Most of us listen to music at least sometimes, rarely – like in confession – do we listen to each other. The listening I want to talk about here, listening to the world, goes beyond the framework of human culture, interpersonal relationships. When I talk about listening to the world, I mean not only all the pleasant and unpleasant sounds produced by human activities (on a scale from an opera aria to a deafening…
Category: Texts
Luděk Čertík: Before We Were People, We Were Land (On the Poetry of the First North American Peoples)
Now make room in your mouth grassgrassgrass Layli Long Soldier The First Nations of North America practiced poetry long before the arrival of white settlers. Their languages, in the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natalie Diaz (Mohawk), represent “the foundation of the American poetic lexicon.” But what is the role of indigenous poets today? And what exactly do we mean by the generalization of the poetry of the first or original…
Luděk Čertík: The Last Wild Embrace (poems)
An example from the upcoming collection by Luďek Čertík, The Last Wild Embrace. * the parrots were on edge since morning; they knew that a strong storm and storm would come from the coast, that is wind and rain, that is lightning and thunder and sometimes hail and falling branches, trees and something more, always something more that doesn't fit into…
F. David Peat: “Gentle Action” Can Lead to Miraculous Results
F. David Peat (1938 – 2017) was an English holistic physicist, philosopher and writer. He initially devoted himself to research in solid-state physics and the foundations of quantum theory, and collaborated for many years with the physicist and philosopher David Bohm, about whom he wrote a monograph. Later, his interests expanded to depth psychology and the field of art and general aspects of culture, including the culture of…
Luděk Čertík: Don't judge a city by its concrete
I open the window and place a tripod with a stereo microphone on the balcony below it. I run the microphone cable through the adjacent fan, plug in the connectors for the left and right channels, close the window quietly, and sit down on the edge of the made-up bed with the recorder on my lap and headphones on. I slightly increase the sensitivity on both inputs and press the record button. And then…
Freya Mathews: As Nature Wishes
Freya Mathews is an Associate Professor of Environmental Philosophy at La Trobe University, Australia. Mathews’ philosophy is rooted in panpsychism, an approach that sees mentality as fundamental to the natural world. Her current main interests include the development of ecological civilization; indigenous (Australian and Chinese) perspectives on “sustainability” and how these perspectives can be adapted to the context of contemporary global society; the return of humans to the wild…
Satiš Kumar: The beauty of simplicity
There is no virtue greater than moderation. The sign of the moderate is that they are peaceful as the sky, firm as a mountain, flexible as a tree in the wind. They do not chase after a goal and make the most of everything that life brings them. Lao-tzu Satish Kumar (*1936) is a peace and ecological activist and publicist. At the age of nine, he joined the order of Jain wandering monks and later…
David G. Haskell: Bird Voices and the Language of Belonging
David George Haskell is an American biologist and writer who is currently a professor of biology at The University of South Tennessee. He has published two books so far: The Forest Unseen (2012) and The Songs of Trees (2017). Both were nominated for a number of major literary awards (including the Pulitzer Prize), the latter of which received the John Burroughs Medal (John Burroughs…
Joy Harjo: Drinking Deeply What Cannot Be Drinked Away (poems)
“Imagining the spirit of poetry is like imagining the shape and size of a hunch. It is a kind of awakening light; it is the full-grown spirit of an ancestor who has accompanied me since the beginning, or a bear or a hummingbird. It is a hundred horses galloping across a landscape in a soft mist, or a woman undressing in the glow of a fire before her beloved. It is none of the above. It transcends all imaginable.” Joy Harjo, Crazy Brave…
Thomas Berry: A Great Work
The image of the mythical creature of the three-legged crow appears in the ancient mythologies of East Asia: in China, Japan and Korea. According to Chinese ideas, it is a bird-sun, inhabiting and symbolizing the sun. In Japan, this mythical creature is known as Yatagarus (Yatagarasu), the forest crow, and is understood as a divine messenger, as the intervention of the will and guidance of heaven; it is a sign of rebirth and rejuvenation. In Japanese…