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To Hill

These lines from Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life made me think about things that we don't associate verbs with and how that in effect makes them dead:

The biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, observes that the indigenous Potawatomi language is rich in verb forms that attribute aliveness to the more-than-human world. The word for “hill,” for example, is a verb: to be a hill. Hills are always in the process of hilling, they are actively being hills.

I love the idea that hills are hilling and will never be done. Would the ocean (in similar vein) which is visually dynamic be oceaning? It is easier to conceive of hills and oceans as things made of matter and therefore non-living - they cannot reproduce. If the same logic were to be applied to a human being that chooses not to participate in the cycle of reproduction, do they turn to mere matter and not a life form? It seems the operating definitions should apply consistently to define an organism and attribute it a verb.

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