Weed Habit: What would these weeds say of the city if they could talk? for NYRA

I love NYRA. Smart, sassy, illustrated with rats. And most importantly, a co-operative. And, I got to write about weeds (read more here). Or just read on a bit….Reviewing Kwan Queenie Li’s Weeds: A Germinating Theory I write:

What would these weeds say of the city if they could talk? Could this murmuring become deeper and weirder, an anarchic language that could be a vegetal speech? Plants and their chemicals talking, fomenting together against private property and for no centralized government? Li’s may be a germinating theory, but I want theory to germinate more in a Jeff  VanderMeer kind of way, written in green, gleaming moss. Maybe it would unhinge how we use theory itself, as if the weeds could compost the theory and come up with a new language of cities. Because to see so deeply, to examine the cracks and fissures that weeds draw our attention to, is to reach a place of madness where language fails. Describing every vein and lobe on a leaf is impossible. To try opens a hole we can never fill, not with language, at least. Like the common ivy I stare at, with its beautiful pinkish veining climbing a fence on the street. I wish I had enough words. I start and stop a sentence, simply write one word: peach. Cross it out. Then blush, then arm and hand.