There are no self-made plants

The readings this week really amazed me, but brought on some thoughts about how to compliment them without seeming to have started at an assumption of the contrary. Thinking this through, I realized that what struck me most was not the quality of the writing or the self-awareness, but rather the fluidity I felt through these texts, particularly those by Savarese and Higashida.

I felt a strong playfulness that rarely comes across so clearly in writing. This stood out strongly to me as I read through Passive Plants, thinking about how there was no feeling that any of it was meant to be read as a metaphor. If a neurotypical had written this text, reading it as a metaphor would likely be the only option. To me, that was the beauty of it - it never felt contrary to my mode of thinking, it simply felt like I was being shown new pathways and connections through old routes and thoughts.

This is my favourite passage I have read in a long time:

'Active or passive—that dichotomy is so American. Most people think of disability as an insult to individual autonomy. I think of it as a necessary ecology: I need people; I need the world. I must relate to everything to function. I’m not some admiral of loneliness haughtily sailing across the ocean. Nor am I a sequoia conversing with angels. There are no self-made plants. If you Google “symbiotic vines,” the correction “parasitic” pops up. The conventional view is utterly Republican: individual plants compete in a ruthless marketplace for supremacy. Vines curtail the growth of trees—they are like the poor and disabled with respect to the economy. But a different view has begun to emerge. As one botanist notes, “The abundant leaves, flowers, and fruits of vines represent important food resources for animals."'

from Passive Plants