WEBVTT

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To love this Earth.

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This is our great pleasure,
our participation, our work:

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to restore our awareness of
our symbiotic relationship

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with nature the most
pressing spiritual

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and political need of our time.

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To be in relation, to everything
around us above us, below us,

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Earth, sky, bones, blood, flesh
is to see the world whole, even

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holy.

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But the world we
frequently surrender

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to defies our participation
and seduces us

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into believing that our only
place in nature is a spectator,

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onlooker.

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Lawrence writes, there exist
two great modes of life.

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The religious, and the sexual.

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Perhaps eroticism is the
bridge between the two.

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Eroticism, engagement,
being in relation:

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the inner life is
called into play.

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No longer numb, we
feel the magnetic pull

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of our bodies towards something
stronger, more vital than simply

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ourselves.

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Arousal becomes a
dance with longing.

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And we form a secret
partnership with possibility.

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What are we afraid of?

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Body, Earth, eros,
nature, even our own.

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When we experience the
world as our own body,

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writes Suzi Gablik in
The Reenactment of Art,

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illusions of duality dissolve.

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And with them, old assumptions
about a distinct and separate

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ego self codified
by our culture.

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The eye becomes the
transcendent eye.

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Not to indulge, but to engage.

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Not to exploit,
but to experience.

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With a passionate awareness
that we embody, where we embody,

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both the sorrow and
the joy of this world.

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Our lack of intimacy
with the land.

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Even knowing the names of
things in the country where

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I come from: avocets,
black-necked stilts,

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white faced ibis,
long billed curlews,

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black tailed jackrabbit,
pronghorn, rattlesnake,

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greasewood sage.

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In this country, Bighorn sheep,
coyote, cougar, javelina,

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morning doves, cactus
wren, acacia, saguaro.

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Knowing the names of things.

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Our lack of intimacy
with the land

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has initiated a lack of
intimacy with each other.

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Could it be that what we fear
most is our capacity to feel?

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And so we annihilate
symbolically

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and physically that which
is beautiful, and tender.

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Anything that dares us to
consider our creative selves.

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The erotic world is
silenced, reduced

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to a collection of objects we
can curate and control, be it

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a vase, a woman, or wilderness.

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Emily Dickinson writes, life is
a spell so exquisite, everything

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conspires to break it.

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Life is a spell so exquisite.

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Everything conspires
to break it.

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How can we not respond?

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It is an unspoken hunger
we deflect with knives.

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One avocado between us.

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Cut neatly in half,
twisted, and separated

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from the large wooden pit.

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With the green
fleshy boats in hand,

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we slice vertical strips
from one end to the other.

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Vegetable planks.

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We smother the
avocado with salsa.

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Hot chillies at
noon in the desert.

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We look at each other and smile.

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Eating avocados with
sharp silver blades,

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risking the blood of
our tongues repeatedly.

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