• Doomer Optimism and Narrative Dynamics

    This is a series of tweets I publised today as a response to Ashley Colby’s (@RizomaFieldSchool) tweet on hand-washing clothes and dishes. The tweet acted as a perfect attractor for many of the ideas about complexity, economics, narrative and pattern language that I’m researching for my PhD Comps Exam and developing towards the research element.…

  • First Thoughts on The Dawn Of Everything by Wengrow & Graeber

    This is a huge book- both in its ground-breaking content and its physical size! Here the authors challenge the entrenched narratives that the pre-agricultural world was either a primitive Eden of small egalitarian hunter-gatherers (Rosseau) or nasty, brutush and short, requiring heirachy and governance to quell our worst natures (Hobbes). For someone like me researching…

  • Grasping The Sparrow’s Tail: Thoughts on Inviting Movement Back into our Lives.

    Grasping The Sparrow’s Tail: Thoughts on Inviting Movement Back into our Lives.

    I let my intuition explore connections between shifts in seasonal farming patterns, Graber and Wengrow’s ‘The Dawn of Everything’, Tai Chi and Panarchy, and the importance of metaphors, stories and narratives in understanding and action.

  • Pattern

    Pattern

    Donk,DinkBamboo chimes in a gentle breezeTing, tangSteel chimes a two tone melody.A rose-breasted hummingbird buzzes byFeeder-boundThe house wren insists the woodstack is hersCrickets channeling the background cosmic radiationA persistent click-drone as old as the universe.A phalanx of Canada geese heading south trumpet their exitThe doppler groan of passing cars on Old Church and Mount PleasantThe…

  • The hedger and John Clare

    The hedger and John Clare

    Each hedge is loaded thick wi greenAnd where the hedger late hath beenTender shoots begin to growFrom the mossy stumps belowWhile sheep and cow that teaze the grainwill nip them to the root againThey lay their bill and mittens byeAnd on to other labours hie John Clare, in ‘May’ from ‘The Shepherds Calendar’ (1827) We can’t let…