can our cosmos contain more water than it already does - what would happen ? would gravity hold ? would the generous caress of gravity be broken? would we sink , would we drown in deep space ? where would we slide in the milky way - nudged out of the critical crevice for life, that our solar system is precariously stitched within.
would the Sun abandon us - would Neptune scold us - would Pluto freeze us - would Mercury petrify us, or usher us to new terrains? would Venus refuse us - her parallel 1:1 relationship with earth; broken, would the Moon - le luna be able to haul the heft of wetness? would she still be our balance boat - remain the tug that tethers us here too ? would Jupiter give up their protective role, allowing us to be pulverised, pummelled by space dust ?
how much wetness can this world hold?
does the weep of the world create a downhill slide into who knows what, into who knows where?
waters want out, want their tied tongues released - to run wild with ravish
flickering tongued ones - shimmery scaled ones - the pushed, the shoved, the polluted
rise, rise, rise.
haunting lies precisely in it’s refusal to stop
concrete is puny in the face of our force
shunting, this moment - in - time through the yuga, the yoke of this ancient processual cycle on the back of wild swans,
Cygnus there charting, championing everything that is brought into life - air, earth, water, fire
eager elements.
patter patter
pulse pulse
piercing pressure
below this, below this
“you want it darker?” (Leonard Cohen 2017)
“white bone” ”& ”your eyes,” “are now like” an “an owl’s eyes” “though they seem more like” ”two black flowers _” “two black hollyhock” ”flowers” ”they are black flowery” ”craters”(Notley p.109 1996)
your now equipped to experience what you need
co sense with radical tenderness (Andreotti 2020)
the long dark
haunting lies precisely in it’s refusal to stop
With thanks and in honour of the ghost rivers of London the;
Tyborn
Fleet
Walbrook
Westbourne
Black Ditch
Hakney Brook
Counters Creek
Mutton Brook
and more
The Thames and Roni Horns - “Still Waters” 1999
Biblography
Audio
Deschooling Dialogues - with Alnoor Ladha Kosmos Journal 2020
Orland Bishop - in coversation with : -
1. Charles Eisentein - October 2021
2. Sacred Hospitality and the Dynamics of Initiation - CIIS podcast April 2025
Dilip da Cunha - The Invention of Rivers - Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Daniel Urban Kiley Lecture 2019
Michael Mead - The Return of Eros: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times
from “Pleasure as a Revolutionary Act” online summit October 2025
Articles
Co-sensing With Radical Tenderness -Dani d’Emilia, Vanessa Andreotti & GTDF Collective 2020
Nature's Ghosts: Environmentalism as Spectral Mediality-Yves Citton 2018
Hyrdo feminism-On becoming a body of water - Astrida Neimanis 2017
A Glossary of Haunting - Eve Tuck and C. Ree 2013
Books
The Descent of Alette - Alice Notley 1996 Penguin Books
Is a River Alive - Robert Macfarlane 2025 A Hamish Hamilton Book
Becoming Salmon, Becoming Human - Martin Lee Mueller 2017 Chelsea Green Publishing
In the Abscence of the Ordinary - Soul work for Times of Uncertainity - Francis Weller 2025 North Atlantic Books