differently next to kin or strangers.
The wind brought rain. In wind and rain, volatiles burst from things that grow as a language of gradients with a vocabulary of one thousand, seven hundred scents. Volatiles, from volare, to fly, used to mean birds and butterflies, then things that are so light they might fly, then things prone to sudden change like geosmin. Mugwort was very volatile. Hellebora drank her in.
Hellebora knew she was moving because the Mugwort patch ahead grew larger. The Mugwort patch grew larger and then as she came closer and then very close, the details of silver-lined leaf and floret spur grew more precise. Hellebora gently pressed her lips to one long spur in order to know its shape better.
Mugwort watched the loom of Hellabora grow. She watched Hellebora’s looming until the touch of flesh lips on one spur sent phloem pulsing through vascular pathways in anticipation of a bite. She watched the pattern of Hellabora’s looming across days. Mugwort watched the pattern of Hellebora’s looming and the pressure on one spur across days and seeing that no bite came, ceased to pulse, though she grew shorter and stockier and the volatiles she let fly were stinky to aphids, and not in a good way. Some of this is plant science: Tendrils sense the loom of the pole before they touch it. Plants who have been touched tend to grow stockier and are less attractive to aphids. Plants observe patterns across time and use them to make decisions.
Maybe you don’t need neurons and a brain to know who and what and where you are and to make the right decisions. When your going is not locomotion but growing, you need to be sure of growing in the right direction.
With her human proclivity for things that move at certain speeds, Hellebora watched Mugwort, lively in the wind. Though plants move with intention and kinship this is not usually on a human time-scale so humans forget how lively they are. Hellebora watched Mugwort in the wind, with lively attention and began to feel how it was for Mugwort on the hill.
In some accounts, knowing is always in motion at whatever speed and so growing is a form of knowing too. In some accounts, knowing is a to-ing and fro-ing between what one expects to see from past experience, checked against what is coming through, from the bend to the wind and the circling tendril, to scanning saccades of the eye and feeler. Knowing is moving-while-deciding from every part of you at once, not watching representations of the world inside your head.
All around Mugwort waved a susurration of patterns repeating inside themselves, and as there was less to predict, and less to worry about, Hellebora began to let more real in. Gossamer from volatile spiderlings shimmered like wires tripping her further into the liveliness of her home-range.
As she pondered how Mugwort, and how she herself had experiences and knew herself as continuous across time, Hellebora expanded to the hill like a sailor to a ship alive in wind and water. Walking often on the hill, finding thin places to stand for a while, to see what other livelinesses were up to that day, she took them all onboard.
The to-ings and fro-ings of Mugwort in the wind comforted Hellebora. She bundled it all up and took it home like a hand-woven rug to tuck around her sisters.