symbiosis

cotton paintings by Jayson Musson

as you may have heard me say before, I like to see humanity as a vast sea. i think it's because i spend a lot of time just sitting and watching lake michigan, wondering what it can teach me. what i've found is that, metaphorically speaking, each person is a wave, helpless to the pushes and pulls of the water around them. and, in the sea, nothing stays still for long.

when waves merge with other waves again and again they produce a current much larger, more dynamic than any wave could on its own. on lake michigan it's just the beginning, an extraordinary swell; in the ocean, it's a  tsunami.

according to this model, all great societal change must occur by merging collectives of people with other collectives, waves with other waves, until the giant crest reaches its breaking point. in other words, groups need to be working alongside other groups in order to build a network of symbiotic relationships. it is only in this symbiosis, this boundary-crossing harmony, that we can create a successful social tsunami.

collectives with collectives, until the entire sea is stirring

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein

“I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself- actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved into the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself!”

~Long Days Journey into Night, Eugene O’Neill 1953

Jon Braley

There is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present

~James Joyce

Kenji Hirata

“My dear friend,

I have fallen in love,

This time very seriously.
With him I find a candor, a loyalty,
A tenderness which intoxicates me,
Something I believe I would never encounter anywhere.
I denied this affection, I pushed it away,
And then I surrendered.
I surrendered first to friendship and then to love,
The love I did not understand for so long revealed itself to me.
For now, I am in the condition of regeneration.
This is a reunion of two beings that both revel and delight
In that which they searched for and found,
One in the other.
Each day I attach myself more to him,
Each day I see disappear the little things in him
Which make me suffer,
Each day I see shine and radiate all the beautiful
Things in him that I admire.
Above all, he is a good child—his love is sweet.
After all, there is nothing but good on this earth.”

Letters from George Sand, 1833-35

have a nice day :)
~katy