The Cult of the Car
We’re drowning in a tsunami of cars, suffocated by their sheer numbers and fumes. For over a century, we’ve been in the grip of a collective madness around automobiles. How have we come to continue accepting as normal, a degraded quality of life where we subsist around the margins of these toxic products of a bygone age?
Edgelands & the Wild
Walking across the car park of my local ASDA superstore I am struck by the sheer acreage of tarmac which never becomes remotely full of cars, even though there are scores upon scores of them parked there. Apart from the surprising number of people who seem to just sit in their idling cars, the only regular inhabitants of this urban desert are the flock of feral pigeons who sit in a huddle in the middle of this expanse between their foraging for scraps.
The Darkling Thrush: A Harbinger
Winter Solstice has come and gone and we’re now well into mid January in the Northern Hemisphere. The sense of bone dead winter seems unchanging – and then suddenly I realise that there’s been a shift. Out on my allotment towards dusk on a frozen winter’s day to put out food for the wild birds, I feel a distinct change in the quality of light. The light lingers longer and there starts to be a twilight and a dusk again after the weeks of mid winter’s abrupt darkness.
Walking the Path to Nowhere & Everywhere
“Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility”
Kith & Kin
When I got up to space, I looked at the blackness of space. There were no dazzling lights. It was just palpable blackness. I believed I saw death. And then I looked back at the Earth. Having read a lot of things about the evolution of Earth over 5 billion years and how all the beauty of nature has evolved, I thought about how we’re killing everything.
Times like these…
You can’t get over it, round it or under it. Whatever your opinion, there’s no escaping the overriding truth that we – and I mean every single one of us in the world – are faced with an unprecedented existential moment. Such a moment has never occurred before in all the 200,000 years or so of homo sapiens existence.
Wonder
Clambering down the rocky cliffs to a small sandy cove on the wild north Cornwall coast on a blustery October day, I was watching the breakers rolling into shore. The sea here can have a deceptively tropical look, turquoise and clear enough that you can see right through it, as the waves rear up and thud onto the beach.
The Value of Sit Spots
’ve been going outdoors to my favourite little spot to sit down for years and it was only recently that I read about the phenomenon and the popularity of ‘sit spots’ or ‘Gaia spots’ as they have been termed. At its simplest it just means going outdoors, sitting down and opening your senses to nature; then coming back and repeating on a regular basis, preferably somewhere near home, since otherwise it’s not so likely to happen regularly.
Why aren’t we Devastated?
I’m attempting to write about an issue for which I have no answer and it’s puzzled me for a long time. Just to say at the outset, in writing about this, I really don’t want to criticise or guilt trip anyone. I’m not trying to convert anyone or make anyone feel guilty about their own habits or lifestyle.
Kafka in the Courtroom
I look around me in a mixture of shock and disbelief at the bizarre setting I’m in. I realise I’m alone in the courtroom – or rather I’m not alone; there’s the magistrate at the head of the court, the prosecuting lawyers, assorted court officials and security guards.