Experiments in motion and stillness

By Paul Ross,

White Sands National Monument, NM

October 31, 2017

Adele and I did our best to take care of a leafy friend on this trip. Our various actions/activities revolved around developing some kind of relational strategies between plants and people through a sharing of stillness or movement. I guided a blindfolded Adele over the soft, white dunes with nothing but footsteps while she held our chlorophyllic companion. Later, we buried our standing bodies in sand, and shared in the dousing of water down all three of our bodies.

Along with other experiments, these goofy-silly-splendid acts were aimed at the development of a relationship through shared experience, and the cultivation of shared perspectives through embodied perception. We are trying to put ourselves in positions to better understand plants’ point of view, and simultaneously share pieces of human experience with the hope that the inverse also occurs. Perhaps, after iterations of experiments, a way of being together with living things on this planet can grow from our questions. Dark, stifling, and supporting as dirt; clear, present, and subtle as air; fleeting as water, this way would be.