Above ground, and mobile. Not like the plants and trees and the things rooted into the earth and connected underground. But like the animals and moving creatures, humans skip over the surface, able to change or adapt to their surroundings as they please, sort of. Or at least have the ability to escape, modify, and manipulate what is around us and ourselves, even if sometimes we lack the capacity to be able to.

And while we are moving through our lives and habitats, it seems they are trying to make us more like the rooted species of this world. Staying where you are, connected by an unseen network which works behind the scenes, electronically and physically. That’s where borders, fences, walls and barriers come into play, as they restrict our ability to live as we would normally, without being in each other’s pockets all the time, living stacked up with no privacy and needing to make do because someone else has decided you have to.

Where perhaps it seems already a sub-network has already begun, as with the trees and fungi root systems form a symbiotic relationship to thrive, so does society or certain areas of it. Adapting already to the strange ‘reality’ that is forming around actual reality and finding new ways around it and through it. Necessity is the mother of all invention they say, so perhaps we are already evolving mental and communicative strategies outside of the conventional box.

Although it seems many are losing their abilities to communicate on a general level due to technology and recent societal pressures and restrictions. Because even when physical barriers might be lessened, sometimes the mental barriers people have adjusted to don’t just disappear. They will often stay and have to be assimilated or left behind gradually, which isn’t as quick and easy as just dropping a mandate or regulation. So some have become rooted, unable to move or change, and end up being at the mercy of the environment rather than the master of it. And that means psychological environment as well as the immediate physical one you find yourself in. Constantly then waiting for the next instruction or order to follow to be able to ‘move forward’, kind of like how we might consider a robot designed to be fully animated in movements, able to move and be mobile, but not until programmed to and activated. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how people come out of this and what kind of mentality is on the other side, because it really does feel as if it’s hanging in the balance right now and it could go either way…

(c) K Wicks