Entering Autumn

I'm very aware of a change of seasons right now, and wanted to share some thoughts about that.

The squirrels are gathering nuts frenetically, and leaves are falling. I don't want the summer to end, so have been soaking up sun whenever possible. (We haven't had a conker fight yet, but I have prepared some!)

At least our chimneys have been swept. I understand one is lit below me, for the first time this year. I can't deny that we are turning away from the sun, for now.

It is a time for gathering thoughts, and changing gear. I hope the initial confusing learning curve stage of my new role is calming down. I need to integrate my experiences of the last few years, and start preparing work on other things.

I have a birthday approaching, which is always difficult personally. I found myself thinking about momento mori, as I watched red kites circling one of our fields, on the Other Wind.

I've been thinking about renewal. It's been interesting to be around young students, in both Oxford and Reading, this past few weeks. Legacies, and passing on the baton, to a new generation of people.

I've been busy enough to unplug from world events for a bit. That has been a relief, but also I get whiplash when I do scan a paper, or read the news online. The news from India, Brazil and Kenya is all on my mind, beyond the European and American bubbles the people around me are generally in. It is mentally exhausting to straddle such different worlds and realities.

I am learning a lot about unconscious relative, almost aristocratic, privilege and inequality, but it is also hard to navigate emotionally. I've had to exist between radically different worlds for much of my life, but often on the outside looking in. This adds layers of insight, but also dissonance.

There is work I want to be focussing on. This aims to broaden and deepen conversations around the rise of the right-wing, and climate anxiety. I need to defend my time and energy to do that, now I have some kind of relatively stable place to stand.

I find it hard to be in conversations about the polycrisis which end in some kind of moral conclusion, but go no further. Apparently we just have to be better educated, or informed, or more committed. The assumption is that everyone else in the world isn't already as enlightened as the speaker. It totally ignores the lived realities of people with few choices at all. There is a lot about evangelical Christianity, the Empire, and the idea of a White Man's Burden, to unpick in mainstream British culture. Main player energy too, amongst a bunch of mediocre guys who simply find themselves on top for no good reasons.

I was reading some of Naomi Klein and Astra Taylors' recent book, End Times Fascism. Although important and well-researched, it also struck me as a somewhat impotent howl of anguish against overwhelming power imbalances. The idiots in charge are incredibly powerful. We obviously just have to disempower them. But power is power, and they have more than us. That leaves me feeling trapped in an endless loop.

This is a debate where some people have taken the moral high ground, and are defining battle lines. That also precludes any real analysis of our own entanglements, and reliance with unequal or environmentally damaging systems. Nuance would bring deeper insights into deeper problems, and actual solutions. Instead we focus the individual sociopaths who have floated to prominence and power, who are endlessly infuriating, distracting and attention grabbing. In the Western imagination we are trapped in a theological war of good against evil, and some people must be to blame.

(Every day I wake up and thank God I am not Christian. I still have to deal with this baggage embedded in the world around me, threatening everyone's survival.)

In the coming months, I want to complete my transport model. This will show how a different paradigm of cheaper infrastructure is not only possible, but essential. Once it becomes more apparent that land is not at a premium, but access is the key issue, I hope that can start changing some perspectives – and create some more hopeful new conversations...

On another note, have a regular turnover of international volunteers at Braziers Park. This is a source of great new friends, interesting conversations, and endless variety. Eduardo 'The Giver' was tireless in finding new places to visit and perform, which recently took us to the acoustic ballroom in Wallingford. I think that may become a regular thing on my calendar, and I am enjoying having more music in my life overall.