‘Go on then,’ Ethan said. ‘What’s this important idea of yours?’
‘Yeah, let’s hear it,’ Jason chipped in.
Alice inhaled. ‘Well, I had this dream—’
‘You had a dream?’ Megan teased.
‘Yeah. But that’s not the point. A thought came up in this half-dream-half-awake state where the dream still rolls on, but you’re aware of waking up.’
‘Any chance of telling us what that thought is?’ Jason teased.
‘Sure. But it’s still kind of thoughts in progress—’
‘Alice, spit it out,’ Ethan laughed.
‘OK. See, the body is constantly digesting. Take food. Food goes in, poo comes out. Take skin cells, bogies, spots, hair, blood. All of it is constantly in a process. Constantly transforming, constantly renewing, constantly in motion. Not everything digest, but if you think of spots as a way of digesting all the excess fat and sugar, that holds. Hair doesn’t seem to digest, but it does something when it gets greasy. And hair is replaced frequently. Skin cells die, they get thrown off the body once they did whatever it is they do. But the point I’m getting at is—’ Alice stopped, countering the amused expressions on the screen with a lopsided smile. ‘Look, you really have to let this sink in and think about it. Digesting. Sit yourself down and look at how your body works, and never stops changing, never stops digesting, or cleaning the blood, or fighting some infection, pumping liquid through the system, or whatever else it does. And here’s the thing that struck me. The body, and nature in general, is in constant motion. Nature works because it constantly digests, renews. It’s alive. It even recycles. No better, it constantly makes new life possible by dying because a fallen leaf serves as nutrient for new life. And that’s where humans get things wrong. We don’t produce or build that way. We produce and set up so many things that aren’t alive. That’s how we’re killing our planet.
Our planet can only live if it constantly digests, and we block the system with our products, buildings, streets. And we don’t think in terms of digesting, renewing, not even in terms of being alive.’
‘Well—’ Jason started, frowning.
‘Think about it. We don’t build or live in a way that digests. Hell, I don’t know how to put it better. You have to really think about your body. How it constantly grows, burns energy, digests, dies. That’s sustainable. But nothing we do is motivated by working with a living system. Funny enough our approach is all about fighting living organisms. We use plastic because nothing can get through. We use chemicals to kill bacteria not even asking what these bacteria might be good for. We use concrete because it puts a barrier between the natural forces and our settlements. We cover living land in dead tar to have straight surfaces. We even cover up rivers. We block the natural flow of things and kill living organisms out of some need for control or for being oh-so-clean. And on top of that, we accumulate and hoard things instead of putting them back into the cycle. So we drain and block. We are like a great constipation for this planet. I’m sorry for not being more precise. It’s just something that hit me this morning, and I don’t know what to make of it. But it seems to be important. And it’s still very sketchy.’
‘You might be right,’ Megan said thoughtfully. ‘We’re the only creatures on this planet who build dead things. And we fill the planet with dead materials adding blockage after blockage.’
‘Yes,’ Alice said with a gleam in her eyes. ‘Humans are the only organisms who constantly create things that neither regenerate nor digest or live. It’s as if we make the planet swallow plastic balls. No one can survive swallowing plastic balls, not even once. Look, I don’t know where this might lead, or whether there’s anything in it we can use with regard to the way we build, produce or live. But think about it.’
Forest track near the city of Lübeck, sunny, September 2025
DAY 7, connecting to
book 2, travelling
‘You’re not wrong. We have made our world into an artificial world. It’s not properly alive any more.’
‘And we keep adding dead things, suffocating our planet and ourselves.’
#photography #body #resist #nature #climate #OurFutureDay7 #digesting #forests