Regeneration does its best work, I would suppose, not as a sign of clumsy replacements of lost things, a sprouting into empty space of an iteration of what was previously taken - as would be the case if we imagined the world to be composed of stable things that occasionally go missing. Within such an ontology, a world of infinite growth and progressive capture, absence is problematic - a void to be filled. Like Death to the author of 'Revelations': a final enemy to be vanquished. In this world, regeneration fits into an economy of named things, of saved things, accommodated within our systems, proper only to the extent that it serves 'us'.
But doesn't loss have a hidden life, a secret fermenting in its body like a fungal parasitoid in the chest of an insect? At what point does grieving become the choreography of a strange joy? Maybe loss is also infected. Infected with becoming. Maybe we need to think of loss in more fruitful ways. Maybe loss needs a new ontology. Maybe regeneration does its best work...as a call to worship.
