It’s always been my hidden wish that one day my imaginary friends would start writing back. So when Samuél proposed we would explore human’s relationship with nature through Titus’s eyes, I jumped in. Samuél is one of the coolest living artists I know (you can read his short autobiography here) and one of the best young thinkers on Substack.
While this started out as a philosophical exploration of our collective ecological worry, it quickly lapsed into fiction and myth.
This is part 1 of an ongoing correspondence between Jo & Dear Titus, an imaginary character living in a self-sustaining community somewhere off the grid. Titus was first introduced in this letter from Jo’s Epistolary called Honorable Harvest.
Dear Jo,
You ask me if the rains will come soon. I’m sitting beneath a coming storm. Do you remember what it used to look like, when the lightning came? The night’s darkness illuminated in an instant? The white caps on the coastline? Do you remember that deafening sound the tidal bore made when it first broke the banks of the ancient river? Today there’s just a drizzle, and the white noise of the wind, and the occasional thundercrack from the sky's belly.
Out here in the Kingdom, the earth feels old. The trees are still green, but not like they used to be. This land is sick. A generation of children is growing up with blazing purple sunsets. The young ones think the magenta clouds are as nature intended, and so the elders lie to them.
It is strangely beautiful, though. Maybe we’re just color blind. Some of the elders believe we are the cancer, but I don’t want to believe it … or at least, I want to believe that we can also find a solution.
I am sorry to hear that your friend suffered before she passed—what was her name, Jo? I know her child will grow up with the warmth of her mother’s love glowing within her.
Don’t let the world you speak of snatch away the calm of a quiet morning. Like the fig tree, your bounty is yours to offer—don’t let the others take it. One of the elders in the nearest community, well beyond the pine forest and out beyond the hills of the Engorged Lake, warned us of the crackling sound the wind makes when it blows through a dry forest.
The rain from the thunderstorm is helping, but of course there is lightning, too. And while I want to tell you, Jo, that the world does not rest on your shoulders, and while I want to tell you that the fig tree will forgive you, how can I know? How do we harness the thunder before it’s too late? Some of the elders tell us that even the rain is sick—six of the young ones have developed a rash on the palms of their hands and under their armpits. The elders suggest only bathing once a week now.
At our weekly Meeting for Contemplation, the community laughed over one of the elder’s stories about a small man named Napoleon. He was a conqueror of much more than fig trees, and, like so many of his generation, he believed the earth existed for his taking. “But the fig tree still grows,” the elder said. “And Napoleon is dead.”
Napoleon wasn’t all bad, though. People rarely are. Some people in your land still even revere him, don’t they? I liked the story of Napoleon telling his lover, Josephine, not to wash herself when he was away at war. He insisted she keep her natural fragrance so that when he returned, he could taste her as she was meant to be tasted.
Why are we so interested in cleanliness, Jo? Why must we always sanitize with unnatural machines? Pesticides and preservatives and anti-bacterial gels … tell me, my friend, when you pick from the fig tree, what does it taste like? Does it taste of the sky? Of the earth? The elders tell us there is no such thing as the natural world anymore.
I have to go now. There is work to be done. But one final thought: perhaps we should all be more patient with the Josephines and the fig trees in our lives. Perhaps this is why your dog, Ella, is so wise. She knows it isn’t over yet, it just takes time. So perhaps we should stop trying to collect the rainwater for drinking and let it flow downstream.
Tell me that we can begin again, Jo. You, too, are wise. Tell me that it's not too late to salvage the harvest. What do you know that I don’t?
You tell me that grateful contemplation of the beauty surrounding us is the only way we can start saving it. So when the rains do come to your lands, Jo, look to Ella. Does she wash herself, or is she patient? What does Ella take from the rain’s bounty?
In grateful contemplation,
Titus
PS: a drawing for you
It’s such a treat to engage in this kind of a dialogue with someone I first never knew, and then was a stranger, and now is a friend