Spot the difference – Solidarity, Intersectionality, Empathy, Compassion, Love

This is in response to a lot of things that I don’t think I’m going to address directly. If you’ve been following the people I follow on twitter this weekend, you know what it’s about. There’s been some awesome responses, particularly here, and shockingly, three years ago, here.

The thing is, we’re all so very different from each other.

This is the thing you have to learn, again, and again, in order to be really good at being a human being.

It’s not easy, but if you look closely enough you can see that we are all different. Your viewpoint on anything is not the same as mine. We have lived entirely different lives, lived through different experiences, and so become different people. We’re also made up of entirely different genetic material, so even our starting points are different.

Sometimes, when fighting against injustice, we use words that hurt someone. Sometimes we’re not even fighting against injustice.

Because we are not other people, we cannot always hear when we’re hurting someone.

Here’s the key.

When someone says you’ve said or done something hurtful, you should probably stop and listen, because they are giving you a chance to use their ears to hear your words.

It’s an incredible opportunity, the thrill of communication. By listening, we can actually learn something about the way someone different from us thinks. Language is this incredible gift, it’s clumsy, and its easy to make mistake, but it gives us the opportunity to share experiences.

You use it best when you listen, or read.

If you’ve not heard of intersectionality, don’t worry, it kind of means the same as all the others. It’s the idea that we’re all part of multiple groups. Some of those groups are mistreated by ‘society’ (that’s a word that means ‘us’, by the way), and because people fit into more than one group, they may have their mistreatment multiplied, and that can be really fucking difficult. It also means that you may be mistreated as part of one group, but also have ‘privilege’ (I’ll get back to that in a minute) in as part of another.

What this means is you can experience being white and a woman. You can experience being gay and disabled. You can experience being Jewish and black and transgender.

Depending on these experiences, your life may be different.

This should not come as a surprise. There are a lot of people out there, and a lot of groups, defined in a lot of different ways.

Privilege is a word with a couple of different meanings. It’s easy to think of it as meaning rich. In fact, we mostly think of it as meaning ‘something other people have’. When we’re talking identity politics (which I’m pretty sure we are), privilege means a lot of things, the simplest of these to understand is probably social capital. Some people, in a room, will be more likely to be listened to on the basis of what they look like and their apparent life histories. Some people are valued more than others. This reinforces itself because when people listen to you, it’s easier to assume that you’re right. These same people will have easier access to spaces, resources and all the other things that are divided and controlled invisibly on the basis of spurious ideas of ‘social status’.

That whole thing is a form of privilege. The ability to speak, to command attention, just by having lived a certain life (or being seen to have lived a certain life), is one of the things we must be challenging constantly.

And we must do it ourselves.

It sounds like a tricky thing. To recognise something that is invisible. It is tricky, but not because it’s complicated, just because it’s hard. I’m trying to explain all of this in the simplest terms possible, because I think it really is simple. Even if applying it is difficult.

We are all different.

The only way to know what it is like to be different to you is to listen.

If you think there’s any chance that you’re in a position of privilege, that your perceived life experience has made your life easier, then when someone different from you says you’re being hurtful, you should shut up and listen. Hear their words. They are reflecting you back through them.

Doing this, is an act of solidarity. Recognising that we are all different, and trying to cross the bridge of those differences, is empathy. Caring enough to do that. To pay attention, listen and think, is compassion.

We can’t change the world by putting people down, but we can if we change ourselves enough to recognise that our very difference is what unites us. Our ability to listen and care is what makes us powerful. We are different, but if we listen to each other, we can be more than just individuals.

You cannot speak for other people. I cannot speak for other people. I am only myself.

But you can listen to other people. You can always listen, and that gives you a broader base of experience, that expands your unique viewpoint on the world.

If we all listened hard enough, maybe eventually we would almost be the same.

That’s an impossible, but we can aim for that. Aim for everyone taking the time to understand everyone else.

It’s not derailing the struggle to think about this stuff, this is the personal face of the struggle.

The personal is political, and the political is personal.

I have not figured it all out. I am trying constantly, to recognise my failings as a person. I get things wrong, constantly. I get called out, all the time. But I hope I do one thing right. I try to listen, I try to let what I hear change me.

We are different people, but by listening to each other, we build bonds of empathy and understanding. With compassion, we become powerful.

We can fight for each other, with love.

—

Illustrations by Emma and Helen

Mounting Darkness and Creative Destruction on the Dark Mountain – Uncivilisation 2012

To civilise is to build.

To uncivilise is to destroy?

I may just be tired, but I actually feel very lost. Last year’s Dark Mountain Uncivilisation Festival made me grounded and full hearted, my mind swirling with ideas. This year, the thoughts are still torrential, but my physical form feels adrift.

It’s a scary place to be. But I think that might be part of the point.

There are some things we need to look in the eye, and they are going to be terrifying. The future is real, and it’s not far away.

Someone this weekend bought together a number of statements under the heading ‘why am I here?’ I was reminded of my fear and dread of why questions, and the leaps they ask you to make. It remains my conviction that no ‘why’ question has an answer that isn’t guesswork or an act of faith. Reasons aren’t available, no matter how hard we reason. A why asks a fundamentally different kind of question. We don’t tell people why the sky is blue, we tell people how air bends light. Or we just lie and make up an answer.

Dark Mountain is looking for new whys. Rightly so. Our civilisation is based on a series of misleading myths that are causing us to eat ourselves. The world is falling part, and we are just digging deeper into it. This weekend’s recurring motif was mythology. Stories that can accompany the logos of understanding. Stories that can tell us ‘why’.

Myth is everything that we think we know, anyway. Our memories of our lives are as distorted as our understandings of history. A well told story is what builds our past. That’s how we remember things.

I am intensely conscious that as I write about this weekend, I am going to create my vision of it. Make it again, after the fact. Ignoring the grumpiness and tiredness. Probably unable to go into why I repeatedly lost my voice and felt afraid to speak. I am here to build my own Dark Mountain myth.

But I am tired, and I am worried it will be the wrong one.

It’s the problem with trying to build our own whys. A new myth is untested in the waters of people, open to interpretation and destruction, a story has as many sides as it has listeners. There is no way to know the impact of a new myth. The inventors of the myths of capitalism probably never saw its natural result as the greed of today. Adam Smith’s invisible hand was supposed to stop this kind of thing, not claw into the world, desperately tearing its livelihood to destruction.

We either need to get this right, or we need to work out a new way of myth making, something that allows us to adapt, something that returns us to the now, allows us to be more present in the moment, more aware of the now.

Steve Wheeler, dazzled me a little, drawing links between the slow disease of ‘progress’, the notion of apocalypse, and utopian, teleological world-views. It’s seems so simple to remember that some of our oldest revelations are not simply about the world ending, but about something new and perfect beginning. The book of John of Patmos does not mourn the destruction of the world, but beckons in the kingdom of god. Even Ragnarok ends with two survivors building a new world. Marx pushes towards another utopia, the apparently inevitable conclusion of wave after wave of revolution.

Our apocalypses are our idealisms.

Steve tried to draw us into the now. To stop wanting stuff for the future. To live in a now that would not rely on desires and fears, that could be content with what is.

It’s that thought from last year. To be happy in the future, we’re going to want to be happy with less. There’s a lot of internal work you can do for that.

Tom Hirons pulled me into the woods, and tried to offer a brief taste of extreme wilderness. The taste and feel of the earth on your face, screaming into the ground, whilst hearing a chorus of others doing the same. It is something I will never forget, perhaps the wildest moment of the weekend (apart form my wriggling terror as I forced myself into the dark night’s woods, jumping at every noise). I admire Tom even more after his talk, in which he talked of trying to create  a rite of passage without appropriating the culture of other peoples. He is one of many people there this weekend, who I am simply incredibly glad exist, and feel blessed to have even passing contact with.

Speaking of passing contacts, I only spoke to Vinay for about two minutes, and still got an intense snippet of knowhow that I think I need to build on.

Stories are better with a little added noise. That was taught by Tom and Rima on the first night, and Martin Shaw the next day.

And an intense debate about I vs We, sent me into tumults of worry about the nature of consensus, and the ability of people to assume its presence. No community is uniform. Be wary of your words when you speak for others. I am not enough, but I cannot know enough of others to speak for them. That is dangerous personal mythmaking.

But then, there is this desire for community, and I suspect that’s what draws the Dark Mountaineers together. The people that really want to leave civilisation can do it. There is still wildness, and it can be escaped to.

There’s more than that, somewhere. There’s a desire to make change. I hope that’s what it is, anyway. Because this isn’t just about personal reinvention, this is about finding a way to make our society stop killing people, and stop killing the planet. I really hope so. Because beyond that goal, I don’t really see what’s worth it.

I feel like we’re sometimes too far up the pyramid of needs of the world. We haven’t found a way to feed everyone, we haven’t found a way to stop burning and poisoning the actual ground and water and air that gives us everything we have, have ever had, and will ever have. We’re obsessing about self actualisation when there are people dying.

But then, as individuals, we need to focus on our own changes and our own world in order to exemplify, promote and build a new way of thinking. Without doing that thinking (and the acres of self destruction and re-creation that accompany it) we can’t make new things, escape old traps or be new people.

So we must be in the now, whilst remembering the past, and building a future that might be able to work for everyone.

The weekend sometimes feels like time travel, or perhaps, stepping out of time long enough to get the overview, seeing how things once were, are still, and always will be. Changed, different, but built from the same stuff.

That earth, that water, that sky.

When I was there, I thought I saw a common theme. I thought the answer was in building mythologies. Finding old stories that can show us new ways. Finding new stories that can reconnect our future to our past. Building worlds within worlds to teach our world new dances.

Now I return, and old fears come back with me. How do we build a right future, built on uncertain ground. How can we decide to teach myths as truths, when we know their truths, and ours, are so malleable, so frangible.

I touched the earth, the ground, and told it I was grateful. I acknowledged that it had built me, fed me, made everything I have ever known. I screamed, giving it my voice. I didn’t feel like I was pouring out. Maybe I was feeding, as it always fed me. It was a connection, nonetheless.

So I did connect. And despite my voicelessness, I found connection to people as well. I am not as good at this as I imagine, or perhaps I have just forgotten some of my people skills, or perhaps I’d thought I was going for my self, and not to connect with people. This is probably the wrong way to go into most things.

Or not.

I honestly don’t know. I feel more questioned and challenged than solidified.

But this is good.

Controversial example.

After the festival ended, many people stayed behind to finish off the beer and have one last fire and gathering. A great atmosphere was suddenly interrupted by a story. Someone had ventured into town and stumbled upon a symbol of civilisation, he suggested we burned it. Another chimed in saying we should tear it apart and burn it piece by piece. Properly excoriate.

Before it got far, some raised a complaint. The ritual interrupted, atmosphere shifting as people try to search for something.

The symbol, you see, was a book. The burning of books is a deep symbol, easily misread and misinterpreted. A reminder of savagery, organised violence. Impromptu rituals, a joke to celebrate the destruction of civilisation, worry of what that destruction is, or means.

The story needs to be told in bits and pieces, with weird disjunctures, because it was a hundred stories.

I for one, felt my mind tumble through them.

The book burned, but not by consensus; the owner took charge. A line was drawn between burning ‘civilisation’ and burning ‘Civilisation, by Kenneth Clarke’. The knowledge inside it was given respect by some, the author disdain by others. The iconography was terrifying. Reminders of oppression. Oppression is still everywhere. This is not safely ironically distant territory.

As I watched the book slowly explode and burst outwards, I wondered. Were we ready to destroy civilisation?

The noise of thought processes around that fire. The arguments and emotions. The fear and the anger and the humour. A real, deep sacred happening. Sacred and scared.

If we are truly to become uncivilised, this is not the only taboo that will need to be put to the flames.

But do we want to build our world on destruction? Is there even a choice?

How to we destroy destruction? How do we consume consumption?

Dangerous symbols make for dangerous ceremonies. It was the first time the festival had felt dangerous. And something was created from that destruction. Every mind focussed and intensified. Not necessarily for the best, but it’s good to shake things up.

A simple act. A simple fire.

It was a terrible and beautiful moment.

I felt like it shouldn’t have happened, but I felt it was needed.

Written down, it probably doesn’t have the power. But in the moment, my gut was wrenched.

What would it really mean to undermine and challenge the very fundaments of our civilisation. To not just nibble at the edges, but cut to the centre.

To burn something up.

—

Last year, I was reminded of what it was I wanted to protect and connect too. This year, Uncivilisation felt like it was more about facing up to how challenging it will be to change the world, and the self. The things we need to destroy are dear and dangerous. The arguments we need to have are heartfelt and hurtful. There will be pain, if we are to wrench our world into something new. There will be a risk, that we will turn into things we despise even more than our current state.

Dark Mountain remains a very civilised festival, full of very civilised people. It’s hard not to see it as having a taste of that kind of middle class avoidance of privilege that is so common. This was expressed eloquently and emotionally by someone who noted that they wanted to scream, from knowing that in their day to day life, they did not always live what they believe. Trying to connect, from behind a wall of socialisation and comfort, to something more primal, honest and pure than the myths of progress and futurity is painful and difficult. I am aware of how lightly and slowly I am treading that world, kept wrapped and safe in my comfort and my privilege.

Eventually, there are parts of our selves we will have to burn up and cast aside. We need to do it inwards, and then outwards. Our black iron prison will need to be burnt. Watching that happen may feel a lot like tearing hearts out. It is not safe, it will be misunderstood, it could lead us closer to destruction.

We have to be wary of the myths we create. They can make us destroy, they can convince others to destroy. I don’t know how to do this right. I feel paralysed, knowing that the destruction I am living in now is killing, but that any step forward could do the same.

I want to run away and cry tears into the ground. Let it know that I don’t know what to do and how to live any more.

I am cut adrift, my anchors burned off.

—

Actually, somehow, I feel like something in me has been uncivilised. More than before, I am adrift from my assumptions. I do not feel like I went to the same Dark Mountain as most. Even though I had plenty of (wonderful) company, and was shown some beautiful things, I feel like a scaled a height, was torn apart, and will now fight to put myself together.

This is probably only a first step, still. I think I need to work on this more. Work out where it should take me. Work out where I should take it.

My heart is opened up.

I come back down the mountain, and the world swirls around me as it always has. Will this be enough to make a difference. Will I be able to leave my heart open in this other world, that will not care for me as the community of the fire would? I am worried I will become overexposed again.

It’s scary, but I think that’s the point.

The work to be done, on self, on the world, is scary.

I feel I have walked into a fire. Sunk into the earth. Drowned under the water. Dissolved into the air.

And yet I am still here. In the now.

I do not have a replacement for self, for civilisation.

I do not know what to do next.

—

Illustration by the incredible Helen. Apologies this is being posted so late. I had a crisis of faith in it.

The Unbearable Darkness of Mountains – Uncivilisation 2011

Last night, as the sun set, I wandered into the woods. Dosed up with Valerian and on barely any sleep (third hangover of the year, too soon after the second) I was already hazy, and I became totally and utterly conscious of how terrible my eyes were.

In the dark of the evening, as everything turns into greys and blues, everything seems to dance. When I stopped walking to take stock, the sound wrapped around me. Tiny titters of birds, bleating lambs far away, owls some closer. But closer, there were the snaps of twigs, the rustle of leaves, the shifting undergrowth and mulch. Footsteps not mine. Movement all around.

And me in the middle, vaguely terrified, and unable to tell what movement was my eyes playing tricks, and what was the forest itself.

It was incredible. Not least when I understood, as my sense reached their limits, that this was all playing around me, but I was nowhere near the centre. All around me was life that cared not for me. I was barely a part of it, even as I felt connected to it. This swirl of noise, the clatter of life, slowly going it’s own way.

I was not in the middle. The world was. I was just a tiny thought, drifting across the surface.

—

—

This was the evening after Uncivilisation 2011, the second ‘festival’ of the Dark Mountain Project. It was the first time it started to feel really uncivilised, and was an incredibly intense experience. Not quite has scary as returning to the city, and feeling some of those sensations again, only related to the thing I’m supposed to be used to. The swirl of noise and the clatter of life, amplified and drowned out all at once, but I’ll get to that. Maybe.

Basically, it was a weekend for creative types interested in the manifesto of the Dark Mountain, to get together and talk. There was a lot of great talk. There was a lot of fascinating stories and people. There was so much going on in a very small space, often seemingly rushing towards you like the ground as you fall.

My brain is genuinely aching. Though my heart is swollen.

I didn’t really expect it to be like this. I was expecting to hear politics and get fired up. I was hoping to learn and grow and solidify.

Instead, I just feel like I have been put in contact with a part of me that has been missing.

This is also good.

I’m not going to talk too much about the speakers and the talks, or even the bands. I’m sure other people will post much more eloquent responses and critiques of what was said. I don’t remember many huge bombshells in the actual programme. Nobody has many answers about what to do next apart from look after yourself, pay attention, listen to stories, tell your stories, and learn how to live with less.

Possibly the simplest and most obviously true statement of the weekend was something along the lines of  ’get better at enjoying non-material things, because if you want to be happy, those are going to be the only things you can rely on’.

In shorter, if everything runs out, make sure you’ve got something that can’t run out to make your heart sing.

That wasn’t actually shorter, was it.

I’m not good at brevity right now, maybe. I’ve got a lot of listening to try and take in and and process. At some point I think a lot of things in my brain are going to pop, in various different ways.

The weekend clicked for me about five times, after initially seeming like something utterly contradictory and so somewhat failed. When people who are talking about the end of the world get angry and self righteous about a cafe only having jacket potatoes left, it makes you wonder. Dougald, one of the organisers, noted that someone on twitter had described the festival as ‘luddites with iPhones’, he was aware of the irony. Smari pointed out earlier (quite probably joking, but still quite probably right), the people who were prepared were probably somewhere else, being prepared. This was not a place to learn how to prepare for the apocalypse. This was a place to talk.

Which seemed kind of pointless.

Until. Well. Until it started to feel right. Until I realised that this wasn’t necessarily about building bunkers, it was about building soul, heart, spirit or something like it. There are many sorts of preparedness.

The ‘What next’ talk helped, particularly when Paul Kingsnorth (the other founder) noted that the festival had kind of started out as a place to get writers together.

Once you start thinking of it as a writer’s workshop at the end of the universe, it kind of made sense.

But before that, it really clicked, as I got in touch with exactly the sort of hippy I am.

People call me a hippy all the time, and sometimes I get annoyed, but mostly because I don’t know what it means. I acknowledge that I don’t help myself by wearing skirts and long hair and liking flowers, but, well, it still seems like a derogatory term. Something ineffectual. I guess this could be historiographical. During one conversation, Vinay noted that the cultural revolution died because all the clever people died in the first years of battle, leaving nobody to lead that side in the war.

So; failed and idealistic revolutionary? Possibly not that far off. But there are other trappings.

This weekend, for me, was actually a deeply spiritual experience. Despite me not having any clear definition of what that is. The biggest learnings were not about people (though the campfire was one of the most supportive singsongs I’ve ever taken part in. I’ve never sung solo acappella in front of strangers before, and I felt happy to do it and to fail. Thanks to that fire. If you’re reading this, you know who you are.)

Really, the awesome ritualistic theatre of Liminal, was what bought my heart into action. A small prologue, a procession through a series of unneverving dreamlike vignettes, and a  final ritual, of noise and movement in the depths of a candlelit forest. Through that, I felt centred and connected to all of life, all of the world. Like had taken part in some kind of bonding ceremony. My centre suddenly felt further away from me than usual, but in the right way.

I celebrated by getting drunk, which was almost as stupid as some of the decisions on my cycle out from Petersfield to the campsite, which took five hours instead of one, and almost as fun. (Though it was the cycle that nearly killed me, if it hadn’t been for a spanner and a nice old lady called Anne, I’d probably be dead. Or at least very, very ill.)

The next day I was less engaged, but still picking up fragments, and maybe the odd braingrenade from Vinay. My mind was struggling to keep up with some of the learnings of the night before. Not least a weighty discussion in the almost sacredly intimate space of the hexayurt (which I stumbled drunkenly into at four in the morning).

I think spaces need to be small for real weight to be talked about. A conference or lecture is not a supportive or communal environment, it is a space for hierarchy and showing off. There were problems with some of the spaces, that bought out some odd things in people, and made me shut up and feel alienated. But when things worked, they worked.

And actually, shutting up and listening was what I needed. It wasn’t until everyone one faded back to their real lives and I was left in a quite countryside that I really appreciated that. And that I finally got to listen to what I really needed.

I made a new friend, who fed and nourished me in a number of ways, not least with actual physical real food. I need to get the micro infrastructure for cookery into my camping bike loadout pretty sharpish.

After absorbing some silence sunshine and beauty, we talked about sheep, unicorns and ancestors. Myths and futures and spirits.

The thing is, when you have the space to look at the noisiness of the quieter, less verbal world, you realise that these spirits, while metaphors, are utterly, utterly real.

Our myths and stories are wrapped up together, and they can still be shared around a campfire, and nothing will make you new friends like laughing and sharing them.

We are going to be ancestors. Even if we don’t have children, those around us will. We will tell them stories, and they will tell stories about us. Eventually, that is all we will be. Stories.

After my final commune with nature, the final fire of the weekend was shared with total but beautiful strangers. The chance to bounce around some chatter, to hear our thoughts and stories of the weekend shared and stretched and played with. Repeated and explained from different angles.

With the owls for company.

We were not the centre, we were just part of a stream through eternity. We looked backwards, and we looked forwards, and we saw everything stretching out beyond us.

—

—

I think we are tiny. I think we make tiny marks. As a civilisation, we have wreaked huge damage, but still, where it is, life persists. We will, eventually, wash away (barring the definitely real possibility of biotech, nanotech or nuclear catastrophe), and leave a world that will move on without us.

But civilisation is not actually us. Not the deep us, at our core.

Politically, we must make sure we demand the world the world deserves. We must learn how to change our civilisation so it does not destroy everything. This will probably not happen until it’s all gone horribly wrong. This is a tragedy for us.

The world will pick itself up and carry on without us.

We need to do something about this. This weekend was not about finding out what. It was about finding out why.

It was about seeing alternatives and feeling them.

It was restorative to something in my heart. Like a tree was growing there that hasn’t been watered in forever. Finally it is growing again, maybe even bearing fruit.

I still don’t know what to do about civilisation. But I do know I need to distance myself from it. My path seems clearer. Move, slowly and safely away from the horror of it all. Find somewhere I can live a simpler life.

The route will not be simple. I don’t have the wisdom and skills and power of my ancestors. I don’t know how to live off land, and I don’t have land to live off.

But. Well. I need to be out there.

Where the real world is. Living and bustling in it’s own way. I must visit it more regularly and learn how to work with it.

These are musts now, not just idle dreams.

I’m not going to stop talking about the problems. I’m going to continue to try and make the world change. But I am also going to make a tent on a darker mountain.

My spirit belongs with the others. In the darkness.

It’s not easy to see in the dark. This weekend, I practiced opening my eyes wider.

With time. I will work on my eyes.

And my heart.

And my soul.

So I can see deeper into the darkness, and maybe even live there.

—

This is a first response. It is tired and slightly crazy, for that is where I’m at right this moment.I’m going to use Unstruck this week to explore a few questions that came up over the weekend. This is technically breaking the rules, but that’s what they’re for, right?

A Lone – Not so bad?

That’s me cuddling a snake. My glasses are always that wonky. #FACT

I realise that I’m probably just going through a weird state of mind, but it occurred to me last night that I might be alone forever, and that it might not really be so bad.

We’re talking romance loneliness here. Someone to settle down with and be with long enough to grow into each other solidly enough to be the roots of some children. Someone to share centres with. Someone to build orgasms with.

As a genderqueer, hairy, smelly man, I am pretty far outside the realm of what is attractive. For quite a while now, I’ve been searching for people who understand the me of me, who might want to become serious about being with me.

This weird entitlement of thinking ‘I’m grown up now, I kinda understand my weaknesses and issues, I’m pretty sure I could be good now, so why aren’t I with someone?’

It’s a privileged and problematic assumption. I try to steer clear. But I’m still left with this longing. A desire for someone to come along and fill in the gaps on a quirky indie romcom with an awesome leftfield soundtrack.

But why?

Why do I feel the need to buy into this assumed tying in with others? Why do I purport to reject the gender binary, whilst still craving the ultimate expression of it’s lunacy? What is it about the happy ending that makes it so right?

It occurred to me, that underneath all of my craving and whinging and moping and moaning, maybe I’m actually learning something much more useful.

I think the last few years of my life have been about learning to be myself, and then also to be with myself. Facing up to some of my darknesses and taking responsibility for my own behaviour, has given me something resembling an ability to be myself. Comfortably. I am stronger than I have ever been. I am more understanding of my instabilities. I am more determined than ever to not be a dick.

It’s awareness. Self awareness.

And self discovery.

And being with my self.

Not to mention self love (in the more euphemistic sense of the phrase).

It all adds up to actually (at least for now) feeling, in a very surprising way, ready to acknowledge that my future might be one in which I am, from that narrow point of view, all alone.

It might even be okay.

I don’t expect to ever be totally alone. I just need to rest on the support of the friends and loved ones I already have. To work on these relationships and be strong in myself. I am part of a community, I can always reach out and grow that. There is no requirement to bond with someone who has to deal with my self and all it’s weirdnesses. It’s only fair to ostracise myself from love if that’s what it takes to be the me I am.

It’s not so bad. I think I can live with it.

No hope in the boat.

I’m just going to try and be me, be happy, look out for those around me. I’m going to be aware and open and forward facing.

And hopefully, I won’t moan so much.

Being alone might just bring me closer in touch with myself, mentally, sexually and maybe even spiritually. It’s possible.

I’m going to stop trying to build a future around imagined ideals. I’m just going to work with myself, and my behaviour.

(At least until the next overwhelming crush (and the inevitable crash and burn).)

We’ll see.

Unstruck at 200 – With bits in

Illustration by Adam.

Today I posted my 200th post on the Unstruck blog. It’s not quite the 200 x 500=100,000 words that that should be, as there are five odd posts without any text at all (and the 500 is a limit, many are dead on, but some are under).

Anyway, for those who don’t know, unstruck is my newer (almost a year old) collaborative and restrictive project. It’s kept me writing all year, and with less self indulgent moping than usual, which is pretty cool. (Don’t worry mope fans, there is a bit of it).

Basically, each day, somebody asks a question, I answer in 500 words, and someone illustrates it in half an hour.

It’s simple, and it’s a way to get me writing, and other people arting, and hopefully even more people thinking.

I love it. Most of the time. It makes me feel like I’m part of a collective. It gives me an opportunity to feel like I had a part in something beautiful.

And occasionally, it means that I write things I like. More often than I’d like to think.

To celebrate, I posted on twitter a selection of my favourites. There’s no system here, just a random pick of things I remembered being good. I re-read them as I did it, and I surprise myself.

I’m reposting those tweets here (including some typoes), for the sake of posterity. It’s not really a best bits. Just a ‘bits that move me or something’.

Enjoy.

Dip into the past here.

First. How deep is your love? http://bit.ly/bkgyv8 This one hurt a lot, but kinda helped too.—
Alabaster Crippens (@AlabasterC) January 12, 2011

How does it feel when things change and shift in life? http://bit.ly/gZi0Ra A whole lot like being alive. This rant available live on demand—
Alabaster Crippens (@AlabasterC) January 12, 2011

But is it art? http://bit.ly/94mDm8 AK cheated on the illustration here, whilst we were on a train. #FACT She suits those glasses. #DUALFACT—
Alabaster Crippens (@AlabasterC) January 12, 2011

'Love is as strong as dead.' [Song of Solomon 8:6] Discuss. http://bit.ly/d6bZeZ Beautiful image. The conclusion just moved me hard too.—
Alabaster Crippens (@AlabasterC) January 12, 2011

Where is my libido? [snip] http://bit.ly/aAaOtH Picture of me wanking in a bath (sfw, probably). I made myself laugh out loud with this one.—
Alabaster Crippens (@AlabasterC) January 12, 2011

Why do people say things like 25 mins to 9 instead of just giving the time? http://bit.ly/cYrKa9 As close to being Jack Bauer as I'll get.—
Alabaster Crippens (@AlabasterC) January 12, 2011

What's under the blanket? http://bit.ly/hxyKSU Definitely one of my favourite illustrations.And under the text is something beautiful, maybe—
Alabaster Crippens (@AlabasterC) January 12, 2011

If the world was ending tomorrow and you were asked to make a speech, what would you say? http://bit.ly/hXoLuk I surprised myself with this.—
Alabaster Crippens (@AlabasterC) January 12, 2011

Bean or the Sprout? http://bit.ly/hvizP6 When I do an unstruck at two in the morning, after a shit party, this happens.—
Alabaster Crippens (@AlabasterC) January 12, 2011

Future? http://bit.ly/g1d9lt I love how I write when I'm hungry.—
Alabaster Crippens (@AlabasterC) January 12, 2011

National Poetry Day – For the Love of Prufrock

I’m not very good at this kind of thing, and it’s all a little shadowy, mumbled and lispy.

But it remains my favourite poem. No matter how many times I read it, it still makes me want to declaim it out loud and perform, and no matter how many times I read it aloud, I can still find new rhythms and meanings and emphases. To get a version even that dreadful, I did about fifteen takes, each one had a different best bit, different tones and variations.

Different meanings.

‘It is impossible to say just what I mean!’

That line stood out for me on the last reading. I wonder what it was the the 19 year old Eliot couldn’t quite get out. What was it he danced around, unable to face?

Mystery.

Beautiful.

That’s great poetry right there.

Even if he was a miserable anti-semitic fascist. At least he did this.

Full text here.

Freizeit- The Kindness of Strangers

It’s a little weird.

Hard to get used to how far you can get on the kindness of strangers, with only the tiniest bit of language ability. It’s also terrifying.

I have been weirdly isolated at times, but it’s pretty much all in my mind.

Currently the biggest problem is that this keyboard has a ä in the ‘ place. That kind of brain programming isn’t easy.

Also the z and y is all muddled.

But zou probablz didnät come here to hear me talk about german kezboards.

That was on purpose by the way.

So where to begin.

Now.

I’m in the beautiful Stadtbucherei (town library?) of Münster. This is a beautiful town, full of cyclists and students and oldness and newness. It’s strange and laid back, but in what I assume is a very German way.

I spend my entire time saying please and thank you, and occasionally the more unwieldy sorry (bitte, danke und es tut mir leid, for the curious). I still feel I’m being really rude, except the locals seem even ruder and it just seems to work out fine for them.

Oddly my brain is switching to German in loads of tiny ways.

Like I keep on being about to type zu, instead of to.

The weirdest thing about it is that I’m not speaking much German. There’s a weird crisis of confidence. I keep on thinking about the grammar too much so that I can’t formulate the phrases before the conversation has moved on or become awkward.

But I’m putting off getting to the good stuff.

Basically, hitching across Europe is crazy. Boring. Exhilarating. Amazing. Unreal. Terrifying and satisfying.

All in random orders.

The main emotion that stays with me though is that feeling of progress whenever there is even a tiny bit of moment.

And amazement.

I’ve not done the maths in miles, but we’ve crossed countries in days. We set off at 6ish on Wednesday morning and were in France by lunchtime, and in Belgium by the evening.

For free. Nothing but asking strangers for a little kindness.

There’s lots of rejection to.

After getting two thirds fo the way across Belgium, we found ourselves stuck in a small service station near Liege (60 miles from the Belgium German border). We camped for a night, and then got up early the next day. And we put our thumbs out.

And we put our thumbs out.

And we wrote signs. With destinations creeping slowly closer and more general.

And we put our thumbs out.

And we danced. With our thumbs out.

And we talked to a million people. (well, mostly Josh and Skozl).

They found out a hundred ways of being told no, sorry.

But that afternoon, about three or so, after what felt like a lifetime of baking, baking sun and smelly toilets and the sound of the motorway. Someone picked us up.

We went forwards. The guy was buying a car nearby.

For a while we went backwards. And ended up on a slightly nicer service station just outside liege.

But this was a better one.

And before too long, the loveliest lady in Belgium (a certified Iron Woman Triathlete) took us up to the German border.

That feeling of satisfaction. That feeling that people will help you. Is amazing. Laurie was on her own, there were three of us. pretty much her first words were ‘I hope I’m not being stupid, and that you won’t aggress, violence or murder me.’

You understand why people don’t pick you up, even as it frustrates when an empty SUV drives by.

But it just makes it better when you get somewhere new.

Bivouaccing in Germany. Meeting geologists, Navy officers and ex army doctors. Awkward joking between kind people with no language shared with us.

Fear on our part. A lack of control.

But then you’re closer. Someone offers another hand and you’re in heaven again. Floating on air as you realise how amazing life can be. How far you can get with nothing.

With the help of friends and strangers.

It’s been a week of miracles, to my mind, but just the simple miracle of community and trust.

Josh used hospitality club to find us someone to stay with in Munster, and Chris has been the kindest most generous host you could imagine. Just for the opportunity to meet with new people, she has put us up and given us a bed and delightful food.

It makes you want to be more generous with everything.

It proves the notion of karma.

If you do kind things, then miracles like this can happen.

The more kind things people do. The more everyone can feel happier and trust to chance and the wind to carry us forward.

It’s hard not to get carried away. I feel the negativity in my spine and my eyes. Even at Chris’ lovely house, I’ve found it hard to sleep (too hot? too quiet? too comfy? too amazing?).

But when I think for even a moment about what I’ve already achieved. About what I’ve seen and learnt. And what I can now imagine in the future. It’s amazing. The support of Josh and Jo and the strangers that have got us here is the best birthday present I could ever have. (And thanks to Mum for helping pay for the passport and the preparation).

And I think I want to learn German and maybe one day move to Münster for a while. It feels like Brighton without the sea (but with a beautiful canal, not like an English Canal). The cycling is incredible. Literally seas of bicycles in every direction. And if Chris and Hermanne are anything to go by das Münsterisch are the loveliest people in the world. It’s another half tourist half student town. And there’s lots going on here, judging from the things this weekend. From exploding scaffolding ships, fireworks, harbour festivals, markets and just the most beautiful countryside.

And a cycle network that actually works.

It’s , miraculous.

I’m running out of time, so there’ll be more detail to come. And photos when I get home. Perhaps that’s an entirely different story in itself.

Final thoughts?

Thank you. Thank you to everyone who has helped me get here, where I am today. And that’s not just in Münster, but in my life. Thank  you to my mother for giving birth to me exactly 26 years ago, and everyone who has made me who I am, to get here today.

I think there’s an argument that you’re always hitch hiking. Relying on the support of the people around you. The kindness and patience of your family and the strangers you meet who may become your friends, but really, whoever they are, you may never see them again.

But they all moved you somewhere, and in some way.

So thanks to the strangers.

Thanks to the kind.

And I hope I never forget that I am constantly, permanently in debt to the strangers and friends and loved ones around me. And I hope I never stop paying them back with kindnesses like these.

Tschuß,

Vielen Dank,

Alabaster Auf Allemands.

(Some assonant creole there? Optimistically.