Evolution is our dream. But it is a waking dream. The dream is decided and implacable. We draw animal and plant species into ourselves, remove them from the earth, the sky and the forest, tear them away from nature, harvest them and make them our own. The grand digestion of our passions breaks them up and incorporates them into our humanity. These wing cases, pistils, leaves, claws, and shells are our future. Our inner insect and flower that had been drifting as if shipwrecked and lost at sea can finally express themselves. We crawl, scratch at the earth and our wounds, we cover ourselves with the froth of love and we tremble at the onslaught of the wind. Plants and animals are our mute instructors, dispensing immemorial knowledge that has survived over the millennia. Let’s listen to the minuscule and to the unobtrusive components of our natural environment as they teach us how to live our lives.

We will be helpless no more: our armour and our protection have arisen from our dreaming body. We continue to grow, but we replace biology and take over inventing our own pollens and our own majestic wings. Anatomy becomes a creation of the imagination. Our body is the soil where we grow our desire and ambitions; it is fertile ground in which everything grows if it is planted right, if we plough, water and keep predators away with our cheery repellents. We are the breeding ground and the womb of our animal and plant future. Nature is the catalogue of shapes that allow our thoughts to come into being and express our inner depths and our dreams.

 

Martin Page