Plants
I'm a plant man. My rooms are filled with plants. I like to spent time hiking or running through forests. My whole food is plants - I'm living purely vegan for years now. Sometimes I like to listen to Mort Garsons Plantasia. I never did chemical drugs, only those that I considered to be natural - while this isn't enough to save a person from self destruction, I can fondly say that this principle saved me at least from some additional addictions and traumas. I love the color of green even though I'm not able to reliable distinguish it from red since reaching adulthood - but I love the concept of the color green. I especially love the color green when the sun shines bright through leafs under a blue sky - I tried to recreate this spectacle of colors when making art, but I doubt that anything could ever come close to the real thing. There are certain trees and plants or even tree and plant types I have a relation to; some of them without knowing their name. I have fond memories of the alder of my childhood; I love the old, pig-chewed oaks around in the city forest of Crailsheim, the city were both my father and my friend originated from. I spent my youth around trees and groves. I slept - by chance - two nights under different trees that were symbols for the holy trinity - not that the latter means a thing to me. I love all my potted plants - it somewhat hurts me when they get spoiled, and I have to throw them away (this only happens every few years). I eat plants, and I do so without regrets. But I'm sure that they have a form of consciousness, a self-awareness of their existence that must remain cryptic for us breathing animals. I believe that any being is in some form soulful, and that we should avoid to harm them without need. I don't mean this in a religious way, I'm not spiritual - at least not in the classic sense of the word. I think that most of our problems are there because people lack empathy for over living things, and I try to differ from those people. Aspects of this ideology - if you want to call it so - are barriers within my everyday life - at sometimes minor nuisances, only known to me; in other cases they attract the mockery of my fellow human beings. I believe that plants have a right to exist, and that we ought to respect this right. When hiking I enter the domain of plants (and animals), and the plants form the path. Sometimes they hurt me - they can pierce you, attack you with acids or chemicals, or shelter ticks or mosquitos that bite you - but I guess this is the toll they take for entering their realm. Once, I burned myself on a Hogweed - quite painful. The Giant Hogweed was kind of legendary here when I was young: A neophyte, entering our world. There were radio and TV broadcasts about it, and I can remember my parents talking about the dangers of this plant; when one hit me many years later when collecting firewood, it was a bit disappointing. But there are other legendary plants that didn't lose any of their charm: Meadowsweet-bushes are gateways to the realm of the deity Holle; Walnut and Alder trees sign the home of witches; some cacti open the up the doors of perception, and primroses open doors to hidden caves filled with gold. And there is the substance of plants themself: You can hear them, swooshing in the wind. You can smell their odor, or the dampness they create when heavy rain falls on them on a warm, but cloudy summer day. You can see the colors of their flowers, or the vivid green of their leafs. You can touch them, you can taste them - but you can't understand their essence, no matter how far you go in dissecting them. They are a part of our world, are a layer of it - but also limited to it, unable to take control. This is their curse, but also their chance: They might remain when we and our world are gone, and might be part of the world that is to come. Then their bondage shall end, end they will, along with their consorts, the mushrooms, be the absolute rulers - towering in a world that knows neither misfortune nor happiness. But their regicides will already be fostering in the shadow of their leafs, preparing their knifes and longing to herald a age of their own.