Maps of Relationship
Every relationship is a nervous system
“Fungal systems are constituted by threadlike mycelial networks below ground. With no predetermined body plan, they become maps of relationship wherever they grow. They branch and fork and fuse to constellate the connective tissue of other species and beings.”
— Sophie Strand
“Every relationship is a nervous system.”
— Andreas Weber
Reflections on the Reciprocity of the Offering
During the sweet, slow rhythm of this past weekend, participants in my Connective Tissue class and I marveled at the fresh snowfall and drank tea as we pondered the collective task of expanding the resilience of our nervous systems by relating with fungi. What if we could feel, on a cellular level, the decomposing of the myth of individualism? What if we could let rot the colonial conditioning that has separated us from our land, from our kin? What if we could commit ourselves to finding greater symbiosis in the myriad nervous systems in our lives, the overlapping nervous systems emergent in every encounter?
Asking these questions together, both through conversation and somatic visualization, was enough to root me back into place. The soul-sucking violence and rising fascism we’re witnessing here in Colorado Springs, in Atlanta, in Palestine, in the Congo, in Sudan, in India… all over the world… it continues to shake us and sicken us and shock us into waves of grief, numbness, dissociation, rage, and fear. We take action, we crash, we rise again. Resting on the earth with other bodies allows us to remember both the weight of what’s at stake and the immensity of love and strength found in communal ecological care.
The maps of relationship in our lives show us both where we are needed and how we are supported. The half-a-billion-year-old mutualism of mycorrhizal threads and plant roots is, in my mind’s eye, a holding of hands and jumping into the unknown. In these evermore terrifying times, can we find within us the courage to dive? What might be learned if we dive into the underground?
Connective Tissue in the Wider Web
Due to a desire to make this offering as accessible as possible, I will be teaching it online via Zoom in a few weeks. Please share, and reach out with any questions or scholarship needs!
Deep gratitude, as always, to Sophie Strand for being a major inspiration for this work. If you would like to read her newest writings and show support to her, you can subscribe to her Substack here. For brilliant dispatches on Palestinian resistance and solidarity, I recommend the writings of Fariha Roisin.