Monday musings

Just got a book in the mail.

How Forests Think by Eduardo Kohn.

I feel like I want to stalk around it a while before I pick it up and start the read. I can already feel that its going to do something to the way I see things and think. Love that about a book but its also hard work. A commitment to go on a journey, rearrange all the closets in your mind.

I don’t know about you but I store ideas, stories, facts and experiences that may not ‘fit’ in any particular world view I hold but never the less are pertinent or intriguing in some way that I want to keep them handy. Like a jigsaw piece that you put to the side and wait for the moment when its space is created and you can fit it into the whole. I tend to do this a lot with my relationship with nature. You can probably tell by the imagery in my blog and my prose that this inter-phase with nature and self is an important theme for me.

There are 3 things that are floating in my mind as I think about starting this book. A kind of anticipation  “will this book go part of the way in helping me to add these pieces together” They are pretty ‘out there’ and a bit of a ramble to explain so I’ll spare myself the disclosure. But the interesting thing is having not  thought about them for years they are brushing off the dust and eager for me to start the read while taking them into account.

I find a similar thing happens when writing romance. Themes come up and coalesce and they seem to awaken pertinent things that connect; an article I read, lyrics to a song, a mood, images, a movie. They all seem to step forward to bring a symbolic wallpaper around the desk as I write infusing the story and characters.

These more anthropological/shamanistic reads like How Forests Think, do the same thing but on me directly rather than a manuscript.

Anyway perhaps I’m just procrastinating…..I’ll have to put genre aside for a few nights and sink into the amazon…. the book promises.. ‘to call into question our central assumptions about what it is to be human’…. hmmmmm. I definitely see a mental spring clean to assimilate even a fraction of what that promises.

If I get excited I’ll share.

Elsa Holland