notes for a story or brainstorming for a list

first, some important quotations:

"'This is the immortal flower. A geometry of yellow, Nobody in the foreground or the background. Instead, positioned there she is. Straddling the calyx: a blue woman, holding two babies in her arms. They are wrapped in turn with a jute blanket embroidered with stars.' - A.

What are the maximum and minimum forms a memory can take?

Here on the table in front of me is a drawing of ‘the immortal flower’ (lotus) A., my mother, drew at the height of her illness, two weeks ago. There are 8,000 petals, and in the most enlightened beings this planet has hosted, perhaps only 4 of these petals were opened, my mother informs me. The lotus and the petals constitute: the crown chakra.

What would it be to live a life in which even one petal was unfurled?" - Bhanu Kapil

"The Bitter-Rose grew at the top of the highest peaks. Whoever eats it discovers that whenever he is about to tell a lie, out loud or only to himself, his tongue begins to burn. He can still tell lies, but then he is warned. Several people have seen the Bitter-Rose: from what they say, it resembles a kind of thick, multicolored lichen, or a swarm of butterflies. But no one has ever picked it, for the slightest trembling of fear nearby alarms it and it retreats into the rock. Now, even if a man desires it, he is always a little afraid of possessing it, and it promptly disappears." - Mount Analogue, René Daumal

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shimmering groundsel

Forming a torus of hills covered in herbs, which i hold between my hands.

as a sorceress, i once hid in an alpine plant, i noticed many things:

being made into a thick paste

a mysterious horse religion

millet, a small grain (but not the smallest, which is teff), is a blessing

resonant hues / sibilant shades

the way the cold air and ice knead the ground: the water enters the soil, and turning into ice in the night it contracts the soil, forming runnels in the morning, eventually melting and flowing deeper or sublimating in the dawn

the churning of the ground: the ice constricts dirt into anthill-like shapes and then evaporates

mistaking midges, with their flitting, stochastic dance, for falling ashes

cosmogonic flora

plants praise us with their outward manifestations, their workings within us, and their self sufficient beauty
how does a plant become sacred?
what is haoma?
is a plant knowledgeable? can a plant know?
we only have our sensory observations and familiarity with the plant's actions. i hesitate to say the plant's mind or soul just yet, because those are both anthropomorphic qualities. i would like to phytomorphosize the problem. intent, planning, self, and agency are all concepts we ascribe to people and animals, but to apply the concepts to plants without reflection seems incautious.
a lone herb each branch giving the other branches just enough room.
seeming to follow a plan, and improvising on that plan:
touched by light, angling towards the light, setting improvised electrical impulses in motion, echoes of radiance in viriditas:

an aleatory aeolian sun chime.

in another life, i possessed a sasquatch for several thousand years. later, as a human child, i shout from the bus at the cairn in the middle of the field, where that old body is buried

i came into contact with the forest person when it nudged some plants deeper into the ground, seeking tender sage seedlings, it salted the salty plants, it rubbed some leaves and sniffed its fingers, it touched the succulent ice plant leaves, and it found me...

the sasquatch legs were hard lost and well-founded
Ashes were thrown ahead for journey
from the trees, i watched people get advice for birth at hollow tree;
an exhalation of the bitter ground
its flowers blown a thick white vapour
a figurine with a sown field pattern
you see, but the field feels, lady of the open bitter grass in the field
the doctrine of signatures written backwards
When the plant looks into me
with its light-eating leaves,
what does it see?:

in the middle of the great ocean grows a leaf, whose edge is serrated and covered in fine, bristly hairs. beneath the surface of the water, flowers grow from its lower stems, each flower is the similitude of 8,000 souls, holding their divine plenitude. each flower’s calyx is greenish blue with spiritual perfection.

surrounded by order, I look for the wildness that sticks out in defiance
Where in “nature” the settled garden bed calls proud attention to itself, in the sterile car pastures that pave the world over, the slightest errant weed calls forth in warbling song.
The eyes come to crave for wanton destruction, the return to something, the tilling of the field

in praise of haremints
brushing against your leaves creates aromatic winds
some herbaceous, some citrus
covered in white oily dots
your bitterness no honey can tame
your flowers white and pink, blushing tongues, lapping up the sun
your sharp flavor matched only by your spines
you collect dust and debris like wool

the elk in the river, perpendicular to the current
brewed with underground water

𐀖𐀲 mi-ta mint

veins a river
after the rains, the way grass points downhill
steel girder bones
i dream of taking my hair down, washing it in the river and letting it flow downstream
flayed paint
"Be idle without rivers or lakes"
forests without trees, rivers without water, plains without grasses, tundras without ice

overwrought then overgrown

cup overflowering! vessel mess hall! missile flower

There are five colors and five changes, five elements, four seasons, four seasons, and four seasons.

hover head under sulphur crag, breathe deep, and sing

lose yourself to laughing

no fees til the end of days

stop pretending super mari

and grapple with the beam

gallows pasta—esper drill
angstrom capital Å

breakwaters cannot break water, only be broken

cludgy cloggy cudgels and doom surrounding
grayscale flowers
dream the light web of your body, and gather your sustenance as it blows in with the wind. growing by false suns, and guided by false stars, led deeper into the widening notches in the tree. new life from old, patience, plastic-eating, outlasting the long brutal years of summer in the dark.
the deals reek of benzene rings
you live most of your life in your body
Lord opens-a-seed-with-their-petals
pistils end in dogteeth
the center of the seed a spore
the spore a dreamy flower
sight graying out in the dark
a slurry of stone o'er which i clomb
finding neither golden fleece nor floam

dry stone dykes, some fields, bearded grasses singed by the summer heat. trees thirsty. in the shade, some dead logs with hard fungus. cow in heat hollering

or, cicadas loud and dry air hits you, when your head walks out of the shade -- you step on a root and push yourself up the hill and back into safety - you smell something sweet (sassafras).
looking for slender mountain mint and maypop, but it's too hot.

plait plant plaintive

bone hard bone marrow soft squeeze

bone wisp bone spur : bone whispers

rattle cage cone
smirr pizzle gristle

whinn goers
gorse winders
furze finders

the hem of my dress, slightly wet
wadding with it hiked up
the chiggers, skeeters, and ticks
the thick hot air full of them
a mountain stream a-flowèn
no soma in them thar hills
just rocks to farm and weeds to munch on
red clover, mountain mint, kudzu
i can be a wisp of smoke,

the filtered flash of sunlight through leaves,
ash on the fingertips
the veins on the underside of a leaf
a mountain mirage image, purple in the distance

have you ever had a scuppernong at forest temperature?

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like a baby or a frog

turning off instead of on

like a dream inside a dog

drifting off into nog

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 ╱╳╳╲  
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blue calyx
descended upon
by plaited streams
winking waking waulking

ne'erd'well dauerwelle
seer gas queers chaffe
sears gaffe
peerage seepage steerage nonage
anguillette dwellers oft
elver gosh lara croft
warp weft wind mill skin
efts' clefts craft theft

brimstone grindstone, waking dire lover's swoon
no remorse, changing course, remora theodora

salient points; sore joints
saline cream, cure stream

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│  u   │▓
│  n   │▓
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ay me, burthensome knowings!

soil pocked by rain
the way the cold air and ice knead the ground
the water enters the soil, and turning into ice in the night it contracts the soil, forming runnels in the morning, eventually melting and flowing deeper or sublimating in the dawn
the way ice constricts dirt into anthill-like shapes and then evaporates

bedtime stories for wee weans and hopeless adults

relentlessly hatching eggs (obscure sunlights emitting from them). gourds from my mothers' garden vibrating and humming—until dawn's dawn rises within itself. i feel the air melt and sway under time's heft and the determination of dogged overdetermination

"here hempen rope tied tight marks the boundary"

my dress fills with the easterly wind, trees inflate as well and sing their soft filtering song. whipped-up leaves follow cloud banks at an offset. the dark gray blue of immanent downpour, and looking straight into the distance, there is light, fleeing.
the cave in that hill and the riverbed under the lake are restful, but everywhere else is seething and hurting trying to escape itself

"Be idle without rivers or lakes"

• river-quenched lotus
• the shore of a poisoned lake
• colorado river-hemp
• the flask hovering over the lake
• sour-grained prayer

additional points of reference & miscellaneous quotations