You and I are Earth
The alchemy of stardust and compost and you
Welcome back to The Link, a bi-weekly circularity newsletter making the connection between regenerative farming and you, every other Tuesday.
I was reading this beautiful piece from
this morning on fertility and blight and the current state of the world. In her substack, she writes: “My initial response intuitively is that to become fertile we must first become bare, lost and dark - The state of the world at the moment?
A massive draining and emptying is unavoidable, a blight of the human species’ structures and norms. Although this may all sound rather bleak, I think it’s a necessary step in ensuring the readiness of a new fertile age. An era full to the brim of new stories and myths. Yes, a fusion of blight with a stirring of fertility, a cosmic arrangement. Moments of collective action and hope, combining and weaving slowly in to a symphony for those who are to come after us - the future people.”
This idea of emptying and draining got me thinking about water and vessels, and the now famous “You and I are Earth” plate. The ceramic celebrity sits at this very moment, fixed on display in the Museum of London, shrouded in mystery of its origins. It’s become so popularized in modern culture in the last few years, it’s easily spotted on sweaters and album covers around the world. But it was lost before it was rediscovered, harvested from the watery depths of the London sewer after surviving four centuries of some of the absolute worst of times.
I like to think about the plate’s creator—an unknown source in 1661—who was pondering their own earthly mortality with a paintbrush and glaze that now feels like a cosmic message loop linking us together to remind us of our very impermanence right now. But how did it all begin? Perhaps they were on a walkabout for creative expression in the woods, or did they just really need another plate for dinner? Their original reason is certainly none of my business, but their intention now lives beyond them, and beyond all of us here in this iteration of time.
I like to imagine them kneeling down near a riverbank, digging deeper and deeper into the soil to dredge up thick, wet clay. With each sloppy scoop, their hands picking up a brilliant alchemy of of minerals, plant life, and animals, ground down into fine particles by way of water pressure and time, calmly resting on the earth floor, waiting until its moment to meet the next cycle of transformation. In this case, a plate.
This vessel, once forged in fire in the past, is now fixed on this present plane. The anonymous creator will never be known, but the universal message has lived on in multiple generations and cycles of people. It will continue to do so and so and so. Its words now commonly inked impermanently onto human flesh, perhaps as talismans of the bodies that carry its message as a reminder to all of us to stay present in this cycle of rhythms we’re living through.
Claire’s notion of the “unavoidable massive draining and emptying before the readiness of a new age” makes me think of the energy space between waves—the call and response, the pull of the moon and its dance with the ocean tide that create motion and movement back and forth in a circle.
In different ways than waves, that same energy force; vibration; pattern; makes me think of compost, too: what is often at the end of one cycle, overlooked, tossed, lost, discarded, sometimes forgotten (like the 17th century plate), sometimes with great care and intentionality, is a space where transformation thrives. It’s surprising, and its emergence can only begin once the in-between—where decay and emptying meet to forge fecundity—has been honored.
If you don’t know what I mean, go cast your own spell of transformation the next time you toss a banana peel into your city compost. Witness and invite it into ceremony by starting your own compost in a vessel, a trench, layering it, or letting it breathe in the open-air.
Embody your own presence and steward transformation by tending to the compost. As you scatter it back onto the soil and back to the earth and plant new seeds, stand back to watch the new “cosmic arrangement” (as Claire would say) emerge. I promise it will be fertile.
Oh hey! You’re still reading this? If you have future topics, smart humans, or concepts you’d like to see featured, respond to this newsletter or drop me a line and say hey: Helen@HelenHollyman.com.
And if you liked this post from The Link, I dare you to share it!