There is a permeable membrane to be negotiated in passing between living systems, including systems of an elemental nature, arguably living, yet inert. Foundational, these ‘elemental systems’ can be identified as Water, Earth, Fire, Atmosphere and Ether. Nutritive to life, their function can be described as ‘containing’ as well as foundational. The containing function of soil as ‘sponge’ within the hydrological cycle is at once a battery, a distributed network of thriving microbial worlds and whorls, a dynamic, incomprehensible complexity of functions ‘governed’ by its earthen nature, originated from clays, silts and sands. Membranes arise as strata almost, nesting within nesting within containing complexities over time, from sustaining quorums of populations, functions, and diversities. The function of these membranes are time and place dependent in expression and by function, protect, regulate, communicate, and distribute through redundancies and elegant utility all within the containing function; soil as sponge, as battery, as life-generating. Membranes arise by design through necessity, evolution, and devolution, continually responsive, magnetic in flow.
Redundancies are repeated (same but different) from one elemental system to another. As above, so below. A tree as a responsive quorum of solar-panel leaves, intra and extracellular navigations and communications for lack of mobility, harvests and harnesses nutrients from elements of Atmosphere, Earth and Water through circularity: Clouds and understory, soil and companion plants, animals, insects and microbes. Trees, regulating, complex membranes themselves, through their function, provide fruit, dappled light and transpiration by which other systems evolve and thrive. The hydrological cycle becomes dynamically visible and experiential to the two and four legged, the grinders, choppers, and digesters, themselves bubbles of hydrological functioning, nested and signaling.
What is measurement within complex and diverse functions of circularity, even gaining in complexity, left to succession as we want to in our ‘Regenerative Movement’? Identified as a movement rather than creation of a system as if new, because if truly regenerative, our task is to simply self-identify or self-discover within systems we are already a part of and had only the mental construct or ‘assumption of separation’ to navigate toward Etheric, observational (self-aware) understanding of our connectivity. The entire system of creation will simply halt to teach one of its own the connections ignored by our actions out of balance. Placing our selves within the hydrology system as water beings, as containers of nested complexities, we begin to see how measurement emerges along the margins of our ability to see, articulate, and act from within the balance of intricate, elemental containers and membranes as a functioning responsive part. With our ability to self-reflect (Ether, tools by which we ‘see’ the stars and ourselves), lies the capacity to understand the relationships between these nesting functions. There exists always a kind of interrelation mirroring. Consider: Clay w/o Water, Humans w/o Microbes, Plants w/o Humans, Earth w/o Plants.
Clay alone. Water alone. Plants alone. Humans alone. Endless potential uses and functions. Mutable and ever changing without end. We do this through commodification. We break down the functions of things-together into things-separate, utilitarian and lifeless. System less. Other. Waste as an inevitable end-result of loss of function within a larger system. Data is something we collect from the endless derivation and isolation of parts within larger systems to understand complexity. Isolating body parts to understand a living system that is dead in function will never reveal itself. It really is this simple. Waste only exists when the parts are separated from a functioning whole. Waste results from a crisis of imagination, a blindness to function, a loss of balance. Data. Isolated measurements.
From within a functional point of view as a part of the ecology we are waking to, what measurements are important rather than possible? We’ve proven our talent and proclivity for derivatives and production. As water beings, in function a currency of information, a narrative of all the things we are a part of, made of, connected to. No lack of currency, what water animates and holds. As water, we are within the currency of all living systems. If lack, if system break down, then recharge through reciprocity. Reciprocity simply the whole system recognition of give and receive, negative, positive, the two sides of the mirror, the allowance of flow, of currency. Value in this allowance for a whole-systems functioning becomes life-giving and sustaining, defined as holding capacity or the function of containing. The function of nesting within containing systems. The function of people, plants, animals and insects, the function of the elemental systems in relationship with living systems. Those functions within place and time.
Measurements through Functions become: Stacked functions, nested functions, holding capacities, protected functions, evolved functions, functions of redundancies and complexities. Closes loops and zero waste. Diversity. Reciprocities. Responsive systems. Self-regulations. Resilience through redundancies. Signaling capacities. Epigenetics and RNA signaling. Quorum. Feedback loops. Sowing and harvesting. Generational foraging. Gardens. Our capacity for Joy and play. Observational discovery. Desire to share. Call to Stewardship.
Stewardship of living systems in place and time, the voice and song of these places, received with gratitude for what true demonstration is. Proof of concept becomes proof of function. Demonstration Garden, a garden on the path of stewarded succession becomes archetype. Becomes a living constellation of signaling, reflective, amplifying life. Measured by capacity to hold an unrestrained joy of living. Few questions by active celebration of a life lived in balance.
