What Something Is For

On a Branch, Moss, and the Way We See What Is Useful

Today in the forest, I picked up a branch.

It was already lying on the ground. I had not broken it from the tree, and at first there seemed to be no reason not to take it with me.

I did not want to collect it or keep it at home.

I wanted to paint with it.

The broken tip, the rough fibres, perhaps a place where the wood might catch as I dragged it across the paper – I imagined what kind of mark might come from it. A branch like this cannot be guided like a brush. It takes up ink unevenly, scratches across the paper, skips, or leaves something where you do not expect it.

For a moment, I was already seeing it as a tool.

Then I saw the moss.

It had spread across a large part of the wood. I held the branch in my hand for a little longer and finally put it back on the forest floor.

Not because I suddenly knew that this particular branch was indispensable in this particular place.

I did not know that.

But my first description was no longer enough.

The branch was not simply lying there.

Something was living on it.

Of course I had seen moss before. I had probably noticed the green on this branch from the beginning as well.

But I had been looking very closely at something else: the tip, the length, the broken parts – at what might be useful to me.

That interests me more than the decision to put the branch back.

Because I had not looked at it superficially.

Quite the opposite.

I had looked at it carefully.

Only my attention had already been shaped by a possible use.

A Tool

When I paint, I sometimes look especially for things that were not meant to be painting tools.

A brush is made for this. Its shape and resistance are suited to bringing paint or ink onto a surface.

A branch is not shaped for this purpose.

Its tip is broken. Fibres stick out. The wood may give under pressure or scratch more strongly than expected. What happens on the paper can only partly be controlled.

That is exactly what interests me about it.

I wanted to use the branch precisely because it does not react like a tool made for this purpose.

And yet, the moment I picked it up, I had already quite clearly turned it into one.

I was looking for something that would resist my control, and still I first saw mainly its possible function for me.

Then there was the moss.

It was simply there.

What I saw in the branch changed nothing about the fact that moss had already been growing on it for some time.

What was just becoming a tool for me had long been a place for other life.

The branch remained interesting to me as a painting tool. But I could no longer see it only in that way.

This moment interests me.

The moment when something lies in front of me and I decide, almost without noticing, what it is.

No Longer Needed

The branch was separated from the tree.

Perhaps that was the most important reason why it first seemed available to me.

I had not broken anything off. The tree would not be harmed if I took it with me. The branch was no longer connected to it.

In my mind, this almost automatically became:

The branch is no longer needed.

Only later did I notice how narrow that sentence really was.

What I meant was:

The tree no longer needs it.

That was all.

The idea that something was “no longer needed” had taken only one relationship into account.

Moss had already spread across the wood. What had once been part of the tree had not simply become a meaningless remnant.

I could not judge what its absence from this particular place would have changed.

But what I had first seen in it was no longer enough.

“Broken off” said something about the branch’s relationship to the tree.

“Available” was something I had added myself.

Since then, I have wondered how often something like this happens.

We rarely encounter things without ideas about what we might do with them. Sometimes the possibility of using something is enough, and it pushes everything else into the background.

That does not have to be wrong.

Still, something strange happened with the branch.

Before I had even decided to take it with me, I had already seen a possible mark on the paper.

In my imagination, it had already become part of an image.

And at first, the moss had not been part of it.

Before the Decision

Perhaps that is exactly why Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss fascinated me so much.

Not only because she writes about mosses that are easily overlooked. While reading, it became clearer to me how much can happen within a small area that is barely noticeable from my height.

What at first looks like nothing more than a green patch on dark wood reveals itself, on closer inspection, as something in its own right.

I cannot claim to see the forest from the perspective of moss.

I cannot do that.

But my perspective does not decide what relationships something is already part of.

I also thought of Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry. What interests me there is less a rule about what may be taken. More the question of what already precedes my taking something.

What do I see – and what do I overlook – when something seems available to me?

And perhaps even more importantly:

What have I already decided while I believe I am merely looking?

With the branch, the answer was quite concrete.

I had looked at its form, its surface, its broken tip.

I had looked closely.

And still, at first, I had mainly seen myself in it:

my hand,

the ink,

the paper,

the possible mark.

Without such ideas, probably none of my works would begin. Something catches my attention because I see a possibility in it.

I do not want to lose that impulse.

Perhaps I simply do not want to give it the last word immediately every time.

When I put the branch back on the ground, hardly anything about the branch itself had changed.

The moss had been there before and was still there afterwards.

At first I had seen a possible painting tool.

Now I also saw a piece of dead wood with moss living on it.

The first way of seeing it was not wrong because of that. But something had been added.

Perhaps next time I do not want to ask immediately whether I can use something.

Or at least not only that.

Sometimes it is enough to delay the decision for a moment.

To leave something where it is for a little longer.

And to decide a little later what it is for.