Combining

Although a few of these pieces have been previously published in other places, I never meant for any of them to stand alone. Nothing in an ecology stands alone.

It is necessary to have an ensemble of all sorts of communication to meet ecology—intellectual, emotional, storied, non-verbal, and physical. The communications must be diverse enough to mee

Poetry asks us to look beyond words.

Asks us to seek the kind of blur where clarity

is held in combining ideas.

This is important.

Vital even.

The process nuances perception.

And defies algorithms.

Gobbling up rigid definitions like

crispy salted snacks.

I invite you into this ecology of communication. Pick the flowers, pee in the bushes, throw the stones, watch the clouds, sleep in the shade, and eat the fruit. I welcome you to wriggle and scratch in these pages and find rest and revolution.

At first, it appears that it is the parts of the system that must be made better or fixed.

Then, it becomes clear that the system is not in the parts — it is in the relationships between them.

So, it seems like it is the relationships that need to be made better or fixed.

But relationships, it turns out, are made of communication.

And then —

The communi

Alfred Korzybski famously said, “A map is not the territory . . .” (1994, p. 58). This phrase has been reframed into many other versions (but even more are needed).

The name is not the thing named.*

The menu is not the food.**

The nutrients are not the meal.

The word is not the thing it represents.***

The representation is not what is being represented.

What makes deductive sense from this moment is unlikely to continue to make sense. Being locked to a goal obstructs the ability to perceive other responses.

Often, in a room of people eager to address and solve the world’s many crises, I am gripped by a panicky sadness. The beauty of the intention to solve these many crises is earnest. Still, the attempted actions are placed in abstracted perceptions that do not meet the rich undercurrents of the situations.