An Invitation to a Rhizomatic Relational Learning Practice

Collectively Learning out Loud in Digital Third Spaces

For me, writing and learning publicly on multiple digital platforms has emerged as a relational practice with a virtual "third place commons" to think and learn out loud, as a way to be in conversation with a wider community than I regularly engage with here on the farm. I've always thought of these digital third spaces as reciprocal and relational, and I appreciate the inspiration, the cross-pollination of ideas and inspiration that takes place when there is a diversity of people from different backgrounds and lived experiences who come together to learn from one another. We know social media spaces can become incredibly divisive, echo chambers where misinformation is weaponized to dissolve the social fabric of our communities. But they can also be places where we find kindred creative spirits and those who share our vision for a liberated future for all.

A "third space" refers to a social environment outside of your home ("first space") and workplace ("second space") where people can connect with others, relax, and build community, often in casual settings like coffee shops, parks, libraries, or community centers;  the term was popularized by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his book "The Great Good Place" where he emphasized the importance of these spaces for social well-being and civic engagement. Emily McGowan writes: "The key is to find somewhere you feel welcome. Your third place should come with a sense of ease and offer respite from the world without removing you from it altogether."

I came over here to Substack from IG because my long-form captions were becoming more unwieldy to read ( and write) in multiple comments because of the caption character count constraints. While I still post short poems of reverent curiosity there with my photography and art practice, I have largely migrated here to commit to a consistent long-form public writing practice. Many of you have followed me from there to here, and I am so grateful to continue to be in thoughtful community with you all. Some of you are new to this circle, and I am glad we’ve found each other. Especially in these devastating late-stage capitalist times we find ourselves in.

I love to engage in a public practice of reverent curiosity to write regular love poems and thought pieces in words and photos as an antidote to the devastation of the modern world. An act of resistance, sharing little snippets of Indigenous joy and curiosity and uplifting my voice to celebrate my own survival against all odds.  I will continue to do that here in a more dynamic, long form. My writing practice is a way to grow the imaginal roots of new worlds and to strengthen my sense of agency and hope in a time of empires collapsing. A way of stirring the compost piles of the failings of modernity to see what might sprout in its place to feed those yet to come.

Since I am fairly new to regularly engaging with this Substack, I wanted to share my appreciation for all of you who have connected with me here in this virtual commons; you who help me see the islands and nodes of coherence, as we plant seeds that allow the sprouting a relational and irresistible future full of diversity, mutual flourishing and a culture of care.

Being here has reinvigorated my practice of writing in longer form, which is timely since I am also working on two forthcoming books as well. Excited to share more about those as they are unfurling. I may even share some messy first drafts or parts that get edited out of them and need to find a new home. And of course will share about my creative process along the way. I plan to share at least two essays a month here, as well as some notes and art.

I love to think of my public writing and sharing as rhizomatic; where there are lots of fertile nodes and shoots that allow for ideas to sprout for others. That is why I called this newsletter "Re-Seeding Imaginations" because when I share something out into the world, it is an invitation for you all to echo back your own thoughts, ideas, musings, links, questions, and curiosities, as we are helping each other re-seeding our imaginations to what is possible as we tend to cultures in transition in a rapidly changing world.

We are living in complexity, we all have our lookouts and unique perspectives birthed from diverse lived experiences, and we all carry a tiny bit of the big story that helps inform our responses to be good future ancestors in a time where we need to desperately to stand up for our relative and descendants of all forms.

" As with any generation, the oral tradition depends upon each person listening and remembering a portion and it is together--all of us remembering what we have heard together--that creates the whole story, the long story of the people. I remember only a small part, but this is what I remember....." ( excerpt from Leslie Marmon Silko's book "Storyteller")

As an eternal apprentice to plants, I am intimately familiar with all that is rhizomatic, subterranean plant stems that send out roots and shoots. This is how I see our informal community of practice, an underground mycelial and rhizomatic web where we are sharing information, nourishment, lessons, dreams, warnings, and life-giving energy to fuel our radical imaginations. You read what I share; it conjures up connections, thoughts, resources, and memories for you, and you share them back with me. In this way, this sort of collective Rhizomatic learning overturns conventional notions of education by positing that the "community is the curriculum." Our conversations around this digital hearth continue to seed and sprout from new nodes and help us engage in collective sense-making. We help strengthen our relational way of thinking and remembering. These are critical skills for the present and future, to adapt into the new cultures of transition that our descendants ( human and more-than-human) are asking us to embody.

Rhizomatic thinking sends out roots in multiple directions continuously spreading and self-replicating in a perambulatory style to reconceptualize sense-making.

Here is a glimpse of my digital writing studio, where I cultivate a rhizomatic and mycelial "idea culture", so you can see some of the themes that I love to write into...from relational memory to traditional ecological knowledge to bio-cultural diversity to creative process and radical imagination and beyond. I love engaging with a number of themes and idea seeds, and of course, I will always be weaving in storytelling from life here on this Indigenous seed farm and the work we do in the community to restore kin-centric landscapes of nourishment.

I shared a little bit about this "idea culture" in this essay. This is in anticipation of soon sharing the next essay in March in this series on relational memory and thinking and my own ecosystem of tools that support note-making and sense-making, which fuels my creative writing practice. I will also be soon offering a workshop/community of practice focused on creating your own “idea culture” to support your own creative endeavors. I will share more on that here in the near future.

I write to help make sense of the world. I read, listen, and engage with multimodal media to also gain new perspectives. I am thankful for all of you who have newly joined me here in this space where we can continue to be a community in the practice of learning together. I would love to create space to experiment with unstructured complex learning community building and idea cross-pollination to continue to nourish my ever-growing understanding of the world. Some of that can happen informally here in the comment sections of this substack, where we can share our own reflections and associations with what comes up for you as you read what I share here.

I often think about how we can use digital third spaces like this platform to engage in this type of unstructured relational learning. Transcending the binary thinking, the masking to shapes optics, un-branding our minds, and helping us to weave a richer relational landscape of memory, knowledge, and understanding in a time where the powers that be want us to lose the ability to think critically and tend to our rhizomatic collective mind.

Tyson Yunkaporta speaks to this in his pivotal book Sand Talk as Kinship Mind:

"Kinship-mind, which is about relationships and connectedness. In Aboriginal worldviews, nothing exists outside of a relationship to something else. There are no isolated variables—every element must be considered in relation to the other elements and the context. Areas of knowledge are integrated, not separated. The relationship between the knower and other knowers, places, and senior knowledge-keepers is paramount. It facilitates shared memory and sustainable knowledge systems."

I have an invitation. A couple of them actually.

This space will always be free and accessible for all who want to meander in and read, comment, and learn from what I am seeding in my posts and essays. I am committed to learning out loud and not paywalling for my essays for the time being. Please read, comment, and share ideas, links, and thoughts that come up for you when you read what I am sharing. I already love some of the dialogue and sharing that is happening in the comment threads; such good connections are emerging. I am always so thankful when we are in a call and response in the comments where resources, questions, and thoughts are shared from all of you here in the community.

The community is the curriculum.

The nodes and roots and shoots are growing and helping us reimagine and birth new worlds on the horizon. I engage in a type of nodal writing from the comments and interactions that take place in the comment sections. Nodal writing is where you allow for rhizomatic offshoots to respond and grow from the primary piece of writing—allowing your writing to have active nodes where additional threads of storytelling can grow from you or others. What does nodal writing look and feel like to me? It means extending questions, weaving my words with the thoughts that have seeded my own understandings and curiosities, writing from a place of inquiry and sometimes unknowing, and allowing the pathway of inquisitiveness to unfurl.

Through our ritual of writing, we blur the lines between yesterday and tomorrow, bearing witness to this spectrum of lives once lived or possibilities of those yet to come dancing alive onto our pages. It is here I write between worlds, where my own spirit struggles to carry my ancient prayer bundle amidst these modern people who have let their own Indigeneity starve. May this collective atlas of memory and imagination be the medicine needed to carry us through the time when our knees are weak and may this writing process allow us the creative devotion needed to tend this basket full of tattered patch pieces of story, stitching them back together to create a unique roadmap for new ancient cultures worth descending from.

I will always attempt to cultivate some fertile nodes from my writing so that you, too, can practice this form of kinship creativity. What might take root in your own writing practice through the practice of deep reading and being in conversation with the ideas that I am sowing here? I would love to hear more. Please share this with us in the comments.

But for those of you who can, I would love to propose another way for us to gather and think and share together. I will be hosting a monthly "Re-Seeding Imaginations Book Club" on Zoom starting in March where we can read and learn together. To start, we will be reading selections that I initially chose, and then we will generate a list of books from your recommendations that we want to read and explore together over time.

I will be transparent that I am limiting participation in the live Zoom Book Club calls to paid subscribers. I will share at least one post a month about the book that we will be reading as well, which will be available to all. I try to keep the monthly subscription price low so that it’s as accessible as possible for these types of live interactions. Your support of this page nourishes our efforts to maintain our Indigenous Seed Bank and educational intergenerational farm here. Thank you!

I will be posting next week about the first Book Club selection, which I am excited to lean into with you all.

In closing, rhizomatic learning recognizes that learning is a complex sense-making process in which each person brings their own context and needs. My evolving understanding continues to be nourished and informed by my relationality, both in my close inner circles and with the wider community that I am grateful to belong to.

What are some curiosities, themes, or ideas you would hope we would dig into in this rhizomatic learning space? What are some books that you would love to see us learn from together?