in the water that runs, in the water that sleeps

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Though I do not expect that I shall be reborn directly as a crocus, I know that one day my atoms will inhabit a bacterium here, a diatom there, a nematode or a flagellate - even a crayfish or a sea cucumber. I will be here, in myriad forms, for as long as there are forms of life on Earth.

I have always been here, and with a certain effort of will,
I can sometimes remember.

—John A. Livingston
One Cosmic Instant, A Natural History of Human Arrogance

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Listen in the wind to the sighing of the bush:
This is the ancestors breathing.
Those who are dead are never gone;
The dead are not down in the earth:
They are in the trembling of the trees,
In the groaning of the woods,
In the water that runs, in the water that sleeps.


—traditional saying from Senegal

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wait - what ?

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earth song

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Listen to things more often than beings.
Hear the voice of the fire, hear the voice of the water,
 

Listen in the wind to the sighing of the bush:
This is the ancestors breathing.
 

Those who are dead are never gone;
The dead are not down in the earth:
 

They are in the trembling of the trees,
In the groaning of the woods,
 

In the water that runs, in the water that sleeps,
They are in the hut, they are in the crowd.
 

Those who are dead are not ever gone;
They are in the woman's breast, they are in the wailing of a child,
 

They are in the burning log and in the moaning rock.
They are in the weeping grasses, in the forest and the home.
 

Listen to things more often than beings.
Hear the voice of fire, hear the voice of water.
 

Listen in the wind to the sighing of the bush.
This is the ancestors breathing.


–Traditional Senegal

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