Metabolic Architectures
Posted in: UncategorizedRebuilding the self in a global wasteland.
by
From Adbusters #116: Blueprint for a New World, Part 5: Politico
Architecture these days is lost in the haze of corporate demand.
But unpeel the bandage layers of scaffolding and you will find that our global renovation project still has some shimmering gems. The clues to our survival are scattered in the catacombs, tucked in the air and glinting in the sunlight hovering over the horizon.
The Internet grape-vine informs me that NASA is doing research on sun-gazing. Following around a yogi from India as he begins his process of cutting ties to a parasitic existence by allowing the combined energies of the sun and Earth to fuse through his body and feed his soul.
Scientifically implausible, the rationalists scream. A hoax!
Imagine feeding your soul to replenish your cellular respiration. Imagine the Earth, not as green and blue grid-work, but as life humming in our bones.
Yogis have imagined it so, as have the Aboriginals of North America, who have long held heshook-ish tsawalk — that “everything is connected.” It means the total lived experience of the land — the consistency of the soil, the spirit of the wind and the many whispers and thoughts of the people who are related to it — is part of a web-like reality that defines our sense of place, our sense of belonging.
And if you won’t take their word for it, there is the French concept of terroir to consider. Originally a concept that refers to the unique personality of wine, based on the composition of the soil, the direction of the air and minute regional and environmental particularities, this imagining of a sense of place is also a reference to the people of a locale. It says: every fiber of your being belongs here.
Under the cacophonous blare of industry and science, these whispers are barely perceptible. Floating fifteen storeys above the Earth, we can barely imagine belonging to the land without the land belonging to us.
Do we dare to take our shoes off, and bask in metabolic revolution? Do we dare to retrieve our places — those places that mark us, that follow us wherever we go, tugging at us to return — from the sterile cartography, ugly, xenophobic nationalism and tar-streaked designs of industry?
The antidote is there … accidentally sucked into a vacuum bag.
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