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refuvescence

Photo of organic soil, by muhamad miftahul serif agil.

Warm greetings and welcome! The title and animating spirit of this blog space is "refuvescence". This is a neologism that I coined in 2017 in collaboration with the Bureau of Linguistical Reality, in a delightful process excavating its dimensions of meaning with artists Alicia Escott, Heidi Quante and Georgia Carbone.

The Bureau convenes word-making salons of people from different backgrounds to think/feel into what particular, peculiar, poignant phenomena we are experiencing due to Anthropogenic climate change and environmental upheaval. New states, new realities, new features of life require new language to be able to name them. The Bureau, with its many collaborators around the world, devises a lexicon for our era of climate destabilization.

Refuvescence (noun.)

Definition:

1) The almost miraculous moment of transition when compost is infused with fresh oxygen and turns from smelling rank to smelling sweet and is now fertile.

A recognition within it that this moment, which seems like magic, is the communal, cooperative, alchemical work of millions of individuals: the communal work of bacteria, worms, fungi and other organisms. An acknowledgement that death, rot and decay are the necessary fodder for life, growth and beauty.

2) A collective moment of transformation when what seems mired, foul and utterly messed up in a society transforms into a progressive and uniting force. Where rotting structures and ideologies are turned or composted into fertile ground for new growth.

3) The agents of transformation within a rotting culture. Those who do the vital work of decomposing what needs to transform so that habitable futures may be possible.

4) Psycho—geographic location where what has been foul transforms into that which is divine.

Here we are, in 2026. Refuvescence surrounds us.

This blog is a space to help metabolize wonder and horror. To decompose toxic inheritances with joy. To tend gardens of joy, justice and perpetual weirdness. A home of animist shimmer and Earthling heartache. Also, baby Crone post-menopausal alchemy.

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Refuvescence (noun.)

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United States in therapy skit, 20 years later on the 250th birthday

The Tyrant and the Reflecting Pool

oyster mushroom resume

moon joy + earth grief