The Forest

16 Jul, 2026

I have so many feelings about the forest I don't know what to do about it. The wetlands too. I have so many feelings about the wetlands and I don’t know what to do about it. Grasslands also. I have so many feelings about the grasslands I don’t know what to do about it. Fuck it, mudflats. I have so many feelings about mudflats I don’t know what to do about it. The goddamn ocean. I have so many feelings about the ocean I don’t know what to do about it. The desert. I have so many feelings about the desert I don't know what to do about it oh my god. If I knew what to do about it I would probably do fewer things about it. The feeling reaches a limit and fritzes out into something uncontainable. It’s the search for something to do about it that makes it hurt enough to inspire infinite variations of action, to inspire creativity, activism, volunteering, returning to every site of pilgrimage over and over and over and coming away each time with something new, something ineffable, something—fuck-–true?

I spent most of my life trying to find the shape of the god I felt in the world, but I realized recently that the god I feel in the world is the world. Literally the planet. Any single place in nature is a deeply complex city of wonders with thousands of simultaneous interactions between things we call species and dirt and rock and precipitation and wind and we can wrap all that together and call it Forest but it’s not one thing and the edges are porous. The awe I find is not for a being, an entity, it is for an experience I am having of a vast ecology that covers the whole world. If you need to call that an entity you can. You can! You don’t have to though. It still works when you don’t.

Civilizing ourselves seems to have ripped us from our participation in ecology except where we do so intentionally. Except it did not in fact rip us from our participation in ecology. It only seems to. We lay down poison to kill rats and insects in our houses but we are covered and filled with microbes, our clothes and food are derived from plants, the wall beams are made from wood. There's no separation except in our heads. And we all kind of know that. But we also kind of don't. Or maybe it's mostly just me?

I do a thing in order to function. I think we all do it. I encounter something too complex, or where I have too many tasks to do and so I say, "What's not important right now? What can I ignore, what can I cross off in order to complete the task I am trying to complete?" And it works. It's very effective. That's how I get by, how I operate in a world of infinite variables. From what I understand that is also the case for everyone. And I/we do this unconsciously too. Things blend into the background, we cease noticing in order to function. But then at a certain point for me, ignoring feeds into depression. Have you ever heard someone say that when you're depressed colors are literally less vivid? I feel like I've heard people say that. Depression is the opposite of noticing. And you know what? I could pretty easily control my depression all by myself by increasing noticing, but what I would sacrifice in that would be functioning in this world of infinite variables. To be fair, the depression also makes me not function. I can go non-functional, incapable of doing work, of being employed, of no longer earning enough money to pay my housing costs so easily. It would be like taking off a backpack filled with weights. So I, uh, am attempting a moderate noticing of the world. A weekend noticing. It's a little dicey. A very thin tightrope.

And that's it. I have no conclusion. I'm just noticing here.