Idzie"To be silenced is not the same as to be silent; to go unheard is not the same as to be speechless. No landscape speaks with a single tongue." Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive? #IsaRiverAlive
"[F]or every human is, of course, a waterbody. Water flows in and through us. Running, we are rivers. Seated, we are pools. Our brains and hearts are three-quarters water, our skin is two-thirds water; even our bones are watery. We were swimmers before we were walkers, slow-turning like breath-divers in the dark flotation tank of the womb." Robert Macfarlane, #IsaRiverAlive
"Urban planners speak of 'daylighting' streams and rivers. This is the practice of un-burying the watercourses over which many cities have been built, and which have been confined to drains and tunnels, flowing invisibly down in darkness. These imprisoned watercourses are sometimes known as 'ghost rivers': their voices are heard at street level, if at all, as whispers drifting from manhole covers or drain grilles...'Daylighting' lets the water of buried streams meet the sun again. It is a means of bringing river ghosts back to life in towns and cities, of re-encountering rivers as friends and fellow citizens." Robert Macfarlane, #IsaRiverAlive
"The impounded meaning of 'river' is now one of 'service provider', an identity held in place by structures of the imagination as well as of land. We have become increasingly waterproofed: conceptually sealed against subtle and various relations with rivers, even as they continue to irritate our bodies, thoughts, songs and stories. Rivers run through people as surely as they run through places." Robert Macfarlane, #IsaRiverAlive
"One of modernity's many vanishing tricks is to disappear the provisionality of its own conclusions. We now take for granted that we take rivers for granted. It is unremarkable that flowing fresh water can be owned, for instance -- can be privatized and sold, reduced to liquid asset -- or to think that access to a river's banks may be tightly controlled or forbidden, rather than being part of a blue commons." Robert Macfarlane, #IsaRiverAlive
"A good grammar of animacy can still re-enchant existence. To imagine that a river is alive causes water to glitter differently. New possibilities of encounter emerge -- and loneliness retreats a step or two. You find yourself falling in love outward, to use Robinson Jeffer's beautiful phrase." Robert Macfarlane, #IsaRiverAlive