# 27
There is no sky other than the breath of the earth
Open air is the “breath” of the green earth. There is no opposition between the ethereal and the material, no sky above us toward which to ascend, but rather a we that is always already within a sky that is nothing other than living earth.
That is to say, a sky built by the metabolic activity of living beings, capable of creating the conditions that make our life possible.
Living in the open air is not the same as being in nature and far from civilization, because—shopping malls aside—nature is everywhere; it does not mean being outside; it means being everywhere at home within those living territories on which our subsistence is founded, and where every living being inhabits the entanglement of other living beings.
However, being in the open air requires a certain commitment: a life that is exclusively urban, disconnected from the circuits that channel biomass toward us, disconnected from the elements and from other forms of life, makes access to the open air decidedly difficult. In the heart of cities, the latter comes through tracking migratory birds or through the geopolitical practice of permaculture gardens on balconies.
Baptiste Morizot, On the animal trail, 2020Invitations to contemplate these words and play with your thoughts
What if everything is entangled
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The word “Abfall” in German means “refuse” or “waste” (garbage, rubbish), or, literally, “that which has fallen down.”
Does everything that touches the ground automatically become unwanted and turn into waste?
The semiotics of waste seem to be deeply rooted in a dynamic of verticality—in the down …
What if everything is entangled
Who invented the separation between sky and earth—which is so blatantly demonstrated in children’s drawings, in the blue line marking the upper border of the paper? And how did this separation become a hierarchy: the idea that we must ascend towards some higher realm, associating what is above with transcendence and superiority, while what is below becomes merely material, earthly, dependent? All the while forgetting that the very air we breathe is produced through the metabolic activity of life on Earth. Oxygen is generated through photosynthesis; our food comes from the soil; and the conditions of our survival emerge from the intricate metabolisms of the living world. The open air is not something “above” us at all, but something we are already immersed in: a living atmosphere continuously produced through the entanglement of earth, plants, animals, microorganisms and humans. To live in the open air might therefore mean remembering how important the earth is to us—and that we are always already within the web of life that sustains us.
Meike Gleim
