Used (musings on land)

Austria, 2024

Part I : Does soil ever get tired ? 

Meandering around the backyard of my hometown I ponder the repercussions of a long history of virgin grounds being transformed into so-called productive or usable land.

Claimed farmland and building land alike: critical mass, vulnerable bodies

— some laid bare and stripped off their original appeal, others sealed to suffocation.

Territories penetrated for reproduction, regenerative matter cultivated to depletion

— not seldom granted only little rest before going into use. Again. 

Part II: What makes an ecosystem breath?

In German there is the word “gebraucht” which can mean either ‘used’ or ‘needed’ depending on context. Also being it a close relative to the word “Brauch”, which one may translate as ‘rite’, ‘custom’ or, yes, you might have guessed it, ‘usage’. 

Obviously there’s a cyclical aspect to agricultural necessities in connection to a capitalist supply-and-demand logic: usable land is needed for purposes of generating produce which feeds human beings and livestock. This notion sounds almost natural, immanent and instinctual if it only wasn’t something completely manmade, or else, conceived and manipulated by men. 

Hence, can something manmade actually be “natural“ and where do we draw the line between what is nature and what is non-nature? Are (innocent) acts of invention and creation something natural but a system of thought is not?

Imagine the very first cultivators of land and inventors of tools that made the whole agricultural evolution more convenient and beneficial for the individual, the tribe, the community —all just to be gradually overtaken by a mindset of efficiency and profitability.

We could easily feel paralyzed by the grief of where we have let a system take us, yet still there are ways to make different use of the things we cannot undo anymore in order to produce what we actually need. 

We have become aware that we need to call on the wisdom of the ones we used. We may assign new ways of use to old ways we thought we needed. And, perhaps, use up the old ways of needing in favor of a need for using only what’s necessary.
Speaking of a use more gentle and considerate than ever, as we decide to revisit the phrase:

Take only what you need. (And give back as much as you can.)

As by default: your lung will always only breath in and out as much air as is required in the very moment. Your heart will always only pump as much blood through your veins as the situation demands. 

Nature uses exactly what it needs to. 

Nature is you.