Cosmic Native is a media, community and experiences project. Somewhere to follow the interesting questions.
There is more to be curious about than any one person can get through alone. I wanted somewhere to explore it with other people, ask better questions than I'd come up with on my own, and go and find out.
The idea underneath all of it is fairly simple:Being alive is ridiculously interesting, and no one field has the whole picture.
A soil scientist, a hospice nurse and someone who builds instruments would each tell you something true about being here, and none of it would be the same. They rarely end up in the same conversation.
Cosmic Native is where I want to put people like that near each other, ask what I actually want to know, and see what comes of it.
How we go about it.
We start with what people actually know, study, practice or have experienced.
We let a question stay open if it wants to.
Changing your mind is a good outcome.
Nobody here has to agree. Someone can say something I think is wrong, and I'd rather have that conversation than a polite one. What happened to you is worth hearing, and it isn't the same thing as proof, and both of those can be true in the same afternoon. We can take something seriously without making the whole conversation solemn.
Not everything needs to be settled.
Some of what I'm curious about has been worked out already and just needs someone who can explain it well. Some of it has been argued over for centuries and will still be argued over long after we're done with it.
Both are worth an afternoon.
Open it
Most of what I want to know is outside, in someone else's hands,
or a couple of questions past where the conversation usually stops.
A few things we hold to
Curiosity is a skill, and it gets sharper the more you use it.
A question can stay open for years and still be worth asking.
Disagreement usually improves a conversation, as long as everyone keeps listening.
What happened to you is worth hearing. It doesn't have to explain the universe to be worth hearing.
The natural world is something to participate in, not something to look at.
There is room here for depth, warmth and a sense of humor.
Earth and stars, roughly half each.
The things we can learn to do sit on one side. The questions nobody has finished sit on the other. Most of what interests me is somewhere between them.
Earth
The part you can get your hands into. Food, land, skills, repair, being outside, and the people who are very good at all of it.
- Growing, foraging, cooking, preserving
- Building, fixing and making things by hand
- Restoring land and spending real time on it
- Bodies, movement, sleep and what actually holds up
Stars
The part nobody has finished. People who study it, and people who have lived through something they still can't explain.
- Consciousness, and how differently people go about studying it
- Death, and what research and lived experience can each contribute to the conversation
- Intuition, dreams and experiences that are difficult to explain
- Deep time, physics and how strange the universe gets up close
Half of what gets planned will turn into something else along the way. That seems like the right way round.
Different ways at the same thing.
A conversation, a day outside and a piece of music each do something different to an idea. Which one we reach for depends on what the subject deserves.
Thinking out loud, together
Some things only come apart when two people work at them in real time. Nobody gets rushed, and the useful part usually shows up late.
Working it out by hand
Music, writing, art, building. Making something is its own kind of thinking, and it doesn't have to arrive at a conclusion.
There is no substitute for going
Some things you can only understand by standing in them, holding one, or eating it with people you met that morning.
Where a question keeps going
Everything above generates more questions than it settles, and they need somewhere to carry on.
Meet Alara
Alara asks a lot of questions and follows most of them further than is reasonable. She sings, makes things, and is endlessly curious about what other people know.
She started Cosmic Native because she wanted to be part of it. Interesting people, conversations that don't get cut short, time outside, and somewhere to put the questions that don't fit anywhere else.
She's the one doing most of the asking here, and she's not especially attached to having the last word on the answers.
The list of things I want to go and see keeps getting longer. That seems like a good sign.
