Extract of Rivering, Fluminism as Literature (PhD).

Like sedimentary rock traps bodies to become fossils, bodies of water contain the nucleotides of all who live within, or have recently lived. Same with air. They recount a story of genetic diversity or its demise. We just need the right tools to find them, unless we are so tiny that we do not need tools. Imagine the world of the tiny!

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In life, organic bodies move in balance with microbial symbionts, not least expressed in the mammalian gut brain axis, reproduction, and systems of immunity. That is until the pathogens overcome, or death comes by any other means and all is subsumed. Those same bacteria that supplied us with our happy thoughts now overwhelm our spectacular mass of structured carbon. But they are still helping us, regardless, like all our crucial scavengers and detrivores—including a writhing mass of blowfly larvae—to mix down into the ground. And from there, critically, they aid us to reassemble at the confluences with new, exciting life forms. The laws of thermal dynamics apply to these flows, and heat is released (imagine all that resistance), and, yes, smell. But death begets life.

Like rivers, animate life embodies moving places, and vice versa—everything moves and is moved—though it remains a question of endurance under geo-thermal and atmospheric forces, as to when the moving processes of decay will begin, and how much resistance to that decay there will be. Once more, opportunities for diversity are bountiful.

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In perfect flow with the floloca, stable isotopes of the distinct recipe of the Stowe water oozes from the hill. They are probably still traceable in those ol’bones of the Brights, laid feet to the east, the last forms of a human body to decompose. In hardwood coffins buried deep in the 19th century, and at this latitude and altitude, they are, most likely, still clinging on to the peacefulness of St Michael’s. And they could still tell us a story or two. As forensic anthropologist, Sue Black, writes

“As water percolates through various geological formations, it will take up isotope ratios of elements specific to that location and when we ingest it, its signature will be transferred into the chemical make-up of all our tissues.” p39

These are our watermarks, long after death.

“So we could, in theory, look at the remains of an individual and, from the isotopic signature in the otic capsule and first molar, discover where in the world their mother was living when she was pregnant with them and the nature of her diet. We could then analyse the remainder of the adult teeth to establish where the deceased person had grown up, and then the rest of their bones to determine where they had lived for the past fifteen years or so. Finally, we could use their hair and nails to locate where they spent the last years or months of their life.”

The same it is for all life, regardless of variations in genetic make-up.

Watermarks.

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Fluminists and crime writers find forensics fascinating. We care in the superlative detail and the tools that solve puzzles and seek justice. We observe, photograph, collect, sort. We imagine, philosophise, assemble, sketch. To test, to annotate, to review. And then we share the signs and the traces that we find in the flows, and we tell the stories of the dead ancestors and the extirpated, bringing their aliveness to us again, proven in the small things.

We acknowledge that life, and also death, always leave their marks, whether our human sensibilities are able to perceive them or not. Our cultures, inheritance, status and styles can be read by scalpel and litmus. So, too, our fears and early traumas, given away by our scars and our deepest secrets. Identities matter, and the unions matter (think DNA), and places really do matter. But also the bullets, the knives, the overdoses, the radiation, drugs, pesticides, carcinogens, plastic toxicities, the abuses and greed, and the chemistries and the violences of the Anthropocene. There is a bright forensic light able to be shone upon our human failings, to illuminate the wanton release of poison into the flow.

Extraction to waste. Dominance and hegemony. Of soil, water, air, life, even rock. How vulnerable have we made life be? Diatoms in lungs, pollen under nails, heavy metals (lead, mercury, gold), and isotopes swapped in and out of place, tattoos through each other, and of place, and of the many confluences between all living beings and all things; evidence, proof, yes, but they are also memoirs. Lives are honoured by the seeking of truth to their ends. Minerals, food, and water are embodied from the ground in which they emerge, like records of the journey. So it is in the trace of all living things, and the rocks and rivers, the great migrations and colliding continents. To the end of time. We are space dust, even in the gold nanoparticles from rivers we accidentally ingest to metabolise in our livers and spleens.

The word forensics is rooted in latin for forums, open arenas within Roman cities that hosted all kinds of civic events drawing a crowd. Criminal trials tended to attract more interest than civil disputes, as they do to this day, and the more infamous the individuals involved (like Caraticus), the louder the rabble. Presentation of both crime and evidence, and sometimes baseless character assassinations, were brought by advocates who argued for the few privileged citizens permitted to have their cases heard before magistrates or consuls. These courts would pop up with temporary wooden benches (the seats of the adjudicators) between market day, say, and official games. The system gradually grew more formal, and upon the destruction of the Republic, all-powerful Emperor Augustus himself became judge, juror, and vicarious executioner in cases that suited. What better way to be rid of your enemies, or follow the growing grievances of your political foe to ward off insurrection.

So forgive me if I set all the politics aside for a moment. I’ve created another word to describe these fundamental traces of exchange within the nagorasphere, crime or no, and will leave the honourable science of forensics to criminology and the courts.

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“Culture” descends to us from the Indo-European root *kwel-, which essentially means to “turn, revolve, move round” but also (or by way of extension) “sojourn, dwell.” A secondary connotation of the root is “far”, that it is about some sort of turning in space and time. The original sense speaks to a turning of seasons, of cyclical planting and cultivating, which log ically dictates where and how communities come together and live.” Jason Renshaw (2021)

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Kwel ~ PIE for “turn, revolve, move around.” To dwell for a while, to spin in and out, like a wheel.
with suffix ic/s, as in forensic/s “like” or “of”, and more definitive than “ous”.
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Both forensics and kwelics (kwɛlɪks IPA transcription), in a strong sense, seek justice. Widespread awareness of our watermarks, and more, may plunge us deeper into the nature of nature, its signals, alerts, language, and art. We may better understand the consequences of our interactions—our confluences— on Earth, even from Space. And we may seek to find peace in them, and plenty more life; an extraordinary loving thing to do. This is our entropic lottery of new becoming, kwelical cycles of the entire nagorasphere, with potential all the way to the end of time. I don’t know about you, but I find this comforting.

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