Status Updates From Forest Euphoria: The Abound...

DNF… I was excited to get into a compilation of examples of queerness in nature but it was mostly the author begging the audience to think of them as good good never bad via constant social justice virtue signaling. it makes me sad because i also used to feel like i had to do that all the time but in my case I was dealing with scrupulosity OCD and feeling generally unworthy of anything. it gets better!!!

i felt safest when i was unwitnessedby other people. i could move outside of society's gaze, outside the grip of cultural prescriptions and interventions. my hair could run wild,i could dress androgynously, i could be covered in mud. being in the culverts or the forest was a chance to move amphibiously, to shape shift, to creep, to oscillate like algae in a riffle, to be neither a boy nor a girl and have no particula

Part of my soul is coming home listening to this. I walked around a pond today listening; I think the author would be happy that I paused many times to exist with the birds and trees and wind. I was moved to tears seeing the connection between it all— how the wind aids the birds’ flight and ripples the water. How the ducks and geese bathe companionably on the bank. Their choir, a gift. Not to have, but to share.