notes

“Racism is integrally linked to capitalism. And I think it’s a mistake to assume that we can combat racism by leaving capitalism in place. As Cedric Robinson pointed out in his book Black Marxism, capitalism is racial capitalism. And, of course, to just say for a moment, that Marx pointed out that what he called primitive accumulation, capital doesn’t just appear from nowhere. The original capital was provided by the labor of slaves. The Industrial Revolution, which pivoted around the production of capital, was enabled by slave labor in the U.S. So, I am convinced that the ultimate eradication of racism is going to require us to move toward a more socialist organization of our economies, of our other institutions. I think we have a long way to go before we can begin to talk about an economic system that is not based on exploitation and on the super-exploitation of Black people, Latinx people and other racialized populations.”

If you made a creature with eyes covering every inch of his body God would still be able to creep up behind him. And deftly, without trying. And with a playful wave of his hand he creates billions of intricate dream landscapes every night. And he ripens a bunch of grapes as if he has nothing else in the universe to do—who said that? Galileo? About the sun. But it’s the same idea. 

... making art an experience that is only marginally human and giving the status of artist to all living things.

Plants and trees are the only ones capable of capturing solar energy and storing it as a chemical bond within the mineral matter of the planet. From this perspective, they have a veritable cosmogonic function: they engender our world minute by minute, they secrete the matter that discreetly circulates from body to body, from individual to individual, from species to species. This universal food is the sunlight housed within earthly matter. [...] Thanks to them, food is a secret trade in light that is consumed from body to body.

“I had a moment of clarity, saw the feeling in the heart of things, walked out to the garden crying.”

The first spring storm was last night, and this morning, as if they had been summoned from the mud by the thunder, the wet woodlands were filled with chorusing peeper frogs.

“There is nothing purely human, the vegetal exists in all that is human, and the tree is at the origin of all experience.”

Michael Moore is right. Green Energy is not an alchemy. It can offset but not undue over-consumption. Drastically cutting all consumption is the only viable option.

“…that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow; it is a goldsmith’s art and connoisseurship of the word which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento[slowly]. But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of ‘work’, that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which which wants to 'get everything done’ at once.”