In Lieu of Possession
with the Lay it on the Line collective
This is the second in our series of Lay it on the Line collaborations. Seven inspiring women write from the UK, the United States, Australia, and Sweden. Our cohort has a monthly rotating curatorship - the curator writes the opening piece and the other six respond. In our breadth of styles there is a common thread of sensorial experience, ecology, art, philosophy and place.
🟢 check out our first collaboration - Threading Waters - here.
Welcome to In Lieu of Possession
Where do sound and sight commingle, leaving just enough of a gap for the human, or might it be the non-human beings, to slip through? Is it within the breach that conversations take place or one-sided perceptions merge with observation? Is it within this space that the human attests to being human? Are we the only beings trying to survive? Does that essence—a mere existence of other—offer perspective?
This month’s collaboration began with a letter; the author commits to the action of storytelling and advocates for others to build their own practice. The goal is to “expedite a meaningful shift”—possible from sharing experiential stories. To Decenter the Human is an act of civil disobedience.
Here is a theme of silence, but not of lacking sound, something more tangible and less human prescribed. The guidance of birds as messengers from the spirit world. Also, an investigation into home place, which is more than mere proximity. Internal dialogue, parable, observational decoding. Connections made. Stillness is noticing that water has various forms—ribbons, steam, mist, spray, dew, fog, and crystals. Individual probing into the human tendency to own, remolding into a kinship in lieu of possession.
Dearest Friends,
Cocooned between my hands is a cup of tea. I wait for dawn. For light to write. To speak for the live things that cannot speak for themselves. Today, I can commit to storytelling. To weave together knowledge that the homocentric view is at the expense of nature. That our human impact is so vast there is a label—Anthropocene.
I believe we must deconstruct human exceptionalism and anthropocentrism and extractivism. Expedite a meaningful shift. Advocate to Decenter the Human which seems to require straightforward guidance with a call to action. Simple instructions that demand a pause, an introspection. Each of us is a storyteller. Can we consider the fractured land and chronicle an experiential story?
Humans live in a web of connected relationships. Together, our words can embolden, can weave a new fabric of human will.
Simple Instructions to Decenter the Human
Step One – Go outside. Sit and listen. Imagine each sound as a voice with a language you understand. Converse with the voices.
Step Two – Write notes, draw pictures, jot poems. Explore being a part of nature. Permit your findings to unfold with no personal insistence or resistance.
Step Three – Ask questions and seek answers. Fill your notebook with adjectives and verbs. Use arrows and lines, diagrams and circles. Color words and highlight hastily squared boxes. What themes do you find?
Step Four – Be brave. Listen to others. Seek the perspective of those with a different viewpoint. Hear, really hear. Do not just nod and forget. Discover with curiosity and in your notebook examine others views with your own. Ask more questions, seek more answers. As needed, refer again to Step Two and Three.
Step Five – Stir the doodles and scribbles, the phrases, the directional lines. Find the emerging thread. Untangle the charged emotions. Free write, don’t pause, write. Be brave.
Step Six – Disrupt the status quo, understand the implication of being silent. Revise your storytelling draft. Revise again. Your words will attest to your honest conviction. Be an outlier when you share with others, your “Civil Disobedience: Through Storytelling.”
With love,
Stacy
Humans are “homo narrans,” which translates to “storytelling animals.” We filter experiences through our unique set of lenses, decoding sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures received through the sense organs.
I sit in my suburban California back yard. It’s just after sunrise. A house finch chortles, a spotted towhee trills. A hummingbird zooms in, vibrating inches from my face before flitting off to a more promising spot, a place where sustenance may lie.
Each of these birds is telling a story, and their songs become part of my story. Stories—mine and theirs—speak of survival, connection, and status. Some stories hang in the air, waiting to be received. Others wind up on the page, offerings for readers to enjoy in their own space and time.
Fifteen minutes go by, and the sun is higher in the sky. Cool air moves the leaves on a bush six feet in front of me. The birds must feel the breeze, too. It means something to the finch, the towhee, and the hummingbird; carries messages I can’t decode. It’s good to remember that I am a visitor with but a tiny part in the play of life.
-Julie Snider
Amanda C. Sandos, A Zookeeper’s Memoir
Dear Stacy,
Green surrounds me, the rustling leaves flutter and flap in the wind. The birds sing a loud, intricate chorus, all of it sounding joyous despite what their calls mean. “This is my tree! My home! Get out!” The trickle of the stream is a soft, vibrant underscore. The sun glinting off the water cascading over the dam catches my eye, as I listen to the bassline drone of her falls. The tiny rainbows reflecting off the spray that mists through the air are dancing on rays of light. A hummingbird buzzes loudly, diving to feed on rhododendron nectar. Silent, vivid butterflies flit away from the disturbance. A dragonfly hawks across the water, adding a distant whir of sound. Another rustle of wind jostles the leaves, then builds and grows and builds on its own riffs before it shivers back into silence. The unsilent silence that is nature. I take a deep breath and slowly release it, feeling my shoulders fall away from my ears at last.
Nature never stops being busy. All day every day. But, somehow stepping into it allows me to settle, to be still and breathe and take in the loamy, earthy scents. I’ve been walking out into the woods to sit in silence since I was a small child. It started when I was eight, as an escape. I have always felt comforted by this symphony of natural sounds. I write this to you now because I, too, believe this practice has helped me learn to better decenter my humanism and connect more deeply to the world around me.
Growing up the child of a Presbyterian Minister, my father enjoyed being in nature and often wrote his sermons while sitting outside. The director of a Presbyterian summer camp, Dad would preach in the outdoor chapel by the lake every Sunday, weather permitting. I always sat on the bench closest to the lake watching nature quietly throughout his sermons, which often had to do with being good earth stewards. One such Sunday, I was so engrossed in watching a great blue heron fishing that I didn’t realize my dad had finished and everyone had left.
Dad dropped onto the bench beside me looking at me with an obvious question on his face. All I could think to say was, “I feel more connected to God here than I ever have in church.” A huge smile bloomed. Dad squeezed me tighter and said, “Then let nature be your church. That’s just fine with me.” We sat silently, watching the heron fish for a long while until she flapped her wings with a splash as she lifted off to disappear over the trees. We made the long walk back to camp listening to the unsilent silence together.
With Love,
Amanda
Between my hands is a cup of coffee, the Winter air stealing its heat, the steam rising fast and high. I feel robbed. I haven’t slept well. I need this coffee. I sip it, defiantly. I will take its heat. Winter can’t have it.
I wiggle my toes. Winter is taking the heat from them too. But I don’t mind that as much. It can have it. In exchange, I’ll take the tingle—the gentle pull of consciousness down to my feet. Here. Now. A reminder that I am part of this day.
It’s 4.12am and no one else is up on my street. Cars are quiet. Houses are dark. It’s just me out here on the balcony, listening to the ocean, which usually can’t be heard over the everyday noise.
Correction: it’s me and a tawny frogmouth. The bird is sitting on the wire. I’m not happy with the bird. It decided to be my alarm clock this morning. Now it’s silent. Maybe it wants to hear the ocean too. Maybe it’s savouring the quiet.
“OK, you got me up, now what?” I ask.
It doesn’t answer. It just looks at the ocean.
So, I do too.
My thoughts evaporate into the Winter air, like steam from my coffee. They seem less important, somehow. I seem less important, somehow. Yet at the same time, I feel like an intrinsic part of this day. This place.
My breath slows. Time slows. My coffee goes cold. The bird is indifferent to this minor tragedy in my day. I shrug and drink it anyway. It’s not so bad.
The centre cannot hold, I hear myself think. So, stop fighting it. Stop holding it together. Let yourself absorb into what’s around you. Become more than you.
The bird and I watch the sun rise together.
As the light emerges and fragments across the ocean’s surface, the bird ruffles its feathers, dislodging one that drifts toward my feet. I pick it up. Its weightlessness grounds me.
The bird, unbothered, leaves without a goodbye; perhaps to tell its kin that it just taught a human how to live.
Yasmin Chopin, Home & Place Writing
1. I open the door and cross the threshold. The transition, from indoor cocoon to wide open space, is marked by a displacement of oxygen and nitrogen equivalent to sixty-five kilograms in weight. I mentally check my joints for pain and ease of movement.
2. Walking is freedom.
3. My body drifts through and within the landscape, as if in two states of being; the first, my physical presence, feels the touch and sound of my feet on the path; the second, my thoughts, float like ribbons in the wind.
4. Walking prompts reverie.
5. I pass a bench. It wears a plaque, a brass memorial of remembrance. I murmur its words—dearly loved, courageous battle, sadly missed. I gather its grief and sorrow; cup it, bear it, walk with it awhile. Then I flex each hand, stretch out the fingers and shake the words free.
6. I consciously let my shoulders relax from their hunched keyboard attitude.
7. My body is an engine.
8. My pace, as unique as my DNA, gradually accelerates as my limbs loosen and the venous oil of my blood becomes more viscous.
9. Physical exercise is therapy.
10. Every walk is a performance, an unrepeatable original event. Like a doodle, you cannot go over it twice. You can only echo the route.
11. I leave traces of my being on the ground and in the air. I speak softly to the trees and creatures nearby. There’s no-one else in sight; I take possession of the path. I enjoy the serenity; the landscape becomes mine.
12. What does it mean to own a landscape?
13. I pause to the point of stillness. I sit on a rock, a patch of grass. It is an act of occupation. I own this space, albeit temporarily.
14. I declare my presence.
15. But, I am not alone. Other beings are here, huddling close, sharing this place—my patch of ground. They’re inside my body, above, and below me, living in their own worlds, seeing through different eyes, detecting scents and odours beyond my perception, hearing sounds that are lost to me. Keeping me safe.
Bee Lilyjones, Before We Leave with Bee Lilyjones and Friends
🟢Reference: Riasg Buidhe by Thomas A. Clark - Scottish Poetry Library
Woman at a Window (After Thomas A Clark)
Your instructions arrived seven months into her doglessness.
I sang in this morning’s mizzle, composing from instinct, practicing a new song, while she listened through her chosen barriers.
The cottage windows have become her country, their frames holding fragments of a world she observes but rarely enters.
Does looking from the inside out require faith in what remains beyond reach?
Weather moves across glass like emotions across her face, visible, interpretable, but belonging to another realm than mine.
This rain. I appear to her as watercolour, edges softening where certainty dissolves into weather.
Glass holds its own distortions, reminding me that all human seeing is mediated, filtered, inevitably partial.
Each raindrop carries its own migration from leaf to earth, weaving stories I witness while foraging for earthworms.
Rain drumming against the canopy creates percussion I feel in my chest.
Within any standing still lie pockets of deeper attention: she observes a cellar spider's vibration in the corner of the window, the way I cock my head. I observe meadow rue sepals falling, one hundred ultraviolet eyelashes.
A mind that observes closely enough will learn the syntax of how things connect and separate. Territorial edges that meet in song. Petals from stems. Dawn song from evensong.
Landscape emerges equally for those who stand still behind glass and those like me who hop and scurry.
Bee Lilyjones
Julia Adzuki, Artists in Resonance
Hand resting lightly on the delicate bone cloud of lichen. Are they waiting for rain? Is there longing in the reaching ready for water or does this thallus simply rest in open awareness? I – we – this cluster of cells I have a habit of calling mine, sit on a pine root in the shape of a step on a hillside that is a giant rock scraped clean last ice age. A rootlet branches off into space, wearing a sleeve of lichen cups lined up like siblings, from tallest to most microscopic right on the tip. When dew falls these cups will fill, not just to the brim but expertly holding a whole round drop, a crystal ball of water. Cladonia pyxidata, what future do you read? In deep time past, your kind were the first to lick the rock. Making a habit of living a habitat for others, mosses making soil, berry bushes bringing birds, pines winding wedging roots through fissures in the rock. Making life in every possible place.
Further north, stellaris, you make yourself food for reindeer, shaped as a micro herd of horns. Your signature – your sign-nature, looking like the one you are medicine for. But now the freeze-melt-freeze-melt winters sometimes trap you beneath a solid sheet of ice, then you can't feed the reindeer, horns shaped as you shaped as them. Their herders have to buy feed for them till the ice releases its grasp. So what of the future Cladonia? When I try spying though your crystal balls, everything seems upside down. It's a matter of perspective, you might suggest. Your very presence attests to good life, to clean air. Sitting with you, my longings rest, bones branch open in the deep steady rhythm of your song.
🟢Audio File: Lichen Song
Participation
Community and conversation are a part of this collaboration. What does this month’s Lay it on the Line inspire within you? If you are feeling creative, write a responsive essay and add it in the comments.
You are invited into this conversation.
What does In Lieu of Possession embolden within you? Are you inspired or have an emotional connection?
Share a sentence, or more.
Stacy, your opening salvo was the perfect portal into the interconnected ecosystems to which we belong. Thanks so much for leading us into this adventure!