Seasonalight

Tag: Neologisms

  • Spennowan, more spider than spiderman.

    Spider and silk, photo by me.

    Spiders intrigue me.

    There are more than 48,000 species of them around the globe, some yet undiscovered by humans, and all of them, bar one that we know of, are predators. They are hugely diverse, reflect all spectrums of light, and are individually character-full.

    I am being lured into their web of life.

    Araneae are air-breathing invertebrates, with eight legs, fangs to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. Silk is a protein fibre, and used to create food traps, nests, egg coverings, and air transport systems. Imagine if we, through our own bodily secretions, could produce all these things: fishing lines, bed linen, baby blankets, and parachutes. There are at least 7 types of silk-making glands, and all spiders have at least three. Some silks are stronger than steel for their weight. Spiders are an essential group of living beings (predators are essential), who may live deep in caves we humans will never visit, and float as high as the clouds when ballooning across continents. They have their own microbial symbioses, most of which we still have little idea. Some spiders are crucial for distributing fungal spores. In rainforests all around Earth, some larger spiders rely on narrow-mouthed frog species for survival, and in utter reciprocity.

    They can fish, fly, cave and row. The largest family jump. Some can sing, dance, and vibrate.

    The diving bell spiders live in bubbles underwater for most of their lives.

    My booted foot was once challenged, briefly, by a female Sydney funnel-web spider, the males being the most venomous in the world, and, in my view, both most fearfully angry. And unforgettable.

    But the vast majority of spiders are harmless to humans. Most are solitary, though some are social. Some females cannibalize their male mates. Some males offer gifts in the hope of sparing their own lives. Some even fake them. Some mothers offer up their own dead bodies as food for their offspring.

    Spiders have been evolving for some 300 million years, and are powerful, intricate and exquisitely adapted. Their relevant-stimuli (emotional responses to you and I) are basic, understudied, yet apparent. And they do feel pain.

    I want to credit these rainbow warriors with a special kind of wisdom. Spider Wisdom, more spider than Spiderman. To have such wisdom is to be fiercely beautiful amongst all other life ~ to be spennowan.

    I offer this to all fellow humans right now.

    (S)pen – PIE root to draw, stretch, spin

    Gnowos – PIE root wise, to know.

    Spennowan.

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  • Hubrigenesis ~ the evolutionary aftermath of the biospheric violence of the Anthropocene.

    Plastic in wetland habitat, photo by me.

    I have been thinking of Earth Crisis, the sixth extinction and futures.

    Paleontology proves such catastrophic shifts in abundance and diversity of life have happened before, and more quickly than one might imagine.

    This time, the trajectories of evolution ahead of us, or the new biogenics of Earth systems, have been irreparably skewed or deviated by anthropogenic activity. Even an ice-age predicted by Milankovitch cycles has been prevented. The bitter truth is that, for a long while, certainly since the Rio summit of 1992,  these harms have been a conscious effort ~ the first time in Earth’s history. 

    Very little has been done by way of prevention, as most are carried out in the name of economic growth and personal freedoms (as if totally justifiable). Further, there have been deliberate cover-ups of scientific data, campaigns to confuse and obfuscate, and huge amounts of capital spent to edify the unconscionable.

    Knowingly harmful acts, both individually and cumulatively, continue to  recalibrate an uncharted evolutionary/biogenic trajectory.

     

    Hubris (latin) ~ wanton violence, insolence towards the gods.

    Genesis (latin) – from PIE ǵenh ~ to produce, beget, give birth.

     

    Hubrigenesis ~ the evolutionary aftermath of the biospheric violence of the Anthropocene.

    Any continuation of the violence actively contributes to the hubrigenesis. 

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  • Esranebulous

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    I have not found a word to describe the uncanny light as a result of carbon atoms from the deaths of a living forest, dust and cloud originating in Iberia, drifting across Europe, pulled by unusual storm forces. The continental nature of the disturbance invited me to look at proto indo-european roots to form such a word.

    This is what I have found ~

    blood cloud/haze / esr nebhis

    So, I offer the word esranebulous.

    Ghostlight of the Anthropocene. I hope such a word would not have to be used often.

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  • Ghostlight of the Anthropocene

    Sepia light seeps into my consciousness.

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    Monday morning came and went. I expected wind-lash Ophelia to clip us hard here in Cardiff and I battened down in readiness. Instead, thick clouds loomed and a strange sepia tone infiltrated every corner of my being. In my eyes, across my forearms, inside my head.

    I looked up at white exterior walls, knowing them to be white, yet they were not. The uncanniness altered my mental state. There was an ominousness to all and yet I felt excited. I looked out across the rooftops and towards the hills and felt disrupted, deeply distracted. I couldn’t work so observed the birds as they too observed the skies.

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    That this could be Saharan dust swept over the sea in the periferal surge of Storm Ophelia tricked me into feeling sanguine. If it nurtures the Amazon Rainforest, I considered, it might even enrich our soils. Such is our interconnected biosphere.

    But forest fire smoke is different. Forest fire smoke is the carbon atoms of the recently dead, like the carbon atoms that rise from the crematorium chimney. Forest fires, fanned by Ophelia, killed 40 people or more, and countless wild lives in Portugal and Spain, including hundreds of thousands of sentient trees. These atoms filled a whole sky, from horizon to horizon. Online, I gazed at strangely ironic, chromatic radar maps. This was continental, as was my realisation.

    Ghosts.

    The sepia light is still distracting me, long after it has blown away in a stiff northeasterly. The hurricane, the wildfires sparked by arson, all anthropogenic in magnitude. And even the Sahara itself:

    “Humans don’t exist in ecological vacuums,” says Archaeologist David Wright. “We are a keystone species and, as such, we make massive impacts on the entire ecological complexion of the Earth. Some of these can be good for us, but some have really threatened the long-term sustainability of the Earth.”

    We are each keystone beings, potential fluminists.

    We cause, and we effect. Everyone of us, agents.

    Collectively, we can do better than tone our world with the ghosts of our kin. I hope I never see it again, but I have given it a name ~ Esranebulous.

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