Power in the Anthropocene

So far in this series of articles I have been focusing my attention on the psychological impact of living in the Anthropocene and on philosophical responses to this. Now I find I have to confront head on the fact that it is extractive capitalism that has bought us to this environmental crisis.

All of the posts in my series on the Anthropocene are exploratory. I am not setting myself up as an expert. What I am doing is searching the internet for information that seems relevant then compiling it into these posts.

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Journal page – ‘Caught in the Matrix’

Since the end of WW11 the accelerated activities of extractive capitalism have created the ecological, cultural and social challenges that now confront us. The endless need of capitalism to continue growing has led to a globalized economy based around ever increasing industrial production and technological developments.

Alongside this a consumerist lifestyle has been actively promoted. While those who can afford to buy the goods and services on offer live very comfortably, the people at the margins are experiencing economic hardship and social injustice.

_{Globally, the top 10% of emitters were responsible for almost half of global energy-related CO2 emissions in 2021, compared with a mere 0.2% for the bottom 10%. The top 10% averaged 22 tonnes of CO2 per capita in 2021, over 200 times more than the average for the bottom 10%… The richest 0.1% of the world’s population emitted 10 times more than all the rest of the richest 10% combined, exceeding a total footprint of 200 tonnes of CO2 per capita annually.
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-world-s-top-1-of-emitters-produce-over-1000-times-more-co2-than-the-bottom-1}

Since the 1980s and the era of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, neoliberal policies have promoted privatization, deregulation, tax cuts and free trade deals that have favoured huge industrial corporations. These corporations are increasingly controlling the fate of Earth and our collective destiny.

_{A study published back in 2017 is one of the most up-to-date reports on all companies around the world and their carbon footprint. It reveals that just 100 of all companies have been responsible for 71% of the global greenhouse gas emissions since 1998.}

_{Additionally, if companies continue to extract fossil fuels at the rate they have been doing over the past 28 years, it is estimated that the global average temperature will rise by up to 4°C. 
https://peri.umass.edu/greenhouse-100-polluters-index-current}

Of these companies, global coal and oil corporations head the list.

The counter argument to these statistics is that most of us consume fossil fuels. We are told we must change our light globes, recycle plastic containers and buy organic vegetables to reduce our carbon footprint. While all of these measures play a part in curbing greenhouse gases and environmental pollutants it is not until global companies take responsibility for their actions that carbon emissions and environmental degradation will be reduced.

Journal page – The Earth cannot digest the waste we produce

Neo-liberal policies have ensured holding these companies to account is extremely difficult. Government policies in the Western world generally favour corporations over the general public. Here in Australia, we are constantly told that the mining industry forms the backbone of our economy and that implementing green policies will take time and is likely to result in job losses and uncomfortable disruptions to our way of life. Fossil fuel industries promote their activities by telling us they are aiming to be ‘carbon neutral’ but never explaining exactly how they plan to do this. This kind of greenwashing appears to be happening across the industrialized world.

At the same time we are constantly encouraged to consume more while being led to believe that those who are experiencing poverty and homelessness have somehow bought it in on themselves by making poor choices. Across much of society there is an attitude that those who are struggling are somehow personally responsible. As a result, economic hardship has become a source of guilt and shame for many experiencing it.

All this is compounded by the rise of authoritarian neoliberal politics across the globe. In an article on the subject Ian Bruff and Cemal Tansel state that:-
_{“contemporary capitalism is governed in a way which tends to reinforce and rely upon practices that seek to marginalize, discipline and control dissenting social groups and oppositional politics rather than strive for their explicit consent or co-optation}.” _{https://eprints.ncl.ac.uk/file_store/production/278697/C115B613-E3A4-4B04-BCAC-603F24A25314.pdf}

As the ecological crises deepen we are faced with difficult truths about how our world is governed and how this governance is exacerbating the issues that confront us.

…to be continued

Making Meaning in the Anthropocene

At this point in this series I need to recap some of the ideas I’ve covered here. As I stated earlier, this series is about the psychological impact living in the Anthropocene can have mentally, emotionally and spiritually. To begin to understand this I had to delve into the mental structures that underlie the culture we live in.

There is a growing consensus among philosophers. eco-feminists and anthropologists that the way we have mentally split ourselves off from nature is the foundation of our current ecological crisis. While opinions vary as to when the nature/human divide occurred, many consider the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th century to be a crucial stage in the development of our culture. At that time reason and logic became the principles which governed society. This freed us from the domination of oppressive religious beliefs and blind faith, but it also meant intuition, magical understandings of the world and the spirituality of indigenous peoples were designated as superstitious and ignorant. As a result, our world view was skewed in favour of rational, mechanistic and scientific constructs.

While this has led to the technological innovations of our modern world it has also created the ecological, economic and social crises we now confront. This places us in an invidious position. It is reason that bought us to this crisis but when we try to use reason to dismantle it, we run into an impasse. For example, when we apply rational, scientific thinking to the problems of climate change we come up with ideas that really just perpetuate the problem. Green technologies are wonderfully innovative but their construction and implementation still relies on the extractive capitalist actions that got us into this mess in the first place. To make the massive wind turbines and solar panels major corporations have decided are the solution, we have to mine rare metals, transport them across the globe and use vast amounts of energy to make the products. At present both the turbines and panels have a life span of around thirty years and many cannot be recycled.

At best these technological innovations buy us time. They are not a blanket solution which will instantly solve climate change although the governments and major mining conglomerates would have us believe they are.

Reason got us into this mess but reason alone cannot get us out of it. As we dither about in confusion the ecological, economic and social crises deepen. Species extinction accelerates, the polar ice continues to melt, indigenous people still face extreme prejudice and those at the bottom rungs of society are struggling to find adequate food and shelter. The psychological impact of all of this is great. Anxiety, fear, grief, numbness, denial and depression are some of the ways this manifests.

We are inside a box created by our own thinking processes. For as long as we remain in the box we are imprisoned by it and cannot see beyond it. We lose hope and sink further into negative emotions.

In his book ‘The Principle of Hope’ the social theorist, Ernst Bloch explored the idea that hope is a basic trait of the human condition. It is expressed in music, dreams and daydreams, fairytales and imaginative stories that take us into worlds that are not yet physical but which might become so. He argued that it operates through intuition and the senses rather than through reason.

Bloch and other social theorists of the mid 20th century developed the understanding that hope does not depend on wishful or positive thinking. Neither is it based in reason and an assessment of existing possibilities. They contend that hope is a strategy that can take us out of defeatism and despair and into imaginings of a better world.

Hope is an intuitive sense that some other way of being might be possible,
that different futures might exist.

When considered in this way hope becomes something we make rather than something we find. Through it we get glimpses of futures beyond the impasse of the Anthropocene. Cracks appear in the walls of our mental prison and, at last, light begins to penetrate our inner darkness.

Looking outside of cultural constructs of mainstream society and shifting our point of view we can find other ways of being in the world. Indigenous people can teach us much about how to live in harmony with the natural world. Through learning from them we can develop awareness of the sacredness of the Earth and of developing a sense of kinship with all beings.

Eastern philosophies and religions can also teach us much. Meditative practices can help us become aware of the unity and harmony of all life. Developing our understanding of the Indian concepts of karma and dharma as well as the Chinese concept of chi and the flow of life force energies can offer us guidelines as to how we can live in more holistic ways.

Learning about ecological world views based on the idea that humans are part of the web of life can help us develop respect for the diversity of life. This realization can promote the desire to live in more ethical ways that are ecologically sustainable.

Developing a sense of wonder and an appreciation of the beauty of life can lift our mood and connect us more deeply to the world around us.

Peaceful political actions can give us a sense of purpose and feelings solidarity with other people who have similar values.

While these ideas and practices can help us develop more environmentally aware ways of living it has to be said that there is absolutely no guarantee that they will have any long term effect on the complex crises that confront us. They are, essentially, an alternative to nihilistic despair. They are ways of making meaning and making hope.

to be continued…

Writing in the Ruins

Living on in the ruins is a concept used by the feminist philosopher Donna Haraway and the anthropologist, Anna Tsing when they consider how we can survive and thrive in the Anthropocene. To both of them that means facing the reality of our current global situation while exploring opportunities for societal change and transformation. It means being aware of the mess we’ve created while still managing to find joy and beauty in being alive.

In her book ‘The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins’ Anna Tsing writes of the matsutake mushrooms that grow in forests disturbed by humans. This mushroom has become a sought after commodity and delicacy. Using it as a symbol for both ruin and regeneration, Tsing examines life in the ecological ruins we have created.

Donna Haraway uses the phrase ‘living on in the ruins’ when developing her idea of staying with the trouble – with acknowledging environmental degradation, species extinction and climate change while imagining and creating new ways of being human. She writes:

“Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places.”

Anna Tsing asks:

‘What if we imagined that what we see as environmental damage is not an anomaly but the face of history? How would we write this history? What stories would we tell? What stories could we tell if we realized that history is not only human?

Writing in the ruins, traversing uncertainties where outcomes are ambiguous the writer and the writing haunted by loss, by unravellings yet weaving a multiplicity of possibilities into emergent ways of being.

-more later in the week.

Finding hope in the Anthropocene

Sometimes I feel like I’m treading water and it’s all I can do stop my head disappearing beneath waves of Anthropocenic grief. Every day it seems there is another terrifying report of environmental damage. At the same time I learn of yet another politician in a position of power saying that emission targets can’t be reached because they cost so much so he’s decided to give the green light on another coal fired power station or fracking project.

To counter my feelings of despair I began researching how we can find hope in the Anthropocene. I wasn’t interested in naive optimism which overlooks what’s really going on but wanted realistic and creative ways to shift my negative feelings. I didn’t expect to find much but I discovered this is an active concern of many people.

The first articles I found focused on the despair many environmental scientists experience when they are confronted with the impact of climate change in the course of their work. (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/12/how-scientists-are-coping-with-environmental-grief).

Reading the words of Ashlee Consolo, a health geographer who works with Inuit people in Canada I discovered that not only are indigenous people teaching us about more holistic ways to live on Earth, they are also teaching us about how to work with ecological grief. In an interview she said:-

“What I really learned from the elders was to start talking about grief as a totally normal response to climate change or other forms of environmental degradation. So it’s not something to feel ashamed about… The sense of helplessness is very prevalent – the feeling that the scale of our environmental crisis is so large that as individuals we can’t intervene. And I think that’s actually one of the really powerful mobilising potentials of ecological grief – it’s driving action and anger; climate marches. More and more people are coming forward to share their pain and there’s power in that – the capacity to make a sea-change in policy because ecological grief is so much now a part of the public narrative.’

The University of Calgary in Canada offers some practical advice on coping with ecological grief. Connecting to others who are experiencing similar feeling can help. They suggest emailing info@refugiaretreats.com to find support groups on social media.

Using rituals is another method for alleviating ecological grief. “Lament rituals for example, are extremely old and very human methods for healing. They include writing, photography, singing and visual arts. It’s a way of capturing your emotions as they flow through you.” https://ucalgary.ca/news/eco-grief-how-cope-emotional-impacts-climate-change

Ecological grief can also form the basis of hopeful actions, for example we could write to politicians or join activist groups. The Australian geographer, Lesley Head sees this kind of hope as stemming from failure (of the world to act decisively on climate change). She writes that failure can be a source of hope if we use it as an opportunity to reflect, learn and open to new possibilities.

“Hope is not a passive emotion; it requires action. It is not a guarantee; it involves risk. It is not a certainy; it can be disappointed. It is not a feeling; it is a practice.” – Lesley Head

Learning hope is an aligned concept that can help with finding hope in the Anthropocene. It involves imagining alternative futures and working with others in political groups and resistance networks. The Dutch philosopher and activist, Eva Meijer calls this type of hope, concrete hope. She writes:-

“Concrete hope is active: it involves imagining possible futures that are different from the present, and working towards realising them.”

Learning hope in the Anthropocene is not an easy task. It involves facing the problems but also being open to new ways of living. Eva Meijer describes this type of hope as ‘…a collective political practice that involves imagining different futures and working towards them together, while acknowledging the uncertainties and complexities of the present.’

The activist and Buddhist, Joanna Macy finds such a path to hope through her meditation practice where she develops what she calls ‘awake awareness’. Joanna Macy is now 94 and in poor health. Her spirit though is as strong as ever. In an interview earlier this year she said:-

“Learning to relate to life from the larger perspective of natural or awake awareness allows us to be emotionally wealthy enough to feel gratitude, even when things are difficult. From there we have the strength to feel our pain for a suffering world. Then, surprisingly, a shift happens, and we see life with the new eyes of love and interdependence. Now we go forth with loving engagement in a life that rises up to meet us.” https://tricycle.org/article/activist-joanna-macy/

A brief reference in something I was reading about Joanna Macy and the idea of making a spiritual connection to the world led me to discover the work of the Australian anthropologist, Deborah Bird Rose. Rose spent many years exploring the spiritual and cultural practices of Australian Aboriginal people still living a traditional life. Through this work she learnt much about Aboriginal culture and how it can help us reconnect with the sacredness and wonder of life. The concepts and ideas she uncovered are inspirational and offer new ways of thinking about what it means to be human.

‘The Anthropocene unmakes the idea of the unlimited, autonomous human and calls for a radical reworking of a great deal of what we thought we knew about ourselves’. Deborah Bird Rose.

In a future post I’ll take a longer look at Rose’s work and how it has led others to develop ideas about how humans can move beyond the negativity and fatalism of anthropocentric consciousness.

The Anthropocene as the uncanny

The earth turns and the seasons shift. Here in Australia spring came early and it is already unseasonably warm. Bushfires are burning in the north of the country and the warnings about the developing el Nino weather pattern become increasingly dire by the day. Our Anthropocenic weather is uncanny, strange and unstable.

The anthropologists Nils Bubandt and Martijn van Beek consider the Anthropocene itself to be uncanny:- “the Anthropocene is a truly an uncanny time, a time when the proper separation between things – between culture and nature, subject and object, human and
nonhuman, life and non-life – is collapsing.” (https://anthropocene.au.dk/fileadmin/Anthropocene/MORE_THAN_HUMAN_vol.3.pdf)

The philosopher, Jacques Derrida saw the Anthropocene is a time when we are haunted by the spectres of ecological catastrophe, mass extinction and planetary crisis. This spectrality propels us into rethinking our relationship to the natural world as traces of all that has been excluded, repressed or forgotten by the dominant culture are exposed.

Here in Australia the trauma of our colonial past is currently being disclosed. Aboriginal people are speaking up about the true history of the country. Similar stories of the abuse of indigenous people under colonialization are coming to light across the globe. Massacre sites, places where children were stolen away from their mothers and where tribal ceremonies were disrupted are being revealed. Often there is something uncanny about these places. The rocks, hills and valleys seem to reverberate with echoes of past atrocities as if some deep psychic wounding has become embedded in the physical structure of the Earth.

Controlling people through colonial practices has occurred alongside the exploitation of nature. The Anthropocene is asking us to examine the human/nature split. At the same time indigenous people are asking us to examine our relationship with all people on Earth. A number of scholars suggest that slavery and European colonization define the Anthropocene. Others say the deforestation and development of industrialized agriculture on indigenous land as well the exploitation of indigenous people has played a significant part in causing our current ecological crisis. To fully deconstruct the way in which our thinking has bought us to our current ecological crisis we have to consider the impact of colonization.

There is a weirdness to these times. Our concept of what it means to be human is being called into a question but a deeper question also arises. Are all humans are equally implicated in behaving in ways that have bought us to ecological crisis of the Anthropocene? Indigenous cultures are living cultures that have operated in harmony with the Earth for countless millennia. Notions of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all life are fundamental to these cultures.

The ghosts of these cultures haunt us. As bushfires rage out control we learn of indigenous fire stick farming and how, in pre-colonial Australia, bushfires did not occur. More unsettling still, we learn that this fire stick farming was undertaken so that the people could grow food crops. Here where I live there are drawings done by early settlers that depict Aboriginal women harvesting yams. Across the country evidence is emerging that prior to white settlement Aboriginal people cultivated the land, established villages and built dams, weirs and food stores. The colonial idea that Aboriginal people were hunter gatherer nomads who lived at a subsidence level is being proven to be false.

I found today’s post difficult to write and even more difficult to draw to a conclusion. I’m finding that the deeper I dig into the idea of the Anthropocene as a cultural crisis the more it seems impossible that we can extricate ourselves from this mess. Being determined to find pathways through the impasse I am going to write about finding hope in the Anthropocene tomorrow.

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Deconstructing anthropocentric thinking

I’m loving all your comments. They are helping me get clear on where these posts are going. I’ve made a mud map of future posts and think there will probably be 7 more. The inspiration is flowing now and I am hoping to get a post up every day.

So many thoughts are swirling around my mind as I consider your comments on religion, patriarchy and the economy. At first, I thought I’d have to tackle them all in separate posts but then I realized they are intrinsically linked. I’ve given up trying to write this stuff in a logical, grammatically correct manner. Taking Einstein’s idea that we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them as my guide, I will approach these blog posts through a stream-of-consciousness wayfaring process.

We need a paradigm shift. A change in how we live on the planet.

The system we live in is a construct that favours the few at the top and oppresses everyone else. It is based on exploitation, whether that is the exploitation of the natural world, animals or people without power or privilege.

It could be said that the chaos we are witnessing now is a direct end result of the mental structures that lie beneath this patriarchal, capitalist system – a system structured around the concept of unlimited growth on a planet of limited resources. It is a system that ultimately cannot sustain itself.

Now the foundations are beginning to collapse
under the weight of their own inconsistencies.

There are lots of ideas out there about how new systems could be structured. In this series of posts about anthropocentric consciousness I am not focusing on practical economic solutions because I am not an economist. Two concepts I came across when I did some research are ecological economics and participatory economics but I’ll leave it to interested readers to do their own research. The idea of a circular economy makes a lot of sense of to me because I think we throw too much away. Where is this ‘away’? As far as I can see there is no away because our waste is now coming back to haunt us. I also think the redistribution of wealth secreted away by the top 1% would go a long way to solving world hunger and providing adequate shelter for all.

To implement any of these ideas

WE NEED A PARADIGM SHIFT

To get there I think we have to deconstruct the conceptual base of this system where powerful white males (and their minions) think they have a God given right to exploit the Earth.

This has to stem from the Biblical passage:-

Genesis 1:26New King James Version “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So obviously the god we are talking about here has no relationship to the spiritual beliefs of indigenous people or with pre Christian Earth goddesses…

If I jump out of the matrix and go to the spiritual beliefs of indigenous people and to the ancient Earth goddesses I see that many centre around the concept of humans living in harmony with the Earth and all nonhuman life. Feelings of being embodied on the Earth lead into the desire to respect, nurture and protect all life.

This is not a superficial notion but is a way of thinking about being human that is utterly different from mainstream Western ideas. It is beautifully expressed here:-

“_{We are the land … the Earth is the mind of the people as we are the mind of the earth. The land is not really the place (separate from ourselves) where we act out the drama of our isolate destinies. It is not a means of survival, a setting for our affairs … It is rather a part of our being, dynamic, significant, real. It is our self … Paula Gunn Allen, Laguna Pueblo (1979: 191–192)}

This leads to the question of how we change our thinking and shift towards more holistic ways of living in harmony with each other, the planet and all non-human beings. Researching this I came across a fascinating article on the subject at https://earthathome.org/

“Changing a closely held worldview is not about changing understandings of isolated concepts, but rather remaking that worldview. What goes into such a large change? Changing one’s mind about deeply held beliefs requires reaching a tipping point.”

This concept of a tipping point fits with the idea that the many crises of the Anthropocene can propel us into rethinking the values of our culture. Old certainties are suddenly no longer as stable as they once were. The places we inhabit can be altered, even destroyed by environmental degradation, natural disasters and climate change. Conditions we once considered secure are no longer rock solid structures. Our usual ways of thinking and living are challenged. In so many ways we are being unmade.

The French philosopher, Giles Deleuze and the psychoanalyst, Felix Guattari called this unmaking ‘deterritorialization’. This is followed by a remaking, or what they call ‘reterritorialization’ – a complex non-linear process that can be contradictory and destabilizing but which leads to new, more fluid ways of being – an always becoming.

I ‘ll take a deeper dive into these ideas in my next post. Please keep your comments coming. They are an important part of this investigation for they expand the discussion into areas I haven’t thought of myself.

Chasing anthropocenic consciousness

The implications of what it means to alive in the Anthropocene can be infinitely depressing. While the mainstream view is that the current crisis is because we burn fossil fuels there’s more going on that. The Anthropocene is also about the plastic swirling around in vast ocean gyres, fast fashion waste, pharmaceuticals past their use by date and dumped in landfill sites, types of plastic no one has yet figured out how to recycle, the fact the bees are dying etc. etc… The list goes on and on.

All of these things are effects of our behaviour though. The question is why do we behave in such life destroying ways in the first place? The answer to that question has to be tied up with the way we consider nature to be a resource we can use for our own betterment and how Western consciousness is constructed around the idea that humans are separate from nature.

Just how we break down this way of thinking is matter of conjecture. The feminist scholar, Donna Haraway suggests that one place to begin is make kin with other beings:-

“I first started using the word “kin” when I was in college in a Shakespeare class because I realized that Shakespeare punned with “kin” and “kind.” Etymologically they’re very closely related. To be kind is to be kin, but kin is not kind. Kin is often quite the opposite of kind. It’s not necessarily to be biologically related but in some consequential way to belong in the same category with each other in such a way that has consequences. If I am kin with the human and more-than-human beings of the Monterey Bay area, then I have accountabilities and obligations and pleasures that are different than if I cared about another place. Nobody can be kin to everything, but our kin networks can be full of attachment sites. I feel like the need for the care across generations is urgent, and it cannot be just a humanist affair.” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/making-kin-an-interview-with-donna-haraway/

I’m finding it difficult to follow logical lines of thought through the impasse of the Anthropocene. I’ve tried writing long blog posts explaining some of the complex ideas I’ve come across but I can’t get anywhere with that approach. I’m thinking the problem might be that such an approach is that is really just continuing to work in the ways of the old system we have been conditioned to believe is the only way things can be. As Einstein said  “No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.”

I’m finding exploring ideas with images and metaphors works best for me right now. If you want to share any art, poetry or writing you have made about this process of finding pathways beyond the fatalism of mainstream anthropocentric thinking please feel free to post a link to your work in the comment section. Communicating with each other is one way to keep our thinking moving.

Anthropocene Awareness

‘The Anthropocene’ is a term that is increasingly used to define a new planetary epoch: one in which humans have become the dominant force shaping Earth’s bio-geophysical composition and processes. Although it originated in the Earth Sciences, it has since been widely adopted across academia and the public sphere as a catch-all description for the overwhelming impact of human activity on the planet. https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/anthropocene

The Anthropocene is a time when the human impact on Earth is becoming alarmingly apparent. The seas, heavy with plastic waste, are rising due to global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The polar ice caps, the permafrost and the glaciers are melting as the temperatures rise across the globe. The soils are contaminated with pesticide run off, chemical fertilizers and, in the worst case, radio-active waste. Climate change brings us terrifying and unpredictable weather. Biodiversity is threatened and species extinction is accelerating because of deforestation, urbanization and modern agricultural practices…

but all of that information and more can be found by simple Google searches or watching the nightly News.

What interests me is how the Anthropocene affects us mentally and emotionally. Personally, I have experienced deep levels of fear and anxiety, even despair as I realize that we humans have caused this environmental mayhem but are also the victims of it. The Earth is our home but we have despoiled our own nest. It all makes me question many of the ideas and attitudes that I have been taught to believe about what it means to be human. In examining and rethinking these attitudes I hope to develop more psychological resilience. I want to move through the paralysis of fear and join with others searching for a way through the impasse of anthropocenic thinking.

Taking the ideas of the anthropologist, Tim Ingold as a guide I am wayfaring through a wide range of ideas and concepts that shed light on the way the human/nature divide has brought us to this impasse.

Rather than sink into fatalistic despair I seek to find pathways that will take me into what Ingold describes as a dynamic and embodied engagement with the world. Part of this process involves creating journal pages where I combine my own photos and digital images with keywords and phrases about the concepts I am researching.

Wayfaring in the anthropocene

We learn to think along straight lines,
interlocking grids,
mind mazes of conformity,
conceptual prisons of normality
where destinations are pre-determined,
curtailed and controlled.

I’d like to be like Basho
taking to the narrow roads in spring.
Held back, hemmed in by convention,
I stop before I begin.

Is it that my wayfaring now
is to be the metaphoric kind?
Like Emily Dickinson
am I to be a traveler in residence,
staying put in this grey place,
this purgatory of repetition.

Wayfaring in the anthropocene
despair obscures the path
yet, whispering in dreams,
the symbiocene.
An opening beckons.

Journal spread – Wayfaring in the Anthropocene

Before embarking on this journey along ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’ the Japanese haiku poet, Matsuo Basho wrote:-
“_{How long ago, I wonder, did I see a drift of cloud borne away upon the wind, and ceaseless dreams of wandering become aroused? Only last year, I had been wandering along the coasts and bays; and in the autumn, I swept away the cobwebs from my tumbledown hut on the banks of the Sumida and soon afterwards saw the old year out. But when the spring mists rose up into the sky, the gods of desire possessed me, and burned my mind with the longing to go beyond the barrier at Shirakawa. The spirits of the road beckoned me, and I could not concentrate on anything.”} https://minookatap.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north.pdf

linked to – https://desperatepoets.com/2023/09/01/desperate-poets-open-link-weekend-19/