March

A propósito das narrativas exageradas e erróneas da grandiosidade do ser humano, António Damásio, em Sentir e Saber (2020), escreve: 

"É grandiosa no que diz respeito aos seres humanos; menospreza injustificadamente os seres não-humanos; e não reconhece a interdependência e a capacidade de cooperação das criaturas vivas, desde as que existem ao nível macroscópico até aos seres humanos. Em última análise, não reconhece a presença de dispositivos e mecanismos poderosos, presentes na natureza desde o início da vida." 

Photo of tapestry detail «undigitise» by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC). March 2025.

Equinox

A new cycle begins. “(…) it’s about as full circle as it gets. (…) One day at a time, and suddenly you realize life is brighter, life is lighter. You made it through the storm” (Dunbar, 2024), except, other entities bully your neighbors, make them suffer, threaten them, persecute them, injure them, kill them and destroy everything. And in the end, they hope to live happily and securely ever after? Is this the implosion of humanity, cause surely it is not a vision for a better world...

Lucy Claire Dunbar (2024). The Book of Gifts. Fotografia de Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC), março de 2025.

PS - Banda sonora pode ser a que li no que Flora Graham escreveu no Nature Briefing de 11 de fevereiro de 2025, sobre o músico Cosmo Sheldrake (com Nature) que ajudou investigadores a registar «the wonderful, wet and complex” sounds of the fungi and other organisms in the soil, in the words of evolutionary biologist and co-author Toby Kiers»: soil.

Gaze

in english: "a steady and intentional look at something or someone, often for a long time, typically indicating interest, admiration, or contemplation. It can also imply a psychological relationship of power between the observer and the observed". by DuckDuckGo 

in portuguese "a light, thin and transparent cotton or silk fabric, very porous, sterile (or sterilizable), of varying elasticity, thickness, shape, reticulation and size, depending on the use for which it is intended. It is usually used in dressings and surgical interventions, and may be impregnated with medications such as antiseptics." by Wikipedia

Photo of tapestry (80 x 80, belonging to «404 Humanity not found» serie) by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC). January 19, 2025.

January

“The courage not to be vanquished by anxiety, not to hurt others out of frustration, not to grow to furious with the world for the perceived injuries it heedlessly inflicts, not to go crazy and somehow to manage to persevere in a more or less adequate way through the difficulties (…), this is true courage, this is a heroism in a class all of its own.” Alain de Botton (2017). The Course of Love. Fotografia de Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC), janeiro de 2025.

January

 

"Vertigo is from the bottom up. Vertigo has always been defined as a disturbance felt in front of an abyss or at a high point in relation to the space between us and the ground. Reversing the direction of this axis by designating the vertigo that can be felt when looking upwards is equivalent to shifting the focus of this disturbance from the drop, the earth, and the materiality to the rise, the sky, and spirituality."

Placa colocada junto das fotografias da exposição do artista Fernando Lemos, no Espaço Engawa, do Centro de Arte Moderna da Gulbenkian. Fotografia de Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC), 30 de dezembro de 2024.

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 «Shadow Worlds» 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

"(...) she could remember nothing. For all the dinners are cooked; the plates and cups washed; the children sent to school and gone into the world. Nothing remains of it all. All has vanished. No biography of history has a word to say about it. And the novels, without meaning to, inevitably lie." Virginia Wolf (1929). A Room of One's Own. 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 ).