We often speak of "deep ecology," but this is also Deep Eco-Psychology: how the environment can remind us of, and help mend, mental and psychic wounds.

I write both, as you know, dozens of ecological and social scientific and historical works, dozens of novels. It's hard to describe a novel that grapples with the horrors of World War II as anything but grueling. But Codex Orféo is somehow...well, I hope, riveting for readers. Deeply provocative. Cinematic in a nearly surreal sense.

Non-violent ecological activism, scientific research and art are pillars of my experience. But I am also a story-teller. I merge science, and my passion for literature whenever possible if it helps me to wrestle demons, and to more effectively communicate what I believe to be most important to our lives.

Codex Orféo is something you won't see coming at you, but it does. It's all about kindness to other species, and to one another. If we can work that out, the world will take care of herself.

When you ask about "mission" it is easy to reference a "mission statement" which, in my case, is the quest, however Quixotic, at times, to sensitize everyone I am in contact with to the miracle of life on Earth, and our sacred responsibilities to preserve, protect and revere biodiversity, at every possible juncture of our days and nights. We have very little time.

We often speak of "deep ecology," but this is also Deep Eco-Psychology: how the environment can remind us of, and help mend, mental and psychic wounds.

Poetry, song, stories, art, our reverence for nature, are key to our survival as a species, and to the survival of all species, I believe. You can't always extract such emphatic hunches and activist stances from a scientific maxim or mathematical axiom.