Inheritance Now

I have a communication to make. This *indicates everywhere* is not the answer. Not the materialist worldview, not cancerous capitalist growth, not rampant resource extraction, not forever. I’m making this very clear. Look at the state of the world. So, I’m loosening my rules. I’m enjoying myself. Ears up, receptors out. Unapologetic in public. Let’s produce intellectual property! Trying to establish meaning, just creating stuff, mistrust. This greed is good thing is because everyone’s too frightened of missing out. Everyone’s too frightened to miss the next big gig. I’ve got to make sure I’m self-int… As long as…

Project Fear

What historic progress was not won through unlawful action, just protest of unjust rule, in revolt? We must be past the stage of endless discourse, wallowing in postcolonial melancholia, raising awareness of every significant social issue, looking at it, stunned. The trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd really should have been a foregone conclusion, but wasn’t. I watched, heart banging in my chest in wait. The whole world watched what happened this time. Still to lie to defend police conduct, protect police personnel, would be getting deep into hypernormalisation: you know, we know you…

Lesser Calamities

Abuse of power comes as no surprise. A vigil held for Sarah Everard, where Kate Duchess of Cambridge was seen attending and paying respects, a largely peaceful, masked and social-distanced assembly, was met later by heavy-handed escalation from the Met, who trampled flowers and tributes, used excessive force, kettled, manhandled and arrested women who were there that day because a policeman abducted and murdered a woman. Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball afterwards claimed, in the language of the abuser, we were placed in this position because of the overriding need to protect people’s safety. Safety from what? Last year’s…

New Times, Old Systems

When was it decided that this would, that this should be the end state? Tories, and Republicans, know with time and demographic shifts they’ll likely never win majorities again. So they gerrymander victories, suppress opposition, suppress voting, change the system, drift away from democracy. Bots are literally manufacturing consent, spraying out identical tweets of unconditional love and support for Johnson. It’s on a knife edge. We let them through the democratic door and they try to close the door behind them. They bend and subvert laws by creating precedent when crimes go unpunished. We’ve seen it…

New Beginning

I have to believe that people are still generally good. Honest, benevolent, but misled into retrogressive revolutions by leaders and representatives who lie, who play pretend, who act in bad faith. They spread disinformation disease, they short-circuit politics, they trade in lies told for power and lies told for profit. It was ever thus. I have to believe their priorities and values do not reflect the polis. The top new COVID cases are in the USA, Brazil, UK. Millions of citizens are being ignored, left unrepresented, left with guilt and powerlessness as our collective body is infected with…

Tier Jerker

At the end of this year I didn’t set a new resolution. I felt a blankness, my writing coming out in looping clichés; by now everything felt said and repeated to death and general fatigue was seeping in infecting everything. The virus spread is escalating as we knew it would approaching winter, as we forecast back in spring and waited watching, delaying, acting, regretting, denying. …

Farewell to the Tango Bollock

I treated the election as a lockdown chance to party. Sleep-deprived I sat up circled by a water, beer, whiskey, tea and sip, sip, sip, sipped and stared for a week at pneumatic CNN, at the universe of votes and John King at the magic wall. What if… what if… we’re doing some what-ifs. Wisconsin flips and Cuomo looks confused. He’s fired up, he keeps having to walk himself back from arguments offending interview guests. Georgia flips and it feels like it’s happening. Biden Urges Patience, As Trump Threatens Lawsuits.

Day of voting closes early…

Fall

Red leaves are falling from the trees and nights are drawing in. We’re in the sweet spot. We’re not dead, and there’s still hope. The situation is much as it was, succeeding summer’s easing of restrictions, unpreparing for the grave downturn into winter, more malpractice to cause yet more preventable death. There will, in a specific and limited way, be blood. I’ll be locking down for winter. I’ll be a caveman scratching art into my rock shelter surrounding. The starting is the hardest thing and then the carrying on. Squiggles and lines. Three floors up, tucked in a corner…