As long as the earth is ravaged, our bodies will be sick. 

As long as her lands and valleys are desolate, we are diseased.

Where the land is infertile, we are unable to breathe life.

Our sickness is her sickness.

As long as her shores are eroding, our bodies weaken, lose flesh.

The illusion of separateness is killing our species and planet. We are the rhizomatic nature of the fungi, the underground root system of the ancient birch network. Our synaptic junctions are the roots and branches connecting us to the micellar nervous system of the planet. Our skin alone has millions of receptors. We feel everything. In an age of rampant anxiety disorder, perhaps it is not disordered at all. Rather a natural response to the devastation felt by our species, our animals, plant, mineral and cellular networks. 

Our current ethos and deadened human philosophy is to shut down, to believe we are separate. That the pain of others is not our pain, the severing not our severing, yet the shattering hurricanes, quakes, bombs, viruses, all affect our daily life. 

We know when someone is looking at us. We turn to meet their gaze, run to safety, or turn away for some sense of privacy. Our hairs stand on end when we feel something is off in the field around us. 

We know. 

We are animal. We are instinct.

If our instinct is constantly suppressed to live up to social norms, what happens then? Rampant anxiety, crippling depression, debilitating autoimmune disorders. 

No wonder we cut. Cutting is an ancient, globally indigenous form of bridging the spirit and the body. Cutting and scarification is part of ritual, sacred rites of passage. No wonder so many people do it. It's an imperative in their cells in a world that teaches them to be cut off, to dismantle their instincts. Without the healthy container of ritual, wisdom and understanding, it becomes pathological.

As long as we blow holes in the earth and tear her open with deadening agricultural, economic, and political practices, we will cut ourselves without knowing why.