Live Differently — Touch the Algae
“The other is not just in one's skin, but in one's bones, in one's belly, in one's heart, in one's nucleus, in one's past and future. This is as true for electrons as it is for brittlestars as it is for the differentially constituted human."
— Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007)
Algae, or seaweed, is other to me, on my skin, under my skin, its filaments like fascia stretching and moist. I don’t know yet if I want it inside, if it will wrap like tentacles around the tunnels that carry oxygenated blood, squeezing tighter than my own arterial walls, constricting movement, holding. Or if it will travel upwards, through the neck and throat, lymph passages and to the back of my eyes, blinding me to my own path, offering darkness, mystery, and the chance of a fatal sting.
I arrived on Millowl afraid of seaweed, as many people are, because we cannot see what's underneath it and/or because we recoil viscerally at the idea of its physical touch. Entanglement, which I would love to understand at the “quantum” level but suspect I simply don’t, seems differently literal here. Encountered through tides, in the edges, seaweed might wrap around our legs, pulling us into oceanic depths which we cannot ever know and yet from which we will never resurface.
Tangled Flame. Fine Art Photograph. 2025.
Edgar Mitchell (add link), who once walked on (another great mystery) the moon, describes entanglement as follows — “when subatomic matter is in a process together, subsequently the subatomic particles go apart from each other and go across the universe. When they do this, they will remain entangled. That means if you do something to one, the other one responds immediately, instantaneously.”
Entanglement, which I would love to understand at the quantum level but suspect I simply don’t, seems differently literal as piles of wet weed pass softly beside my limbs.
Caught in the Weeds. Fine Art Photograph. 2025.
An embryo begins with one cell wall, the fluid within, and movement, action, the capacity to create. And yet it is never alone. From birth we are embedded, entangled at the cellular level with the once-in-soil branches of our mothers, kin, ancestors – in all their complexities. You do something to one, the other one responds.
Our cell walls are porous, like the membranes of algae, and in their cleaving the cellular fluid moves too, thickening and extending with fibrous filaments, enabling new forms of stillness, motion, creation. Like the kelp holdfast we hold tight to the uterine wall. Never alone, we are already ancient, carriers of breath, capacity, memory.
Seaweed as body. Fluid, pattern, structure. Entangled, entangling.
Deep Current. Wallpaper and Fabric Repeat — Artful Weave.
Living alongside ‘the weed’, the kelp, the algae, tangled quite literally on the shore, entangled not only with seagrass but with the exchange of water, tide, and sand, I encounter its otherness differently now. I look for the dazzling beauty of mixed pastel or neon shades, the almost infinite filament patterns that mirror rivers from the sky and the capillary beds just under my skin. I look for beads of water on blooms and I am curious about its constitution, its sameness and difference. I wonder if we can learn to live differently together, to acknowledge any discomfort and deepen our co-living, even to the point of inviting us into our beds.
Salt Flowers. Bedding, Fabric and Wallpaper Mural — Artful Weave.
In Who is Courting You, Sophie Strand (link) describes the world as “a love story that wants desperately to include us again”.
Seaweed as body. Fluid, membrane, breath.
Tim Ingold (link) reminds me that “life is lived along lines, not points”. The first breath touches the sky and, in so doing, lifts us in a new way from the earth that gave rise to us, as a frond uncurls in the morning sun. We see and feel new worlds, new textures. Texture is more than its touch, it is imagination, a call, an inducement to act.
And yet, still, we are of earth. Power and strength, layers of stone, a dance of tides. Strong formations, still cellular, a return to our fluids as ground.