Yes, you read the title correctly. Compost Mentis. No, it’s not a typo, compos mentis distorted and transformed. It’s poetic license. It’s a playful hybrid of Latin legalese and a gardening gift.
Let’s start with the Latin.
compos mentis: of sound mind, memory, and understanding (Source: Merriam-Webster)
For the longest time I believed I’d alchemized this clever conjunction of sane thinking and all things compost. Compost on the brain. Compost as metaphor. Etc.
And then I came across this totally inspired (and inspiring) initiative.
We take a lot of our inspiration from compost, applying it as a method, structure, material, ethic and resource for collaborating as humans, and across species in the ecosystems we are part of. Some of these inspirations include: Slowness… Interdependence and skillsharing… Co-design and cooperation… Grounding in complexity, diversity and intersectionality… Centering care, joy, pleasure & nourishment in our work… Resilient and robust systems and processes… (Source: “we want the soil back!”, A Manifesto (in Process), Compost Mentis)
Love that! Might have penned much of that myself given the similarity of perspective. But no, those are the words of Compost Mentis (compost-mentis.com), “a soil and alternative sanitation co-op working for ecological and social justice in everyday urban spaces.”
Check them out!
And then boomerang back here for more meditation on composting, both the literal detritus-to-dirt variety, and the metaphorical life-to-ideas-to-words variety.
Consider this post a down payment with future installments forthcoming soon.
Compost Mentis, poem
No, failed posts
are not poems,
nor failed poems,
but parts and pieces,
like carrot peels and
eggshells and tea leaves
and grass clippings and
last autumns’s leaf rot
tumbling together,
aerating, heating,
and decomposing,
leftover debris
into nutrients
life re-earthed.
What do you think?