Your Bones Are Borrowed From Mountains (& Other Important Reminders Worth Putting Our Phones Down, Perhaps, For One Darn Minute?)

We are literally little fragments of the cosmos but here we are, rotting in front of screens, hostages to a planet-shredding neoliberal agenda by a bunch of psychopaths

Hey you lovely, warm, soft creature. Did you hear the news?

It’s good news. It's now thought that human beings ... homo sapiens ...are not separate from, in control of, or superior to the natural world, but are in fact incontrovertibly embedded within a complex web of dynamic, symbiotic, reciprocal relationship with all of life on Earth! Wow!

In other words—

despite humans modifying their living situation beyond recognition and carving up, shedding, polluting the very systems that keep them alive (weird, huh?)

—humans are intimately interconnected to, and dependent on all of life and the Earth herself.

However, many of us have absolutely no idea what it even means, to be so darn interconnected, or why it matters. Or how to actually feel it, when we live in polyester costumes in plastic-filled lives, grunting and straining under the unrelenting green blink of the WIFI router.

lights lights lights everywhere
the constant glow of our constant screens

If more of us actually felt our connection with the web of life —

like, felt it in our bones, in our breath, in our twitchy little animal bodies currently scrolling this

—it would make the things that are happening all the time, the extraction, erasure, ecocide and institutionalised violence and oppression that our system calls business as usual...it would make it all rather impossible.

the war and terror and destruction and the war and terror and destruction and the war and terror and destruction and

But. Not having all the war and terror and destruction is super bad for the economy.

And the growth of the economy is more important than a silly thing like life. A silly thing like clean water. A silly thing like air we can actually breathe. The growth of the economy is more important than a silly thing like silly old diversity.

As Shane Jones (Aotearoa politician, lover of economic growth, hater of life) said:

“We are not going to sit around and read poetry to rare lizards while our current account deficit goes down the gurgler.”

“Hey Siobhán I thought this piece was about bones and mountains or something? It sounded a bit nice which is why I am here on this page but now you're just going on about the economyyyyyurgggghhhh"

So just to make that last bit really clear—

because you're probably skimming while waiting for me to get to the bit about mountains, and you're also responding to workplace Slack messages, while drinking a caffeinated something, while jiggling an unsettled child or three on your lap, because we kinda have to do all the things at once now, just to survive

—we are intimately interconnected with, and inherently belong to, an astonishingly beautiful, vast, living, dynamic web of life.

And.

Just say ‘but’ when you mean ‘but’

The systems we live within, in order for them to exist, need to ensure that we do not realise this, that we do not remember this, that we do not reconnect with this immutable fact of interconnectedness.

Because to realise, to remember, to reconnect....it would make us rather inconvenient, quite unruly and fundamentally unprofitable.

As the late Kurt Vonnegut said: We'll go down in history as the first society that wouldn't save itself because it wasn't cost-effective."

The systems of domination we live within benefit from us seeing ourselves as little individual, separate people who have full control over our own happiness, living in a meritocratic culture where 'independence' is a virtue and absolutely anyone (with the right ‘mindset’ and a smidge of hard work) can rise above silly things like institutionalised oppression and structural inequality.

But it’s all an illusion.

(Using the word illusion to describe all of this endemic individualism seems to imply that ….POOF! ….just seeing it means it disappears and true connection is revealed instantly. We always want instant results, don’t we?)

Once we look in the direction of our incontrovertible interconnectedness, there is a tremendous amount to see
and feel
and touch
and remember
and do
and love

This is part of my work in the world: seeing through the illusion and helping my fellow earthlings reconnect with themselves, each other and the more-than-human world.

If you need convincing, see:

Why It Matters to See Yourself as the Fuzzy Little Ape-Like Earth Child That You Are

Anyway, this is all starting to sound like I’m trying to sell you something (like everything on the internet is?), and I’m really, really not.

So how about we get into what I am doing…..which is reminding you of things your animal body knows about its place here on this earth, but that your capitalist-hostage-influenced mind has forgotten.

This is the part where I mention the title again, for those that have been confused so far.

Your bones are borrowed from mountains: a biological fact

This is not just a poetic metaphor. This is a literal truth of biology.

The minerals that make up your bones (calcium, phosphorus, magnesium) are geological. They come from the Earth’s crust, shaped by tectonic shifts, sediment, ancient seabeds, and ...mountains. You are built from rock, dust, and time. Your body is a temporary arrangement of Earth’s matter. You are the earth.

Your bones are borrowed from mountains: a pretty, temporal metaphor

This is not just a literal truth of biology. It's also a poetic metaphor.

We are embodied, borrowed expressions of a living world. We are made of Earth, sure, but on loan for a time.

We don't own these bodies. They are gifts, entrusted to us, and will be returned. Just like a mountain erodes, we too return to the land.

Your bones are borrowed from mountains: a call to rebellion

This is not just a poetic metaphor or biological truth. It's also a cry to resistance, to remember what is being fracked, mined, shredded and polluted in the name of economic growth.

You. Literally you.

Not convinced? Here are a few more important reminders that you, my dear, belong right here:

Your body is made of water, minerals, and salts.... just like rivers, rocks and oceans.
You are the earth.

The iron in your blood came from stars exploding before this planet was born.
You are the cosmos.

When you breathe, you’re in an intimate partnership with trees
You are sharing life.

Your feelings surge and shift like weather. Angry storms, sad rains, laughter on the breeze. Hot… cold… icy glare.
You are the climate.

You are constantly dying and renewing, just like the seasons turn. Your skin sheds cells like trees shed leaves. The earth is reclaiming you, cell by cell.
You are deliciously gross.

Your hunger is life speaking to you.
You are life, longing to sustain itself.

Metabolism is combustion. The same laws that fuel stars fuel your cells.
You are fire.

Your tears and sweat contain the same salt as oceans.
You are the universal waters that sustain life.

Your heartbeat is the echo of the drum rhythms of your ancestors. Your body remembers and resonates with the Earth's oldest beat.
You are the pulse of the Earth.

You are not an individual person (and all the responsibilities that come with that)....you're an entire ecosystem. There are more *bacterial* cells in our gut than "human" ones in our body (although, given that, how come we are still making the distinction?)
You are all of this.

Your bones are borrowed from mountains, so ….

What will you do, you little piece of planet, now that you feel the tingle of remembering?

If you remembered this every morning

that your bones are borrowed from mountains, that you are Earth, that you are the stars, that you are all of this

not metaphorically, but materially....

What would become intolerable?

What would you stop consenting to?

What might you begin to protect as if it were your own body?

Because it is.