What’s in a harvest?
Harvest: noun the gathering in of ripened crops.
Before crops can ripen, seeds must be sown,
or clones cut from mothers. Even before this: the soil is prepared.
We maintain, we water, protect from pests and disease.
We wait.
We wait.
We wait.
We harvest our ripened crops.
Reap: verb cutting using a scythe or sickle.
In a scene from The House That Jack Built (2018)
the field breathes with the rhythmic slice, slice, slicing of men with sickles,
harvesting.
In much the same way, ideas can also be harvested. So can stories and poems.
Finally (you might think) we arrive at the core of my introduction:
I’m completely obsessed with the idea of intellectual harvesting: preparing the soil by reading far and wide and relentlessly observing the world, watering… waiting… thinking… and finally harvesting by writing.
My point is that I am a reader, observer, writer, poet, philosopher
and above all, a harvester of stories and ideas.
I hope to bring value to this hive by sharing my interests with like-minded people like you.
I leave you with two small impressions so you have an idea of what’s to come…
deltas
Rivers rush over land, hit
oceans or deserts, birth rich soil
in the flickering forks of a delta.
Your own branching windpipe resembles
the Nile, Okavango, Orange.
The trachea keeps cleaving, becomes alveoli.
Fungi tunnels through mountain and stone,
often blossoms in fairy rings. Fresh mycelium
reaches out, covers new ground.
Someday, on a rainy day,
it will grow into my veins
and through my navel. Drenched
and dressed in fungi I will rise again:
a pinhead pops out of the ground,
grows a stem, a cap and a veil
that breaks.
to reason like mycelium
with "Primordial Chaos, No. 16" by Hilma af Klint, 1906‒1907
to reason like mycelium
means reaching far and wide ‒
never anchoring, always expanding,
branching off in unforeseen directions
chanting yes, and, yes, and, yes.
Hilma af Klint, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Really creative introduction! Cannot wait for the future content. Like a harvest, hive will become your soil, your posts the seeds that you plant, and your growth and interactions the harvest waiting at the end.
Good luck and best wishes!
Thank you, urban.scout! I really appreciate the encouragement.
Harvesting, a perpetual taking away but always giving back. The mind, an infinite landscape layered by soil. Some seeds will grow, others will turn into soil, others will spread and take over. The mind, an infinite possibilities, never there, yet always already present.
I hope that you find some seeds waiting to grow in the mind garden you are cultivating; they might be hidden in the strangest corners.
Hive, Hive-mind, mindlessly meandering through hexagonal thoughts, pondering, waiting, always waiting for the same thing to happen differently.
Be creative and enjoy the growth. Welcome!
I love your continuation of the mind/soil idea. And thank you for getting me on this platform and for the warm welcome. Much appreciated. I'm looking forward to all our future musings!
There is a beautiful board of a psychologist in the UK: mind garden.
We cultivate our crops by reading, by reading we sow new seeds.
Another saffa, @zakludick. She is a fellow philosopher, creative thinker, and poet. We had a somewhat intoxicated discussion about creating and developing a creative writing community from South Africa.
We are both from the university and I think we have access to young minds ripe for the picking. For one thing, people want to contribute to new ways of thinking and understanding but don’t always know where to go. Hive is that the community and (safe) space people are yearning for but don’t know it exists. But also, people are looking for community and real connection.
Anyways, the idea is still in its infancy, but we can organise something to expose more people to the awesome environment of Hive!
Please make use of the SouthAfrica community until we actually can saturate and then diversify!
Well met @newharvest! I shall add you to the Saffa-centric-but-not-inclusive Activity group!
Thank you @zakludick! I appreciate you adding me to the group.
Awesome! I hope to see more of you soon!
Also, you, @fermentedphil and @urban.scout are within Braai range of us! 😁
And stellies have some awesome pubs that are well suited for many folks to gather around. Hope that we can organise something in the new year!
Indeed. So I am in Table View. Together with my family, active or not active we have... 13 people with Hive accounts here.
Hehe. Mine is a family of 5. Though the 10 year old is not posting much yet. He will catch on in due time.
The other kids @merenludick and @aimeludick are doing way better.
But yeah. Just us can come over. We have an extended group of other Hive users in CT. We dont need to throw a huge thing.
A braai or gathering of some sort is food too.
Definitely keen for a gathering of some sort!
That sounds awesome! Also very keen.