nir: a little song, a po em.

English lute airs were particularly pop-

Ct11..1.µ ,, -
yt ular in the early modern era (see Thomas Campion's Two Bookes

,lv,;. .I( t: J' ,a(,

,/.,."-,/] cf Ayres).
- what invisibly p asses thr ough bod ies, like wind through an
.,eolian harp, creating song. And what if all of animated nature I Be
,4 G-l~ss~ i 4.,,,. t organicHarps diverselyframed (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The
/111
~.I ,1f,Jl,,Et,,>.,J/ifr t1--<-.I yl liolian Harp").

+Jiru /# u ~
,4,-Pl - what is exch anged by livin g things (in the troposphere or dis-
~olved in water).
Ii. h~,h, /el/~f" - a medium carrying smell and sound. Rose is a rose is a rose is
;' •,tt tJ'/i ~ ~,(
11 rose(Gertrude Stein, "Sacred Emily ").

- accordin g to th e World Health Organizat ion, air pollution

:2,~18 ~t/~!/•1.1,1v, /~'~"
, aused approx im ately one in eight global deaths in 2012, making it
I he "world's largest single environm enta l health risk."
\
- poe try's (literal) inspiration. Best to write in open air'or _~eside
,
.111open window to foster feral connection with earth's atmosphere,
,ither beings , and our hum an capaci ty for sensory situatedness .

.idjokla (Internat ion al Phonetic Alph abet: ii:Q jcekh!n): the neol-
11gism ao jok la takes an Icelandic verb form and applies it to the
word for glacier (jokull). This follows the behavior of Icelandi c
~easonal verbs such as ao vora (to become sprin g) an d ao vetra (to
become winter), signaling metamorp hi c tran sition as their action.
I he glacier -verb neologism traces trans ition ; in the case of curr ent
11.~age, it implies a flux in mass, lean ing heavily toward tra nsitiona l
disapp earanc e. The creatio n of thi s action word also allows for
!'mpathetic embodime nt of glacier exper iences. Encouraged as a
loanword to languages ou twith Icelandic.

nkiw8gon (the 8 is pronounced like th e French on) is from th e

/\benaki word for "Land ," ''Aki," and our basic conc ept of cont inu al

Entries I 19
 no tes because Kohn's an im ac (
process, wBgon.AkiwBgonis the continual becomin g of the Land, offers p ossibi lity. y or at leas t his art iculati on of it)
an d we people as part of that ongoingness. Land, for us, includ es
not only the geograp hic place, but also an th e nonhuman and hu-
Anthropocene Anxiety o·tsor der a feel· fh
man peopl e who m ake up that particular place-includi ng both the fut1~refro m withi tl A h . mg o opelessness about
n 1e nt ropocene an d f
those things Western culture sees as alive, such as Plants and Ani- ness about do ing anyth . h , a sense o helpless-
mg to c ange th e trajectory of the era.
mals, and tho se things th at they generally don't see as alive, su ch as
Stone , Mountain s, Rivers, Lakes, Clou ds. Land is a wo rd of int imate
archaeology· dredg· fi
relationship. AkiwBgonackno wledges the Land as a pr ocess of be- ken crocker;) set i~np~a:, tho~ exampl e, the sh ard s of dr ought (bro-
1s mstant centur ies 1
coming in which everythin g has person h ood. Our participation in eulog ized con duit s of . c ·1· ago to savage the
empir e 1a1 mg to dr f
akiwBgonmeans, first, that we listen-that we pay attention with verbia e · aw water rom plunder
g m mut eness; or toxic invisib ilities (th e new p h ,
all of our senses, with our bodies, sp irits, and our intell ect to what not on ly as discourse b t ersep one s) :
, u as corpo ral ecstasy and f . ful d
is happ ening , wh at is becoming now at thi s moment. See Land, Scoring in turn such . .d f rmt isgust.
mc1 ents o rupture in the sur fac f h
eral text (see still Michel Foucau 1t, Larcheologie
' , e o t e gen-
du savoir~.
reciproesis.

animacy: I hunt in Eduardo Kohn's How Forests Think:An Anthro-

archipelago: the assur ed ackn owled . \
pology beyond the Human for th e word animacy while two mutts light and all land£ gment th at all islan ds emit
1 orms are capable of receiving th em The h.
sleep at my feet. They bark. We go out side. I see the morning glory pe ago acknow ledges th e dire state the Anth . arc J-
h as finally bloom ed; a white butt erfly I do not "ident ify" visits it too. <.>frising sea levels porte nd s and it th ti r~fi.poceneand the peril
k' , us ortI es its knowledge b
"Situated , intimat e engagemen t." That's how I sum up these pages
see mg out other islands beyond its kn . Th y
from th e chapt er titl ed "The Living Thoug ht ," whi ch begins with i~lan ds have answers to b owmg. e notion that other
' o, uoys the archipelago F th
barking dog s followed by a silence- in Quechua: hau' hau' hau' i rn turies, the var ious . 1 d f . or e past many
is an s o th e planet's . d .
then chun.The dogs are dead. Prey to a puma. Kohn then unfold s li,1ve got on well des ·t h . myna archipelagos
, p1 e t ere bemg no walls Th .
a complex argument: "If th oughts exist beyond th e hum an , th en 111vitation for atolled t' . ere is an op en
na wns to seek out arch ipelagos. See atoll.
we humans are not the on ly selves in thi s wo rld . We, in sh ort , are
not the only kind s of we. Ani mism, the attribution of enchantment
iu·i:hive: a place is an archive of its own ruins A .
to these other-than -human loci , is more than belief, an embodied , ii I rauma as fact It h d . place is th e archive
. app ene here. The ships ca b .
practice, or a foil for our critiques of Western me cha n istic repre - 1•1
•nple, the ir cargo ' and th e peop 1e h auhn
. g cargo
m e Thy top pick'fi up
.
sentations of natur e." I read and tak e note s so as not to count days: 1111 1rauma and our d . Th . . · e ac1 c 1s
esire. e nm 1s ever h h
day 32 of the Sob eranes Fire; seven days, says the vet, u ntil my " lo get caug ht up. 1 yw ere t ere ha s been a
m - a ways carrying th e offi '
oldest dog will die - foo d itself a toxin for her n ow. As an always ,11,ly always involved . h 1 cer s status in the
m t e c osed- door domesticity of empir e.
already we, we remain a toxin for th is planet? I read on, takin g

Entries! 2 1
,LO
\ Cm111t
er Desecration
 hands
. . throug h th e atmospher ic filam
Your daily commut e through it, or your tourist visit to it, or your d1ss1mulation of bird s k h ent s. th ere, on th e branch
. as t em t t 11h .a
wrong turn leading to it, or your binding obligation to stay in it or deceit to survive a catacl s . o e . t eir stor y. it is not pretense
may be a document of the place's ruin. You can sense th e bodi es th is n~te , how it tr ills besid:d: 1:e:tmct~o n. listen to their songs .
that passed through the place befor e. Flown above. Eaten tunnels bleedmg . already. we are alive. . azh1gwa. we are torq ued and
through. Exposed the brick and fuel spills. Paid out. Locked down.
The body knows more than the curatorial eye of the drone or the bearing : as in th e qua 1· ity or state f b .
tight porn shot . Or the preservationist's weak references, the devel- A single bird begins geograph· c o emg of import , a notation
b ic ,~ Th · ·
opers' biopolitical commitments to life. Ruins and remains post- to e oppos ite othe r and e h. . e straightest degree begins
veryt mg · d 1.
disaster is a place of pr esent presence, neith er passed nor futurist. west of relative to on , m ec mation , negative
es surroundin A . or
"Which by now have turned into ruins." "He was there to collect 111ove the entir e flock . gs. sm gle bird's tiny shift
. , an accident of d . . can
,111d n ght into the spac b irect10n or wingfall fall left
the past." W e etween us a d
l'nl her/w heth er where d h n ocean. Index intuition
. ' oes t e b' d ·
attention: directed m ental, physical, and spiritual awareness. Lis- 111uJcc tion of word s bet d' ir end and th e sky begin' A
' ween irection bet . .
tening , observation . Also care - attend ing to a place, tim e, system , I 11I\, at once open and p . ween wmg and rotating
rec1se- a b. 1 .
b eing. Consistent ly thr eatened or thwarted by variou s forms of dis- , li1rward and shift I . 10 og1cal compass. Words
a ong Imes of . en-
tr action -d evices, tasks- as well as by emotional reaction s, in du d •111,•
ncc of syllables before th magnet~c force pushing out a
e gesture of flight weig . h ts position.
ing guilt and fear. Can b e enlarged, sometimes , through practi cl·,
diligence, and carefully chosen tools . See making . fl, •·•·nness·. th e space between the ho
I I Iit·t ween one shore a d h use and the forest is th e
I n t e other is th " . ,,
atoll (verb): protect, fortify, build up, wall off, confidently prow ·,I 1111 the trees is the "t 'l " e nve r, between th e
ra1 , and so o M
with limited knowledge , onward, establish (political ) pr ecede1111 ' I, i II.at ion (in Imp . lE n. ary Louis e Pratt's
erta yes) of th "
I 11111 dynamics of th . e contact zone" as the
atolls (noun, usu ally plural): th e rapid transformation of a 011•, e site of between
giving nation into one governed by a latent fear, br ed from a 111, ',111he usefully ap I' d . ness for colon ial en-
p ie m other geo .
sumed, imminent threat. Nation -state s in atolls preempti vely 11
1 ,, ill.it hyphenated " spatial encou nters. I
space as a tra ns-" .
late th emselves by building walls of increasin g heights. The go,d 1 ,1•h-dgcs othernes d d' poetic s, a trait d'union
s an 1fference
state wh ere no one can see out and realize the need to gel m11 , 111'l\1' l o stand ing in th d . , movement and stasis.
I I e oorway is th t
where no one can see in /come in. See archipelago . 11' ,ilso gainin g th k a you can see both
e nowledge of th
' lh tcning. Attent· . e spaces of resis-
10n to bem "b
111111rnur of o . g etween" is one way
azhigwa: now is not a time for grief or silence. th e earth 8\111 ur mt ersections with l
its seeds; new life germinat es in even the narrowest crr v1,, 1111
11·vl'r)1wh P ace, th at one is
ere.
waters surfac e and rush. azhigwa is to breath e time, Lo l h Ir.,,I

Entries J 2 3
J) \ ( '1111111
1•, I >,.,, ., 1111/11
11
betwixtuation: that in the book of x its m argin s are nei thl'1 , , 1 11v11y forme d by life itself, whi ch we are only beginning to
nor end but th e inter val between the word and the worl d. & 11 ,111
how to access and enabl e agenticall y.
in the between there is a kind of weltsc hm erz (as much a fati1:1"
form as it is a weariness/wariness of bin ar ies, of either/or) b111.d , 1,111ingsuggests a field of activities contin gent on Catski ll
the disarming and simultaneou sly activating pow er that is nu ,111o 111
1111sands tone .
This space/s pe ech shed s a stri ving ne ss, sheds auster ity 's suih / 1• t,g"tive bluestoning: following the various thicknesses and
mulas in favor of raw messiness: this hot mass: disobedi enn · ti i ii blue-gray, cut into rectangles, squares , or patche s, that
were literallysitting in the middle of the street readingbooks e11111 ,1 11,ukup sidewalks from the Hud son Valley to New York City:
beco m ingne ss: maybe this is the bardo:receptivity: where ho/111I 111
1y of bluesto ne sid ewalk s, like a stat iona ry mo ving side -
not yet done its work: the ghost of an imminent superabund .1111 I 1h111k
airport peopl e mov er ), so some stan d and ot hers walk.
placental, iridescent mystery. Betw ix tuation is the powe r of c 1H c1111. 11111rsI follow the subme rged blu estone to a historic ceme ter y
ter, th e constant move ment of assoc iative, energetic cornpk x111, 111
111.1cc
in th e wood s.
betwe en bodie s, the coin ciden t, polytropical po ssibilities ofbl',11111 11,,torybluestoning: divin at ion by tossing frag ment s of th is
(carrying, sup porting, en during , giving birth to, intu itive w,1) 111
1 I 1,11u·into the air and reading the future from the spread it
ding) and baring (i.e., flash in g, exposing , unco ver in g) th e sell11, I 1kc readi ng tea leaves in the pit s of an abandoned quar-
The crux of a bet wixt uati on is flux. t I lie Catski ll Mountains, and we find in old site s th at hu-
111,1kc
furniture-tab les and thrones -a nd even room s in the
biotariat: the political "class" appropriate to the Anthropocc1w , I 1111
1of th is flat layere d rock.
the era of geophy sical capita lism. The id ea that, once we can 11'1
ceive the total impact of capit alism on life itself (this mom ent 11 Iii ,I ltl'lween the said and the unsaid , there we are . Ever- mu-
whi ch all biological life-as both "labor" and natural or mall'11ii 1111
rntang led. You are an archivist of end angered sounds. Pay
"reso urce" - is exploited for the production of su rplu s value 1, 11111
11110 the me mor y of yo ur sen ses, the felt exper ience of your
the poin t at which the entire biosphere faces exhaustion and uil 111lwrn here, there, some wh ere, in your bod y, amon g othe rs,
lapse), just th en does it become n ecessary to develop a new polit11.ii 1111111c,
on this earth . Collect mo m ents like layers of sediment
cons ciousness and new revolution ar y subjectivit y on the basis <ii/1/, , It, ,11r, water in th e vial of yo u.
as such. Hen ce a reframing of strugg les in term s of inter systc1111
,
and int erspe cies respon ses and respon sibilities th at recognize ''1li1 I) 11Hionalism arises from bioregional attu nemen t. Biore-
comm ons" as a system of ecolo gical sustainability, wr it large , i111.. lilc-place ) is a term used to define a plac e in term s of its
which human socia l re/producti on must fit. The proposition o( 1111 1 1.11
11ing systems rathe r th an to ecolog ically irrelevant po-
biotariat calls a new collect ive id entity into being , a new comn1<111 l l1111111dar
ies (such as st ate and na tio n). Body regionalism

I
24 Counter-Desecration EntriesI 25
 acknowledges all bodie s as inclusive of bioregion. If a birn, •
is the place wher e all conduct the business of living at all 11,1,
1
along all cycles of organic proces ses, bod y regionalism harn ,
implicit and explicit reciprocities to extend its po ssibilities. M ,11 t
perceived as an affective consequence.
bordered: It's November post-11/9 and I am in Mexico, in a t 111..
nia somewh ere outside Piedras Negr as. A rosebush bord ers a I\ 11
fence in the sma ll yard. Six roses sur vive ... perhaps from h:11 ,I,
weather conditions ... pe rhap s from thir st ... the rest have d kd
Perhap s it's ju st plain luck that th ere are still petals bloomin g /ii 1
organs bursting out of a fresh cut-open corp se. I watch childr en n 111
an d laugh because p erh aps joy is free. I overhear a white woman , :111
American like me, nearb y, reach down and pet a stray dog pa ssini:
us. She says, to th e dog, not the children: You must be so hun gr)
All you need is some love. I remem ber when I was in Romani a.
still have nightmares about all the starving dogs.
B-RAD (Bio-Regional Attachment Disorder) : attachment disor-
der characterized by dysphoric response to coexistence in biodi -
verse context with inabil ities to dwell in cosmic awareness with
creative agency ""
Treatment: walks "" local waterway/woods "" n atur alist train -
ing (see: Birmingham Audubo n Moun tain Workshop)"" hikin g ""
camping "" beloved(s) ""wildlife (refer to raccoon @ Desoto State
Park cabin #8 "" fox@ Rickwood Caverns State Park campsite #13)
"" improvement when power totems & metaphysical agents emerge
as vultur es, ticks ""
Cross-reference:"I can't abide what the world has become, the fro-
zen-ness of our product thi s evil thing that we kiss th e ass of every
hour. I want a dailiness that is free and beautiful" (Alice Notley).
26 / Counter-Desecration
l 11H (bot h verb and noun ) is a movement (constantl y be-
lt,•,c il just was) of digging deeper than the know n, as I've
I 11.,1s [ have acquired it and held as ground. Burro wing
, /1 111rowing from the unknowab le, for as long as it will allow
1 tt,·vcr it will give (no gift is given to be kept). Rather than
, 111hold tightly th e acquire d of my past, I will inqui re into
111wlng's gift, which might too soon vanish, ifI let fear hold me
I lit, 111 the likelihood of falling, which is always inward as well
t,1\\, 1rd somethi ng new, in all its ferocity, even if its gift is a wider
111p•,r 0 ( the void behind anyth ing I reach for, and beneath any
,1111tl.
1 , ,1kh refers to all species caught th at are not the target species,
Iii<II can be as high as 85-90 percent by weight (as docum ented
11 1'1('shrimp trawler fishery in the Gulf of California). We might
1 I 11regard many of ourselves as bycatch, caught up in systems of
l,ili:d plunde r and extr action. The comme rcial apparatus tha t is a
Ji, 1111p trawler is akin to a global econo mic system th at catches so
llh lllY bodies in its nets, in its slow-a nd fast - violence. Some of
11\ ,i re better able to surv ive the net s, some of us have the power
, 11 privilege or luck to move away from the nets, but many of us
(!,(.'cause of une ven econom ics, and/o r inst itutio nali zed racisms,
•,exisms, speciesisms, and/or xen ophobia that plays out geogra ph -
1t nlly) are unabl e to keep out of the nets. Bycatch, th en, is a term
1hat leads to cons ideration of multispecies environm ental justice,
witness, and kinship.
das ping: being with the bein gs and places you're with, setting
aside defenses, ego, and fear. Centered on physical presence and
proximity, clasping eschews intention and does not work toward
outcomes. Origin: clasped hand s; the hum an hand 's desire to clasp
Entries I 27
another hand, or anything handlike. Contrast with grasping(being
present or approaching presence, but with extract ive intent).
climacteric : a critica l jun cture, menopause , and in botany, a ripen -
ing process of increased cellular respirat ion . Beyond death, mor e
breath, beyond capitalism's logics of labor. As she bounds over the
ruins of bounded individualism into the beyond, sweat is still not
OK. Or aboriginal peoples exchanging sweat as greeting. "I think
too much of my skin -if it wrinkl es, blisters, cracks, bubbles, then
I am properly attached!" Beware of the too-pure, of eyes too fresh
they don't see. Here comes the menopausal whale distributing re-
sources, pod leader , versus young : womb, hoard , death . Throw out
your legal rights, autobiograp hies, and baby supp lies! She clears her
docket for work as she pleases though not without grief: her friend
in poetry in excess of productivity. Tender heart, not breathless,
depleted. World as fruit ripenin g on the vine, deat h sweeteni ng.
''After we think we've killed it, earth will still continue" becau se the
phytoplankton are talkin g, their invisible-to-the-human-eye tenta-
cles and pillow shapes calling for bacter ia to come swimming over,
orchestrati ng th e bloom that could cover it up and start again. To
connect botany to her body, she climb s up to the last rung, arms full
of mantra s, potions, and cooling breath because the medica l indus-
try is of no use, calling her heightened follicle receptivity a mistake.
Life is. Don't worry. Syndrome? Ha! Pr isms of electric color spilling
out of her mouth. Her belly spills over the edge of her swimsuit as
she sits on the beach lounging, balancing that big egg on her knee
un til it tumbl es in to the crack, deepening, a brand new hatch.
cloudygenous describes the results of lifestyles and p rac tices re-
sulting from living in the internet so that internet becomes the
"place" generat ing its own ind igenous peoples and/or practices.
28 [ Count er-Desecration
·1his could be positive-for example, when the internet facilitates
engagemen t with the universe beyond one's physical borders. This
rn uld be negative-for examp le, wh en th e e-magination of the
cloudygenou s replaces physical reality and engagement with such
reality. It's not an adjective that's inh erently negative or positive; it's
more comp licated, in the way a cloud can obscure but also generate
Ii (e-supporting rain.
wm municate (reciprocal verb): to learn, guide or be led, be led or
guided by. To be like the weather, in response. To see a dead squirrel
rotting or feel th e wind blowing or see a bud swelling or shriveling.
If you water a plant, you're communicating with it. When it exhales
ox.ygen that you can inhale, it's communicating with you. Through
attention, through care, inadvertently , by accident , throug h waste.
To listen, ask questions, to release your ions, to receive. Also, to in-
flict: what you (collective) communicate matters, charges. To over-
hear, be overheard. To move in a mass , as birds, ahead of weather.
- -, _)
conspectus : a single viewpoint offering a view of hills and moun-
lains, identified by their place-names. (see place-name).
A conspectus is a place where you can thread your eyes in and
out of the hills in a narrative sequence, with no fixed start ing p oint
or end point. The form frequent ly eschews sum miti sm; conspec-
1uses are usua lly located at ancient sites of dwelling-fo r instance,
confluences. Der ived from W ittgenstein, the term was first em -
ployed by the author in 2010, when he created fourtee n mountain
conspectus for th e Isle of Skye.
crypto-animist activism: the practice of commu ni cating with or
being aware of nonh uman objects, creatures, or presences duri ng
such direct actions as civil disobed ience, strikes, occupa tions,
Entries I 29
 demonstrations, or other acts of political resistance or risking ar-
rest. Crypto-anim ist activism considers beetles, finches, flies, m o/:~,
dirt, bacteria, foxes, lichen, reeds, or even houseplants within build-
ings that are having simultaneo us existences, whether related or un-
related to human agency or human intentionality. Crypto-an imist
activism can be practiced every( w )here (see everyhere) at any time,
whether metaphorically or not, and is a highly effective strategy for
focusing on "the un tended"; Jonathan Skinner writes that only po-
etry can "attend to the untended as th e untended, essentially leaving
it alone" as he asks us to consider weeds in disturbed land scapes
("Thoughts on Things: The Poetics of the Third Landscape"). The
practice of crypto-animist activism can be practiced indi vidually,
communally, or ritually, as Leslie Marmon Silko not es in "Land-
scape, History, and Pueblo Imagination": "Survival in any landscape
comes down to mak ing the best use of all available resources. "
curb cut: any small, subversive act ion that encourages justice, eco-
logical balanc e, an d local nourishme nt by cutting into the status
quo. When artis ts embark on works, or people on actions, that they
feel are righ t to do, but about which they wonder, "What difference
will this make?," this is a sign that they are undertak ing a curb
cut. Thus the term invokes discourses surrounding individual ver-
sus systemic respons es to ecological issues such as climate change.
Origin: from the rainwater harvest ing prac tice of making cuts in
sidewalk curbs to divert stormwater into infiltrat ion basins (also
called rain gardens); the practice reduces flood ing, filters water,
and nour ishes plants.
the deep :
Warmly,
The deep is a downward devotion .
30 I Counter-Desecration
Down here with her, I remove myself from embodyi ng, putting
on a different skin. The deep -The Below of Sedna's self-made
home. Strength is not easy.
Sedna says:
Come down here and help me with this phantom-pain-turned-an-
imal on my body. I deserve your love down here because I have not
deserved any of the traumas I have been dealt.
Descend through the razor-s harp slit, passing be yond the lifeless
~ouls and the hideou s cauld ron, to her in her own home, sea realm,
marine mamma lian realm. There is work to be done. They know it,
they have come here to do thi s for her.
Massage her aching, loving her. The "mistr ess of life and death"
needs be court ed, appeased, softened by shaman love.
desire line: the way we want to go. often the shortest distance be-
1ween two poin ts. an expediency. a tramp ling and then an erosion.
an accretion of man y subjective individual decisions. pavement- like
soil, cracked. outlaw to the prescribed paths of the state cl-landscape
architects. an ever-widening way. in need of care and restoration.
the opposite of meandering, an antonym of lost. a microcosm .
dispersal: of seeds by wind, ra in splashes, or in the fur or scat of
an imals, or by theft, espec ially colonial Brit ish; of species uph ill
in response to climate change; of human experience by language,
often metaphor (must we always have one to live by?) or forma l
exper imentat ion ("the self is a guin ea pig" - Leslie Scalapino ); of a
shifting gaze, which provokes a readin ess to move: look back this
way, see the ... ; of the self into decentered relationship with othe r
living organ isms by instanc es of beauty that may lead to fairness
(Elaine Scarry); as a rupture, even joy, because "one is several, in-
comple te, and subject to dispersal" (Lyn Hejinian).
Entries I31
 distributed centrality is an ethical value term for the equal cen-
trality of every being, place, and event, recognizing the coconsti -
tutiv e fluidity of those thr ee forces. On the surface of our planet,
the center happen s at every point. Such equally distr ibuted value is
necessa rily non totalizing and disconn ected: nothing is everyt hin g,
and no one is everyone, in an expanded everywhere. Distributed
centrality dismantles competitive judgments that are really about
power , such as prize cultur e and simil ar reifying exclusions. It's
an invit ation to be simu ltaneous ly at home and away, to value the
world's connected dispersals, to act so that th e center is a genero us
everywh ere. Distributed centrality empha sizes our ability to rec-
ognize th e water, the stone, the child, th e other, wheth er or not the
other recognizes us. These are human values we wr ite, and their
challenges are our cond itions. If everyt hing is equally centra l, the
importance of our actions is clear.
ditch: a conduit, often alongs ide a road or a path, which conducts
water, often wastewater, from one place to another. This type of
earthwork is cons tru cted to have a single use: conveying water.
As with a road, this single use is often flouted or ignored, an d
th e ditch become a garbage dump, a car hazard , a fishing pond, a
toxic site of play. As major rain events and catastrophic flooding
increase and m ake mu ch current in frastru cture obsolete, the tras h,
the effluent, and th e stagnant water tha t have always character ized
the ditch's promis cu ous, opportunistic, and polluted waysideness
begin to spill over int o the spaces a dit ch is intend ed to drain or
skirt. It is a figur e of lowlin ess, and as such is genero us (though
poisonous) toward those who wish or need to hide. And that's
the kna ck of a ditch: every thou m ight interact the re unob served .
Related n atu ral landforms inclu de th e gully, the arroyo , and th e
damaged spillway.
32 I Counter-Desecration
diversity: what will save us. Interrelation s and interdepend ence be-
t ween and among the multitu de of kinds of species, plant s, anim als,
humans, protect species from danger to reverse rates of extinct ion.
It is nourished by reversing kinds of thinki ng th at devalue diversity.
Pnstering the spr ead of diversity in all its form s, difference outdoes
homogeneity for greater perspec tive, expan ded ideas, increa sed
empathy; results in a stronger social, ecological, econom ic weave.
dysoptics: a strat egy of destruc tive rheto ric by wh ich a speaker
claims things to be mu ch worse tha n they are, in order to habitu -
ate the targ eted audience to the further degradat ion of said thing s.
l)ysoptical claims prepare the way for the intent ional ruination,
dismant lin g, or elim inat ion of environments, social programs,
regulatory agencies, or any oppos ing viewpoint. A subcategory of
dysopt ics reverses this techni que, insistin g thing s are fine when
they are not , and denying all evidence to the contrary (e.g., cli-
mate change denial). Dysoptics seeks to distort perception and can
be especially effective when combined with nostalgic appeals to a
golden past , extravaga nt promis es of a vastly improv ed future, or
some comb ination thereof (e.g., "Make America Great Again"). See
nome nsut ure.
earth : to bring (a perso n) to (the) earth. To cost the earth . Earth al-
mon d. Earth art. Earth artist. Earth auger. Earth bag. Earth -baking .
Earth -bank. Earth-based. Earth bat h. Eart h battery. Earth -bedded .
Earth -beetle. Earthbind. Earth-b ird. Earth-blinded. Ear th -bob .
Earth -bo ttom. Eart h -bred. Earth -built. Ear th -bu rrow er. Eart h
car. Earth chestnu t. Eart h- child. Eart h closet. Earth coal. Earth
con nection. Earth -con scious. Earth -convu lsin g. Earth -creepin g.
Earth curr ent. Earth dam. Ear th -damp. Earth day. Earth -delving.
Ear th-d estro yin g. Earth -devou rin g. Eart h -dim med . Earth dog.
Entries I 33
 Earth -drake. Earth-eating. Earth-ejected. Earth-embracing. Earth-
fed. Earth- flea. Earth-flea-bee tle. Earth -floored. Earth flow. Earth
fly. Earth -foam. Earth-fold. Earth fork. Earth- friendly. Earth girl.
Earth-glacier. Earth god . Earth goddess. Earth-hau ling. Earth his-
tory. Earth hog. Earth-holder. Earth-hole. Earth hut. Earth-incin-
erating. Earth inductor. Earth ivy. Earth lead. Earth leakage. Earth
life. Earth-line. Earth loop. Earth-lord. Earth -louse. Earth -made.
Earth-magic. Earth-ma ker. Earth-measure. Earth-measuring.
Earth-moon. Earthmoss. Earth-mound. Earth-mo use. Earth move-
ment. Earth-noise . Earth of alum. Earth of vitriol. Earth -oil. Earth
orbit. Earth-orbiting. Earth pea. Earth-piercing. Earth-pig. Earth
pigment. Earth pillar. Earth plane. Eart h-planet. Earth plate. Earth-
pole. Earth-power. Earth-puff. Earth-refreshing. Earth resistance.
Earth-rind. Eart h-ro ofed. Earth-rooted. Earth sack. Earths-amaz-
ing. Earth satellite. Earth-scraper. Earth sculptur e. Earth-sheltered.
Earth sheltering. Earth shock. Earth-shrew. Eart h shrinkage. Earth
sign. Earthslide. Earthslip. Earth -smell. Earth-smelling. Earth
smoke. Earth soul. Eart h-spider. Eart h spike. Earth spir it. Earth
spring. Earth-sprung. Earth-squirrel. Earth-stained. Earth statio n.
Earth-subduer. Eart h- surface . Earth table . Ear th -threaten ing.
Earth thro e. Earth tilting. Earth time. Earth-tint. Also calling to
(the) Earth. Earth to Earth. Earth-tone. Earth tongue. Earth-tread-
ing. Earth tremor. Earth-turned. Eart h-vexing. Earth-wa ll. Earth -
walled. Eart h waller. Earth wave. Ear th wax. Earth-wheeling. Earth
white. Earth-wide. Earth wolf. Eart h-worker . Earth-worn. Earth
worship. Earth -year. The ends (also end ) of (the) earth. To feel the
earth move. To go to earth. To lose earth. To make the earth move.
echoherence: logical or biological interconnection seen through a
lens of ecological situatedness. Example: She leaned on a larch, and
the shadow cast by the two was an echoherence.
34 I Counter-Desecration
echolocution points toward an ecological writing practice
ground ed in active listening techniq ues and attends to its formal
qualities through the incorporation of material elements from the
sound scapes in which the writing is present. Reflecting the pres-
ence of the many environments writ ing may inhabit-in its com-
position and/or its performance-echolocution also emphasizes
awareness and active incorporation of silence into the work-a s a
contra sting element to the poetic and nonpoetic sonic events, and
as a material ent ity in itself. Silence decentralizes writing , allowing
the emergence of the soundscape to quietly insist on its necessary
presence for such an ecological poetic practice.
ecobereavement: I think of how wrecked, how orange and cream,
Delhi is when I drive across it, the pollution like an inverted dom e
in which a person in front of you could stumb le and what you
would notice first is the seam of crimson blood at th eir temple,
an emphasis of the thickening air around them. An orn ament. A
brooch. To mourn or grieve in the mode of ecobereavement, de-
scribe the burnt verge, the spool of cloth you lie down on. This
is the asphalt of the capital. A makeshift memor ial. For whom or
what? But you're not thinking these things in the instant before
you yourself kneel then lie down . Don't get up. Nobody sees you
lying there; you can smell the shit on the soles of their sho es as
they walk past. In this scenario, you'r e a woman from a nonnative,
nonwhite ba ckground. You're the weirdest kind of tourist there
is. Ecobereavement: are the suicide rates of farmers in Karnataka,
Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Punjab , and West Bengal a marker of this,
as winter falls?
eco-justice poetry exists at the intersection of ecology and social
justice and culture. Aligned with environmental justic e thought
Entries j 35
and activism, inspired by the "17 Princip les of Environmental Jus-
tice" developed by the first National People of Color Environmenta l
Leadership Summ it, with the knowledge that racism, colonization,
and economic injus tice lie at the heart of environme nt al crisis,
eco-justice poetry seeks to decolonize our ecopoetry. Eco-justice
poetry recognizes the human right of all peop le to self-determ ina-
tion and the right to enjoy a healthy life-susta ining environment,
free from harm . We recognize the role of culture in creating human
bonds with the environment and the role of poetry in preserving
culture. We value cultural diversity and bring it to the forefron t
of ecopoetry, celebrating the diverse cultura l tradit ions that feed
ecological thought and poetry.
ecolyric: eco-, from oikos (Greek), mea ning "family," "property,"
"household"; lyric (adj.), pertain ing to the lyre, or characteristic of
song. Also, poetry that expresses feelings. Thus, ecolyric (adj ./n.) :
p erta ining to feelings of home, expressed musically. Songs of earth
and commons.
But what happens to your songs if the hom e of which you sing
is dep leted, contaminated, colonized, or absent? How do you sing
of home if you are in migration, forced tra nsport, or exile; if you
are detained, displaced, deported, or dispersed? What if your home
does n ot support or extend your form of life- your tradition s and
knowledges , gender expression, sexuality, attachments-and en-
able you to move and thrive? What if your home makes you sick?
Brenda Hillman wrote th at as people continue to cause environ-
mental harm , lyric does not sing "comforting ditties"; instead, "lyric
is rendered on torn, damag ed, or twisted strings ." Today ecolyrics
are songs of species loss, drou ght, disaster, toxic burden, attr ition.
Ecolyr ic is elegiac, choral, polyvocal, int er rupt- ed/- ive, allusive,
collaged, curated, compo sted, trans lative. It is documen t, art ifact,
36 I Counter-Desecration
dirge, trace. Ecolyrics are also songs of resistance, refusal, exten-
sion, and restorat ion. They demand recognition , remediatio n, and
responsibility.
ccopoet hos : a neolog ism of three roots, eco, poesis, and ethos, pos-
iLing a "house hold" disposition, wherein oikos has neither border
nor limit an d disposition denot es ethica l relation (akin to Gary
Snyder's earth house hold): both creation and creative mode . Yi
Fu Tuan's descr iption of topophili a- "The affective bond between
people and place" -a rising out of "experiences mostly fleeting and
undra matic , repeated day after day over a span of years" and Ed-
ward Casey's idea of implacemen t in landscape painting - the per -
son observing the landscape "integra l" to it, rather tha n outside-
are foundationa l to ecopoethos . When habit ation move s beyond a
passive residence on a part icular ground to ethical relationship via
Lhetopophilic sense, being , making, and eth ical relation become
integrated.
empiricism : nostalgia based on what was observed; a remem-
brance of th ings past
memory's simile: it was like thi s
(jellyfish shapeshifted like strange dreams in the sea; the monarchs
llsed to tack themselves to this tree, yes this one, like fragile scraps of
orange silk un til it seemed ablaze with torch song; once you saw a
whooping crane rising to flight in the white static of spring snow-
white into white, flash of scarlet cap-like a resurrected my thology)
in a sentence: as disaster capitalism plunders the remnants of its
late empi re, empir icism emerges as a despera te tenderne ss
prehistori c pango lins - golden scales like artichoke leaves, a rub-
bery pink nood le of a tongue - carried into th e African bush by the
Pangolin Men, who protect th em from poach ers
Entries I 37
 do-over by genetic de-extinction: 4.2 million cryovials of tissue
samples stored in a Smith sonian biorepo sitory
reflowering:nearly 1 mill ion seeds dream ing in the Arctic Circle's
Doom sday Vault;
Japanese robo-bees that can pollinate flowers, made from tin y
drones, horsehair, and a sticky ion gel, like that uncanny whir-
ring and p ersistent ticking of hope-o r is it hubr is?- stirring th e
coal-polluted sludge of our long- since-m echan ized hearts .
everyhere ari ses when anywhere is considered a vital "here "
through a situated affective human attent iveness. Descr ibes both a
multitude of such disposition s (in many heres) an d the possibility
of invoking m ulti ple subjectivi ties in a vital here (hence "every-
her e," as opposed to "anyhere"). Corresponds with poetic embed-
dedness or embodied poesis. Continuous with a range of healin g
gestures.
game trail: animal trail s wind thro ugh almost all wild landscapes.
Meanwhil e, about every road in North Ameri ca that fits the lay of
the land - that follows a river or valley, links woodland town ships,
heads in to the hills, or winds up a mo untain pa ss-was first laid
down by big animal s. Grid work neighborhood s and long federal
highways are the main exception s.
That road that takes you to a lake or river? Deer, elk, moose, coy-
ote, bear, or cougar took it first. They cut tracks through the brush
and knew the best way through th e hill s: when "the bear went over
the mountain," h e probably took an established route. Trackers and
hunters, then doc tors, gambler s, trade rs, and people looking for
lovers, walked along tracks laid down millennia earlier. Eventually
cam e h orses, carts, wagons. When the auto m obile arrived it too
traveled "the old ways."
38 I Count er-Desecration
Ghost herds of fauna, our first civic planner s. Let's call roads
game tra ils for a while. It might be instruct ive to get a book on an -
imal tracks . To stu dy it is to see a world that lies b eneath our own.
~eohaptics (geo:reiating to the earth; haptics: relating to the sense of
touch) describ es the extreme intima cy of ecological entanglement,
via the air, water, and matter we take in and continually re-become.
•I he nature of this contact is closer than any other as it touches the
body at every moment and level of interpenetration with "the en-
vironmen t" (and therefore th e impossibility of bein g disconnected
or estranged from it at all). Akin to Tennyson's description of God
as "closer . . . than br eathin g, an d nearer than hand s and feet" (oft
cited by Tim othy Morton) and e. e. cumm ings's description of his
lover "who se most frail gestur e are things wh ich enclose me, / or
which i cannot touch because they are too near," this too-near-ness
might also describe where geohaptics soften and move through
borders of discrete or indi vidual bodies or substances-t hrou gh
pores, cell walls, alveoli, mucus membran es, sense organs, and
so on.
geopathy: Earth feels everything we do.
geopoetics: from the Greek: geo (earth) and poesis (making). Lit-
erally, earth-making. Critical hum an geograp hy helps one think
about scale. Geopoetics migh t be mulch or comp ost or the build-
ing of earthw orks to collect stor mwater runoff and plant the ra in
in the desert. Co nsider land art , new environ ment al art, perma -
culture pract ices, garden ing. Or consider the Anthropo cene and
climate change as geopoesis-and hence, to return to scale, geo-
poet ics is a means to consider appropriate techno logy and polit ical
ecology, and poetry is technology as well. A "quest for wiser ways
Entr ies I 39
 of dwelling," wrote Anne Buttimer. "What we're concerned with
is a new world-sensation," wrote Kenneth White. Also, specul a-
tive more-than-human geopoetics: a reflective and refractiv e
earth-making that imagines and specu lates on alter-subjectiviti es.
The Great Plaints [plaint , n., roots ME playnthe, ME plau nt,
pre -seventeenth century plante]: plant haun ting. Conjured by un -
even ecotones (echotones) carved out by homestead plows. Litany
... bluestem tumblegrass purpletop needleandthread buffalograss
western wheatgrass switchgrass mannagrass salt grass wildrye squir-
reltail threadleaf sedge ... lamenting mass displacement of native
prairie grasses, agricultural succession of soybean and feedlot
corn. Ghost flora-toothed or hollow -throated - projecting auri -
cles, pollen grains fossilized in sediment. Purple, blue, green, gold,
straw, many -brown, black-voiced - plain to ungulate and glire.
horh izome : 1. the visible differant by which relation may be traced
("The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon" - Ralph Waldo
Emerson). Yet not sky, not beyond, but the foreground seen as the
beginning. From the ground, roots and branches, logic of resem -
blance spreading from no center to no boundary , things as seen sig-
nets distributed equally/unequ ally in boundless space ("barnstorm,
boom, boost, bulldoze/pan out, splurg e" -Ronald Johnson, Ark).
From the microphag e mesh to the farthest planet, horhizome ex-
pr esses the intersyst emic homology of the ecoverse. 2. Conversely,
the unseen horizon of center less relation. Provisional, in flux, in-
determinant, proce ssural, the unseen view, or prospect of, near/far,
above/below, leaping , neap ing, noding. Viz Timoth y Morton , and
the ecological thought "a vast, sprawli ng mesh of int erconn ection
without a definite center or edge. It is radical intimacy, coexistence
with other beings, senti ent and oth erwise." Horhizom e trac es the
40 J Counter-Desecration
node's node, the mesh enacted in a "quick graph" (Philip Wha-
lt-n), consciousness stitch ing relations in scale, above/ below, seen/
1111seen.
improvement: as used to settler-colonize and resource-dispossess,
ll'rdking peoples and nomadic intent, for example , and not-in-my-
lmckyard approaches to homestead management , all of which
illustrate the capitalizing of resources for exploitative profit . In
particular, the term improvement for the purpose of advoca cy
when justifying territorial seizure, in th e sense that we will use
I he resources better than those who currently have use of them.
Improvement is often a cloak by which to dispossess and displace
undesirableelements , tho se presenting unwelcome race and or class
,1ltributes .
The word improve is based on the older French for "profit."
For improvement read renewal, and nostalgia, for Boym "the
fantasies of the past, determined by the needs of the present, [that]
have a direct impact on the realiti es of the future."
A nested term inside these lines of t hought, the older Latin term,
rus in urbs, creates illusions of countryside, by building a garden
within a city.
inanimals: all of us on this planet who are fighting and losing the
battle for clear br eath. See unanimals (a synonym which is also an
antonym).
indigenous ecopoetics foregrounds how the primary them es in
native texts express th e idea of interconne ction and interrelated-
ness of humans, nat ure, and other species ; the centrality of land
and water in the conception of indig enous gen ealogy, identity,
and community; and the importanc e of knowing the indi genou s
Entries I 41
 histories of a place. Moreover, indigenous ecopoetics shows how
native writers employ ecological images, metaphors, and symbols
to critique colonial and Western views of nature as an empty, sep-
arate object that exists to be exploited for profit. Last, indigenou s
ecopoetics reconnects people to the sacredness of the earth, hon -
ors the earth as an ancestor, protests against further environmental
degradation, and insists tha t land (and literary representations of
land) are sites of healing, belonging, resistance, and mutual care.
inhabitant : an organism that cultivates and deploys knowledg e
of biotic community, contributes to sustaining life processes ,
seeks meaningful material relations beyond ecologically irrele-
vant political boundaries, seeks familiarity with plants and ani-
mals, geographical specificities, and so on; if human, engages
this knowledge through place-making pract ices toward a viable,
meaningful, protected, sustainable home. Examples not limited to
engineering water management systems (beaver), restoring native
plant communities (Aldo Leopold), creating pollinator sanctuar ies
(President Obama's "Butterfly Corridor"), protecting treaty rights,
tending small nests and gardens. Also, the writing of such an
organism.
inter-strand, drawing on Kamau Brathwaite's "interlap," a land -
scape metaphor for the process of creolization in the Caribbean .
A landscape poetics that gives a dynamic and three -dimensional
way of thinking about habit and habitat, human and nonhuman
activities and interventions - as fissured and fluid (more than "in
the cracks"/ palimpsest) , brushing past, reaching through. Waves'
edge procession and recession, carrying and uncovering; the con-
nections between cargos and wrecks, sparks and dissolution. In
canyons, cities, beach, and backland s: seeds disp laced from one
,helf to another, bearing crumbs of dirt. Sideways ramifications:
11
cw roots, new walls, new wires, new-old-new pat hways. Growing/
writing over and through; speaking/living with and under .
inter-c ontinents the largest spaces not-fit the only precon-
dition.
, oY AIENE : one can imagine a person, a Kfrankawa person (maybe
11ear Laredo or maybe on the coast of el Golfo de Mexico) some
time around 1828 reciting this word and a number of others to
Juan Luis Berlandier (who might be Jean-Louis Berlandier), who
~cribbled the words down on a paper. This paper was later sold by
1\crlandier's wife as part of a collection to a US American general
who was occupy ing Matamoros in the mid-ni net eenth century. We
can imagine that list of words somehow traveling to London and
heing acquired by the British Museum at Sotheby's in 191 3. We can
imagine Herbe rt Landar finding this list of words and then repro-
ducing it in an article in a linguistics journal in 1968. Now we can
read this word being republished in 20 15 on a poetry and poetics
website and in the book Ford Over in 2016 and again in 2018 in
this book. Yet in the space between 1828 and 2018 the meaning of
the word has been lost. Perhaps this word (its sound, its smell, its
weight, its dirt, its wetness) might be a map back to its signified, all
that has been lost.
Land is a word of intimate relationship. See akiw8gon.
language: a living archive. A communa l lun g that holds and re-
members all things through us. Made between our bodi es, language
lives everywhere. It travels and absorbs. A neural interconnectivity;
the kinet ic sensation is felt by all. It is composed of edges, imposes
edges, but has no edges. It is a phenomena l organ ism, an extended

42 j Counter-Desecration
Entries I 4 3
 nervous system that we all share. Capacious and metamorphic, in -
finitely adaptable, composed of and running through everything:
all the meat of our bodies, this recyclable air, the earth and the uni -
verse that suspends it, all the physical spaces that contain us, and
even all of the invisible, silent, or silenced spaces where languag e
rests, waiting for us to bring our attention through sound . Lan -
guage absorbs all things: silt, soil, your ear against air, each word ,
earth against the mouth. To make room, in language, for languag e,
listen closely. See repair.
making : the act and process of creating. Making that requires
mental and physical attention engages propriocept ion, allows the
sensation of body-being-in-place. This might mean handwork-
writing by hand, or manipulating objects that represent language
in space (or sound) rather than in mind or onscreen. It might mean
interspersing meditation or movement with writing, or practicing
a craft with physical products-whittling, knitting, repair-in tan-
dem with poetic practice. See Wendell Berry's "work that is re-
storative, convivial, dignified and dignifying, and pleasing" ("The
Body and the Earth"). Making may disturb or exploit a place and
simultaneously aid or enhance that or another place. See Bridget
Elmer and Emily Larned: "Impractical Labor seeks to restore the
relationship between a maker and their tools; a maker and their
time; a maker and what they make" (Impractical Labor in Service
of the Speculative Arts). Such labor may also help to restore and
maintain the relationship between th e maker and the places where
th ey make.
metabolic poetics is concerned with the potent ial of expanded
modes of reading and writing to shift the frames and scales of con-
ven tiona l forms of signification in order to bring into focus the
44 [ Counter- Desecration
1>ftc
n inscrutable biological and cultural writing intrinsic to the An-
1h ropocene, especially as this is reflected in the inextricable link
hclween the metabolic processes of human and nonhuman bodies
,rnd the global metabolism of energy and capital. We wear the en-
~·rgy systems that power our societies in the form of chemicals in
ou r flesh and in the hormonal messages of the endocrine system.
We house shifting communities of microbes that reflect our de-
pendence on processed, indu strialized food production. As a result
of these influences, metabolic rifts have developed within human
hodies and societies (obesity epidemics, income inequality) as well
as within larger planetary biogeochemical cycles (increasing atmo-
spheric carbon dioxide). How might we expand our capacity for
literacy as our awareness of int ertwined material-semiotic world-
i ngs grows? Attentive to diffractive m ethodological approaches that
encompass biosemiotic, transcorporeal, and intra-active consider-
ations, metabolic poetics includ es expanded prac tices that conceive
of poetry as an enzyme (Robert Kocik), or the hormone as a lin-
guistics (Lisa Robertson), or diagnosis as poetics (Eleni Stecopou -
los), along with other material -discursive entang lements.
metaform (adj./v.) describes the process of becoming, of physically
incorporating and transformin g the human and other -than-human
world by way of mat erial, embodied , and conceptual intr a-action .
In this process, our particular, corporeal embeddedness in the
world gives rise to ideas th at affect how human and other-than-hu -
man entitie s inhabit the world, shifting what an d how th e world
means, generating new ideas that affect further m ateria l shifts,
and so on. This concept derives from Mark Johnson's definition
of mind as a continuous intra-action of human bo dy, brain, and
environment (in The M eaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Un-
derstandi ng). According to Johnson, metaphor plays a key role in
Entries [ 45
 mind's emergence . Metaphor is not a deviation from the pri mary or
"original" m ean ing of a word, an unde rstan ding of metaphor th at
Marina Rakova calls "the standa rd assumption" (in The Extent of
the Literal: Metaphor, Polysemyand Theoriesof Concepts),but a pri -
mar y function and expression of our relational being in and with
the world. Metaform combines metaphor,form, and metamorphosis
to express the material ramifications of this logic. In lin e with this
definition, metaphor is not a purely linguistic or concept ual figure
but a linguistic expression of a very real material process; this pro-
cess is "metaform."
negative corpuscuity is a fantasy field of the Anthropocene corre-
spond ing with the onset of the nuclear age after World War II, in
which it was possible to imagine mass extinctio n enac ted through
huma n technological means and not simply as an act of gods or
supernatur al phenome na. The im aginat ive potential of negative
corpuscuity is in conversation with Keats's "negative capa bility,"
wh ich describes lyric possibility thro ugh th e poet's self-negation,
allowing for more intimat e relation ship between self and nature,
no longer in opposit ion. Given that th e nuclear age weapo nized the
exhilarating discover ies of the constituent parts of matter, negative
corpuscuity in turn views th e cons titu ent parts of matter, which
make up all our flora and faun a, as a field of "small bodi es" in in -
timate relation ship to constitue nt parts of the (huma n ) self. It asks
us to think of our bodi es on a minute scale of energies and fields.
Negative corp uscuity der ives from the term negative corpusculeor
negative body, the in itial term for th e electro n proposed by J. J.
Thomson , which was never in common usage. In other words, neg-
ative corp uscuity proposes to activate a different form of "atomic"
imagination, on e th at forges small-scale con nection s between our
material bodi es and the m aterials of our world.
46 I Counter-Desecration
Ncseihi (pronounced neh-SAY-hih ): an Arapaho verb that means
"to be wild." In th e Arapah o cosmology verbs go with either ani-
mate or inanima te beings (akin to th e way, in Indo-European lan -
~uages, words are gendered ma le, female, and neut er). Nese{hi of
rnurse is anim ate. It can mean to act spont aneou:ly, to be far out, to
Ii ve close to natur e, to resist being meddled with , to act with notable
bravery or stealth. To resist confinement furiously. For contempo-
rary humans I'd say it means to live largely away from technological
comforts or surve illance. Be skeptical of "things."
"Off the grid" is part of it- there's an edge of danger, there's
more self-reliance, also stronger habi ts of alertness. You develop
an acute sense of consequence where shoutin g help won't bring an
ambulance .
This means that you (or a coyote, a weasel, a wolverine, a sparrow
hawk) focus attent ion on your surroundings and stud y your outer
and inn er resources . To be neseihi is not to be careless. You take care
of tools, watch over weaker compa ni ons; you sing and tell stories.
You also practice nfit6uuhu (another animate verb). This means to
make wild anima l cries or hum an whistle s: a mode of speech that
passes directly between species.
nomensu ture: a stra tegy of reparative nomenclature used to re-
sist the deg radatio n and denial of scientific fact regar ding envi-
ronm ental conditi ons. Nomens utur e attemp ts, in its insistence on
clarity and truth, not only to name thing s as the y are, but also to
creatively repair and restore tho se thin gs by ensuri ng that they are
keenly seen and ur gently acted on. Various strains of this linguist ic
sutur ing system have arisen in recent years, each forming in stark
oppositio n to an instance of climate chan ge den ial or speciesism
(see dysoptics). But its techn iques are flexible an d have also been
wield ed effectively to rep air and resis t other dark propagandas.
Entries I 4 7
 When insistently applied by organized groups, nomensutural ac-
tions can change not only public perception surro unding a sensi-
tive environmental issue, but also affect policy, improve and repair
communication across a geograp hic area or blighted interpersonal
zone, and even rehabilitate local microclimates.
numapen: after the election, I had a dream; and in the dream, I
found a word. I woke up repeating it, almost a mantra; and every
day since, I've said the word to myself, trying to discover its defi-
nition. Here is the etymology as best I can construct it. Numa was
the second king of Rome. He put aside Romulus's warlike ways and,
to curb the violence of his people, made himself an example of hu-
mility and virtue. After his wife died, he walked through the fields
every day with a nymph , who dictated to him the sacred pieties,
which later h e wrote down in a book. He built a temple to Jupiter
whose doors were to be open when Rome was at war. During his
whole reign, those doors never opened; when he died, his books
were buried with him. But the etymology of numapen is also hom-
onymic (pneumapen) and refers to spirit , breath , and, in a Homeric
light, an aspect of the soul itself. The numapen, properly defined,
is a writing tool imbued with peace, humility, breath, and soul,
making possible a writing practice devoted to the same.
odontomancy : divination by teeth. To predict storm s, we watch
how the animals move. The chickens know before we do; we watch
them pecking at their food and see them predicting a tornado that
soon arrives: this is alectryomancy. Like reading tea leaves (tasseo-
manc y) or the bone s of similar chickens after a meal (osteomancy),
alectryomancy attempts to divine the future from leftovers, but in
contrast to those rituals, the one who moves the interpre ted ob-
ject is an animal. In odontoman cy, th e interpreted object is not
48 I Counter-Desecration
consequent but potential to that animal. Under some conditions
chickens can still grow teeth, ancient like flightle ss feathered di-
nosaurs . In response to environme ntal cond itions, elephants have
stopped forming tusks. To extract the full tusk-tooth, the elephant
must be killed, as a third of the elongated incisor is embedded in the
elephant's head. Thus th e elephant -poaching industr y has driven
elephants near extinction. However, very rapidly in the evolution -
ary timeline, even rapidly in the context of punctuated equilibrium ,
elephants have stopped growing these teeth over the course of two
or three generations. Under the right conditions toothless animals
refer back to their ancient DNA. Teeth to shred, teeth to chew, teeth
to bare. When they are needed. What can we predict by the pres-
ence or loss of teeth in a species?
orakinzop : oratory often sits in the shape of an empty throne. Why
not a mystical boat shaped like the body of our vowels, our owls,
head and smart tail and eyes of a bird? Truth's imagination. Its hoot-
ing. Its connectivity in relative space and time . The shap e of weather.
Kin, related to kind and child from akin, and see also cynn, kunjam,
kenn, kyn: family, race, sort , rank. Then there 's kunzop, Buddhism's
"relative truth," Tibetan, which posits the notion of "dressed up."
The dressed-up world is hard to work with because it is said to be
empty of its own nature. It fills gaps of all kinds. Kunzop is an outfit,
a costume , a self-existing show, a performance, an orality, "a living
theater." As a performer in the relative world, you want it to be about
you and things seen your way. "You could be th e audience or you
could be the show." We disagree. There's rampant ignorance, bigotry,
misogyny, racism, and ideology that want to enforce their versions
of truth. Distinction between unreasona ble and reasonable logic
breaks down , goes psychot ic. When we meditate , we might start
to realize what is known as the tran sparency and impermanence of
Entries I 49
time and space. (Absolute truth?) And feel akin to everyone with a
broken heart, all sent ience. The whole picture keeps shifting und er
our feet. But the earth we sit on as it rolls unde r our feet (imp er-
manence!) can be harm ed but won 't be fooled. We can't rem ove
the date from the Whi te Hou se website and make climate chang e
go away as an "issue." India's hotte st day on record: 123.8 degrees
Fahrenheit in the town of Phalodi , India's hottest day on record. An
orakinzop with brok en heart, communication, and measurement.
orrido (from the Latin horrfdus, a der ivative of horrere, "to feel
horror" [first half of th e fourteen th centur y]): a rocky throat of
tremendo us depth and beauty, form ed by the action of water falling
through caverns and down ravines, making for tumultuou s passage
into an isolated valley. Under mod ernity, a corridor from which
electr ification for other, mor e economi cally generative ·valleys can
be drained.
the other: to talk about "the oth er" seem s to predetermi ne violence
against this other. Actua lly, th e mere usage of the word other is it-
self a form of violence, even if it is used in a tolerant and accept ing
context. To ackno wledge tha t differences exist without adher ing
or imp lying a whole or an identity: a skin color is merely different
than another skin color, for exampl e, or a genital is m erely different
than another gen ital. When "the other" is an impenetrable whole
and not just mere differences, violence is poss ible: a person of color
is form ed by taking one -a lready constru cted - feature and redu c-
ing a living breath to it. This is symboli c violence par excellence.
An identit y, final and rigid , hence an "other," also and by necessity
final and rigid. Relying on th e category of "mere difference s," in
contrast, could help estab lish an ontologically flat sur face where
few point s of attack/vi olence can present itself.
50 I Counter-Desecration
overburden: that tear of ecosystem, or stratum of landscape (earth
"' l apart by human perception, cf. country, from contra), poor in
ltk designa ted as natural resources, or economically exploitable
111/,stances, such as ore bod ies, coal seams, or mu seal art ifacts
,,Iinstitut ionally corroborated history, and endu ring above the
,,,1111e-hence to be blasted open an d trucked away , to some pe-
1 ,11
/,ery classifiedas equallyprofitless,so that exploitation (the action
of/,enefitingfro m assets) may comm ence.
ovule pt: the med iation, disrup tion, and restructuring of ovu-
1.,tory time by anthropo genic environmental factors includ ing
lungfull emissions, endocrine disrup tors, hazy particulates. Also:
the reshuffling of ovulatory time's various marke rs by ant hropo-
genic time: thwarting , me diating, stalling, occluded, corporatized ,
post-Fordist , market -based approaches to temporality as a condi-
tion for subject ivity or livedness or dura tion. Reproduct ion's split
into marke table commod ities, egg as service, tissu e as surp lus, cells'
liquid jou rneys via tra nsnationa l channels of reproductive labor.
Occluded from view by a small rou nd word; no safe passage; it
doesn't last or stick; it sinks. A letter writt en in th ick dark ink. Time
and the slipp age of a tiny physical object, time congealed, a bleed-
ing sunse t. An incantation is repeated so is an argum ent mean t to
persuade tim e to bend like a sent ence. As feathe rs are not flowers
and a toxic California sunset repeats until it doe sn't.
(A ter m meant to be deployed within discourses of reproductive
Lime,queer futurity, and the market economy of ovulatory crisis.)
page-making: the human act of using available surfa ces and envi-
ronm ents as sites and materials in or with wh ich to produce writ-
ing. This can be an outdoor or indoor, digital or material, actual,
imagined, or conceptua l activity. It expresses the ubiquity of the
Entries j 51
 page as a frame of reference within or by which we cast the world
around us as a vehicle for human expression. "Page-making" usu -
ally casts the human auth or as the pri mary agent in the production
of writing, and therefore the "page-making" process, while the oth-
er-than-human material is cast as the page. Occasionally this dia-
lectic is troubl ed or confused, particularly when attention is drawn
to th e other -than-human makeup of the words themselves, to the
agency of the "page" or when an obstacle is encountered to frustrat e
the author's original intention . Very occasionally this dynam ic is
reversed, when the human figures as a page for other-than-human
writing. "Page-making" emerges out of a long-standing proc ess of
environmen tal cultur al processing; its troub ling and reversal offer
methods of eroding and transforming the dynamics of"page-mak-
ing" so as to explode the stable meaning complex from which it
develops. "Page-making" highlights th e role that the technology,
materials, and accompanyi ng ideology of writing have had in de-
fining our understanding of human and other- than -human agency
and auth orsh ip. See also Heidegger's The Question concerning Tech-
nology and Tim Ingold's Lines.
Panama is a faraway place. It is the crack in the egg of the world .
It joins the Oceans and the Sea. It joins the hemi spheres as the
Bridge of th e World. It is a place of many fishes and the homeland
of the liminal (though it is not limit ed to the limin al). Panama's
population is infinit e and uncountable, anim ate and inanimate, of
every form, every color . .. with no center or origin necessar ily ob-
servable. The Panamanian perso n is not limited to flesh, not bound
by any Western or Eastern category or mode. The heart of a Pan-
aman ian is evenly distributed throughout the mu ltiverse . Partly
because of its evenly distributed nervous system, the cockroach is
a Panamanian 's tot em insect. There is no boundar y to Panama in
52 I Counter-Desecration
any of the seven directions. Panama as spiritual state is made up
nf all possible valences. Because the domain and the target of the
spiritual state of Panama includ e everythi ng between past t ime
and contradi ction as well as the poles of each path of dichotomy,
Panama is mor e closely related to the structure and the quantum
nature of the qubit than to the bin ary structure and nature of the
bit. The third space grows from everything in Panama, even in the
partisan and in the otherwise not in-between. Panama is shape d
like a snake, a supreme ly yogic animal. Panama is the coun try of
union, hence and because of its ancien t indigenous yoga ("yoga"
as a putting together; see also Saloma and Tecumseh Repub-
lic). It is the count ry of med iation, part of an ever-proliferati ng
symbol of completion joining th e hemispheres, conn ecting near
lo far.
path (after G. F.Dutton and Frank Fraser Darl ing):
a path should merge into th e wild on either side
a path holds the foreground and assembles vision,
just as far as the hori zon
paths are interludes in- between episodes
a path is not static- it wanders past Time
a path is never straight, no matter how flat the countr y
trust a deer path over a hum an path
plan a path with broad feet & narrow eyes
pathmaking : a brid ge betwee n language and non discurs ive or
preliterate hermeneutics, such as divination or the reading of an-
imal tracks (see Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical
Method). Verse then (the plow's turn) as infrastructural recom-
pense in an era th at has disposed of th e notion of "public works."
Entries j 53
 permeability: a porousness that insists upon the copresence of th e
other, of the outs ide, of the self as other. Insistence on a copres-
ence, while simultaneously allowing for moments of dista nce, for
moments to draw back, to refuse, and also to reenter. A state of
compass ion and vulnerab ility that is an opening of the self and
an acknowledgment of the various systems (people, objects, ani -
mals, ecosystems, histories) that compose the self. A push against
erasure, a struggle to prevent multiplicity from destroying the po s-
sibility of a whole. An insistence on the metaxy of the body and
bodiless, of the ground and ground lessness, of past and present.
Neither subsuming, nor digestin g, nor rejecting the various com -
ponents that comprise and challenge.
phylogeny : coined by Ern st Haeckel (think drawings of diatoms,
shells, jellyfish, spiders, etc.), 1866, to describe the organisma l lin-
eages we all passed through; phyla (cpu;\~,tribe, stem, race, branch)
+geny (born). Troubled by Haeckel's repugna nt ideas of a hierarc hy
of "races." Wrest it from his hands and give it back to all the animals
and plants-we all passed throug h roo ts and branch es of the same
tree, beginning somewhere with a few mol ecules combusting (as
Darwin suspected , as genome data con firm s). In the mid -196os,
Lynn Margulis pioneered "symbiogene sis": we came about not just
through compet ition but through acts of symbiosis. We carry ev-
idence of species merger in our cells, of species relation in almost
every structure we daily rely on. Lobefin fishes did proto-lungs,
acorn worms might have done something like a heart, amphibians
did sh oulders, jellyfish saw first. If we let phyla be taken over by its
bedmate phylla (leaves, peta ls, sprouts, sheaves, sheets of paper),
we clear a mute space where we are all tangled in and leafing from
the same root s. (If we take it further, to its homonym ic neighbor,
philo, we fall into love.)
54 J Count er-Desecration
phytosentience: plant intelligenc e. The knowledge of and by our-
selves as nervous branch ings. Phytosent ience is that awareness of
intelligences that rouse at the light, are stressed or unstressed in
varying temperatures and pressur es, and are coded, like the Venus
flytrap, to acknowledge touch. "Plant- thinking, like the thinking of
our own bodies, is neither conceptua l nor pictorial," writes Michael
Marder. The deep consideration of the being of the plant, the cog-
nitive-emotio nal-imaginati ve process of th inking oneself as plant,
feels good. Plants ' awareness - their commun icative capacities,
their poten tial to learn, their phototrop ism - is phytose nt ience. To
be aware of plants' awareness is a form of phytosentience. We use
phytosentience to feel into ourselves, opening consciousness in that
part of us poetic percussion pleases. It's the sentience it takes to
be grounded at soily root chakra while crown chakra's thousand
petals open above the head . As Ronald Johnson wrote : "Linkings,
inklings/ around the stem & bra nches of the nerv etree / shudder
& shutterings, sensings. / SENSE sings."
place-name (after W. F.N. Nicolaisen):
a place-name is a sound-des igna ting reality
place-na m es are composed of wor ds for what a place once was
place-n ames color the horizon sink their roots into the past
a name is the place and its absence
place-name s frame
polychronography: temporalities smeared across various sty-
Iis tics in order to reveal and investigate materia l flows and ne t-
works perceived throug h the sequentia l process of writing and
reading from an individua l point of view. To overlay and to loop,
to name and to elaborate, to clarify by deliberate ma sh-up. To
Entries I ss
name measurements of time reflexively and make awareness ol
multiple flows incanta tory- a poetics of temporal and temporar y
reverie. To embed perso nal event s within human and more-than
hum an temporalities. To make referents slippery, to let acti o11
in one time flow become a current in anoth er. To use sound s as
connectives across tempora liti es. To body time . To fracture and
to reassemble as sup ernovas explode only to coalesce at distan ce
into new clouds that make new stars. Polychronography req uir c1>
cut -up s and atten uati ons, glints off hyperobjects perce ived from
th is portion of the electroma gnet ic spect rum and even writing th e
instrumentat ion of access, be it a PET scan or a radio observatory.
Polychronography recognizes and enacts mu ltiple understandin gs
of tempora lity, including tim e as a synonym for life itself and tim e
as measur ement. It can wade into deep ti me, the deep present ,
globalization's collapse of tim e zones, and even mod els of th e uni
verse that exile time.
protector : gua rdian, defender, one who stand s for an element , a
place, a sustenance, a human right, indigenous spirituality/co nn ec-
tion/stewa rdship right s.
Or igins: #noDAPL in th e Sacred Stone Camp, Standin g Rock
Sioux versus DAPL.
Use: to differentiate between protest show of action and praye r-
ful, devoted dedication to protecting clean water sou rce(s) from
highly probable contam ination by the oil industry.
Use: (2016 ) by Sacred Stone Cam p, Oceti sakowiIJ Camp, Red
Warrior Camp, unil aterally by all Water Protecto rs, allies, and allied
agencies.
protext is a species of political action that arises from acute crises,
such as th e recent rise of right-w ing nationa lism, the norm alization
56 I Counter-Desecration
11rracism and misogyny, or accelerated environmenta l depreda-
1ion. Wh ile protext is often lingu istic in nature, it can also proceed
hy way of visual or cultural literaci es, or other, extraliterary forms
nf signification. Protext can issue from the express ive possibilities
of' new media - the writing of computer code (to cite but one ex-
,11
n ple) can be a form of protext. While cert ainly political, protext
1s not programmatic, and its orienta tion is responsive rather than
reactionary : th e prefix pro- suggests affirmation, a viewpoint ori-
t'nted "forward, to or toward the front, from a position in the rear,
11ut, into a public posit ion" ( Oxford English Dictionary). Because
pretext is often a highly localized phenomenon, its performance
1s freque ntly inflected with anxie ties abou t its own efficacy and
whether its energies are commu ni cable.
radical empathy: to be radical is to be extreme, to hold intense
rnnvict ion, to come out of a roo ted place and, in an atomi c sense,
lo behave as a unit. What would it mean to deploy empa thy in such
a way?
Radical Indigenous Queer Feminist: a perso n that lives on the
intersection s of radical thought and whose politic s and daily rituals
,ire rooted in survival or acts of survivance while reclaiming and
empowering themselves and their communit ies through th eir in -
digenous cultu re, ceremony, and trad ition al practices . This person
is just as powerful and intelligent with or without having been in -
slitutionali zed by th e colon izers who have corrupted the harmo ny
human beings have nurtured alongside the land, water, sky, ani -
mals, and pla'i}tlife since time immemor ial. In acknowledging the
lcrm Radical Indigenous Queer Feminist, the individual is aware
of the pow er of reclaiming Western/Englis h th eoretica l terms as
a means to critiqu e those spaces in order to engage in discussion
Entries I 57
 about histories that have been erased or altered through genocide ,
forced assimilation, and incalculable acts of colonial violence. The
histories include, but of course could never be limited to, matrilin -
eal/matriarchal societies and leadership, reverence toward nonbi -
nary/multigender societies, nontoxic/Western forms of masculin -
ity that function outside the praxis of patriarchy, and various forms
of sexual orientation that aren't constrained by Western const ruc ts
of hetero sexuality or homosexuality.
reassociated : the body knows what the voice cannot. To return to
the body when it has been taken from you, build a body safer than
your own that you can fit insid e. This might be a cocoon of moss
and loam, woven in the loose shape of you. It could be a box of
water, within which you can float until you are ready to emerge as
if for the very first time. Or a book built of plaited senten ces that
rewrite a life safer than your own. See bodied.
reciproesis is from the words reciprocity (a balanced giving and
takin g of equals) and poesis (making or doing). Reciproesisis our
doing in response to listening. Reciproesisarises from the un cler-
standing that all making, all doing, is done in reciprocity with the
Land . Reciproesisgrows from th e knowl edge that we are persons
among other persons, that we live in gratitude for the gifts given
freely-for example, the water that gives itself to us, the green
plants that make food and oxygen from sun light and freely give it
to us all- that our making must be a giving back informed by our
respectful listening, our grati tude , and our willing and conscious
participation in akiw8gon. I believe that the indigenous knowledg e
conta ined in these words is cruc ial in creating a paradigm change
in Western understanding that will help us choose the green road
rather than the road of cinders. See akiw8gon, Land .
58 I Counter-Desecration
reconstructive cladistics: the reparatory capacity to perceive, in the
mind's mirror, traces of the cephalon, pygidium, glabella, and so
on, of one's relatives in self, in otherness; and the flowering effects
of this capacity on the quality of immediat e somatic experience.
recovery : to take cover and protect, dissemble, tear down, and re-
place. Recovery:from Old French "expressing intensive force"" -
force like a weed, seeded in the crack and grown. A vine that tears
down walls and reclaim s. Conceal. To make crumb le. To know
something about who and what we are. To be agent by which we
repair; to live as immune system; to resemble a weed's capacity for
self-regenera tion.
relaxatio n time has to do with how extinction processes occur.
When a species is under pressure, their survival might continue for
a lengthy duration before they succumb to total annihilation. This
process of time delay is called relaxation time (and the phenomenon
is also known as extinction debt). This time-based unde rstanding of
collective death relates intimately to the Ant hropocen e- a period
in which we are curr ently undergoing a massive loss of biodiversity.
What are the threshold conditions for human animals, other ani-
mals, and all other coprod ucers of life on earth ? How can a future
be imagined when there is a violent loss of biocultural diversity?
More than a hundred species go extinct on a daily basis, yet this
event takes place unregistered for mo st human anima ls. Relaxation
time speaks to the way we as human animals perceive our relation-
ship to other animals and the ecosystem. We hardly notice anima ls
(ourselves and oth ers) as well as flora relaxing out of existence.
repair: begin with what you have. Here, a clutch of syllables tied
with blue str ing-carnation, elderflow er, gardenia, thyme, and
Entries j 59
 thistle. A white candle. A ring of hair. Ink. Let it war p. To gather all
absences thr ough a door in the tongue. Silence to sound to skin, to
restore all things. See language.
repoise: Let's call it the inner-eru ptive tense (no t future , not present ,
not past ) emerging from repose.To repoiseis to not deny or avoid the
poison of an all-consumi ng-and-deade nin g event , be it a personal ,
local, politica l, or global poison. To repo ise is to act within what J
have been, and am, and may become. To find in the mid st of a po i-
son's numbn ess an i hidin g insid e th e deadn ess of repose , an i that is
a tin cture m ade of the poison, a little i right th ere, in the mid st of th e
numbn ess, an i born of th e disruption , brought awake, despite the
vortex ofloss surround ing me, an i th at makes poise possible, shock-
ing as th at may feel. Repoising reaches back, down , and forward at
once, edgy, itchy with int erest, and a little dangero us, a bridge-tense
moving fast, but one that is not the "bridge" of past-per fect or pres-
ent -perfect or future -perfect. The little i in repoise make s it a tense
that is never perfected, never complete.
resistance: to be rooted and unruly. To be integrated into local
circum stance so to dismantle m ono liths. To challenge monolithic
orders and defy languag e itself, to defy the ways of the castle. To
deeply see is to seek th e roots upward , downward , and sideways.
To see which processes monoliths serve. To cou nt er forgetting and
root, to expand and recognize stories beyond the m onoli th. Work-
ing with both roots and m ethod s of dispersal. To seek outside usual
patterns of percept ion by seeing the familiar in its multip le possi-
bilitie s. To ma ke against the production of unseeing.
ruins: not marb le, nor gilded monum ents, and so on (see Shake-
spear e), but abando ned strip mall s, condemned hous ing projects,
60 I Counter-Desecration
,•11
1pty storefronts, half-con structed corp orat e headquarters ("that
1 1~c intoruin" - Rober t Smithson), and foreclosed home s.
The United States has mo re ruins than any developed country
(Mike Davis). They constitute the most consistent prod uct of cap-
italism's voracio us and capric ious app etite, our m onu ments, more
llushmo re th an Rushmor e.
Freud likened th e mind to a city built over the ruins of a hundr ed
.111
cient cities and believed we must un cover the ruts and road s,
parapets and archways, over which the self is made.
Everythin g tends toward its end (ref. mort ality or entropy) . We
1car down, we level, we wire the old casino with explosives. In a
l rash of rubble, cloud of particle, "all that is solid melts into air"
( Karl Marx) . But for a moment or month , however long we let ou r
ruins stand, we mi ght look to weeds growing in parking lots, pull
back plywood shutt ers, and witness in them a rewiring, a rework -
ing, a poiesis, a release from form.
Saloma : an entity -to-entity intensiv e communicatio n, poetizing,
or philosophizing based on th e ancient Saloma Panamefl a practice
(e.g., https:/ /yo utu.b e/ fzCdy9PfonE). Can happ en intern ally or ex-
lernally. A qu bit-yogic practic e. Also potentially closely related to
complementary nature (e.g., Kelso and Engstrn m , The Complemen-
tary Nature). Can serve as a basis for coevolvem ent and inter sub-
jectivity with oth er life-form s and/or machine s. A h ealing po etics,
philosophy, spiritu ality. A kind of vocal and propr ioceptive yoga
("yoga" as a putting togeth er) occu rring on all po ssible levels and
in all possible arrangements across th e valley. Radical faciality. The
basis and ground of int erface. See Panama , Tecumseh Republic.
sanctua ry: a bounded space, without border. Wher e I am im-
mune from gods and ma sters, without need of defense. Where I
Entries j 61

am inalienable. This point in time. Impassable. No birth or death
allowed, only the living or dead. A place held in prayer, betwe en
hear t and asphalt. Shellmound beneath the park ing lot. Shin ing
island. Church with out priest or icon, only acoustic stone . Our city,
ecumenical - belonging to all inhabitants of earth. The once and
future university.
scalar: Isn't eart h connec ted to sun with an intimacy distinct from
the speed of light? There must be a process con necting one end of
Andromeda to the other in nonlocal time by which the galacti c
entity operates, that is, simultaneously. We see that star-cluster s
near the center spin more slowly than those on the outer edge of
the whirlpool. She spins, and all her stars spin with her. All conne ct
by a force without inertia, without size or direction, that's invisible
if viewed so slowly as the speed of light.
sci-animism : from the Latin scire, "to know," and anima, "life,"
"breath," "soul." The belief that science is a path to feeling the soul -
fulness of rocks and stars, plant s and anima ls, air and sea. Not an
embrace of pseudoscience or alternative facts, sci-animi sm argue s
for embracing an evidence-based love of human embeddedness in
the unfolding beauty of the material world, a love that calls forth
human care and intelligence. Sci-animism holds that scientific
thou ght and animistic identification team up in the Anthropo-
cene to guide the moral sense toward right action for a just and
susta in able future (q.v. Robin Kim merer, "Learning the Language
of Animacy"). To sci-animize is to engage in theorizing or specu -
lating about sci-animism; to sci-animat e is to breathe the life of art
into scientific data; to conduc t field research, informed by science,
that gives rise to new art istic forms. See, for examp le, composer DJ
Spooky's (aka Paul Miller) symphonic remix "Heart of a Forest ,"
62 I Counter-Desecration
\
composed during four seasonal visits to the Andr ews Experimen -
lal Forest in Oregon.
shadow: Even if I'm angry the cedar was cut down, par t of re-
storing balance is my response. New ecology, collective mind,
calls for expressions of growth. When a wood lily blooms, a chord
sounds. I feel tremendous energy flow from beautiful earth, for the
quantum is diaphanous, not dialectic, and permeated by starlight.
Time, transformation, uni fies. My anger at destroyed land provides
a structure that's appropriate , so I also feel peace - two emotio ns,
side by side , natural shadow. There 's still a world of contrast, but in
color, not black-and -white, and in change .
shelter (noun): "I really cannot fathom visiting Hawaii again . The
homeless, stench of homeless and rampant crime from ... gangs
have totally turned me off to this once beautifu l [place]." "The pur-
pose of this ordinance is to prohibit, subject to exceptions, per-
sons from sitting or lying on city sidewalks in the Waikiki district
Isince expanded]." "The encampm ents have grown to a point where
they're no longer manageable. It's really a last resort at this point for
us to be able to try and manage the area ... a new stored property
law will allow city officials to seize proper ty on public sidewalks.
IMayor] Caldwell has called this tactic a form of 'compassionate
disruption' (Councilman Joey Manahan). "When peopl e are moved
and they are uncomfortable, they mak e different choices" (Connie
Mitchell, executive d irector of the Institu te for Human Services).
"Something whic h affords a refuge from danger, attack, pursuit , or
observation; a place of safety." "Serving as a sanctuary in ancient
times for defeated warriors, noncombatants, and those who vio-
lated th e kapu (sacred laws), th e Pu'uhonua o Honaunau rema ins
a most sacred place to those who step foot on its grounds. " "Today,
Entries J 63
 you may visit Pu'uhonua o H6naunau Nat ional Historical Park, and
still feel the spirit of peace and forgiveness that contin ues to sur
round and bless this special place ." "The Pope Francis Laundry -
opened by th e Pope himself - is a place where home less peop le and
others struggling with extreme poverty can wash and dry a lo ad of
laundry for free." "We can find no socia l or moral justification, no
justification whatsoever, for lack of hou sing" (Pope Fra ncis).
skirt: to lift up and away, to shir k, to walk outside or around a zon e
of responsib ility or an im agined per iphery of comp licity. This de-
scr ibes the casua l and everyday practice of imagining oneself as be-
longing to the outskirt, edge, or per imeter of an ecological disast er,
both mora lly and phys ically. As observed in the act of kith lifting
the ir saris and under-petticoats to walk around, beyond, past, or at-
tempting to otherwise physically transcend symptoms of ecological
disasters in urban contexts-oil seepage into ground-gutters, tox ic
wells, garbage mounds , human waste tributarie s-in order to per -
form a moral tra nscendence of responsibil ity and codependence on
urbanization, underfunding of municipa l san itation, in formal or
gray econom ies, and comp licity with hazardous and substanda rd
housing . As an everyday practice, skir tin g attempts to cons tru ct a
cognitive map (see Fredric Jameson) in order to perceptually and
im aginative ly neuter one's own soc ial alienation from th e ur ban
"barrage of immediacy," where the cause and effect of environ-
me nt al policy, like a diesel-fue led h igh-octane ourobo ros, shit and
eat the sim ultaneous fragmentation and homog en ization of urban
space. Skirt in g is a daily practice- lifti ng yards of chiffon, cotton,
silk, and rayon blends away from organic and m an-ma de waste-
that underpins (but does not underwrite) a "system of operational
comb ination" (Michel de Certeau) composi ng a culture of con-
sumption. It pulls back, folds away, lifts up, and partition s any zo ne
of con tact between the disaste r and the self. See unskirt.
64 I Counter-Desecration
slow violence: from Rob N ixon: "A violence that occurs gradua lly
.ind out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction tha t is dispersed
K ross tim e and space, an attritional violence that is typically not
viewed as violence at all" (Slow Violenceand the Environmentalism
,f the Poor). W h at forms of slow violence am I participating in?
Name them. W h at can I do to mean in gfully reduce that partic-
ipation, to reverse that violence, or parts of it? Nixon: "A m ajor
challenge is representa tion al: how to devise arresting stories, im -
,1ges, and symbols adequa te to the pervas ive but elusive vio lence of
delayed effects." Work at this with lyric, with narrative, with other
forms.
solastalgia: a "psych oterratic" or earth-rela ted mental health con-
dition, solastalgia is psychic or existentia l di stress caused by envi-
ronmenta l ch ange. Austra lian environ m ental philosop h er Glenn
Albrec ht coi ned the term after studies on long-te rm drought and
min ing activity revealed there was no word to describe the un-
happ in ess of people whose landscapes were being transformed by
forces beyond their control. Solasta lgia- Latin solacium, solatium,
Lhe ste m of safari, "to comfort, console," and algia, "pain" -thus
emerge d to descr ibe this distinctive kin d of hom esickness . In dige-
nous inh abitants of Austra lia's Hunter Valley experience solasta lgia
relative to large-sca le open -cut coal-m inin g impac ts and will travel
hund reds of extra kilometers to avo id looking at what has been
do ne to thei r home .
south borderland: two nations or two ideologies abut. Theoreticall y
the walls are omniprese nt, but blurry and evanesce nt. The bord er-
land is a collisio n of two ontogen ies, thoug h not demarcated . Th e
difference is apparent in the people on either side, on their houses
and the origin of the ir colonizer and that coloni zer's lasting impres-
sion in the landscape. Inside th e border land are the furies and the
En tries I 65
disruplion s. Violence is a fog here. History is effaced by populist
amn esia, so in theory, one side is still a fresh occupation to the dis-
placed on either side. The border is the acute mirror to our hunger s.
sus-ten-ance: sustento refers to food, to livelihood, someth ing thal
provides nouri shm ent or support. It's growth but it's also a hold.
The boun ce of earth underneath my feet. But this is a give-and-take.
We can't be support ed solely by a hollow tree; it bends, then breaks.
Tecumseh Republic : among other thing s ... a postcolonial,
postrace, po st- united states, postbina ry, postcomputer , postcapi -
tal, posth uman/new ly human, postoppression, post-Ind ian societal
ontology respectful of and led by traditional holis tic indigenous
values. Named after the Shawnee leader Tecumseh (b. 1768- d.
October 5, 1813), who in the early nineteenth century almost suc-
ceeded in unit ing an Indian nat ion in victory against the largely
mass-murdering and racist United States. Citizens of the Tecum seh
Republic are known as Tees and have absorbed and tran scend ed
all techno logies previous to the endpoint of empire. The Tecumseh
Republic is reachable through el Cerro Sonsonate and other spir-
itual highp oints in Panama. In this way, Panama is th e Tecumseh
Republic's only entranc e and its only exit. No Tee is mediated by
the screen, and all emphas ize both internal and external face to face
communication. The Tecumseh Republic is bo rderless and perme -
ates all worlds on some level. See Panama, Saloma.
temenos: from the Greek tern- / to ma rk / to cut / to precinct /
to sanctuary / land designated to a king or ded icated to a god , a
sanctuary, a holy grove or pr ecinct , such as the Acropolis of Athens.
-a receptacle of divinity-a locality -a cup -
-a walkinggrove of sacred trees-a threshol d -
66 I Counter-Desecration
: : of mind : : of transmission communion : : of magic : :
: : of proph ecy : : of dr eam : : of mtn forest river ocean : :
: : of ten thousa nd dir ections : :
& all sound soundings mystic universe thought speech proces-
sion to light and then return.
terraque: combin es terra (earth) and aqua (water) to convey the
variable existence(s) between the two. I first came across the term
while translating Michele Metail's long poem Les horizons du sol
(Earth'sHorizons):
HAUTS - FONDS SI SU BM ERSIB LES QUE MASQUE DEPUIS LE
SOIR L' AG ITATI ON ENCLAVEE DANS UN MONDE TERRAQ U E
In the global context of troubled waters- drou ght, sea-level rise,
megastorm s- the word echoed and continued to sound . I wanted
to keep the sense of an agitated world caught between two ele-
ments, the harshness of th e q extend ing into unres olvable tension.
SUBMERGE D SHO ALS THAT D UR I NG TH E N IGHT MASK THE
ANXIE TY OF A WOR LD HELD BETWEEN EART H AND WATER
Instead , I chose the x of anxiety: X for the tremble of change.
terrotic: to be aroused- especially to action, conservat ion, rewil-
ding, writin g and / or revolution -by (or in) ecology, physical ge-
ography, and/ or nonhuman environme nts. Relating to the capacity
of the earth to awaken sexual desire or excitement [in part for har -
nessing into alternate ways of living and being on the planet ]. To
desire, want , or have sexual appetites in relation to planetary forces
and their preservation. An act of hum ans bri nging or coming to-
gether with the ecological nonhum an.
f.11triesI 67
t/here: the manifold is present in the singular. Walking through the
cemetery in late winter, snowd rop s flower haphazard ly among trees
an d fallen monum ents across a hill side, rain dappling my skin .
The dead are here, to o, and not. Dogs walk, sniff, defecate, race.
"Mother" and "Father " writ on stone: names from Dutch , Fren ch,
German , English , Greek, Italian , Islamic dia sporas. I, too, might
rest here, sooner, later. Under th e earth. The drumlins across which
we walk, spoil dropped by retrea tin g glaciers, scribe a deeper tim e
frame. While the weather has borrowed th e wet from Lake Ontari o
the snowdrop s originate in the Pyrenees, Caucasus, Iran, the Ae-
gean. For a th ousand years, the Onond aga people h ere dwelt, their
hom eland since reduced to 7,300 acres southeast of Syracuse. Lake
Onondaga , birthplace of the Haudenosaunee, bear s the freight of
two hundr ed years of city sewage, commer cial salt produ ction , and
heavy indus try; an EPA Superfund site, though rehabilitated, re -
main s one of the nation 's most polluted lakes. In the seams of my
shoes, trac es of south Louisiana mud adheres. Here and ther e, now
and then. All at once . All. At. Onc e. Hold that , be t/here.
thereoir: the markings that make a city legible; the conversation
between the languages of infr astru cture (markings on road s and
sidewalks made by utility workers) and graffiti (markings on walls
and trestles and tun nels), speech & reading, art & crime, necessary
& nuisance, renovation & revolution: between pigeon s as fancy &
menace.
Thereoiris how some civic langu age is sanctioned vandali sm:
necessary (marking existing utilities or where new one s should go,
where something is to be built or unbuilt ) & some , misdemeanor
(un-a sked-for, without permission). It's a matter of who makes lan-
gu age and where, who makes signs & do those signs say progres s
or decay.
68 I Counter-Desecration
Thereoir is identificatio n & anonymity, claiming territory, con-
cealing authors .
Thereoir is resistance, encoding, writing inside-la nguages out-
ward ly, communica ting ambiguity.
There oir is th e chara cter & climate of cities, the features of a
landscape we see and, in seeing them, read and make meaning.
torpor might describe th e rest state required of an activist. An ac-
)
tivist might enter a state of torp or so that she can con tinu e to thrive
despite the onset of particularly difficult weather and reduced re-
sources. After a per iod of torpor , the activist may be extrao rdinar ily
hungry and aggressive, bette r pr epared for a bu sy and demanding
season oflo ng days and night s. In her torpor state, an activist main-
tains her bas e convictions, but she will significantly slow her mental
and physical activities. In this way, she will be able to prot ect her
overall longevity. Even from a state of torpor, the activist can wake
up rapidly and thoroughly if necessary. Torpor does not last long
relative to th e activist's fully alert periods, though for the health of
the activist, torpor may recur on something akin to an annu al basis.
unanimals: to replace animals; to recognize that the original mean-
ing of animals simply denotes breathing and is not a separation/
d istinction between a false human /other species binary , nor an
insult to our mammalian and evolutionar y nature, for example,
"What are you, an animal?" Yes, you are. We are. We humans are
animals, and our animaln esses could-if we let it - unit e and con-
nect us to other senti ent being s of our planet. But, with human
development, that vital truth has gone extinct (like so man y animal
species). Unanimals reminds us that we ought to make a collective
effort toward th e unified and diverse needs and benefit of all of us
who take breath. See inanimals .
E11triesI 69
 unpersonism: wherein the poet ic subject is a site of total perm l',t
bility, of radical interconnection with the human and nonhum :111
living world. Not so much a negation as a dilation of Frank O'I-lu
ra's "Personism" -which famou sly proposes an eros of poetic ah
straction that evokes "overtones of love without destroying lovt ',\
life-giving vulgar ity ... while preventing love from distractin g
into feeling about the person." Unpersonism proposes a more
inclusive embrace, an eros that extends from the intraspecies lo
the cross-species to the plan etary, with "all life-giving vulgarity "
int act.
Unpersonism can be poetically manife sted by many mean s, in
eludin g a probing of one's position in time and space, in which the
indi vidual dissolves into the gene pool, the species into the ecosys
tern, and the ecosystem into a continuum of changing relationships
and dependencie s. At its mo st extreme, unpersonism may extend
out to the univer se, where it attains a state of cosmic anonym ity,
a form of the ulti mate communal. At another extreme, it conjures
an image of a ro ck formation in which human fossil remains lie
intermingled with evidence of mass plant and animal extinctions.
It is this apparition of future ruin that compels the backward-fac ing
angel of history to turn around and face her destiny as the angel of
the Anthrop ocene .
unskirt: to touch the disaster. To touch , not with the vulnerable
body: the warm, bony ankle dampened by sewage; the full, dark
calves splashed by the welJ water swirling with mercury ; the muscles
atrophyi ng with governm ent -sanctione d toxicity; the heaving sor-
row and n ausea of entire towns. But to touch the disaster as a body
politic by wrapping our selves together in the yards of a constitu-
tional right to protect what is ours - our bodies, our welJs. See skirt.
70 I Counter-Desecration
use without using: to practice "use" nonexp loitatively. Wh ich is
lo say, to use not just toward "renewal" (recycling, remed iation) or
'\ ustainabi lity" (the preser vation of natural resources under capi-
talism) but with a more radical sense of ecology guided by nonex-
ploitative relation in though t and practi ce. Whereas using in thi s
l0 ntext implies "using up" (exhau stin g, destroying), use suggests
l,1king up somet hing with (a) future (user) in mind. Use also im-
plies mindfulness of that which is being used (as a respect ed object
or subject of mutual recognition). Use without using is an ethi-
cal-political practice that is anticapitalist, antim isogynist, antirac-
isl, and anticolonial because it perceives these categories as integral
to the imminence (and immanence ) of ecological catastrophe. One
could do worse than to look to indigenous nation s/groups for mod-
els of use without using in practice, since such groups see land use
as coextens ive with correct political, economic , and legal practices
(health, just ice, governance, kinship, aesthetics). One could also do
worse than to look to those who have been denied much by the cur-
rently domin ant modes of political and economic life (capitalism,
neoliberalism, settler-colonialism) because, by necessity, they have
innovated on the meanings of use without using in pr actice. What,
for instance, are the forms of use without using that emerge through
"zones of non -being" -Frantz Fanon's phrase for the desert-like
(sociopolitical , economic, and legal) climates in which colonized
and dominated subjects persist?
vira l avatar: At the jubilant vertex of the most mathematica11y se-
rene viral coding, we achieve vira l avatar, the ho st in whose farthest
cell a par ticular virus has most plentifully inscribed its formula.
While multiple viruses abide contentedly in a given, begott en bi-
ome, there are chronospher ic fields in which a discreet virus might
Entries I 7 1
 ''"' 11 ii ., 11
;1111e
so repeatedly
as to become synonymous with host
I ht \ v,rus attains its crown, its ma ntle, its avatar form . As travel~
ihl' hosl throug h the world, so travels the virus, spelled aloft. 11w
human host genera lly refers to un ion as love, but shuns viral eros.
We cannot explain the pain th is engenders . The animal host re
gards u nion as survival, but similarly shuns viral bios. The plant
host knows union to be vibration, but would rather sever from ils
root than transcend to viral rh izome. The fungal host recedes . TI1e
bacteria l host ch ars its garment. Our hosts find only the other to
be toxic. They wish to make a pure sound for a pure ear in its clean
colony alone. They crave no vibration other than cradle. The oyster
mushroom, the dysente ry bacillus, the bat, the willow, the saint, th e
limb ic other. We cannot explain the pain this engenders, and even
less reject the union .
vivitocracy: a social m ind-set built on the idea that all life deserves
equallyto exist. No discern ible characteristics enable a hierarchy of
value to subsist among life-forms of any kind in such commun ities.
In a vivitocracy, "mean ingful expressions of care," to quote Fred
Rogers, are rampant and undeniab le.
Small vivitocracies have been seen throughout history in tim es
of immediate crisis and are destined to proliferate in the present
day. After Hurricane Katrina, the Atlantic published "Finding Sol-
idar ity in Disaster," an article about vivitocracies that formed; ac-
cording to its author, Jacob Remes, "disasters serve as remi nders
that everyone is dependent on their friends and neighbors, and that
those relations h ips need not be media ted by the state . Indeed, they
are often better left unstruc tured by the state."
Vivitocracies arise on their own out of mutua l respect, concern,
and need . The current global environmental crisis requi res vivitoc -
racies in order for the planet as we know it to surv ive.
72 j Counter-Desecration
walking: movement through an environmen t whether sinuous or
along a rat iona l tra nsect that opens space up to time and embeds
lime in space. The mode of transport scaled to th e human body.
'[he nond irected activity that introduces us to our neighbors, with
mutual opportunities for eye contact, smell, sound, commu nication.
An extension of writing, on foot and in the air. An ecopoetics be-
yond the "house" of oikos,walking, writing, and/o r drawing are the
beginning of (huma n) ecology; oth erwise, we are just dealing with
one another's needs from the outside, with little opportun ity for
noncoe rcive exchanges within a commo ns. Walking makes a line,
tracing the irreve rsible, time-bo und cond ition of the human me-
tabolism (cf. Richard Long). Like a transect or (famously) Thoreau's
railroad cutting, walking reveals at the same time that it encloses.
washland refers to the specific launder ing (as with money) of a
city park located between the downtown business district and an
impover ished comm unity unde rgoing gentr ification in Cincinna ti,
Ohio. Wash/and also refers to any cleansing (e.g., by oil-see Stand-
ing Rock, merely the most recen t example of neocolo nial betrayal
of trea ties between conqueror and conq uered) of a land, a cleansing
of its biologica l, geological, and/or mar ine forms of life in order
to extract its nonliving resources. The United States of Americ a
is mere ly one country that can also be called washland, but to the
extent this cleansing - primarily ethni c-was never complete (Na-
tive America ns were not drive n to extinction), "we" have a mora l
impera tive to resist the tota lization of bio -geo-ethno -cleansing
however much such erasures have found revived inspiration in the
imminent future.
watershed: At the con flue nce of two rivers, the Schuylkill and
the Delaware, William Penn settled his city in 1682. Built on the
Entries I 73
 southeastern edge of fertile Pennsylvania piedmont, Philadelphi :1
tilts; its creeks and stormwater dra in into the Delaware's great basin .
From landscaped lawns to the Wissahickon to the Schuylkill, fron1
city streets to the Tacony to the Delaware-all the water th at falls
and runs works its way, if it can, south, to the Atlantic. Everythin g
the water touches leaves traces that travel with it: lead, chrom ium -6,
Roundup, PFAS, mercury, benzene, sulfuric acid. Plastics and micr o-
plastics. Hormones, antidepressants, countless pharmaceuticals. Be-
cause the rivers flow through our bodies, too: raw river water, once
treated and drinkable, enters us and exits as urine and other fluids
that flow back into the Delaware after they too have been treated.
The water holds on to everything treatmen t doesn't remove. Though
land, city, bodies all shed water, water, that universal solvent, can't
shed its own memory, can't help but tell us of all it has touched .
way-dwelling :
• length of time spent in a single spot, say, when tran sfixed by th e
first spring call of a cuckoo
• enthralled
• cherry blossoms may be enjoyed for a week
• deep compassion for the place in the moment
• the unfamiliar foothold of immediacy
• waves are sea's way-dwelling
• a second of low winter sun illuminati ng butterbur bud-nubs
• the ephemera l is a matter of timescale
• the cry of the buzzard is one with the ear
• an involuntary surrender to place and time
weave watching: residing in the flow of the visual with another
being's resonating body.
At the Point Reyes lighthouse, a gray whale weaves in and out of
74 I Counter-Desecration
the surf in a glistening patch of the Pacific. What is it for the whale
to come in and out of our sight, to see the whale's intelligence and
desire weave through water and air, to understand a negotiation of
needs and desires? A snack, then a spout. Why is the feeling me-
dicinal to watch a fluid body surfacing and submerging? A rock or
plant or animal, luxuriating in its form, weaves through mediums.
Does the whale feel being seen?
Jean-Luc Nancy distinguishes the tim eliness of sensing: The vi-
sual persists until its disappearance;the sonorous appears and fades
(/wayinto its permanence. But the visual can dive and also resurface.
This resurfacing is the wild, hopeful , vulnerab le, and unexpected
of the unknown. It is an anticipa tory consc iousness. Nothi ng in
sight is stable. Everyone's fluidity's a multispecies event. When we
keep our form in sight, sight weaves us, an d our intelligence can be
carried within it.
witness : witnessing involves an idea of significance equivalent to
truth. "Earth from deep space looks blue and alive, they said . .. I
heard words, but the sound carried different meaning to my body
... . 'Use these new words, enhanced by your imagining , to allow
dimensions to emerge,' they said." Care is requ ired for witness to
resonate energetically with listener, however nonc halant I appear.
The more compassion one ha s for nonnorma l experiences of oth-
ers, the sooner mas s consciousness will shift toward the stars . To
him, this means shi fting the ethical structure of com municating a
narrat ive. "I think of myself in a service capacity."
woveness: be-cause we, worlds, words are "of green stuff woven,"
seeded, fleeting, tendrilled, tendreled, us, this flux we freeze-frame .
Ou r sensing-say ing-severs or sutures. Be-cause language lives
between breath and flesh, it can bind back (ligature, religion) inn er/
Entries [ 7 5
 rn 11,·1, j1i1, 1 (mol)/future (rot, seed), thought-map/felt-ground un - M AR T HE REED
dl'1 fo o l. Voices: visceral, animal; tech and text. Context: the world
Is wove n (too close to see). Poetics as weaving, seeing the seams,
fccling a wayalong the threads , the web. Learn ing how we are made
as we make. Cicada-call, cellphon e, sound through skin th is August
n ight. "~~M[W~[RfINBflW[[N"
Sp eaking-Through Contiguity

A glowing eel in the darkness- anguish.

I le clacks the beads, how to live, where to go.
Arthur Sze I "Strike-Slip"

"Life is not just networked; it is network," 1 biologist David George

Haskell observes, yet where in that network does th e hu man fit?
Decoder? Recode r ? Maste r? Our species has a long, troubled hi s-
tory with the illusion of mastery. The spiraling causes and conse-
quences of ecological crisis - clim ate change, rising sea levels, toxic
landfills, p oisoned water and neighborhoo ds, collapsing fisheries,
destroye d com mun ities - lies within a lie, or a rath er, a conce it: a
false dichotomy separating humankind from all oth er const ituent
eleme nt s of the living world. Human and Nature, distinct and iso -
late, resonate in polar opposit ion , leaving humank ind unrespons ive
to our comple xly interpenetrated conditi on: imaging ourselves cut
off wh ile deep in the midst .
Timot hy Morton , in Ecology without Nature, reframes the hu -
man/o ther -th an-hum an relation as "drastically collective," to em-
phasize the environm ent as a site of political im perative : ''All kinds
of beings, from toxi c waste to sea snails, are clamo ring for our sci-
entific, political, and artistic att ention, an d have beco me part of

76 I Counter-Desecration