October

“I experienced awe and wonder at this world we live in. How incredible existence is. The probability of our being here, of having survived as a species in this tiny spec of a planet. I was gripped with a desire to keep going – to experience more of this thing we call existence. It dawned on me how precious life is (Bradley, 2023). But “how do we make Earth a credible base if the land has already been appropriated and reterritorialized by those who are carving it among themselves into so many juxtaposed nations with no common ideal other than the war of each against all?” (Latour, 2023).

Nick Bradley (2023), Four Seasons in Japan. Bruno Latour (2023), After Lockdown: metamorphosis. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC). October, 2024.

July

"how can humans serve as sources of healing and regeneration for every living system they affect?" Regenerative Development and Design, a research study by Leen Gorissen, Karla Bonaldi, Piet Haerens and Lénia Rato. 

A simple question that can help us align our paths to solve the growing crises we are facing. Instead of prescribing a one-way route, the approach invites human actions fostering healing and regeneration as guiding rules/principles. Although holistic, it allows space for individual reflection of actions a person wants to follow (our own paths), but at the same time integrating the living systems we are part of, like communities, countries, climate, nature, organizations or religions. 

Going back to the uniqueness of the study, “not about sustaining what is or restoring what was” but “about creating thriving living systems—social-ecological systems such as places, organizations, communities, and ecosystems—that have the capacity to evolve toward increasing states of health, vitality and abundance over time”. The approach “calls for a new role for humans: to become agents of new vitality and evolutionary capability and to live in conscious alignment with living systems principles of wholeness, nestedness, relationship, and reciprocity, harmonizing human development with the way life works.” 

Engaged in thinking about “what does it take to actively create the wisdom, willpower, and capability to become co-creators of a brighter future, rather than being victims of the mistakes of our past”, while staying within the planetary boundary limits. 

While widening my horizons, I am healing and regenerating by acting on reducing consumption and litter, creating and taking care of a forest in a balcony city apartment (incorporating organic waste as compost and infrastructure), weaving plants into sensorial tapestries, reading and cultivating myself about other beautiful paths, investing in beings that cooperate and flourish together, and actively divesting in things/beings aligned with destruction, greed and revenge.

Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC). Lisbon, May 3, 2024.

June

"(...) from wholeness as a living plant to fragment strands and back to wholeness again as a" tapestry. "The dual powers of destruction and creation that shape the world. Strands once separated are rewoven into a new hole." Grief can "be comforted by creation, by rebuilding the homeland that was taken. The fragments, like ash splints, can be rewoven into a new whole." Robin Wall Kimerer (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.

Photo of tapestry (76 x 82 cm) by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) June 20, 2024.

sugar and oxygen

"Carbon dioxide plus water combined in the presence of light and chlorophyl in the beautiful membrane-bound machinery of life yields sugar and oxygen." Robin Wall Kimerer (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 2024.

March

O tempo oferece palcos onde vamos esculpindo vidas. A nossa e a de outros seres que se entrelaçam na nossa. O tempo, esse grande escultor, de Marguerite Yourcenar. No das plantas e no meu, recomeça um novo ciclo. Juntas, vamos esculpindo o tempo. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 2024.

February

"Beauty is not only formal, and lies not only in the superficial qualities that are appealing to the eye or ear, it lies in patterns of meaning, in evocations of values, and its connection to the life the reader is living and the world she wants to see." Rebecca Solnit (2022). Orwell's Roses. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 2024.

unselfing

"Observing something beautiful" is "an occasion for unselfing" and it "may well hold the key to our collective survival. Because it means that our role here on earth is not simply to maximize the advantage in our lives (...). It's to maximize (protect, regenerate) all life. We are here not just to make sure we as individuals survive, but to make sure that life survives. (...) We must attempt, with great urgency, to imagine a world that does not require Shadow Lands, that is not predicated on sacrificial people and sacrificial ecologies and sacrificial continents. More than imagine it, we must begin, at once, to build it." Naomi Klein (2023). Doppelganger. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

September

"Build a life that you don't need to escape from." "If true peace and clarity are what you seek in this life (...) know that you will find them nearby and not faraway". Ryan Holiday (2019). Stillness is Key.

 

Photo: Probably the smallest garden in the city: tropical part. Taken in august 2023 by Monica Pinheiro. Free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

July

"When you can see yourself from outside, you contemplate existence with more humility and perceptiveness than when (...) you imagined yourself as the best self, your city as the best city, and what you called life as the only conceivable life." Rafael Argullol cited by Irene Vallejo (2022). Papyrus: the invention of books in the ancient world. Photo by Monica Pinheiro, free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

July

"It's a strange sort of pain. (...) To die of yearning for something you'll never experience." by Alessandro Baricco (1997). Silk. Painting: gouache and watercolour. June, 2023.

September

"Cloth can come from plants (cotton, linen), animals (sheep, silkworm), and, since the nineteenth century, from synthetic material and processes, namely plant-derived celulose liquefied and then extruded into strands (rayon) and various chemical recombinations of petroleum (nylon, spandex, polyester)." Sofi Thanhauser (2022). Worn: A People's History of Clothing. Photo by Monica Pinheiro free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

October

"(...) it's not really about technology, but instead more about the quality of your life. (...) you'll come to realize that digital minimalism is much more than a set of rules, it's about cultivating a life worth living in our current age of alluring devices." Cal Newport (2020). Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Photo by Monica Pinheiro free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

June

"What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself." Dreams by Nuage. Tapestry and photo by Monica Pinheiro (PT20220615). License CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

March

 

"Turning points in a life that seemed set on a predictable path suddendly emerge. (...) a reality check sets in. Once past certainties have collapsed, one begins to look at the world with different eyes. Emotions change. (...) The cunning of uncertainty lets in the unexpected. It makes room for the new, even if the new is often made from clever and unexpected recombinations of already existing elements. Poised on the threshold between the present and the unknowable future, it invites us to join the dance." Helga Nowotony (2016). The Cunning of Uncertainty. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Kindness by default

As earthling, living in Portugal, I can´t imagine what Ukraine beings are going through in these hours, or what it must feel for Russian beings, having someone decide in their name to commit such an atrocity, so contrary to human species default to protect, care and blossom. Amidst another much bigger war of infinite greed, we add the greed for more territory, more resources, more terror, more power. Enough should be enough to concentrate on the habitability of the finitude of our Planet. 

Greed is a sickness. It needs help to be treated. If not treated can result in serious crimes: against environment (the biggest of all, given it sustains all life on Earth), against Nature and all living beings (including us), against our societies and the right to live peacefully and respectfully in a House that is much bigger than our homes, our communities, or our countries. 

What is happening is an aberration, an abnormality of the system, a hideous crime against us all. The system must be corrected. We are all encoded to be kind by default (*). We need to remind ourselves that what makes vibrant communities is respect, communion, sharing, and a lot of love for the extra energy to transcend ourselves (and endure in the most difficult of times). 

(*) Be alert for manipulation! We have been manipulated throughout history to believe that greed is our nature. It is not. More about it in Rutger Bregman (2021). Humankind: A Hopeful History.

January

"[A]ll this was an ongoing labor of love. The sustainability of nature (...) never just falls into place; it must be brought out through that human work that also brings out our humanity." Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2017). The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life in capitalist Ruins. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

Assemblages

 

«Assemblages are open-ended gatherings. They allow us to ask about communal effects without assuming them. They show us potential histories in the making. (…) Assemblages don’t just gather lifeways; they make them. Thinking through assemblages urges us to ask: How do gatherings sometimes become “happenings,” that is, greater than the sum of their parts? If history without progress is indeterminate and multidimensional, might assemblages show us it’s possibilities?» Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2017). The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life in capitalist Ruins. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

December

"Humans, pines, and fungi make living arrangements simultaneously for themselves and for others: multispecies worlds."  Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2017). The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life in capitalist Ruins. 

 

20220103 note: pinus pinaster and pinus pinea descriptions in European Atlas of Forest Tree Species (2016): https://ies-ows.jrc.ec.europa.eu/efdac/download/Atlas/pdf/Pinus_pinaster.pdf; https://ies-ows.jrc.ec.europa.eu/efdac/download/Atlas/pdf/Pinus_pinea.pdf .

December

"Patterns of unintentional coordination develop in assemblages. To notice such patterns means watching the interplay of temporal rhythms and scales in the divergent lifeways that gather. (...) This turns out to be a method that might revitalize political economies inside them, and not just for humans. Assemblages cannot hide from capital and the state; they are sites for watching how political economy works." Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2017). The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life in capitalist Ruins. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

December

Phenology: "the study of periodic events in biological life cycles and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate, as well as habitat factors (such as elevation). (...) Examples include the date of emergence of leaves and flowers (...), the date of leaf colouring and fall in deciduous trees (...). In the scientific literature on ecology, the term is used more generally to indicate the time frame for any seasonal biological phenomena, including the dates of last appearance (e.g., the seasonal phenology of a species may be from April through September). (...) In addition to providing a longer historical baseline than instrumental measurements, phenological observations provide high temporal resolution of ongoing changes related to global warming." 

 

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

 

20220105: text was changed from book citation to definition of «phenology», maintaining the photo showing a tree, displaying all 4 seasons at time of capture (December, Cacem, Portugal), with nude parts, white flowers, green leafs, fruits and yellow and red leafs in other parts of the same tree.