That works on so many levels.

And bear with me. There are so many threads unfolding that a linear piece of writing is not going to stand a chance of capturing any significant fraction of them; even less of having them make sense. Consider this a bit of a download and yet to be put in order.

It is a saturday afternoon. The cat is sleeping on the other Sofa. My Love is in the kitchen doing something that she is masterful at. The sun is starting to fade behind low skidding clouds that have been here for most of the week. Not much rain today. The fire is warm. Cocteau Twins are playing and I am tripping. Or journeying. Call it what you will; it is an interrupt on normal life and one that I have been feeling much in need of.

It has been an intense few days. On thursday my Love got us tickets to go see ‘Bones of Crows’. A free showing at our local theatre. Expletive alert. Oh my fucking God.

There are places where I find myself on Vancouver Island, the waters and even in the sky around here where I feel incredibly fortunate to live where I live. And to know that this was stolen. Another path could have been trodden by my ancestors, but it wasn’t. My ancestor culture came from a context of domination – it still does. Watching that work of art movie unfold and listening to the sharings of so many people in the theatre after the showing. Keeping my heart open in the face of what is at the ragged edges of our culture. Contact could have been a celebration – but it was never going to be. It was an attempted Genocide. And the scars are everywhere. The denial is miles deep. As is my own. It is very easy to sit here in warmth and comfort (the cat, the smells of food cooking, the warmth) and believe that there is nothing wrong. Nothing of concern. I have allowed myself that luxury for just about a year. That time of rest is almost over.

In April I will be joining with my brothers in the Mankind Project on lake behind Powell River on one of our weekends. I did my weekend in 2017 and the awakening it quickened in me is still bearing new fruit. This is going to be interesting as the full leader for the weekend is an Indigenous man. I do not know what to expect. There is a good part of me that is scared. And honoured. In truth I know I still, at 55, have so much to learn. How many lives have been scarred. How many destroyed. How many gave up. An elder at the theatre said it very clearly on thursday; ‘We are still here’. They are still here. We have much to learn.

I was about to say something along the lines of ‘Oh my fucking God’ again. But those words themselves express something that is not moving; a stagnant wish. No surprise that I have been feeling like I have been sitting in one posture for too long. I learned a decade ago (thank you and honouring you Christopher) that there is nothing wrong with Anger. I know. It has been smouldering. Waiting for a breath and some fresh kindling. Anger that is left stuck causes problems. Anger that is moving is a direct encounter with the energetic breath of life.

When I moved up island from Victoria, BC just over 2 years ago I felt that it was an opportunity to go deeper. To create new relationships; with the land, with people. To intentionally step that bit closer to the edge…

A year ago I was arrested as part of a Save old Growth protest in Nanaimo. Just one amongst thousands over the last two years in that protest. And a drop in the ocean of saying ‘No’ or at least ‘Hold on a minute…’ to the reckless devastation that has been wrought. I have been working through the layers that experience drove to the surface. There is another post about my Mothers’ gift that I will save to another time – soon. She raised a fierce Son.

My ancestors knew what they were doing. Unfortunately. They had honed the art within and amongst themselves throughout Europe and every other part of the world they could exert themselves upon for millenia. Then they came here. They SAW and they WANTED. And there was this slight inconvenient problem of those who lived here already and who had unfathomably deep connection with the land, beneath and beyond its value as resource. The life that it is. The relationship that it grounds. They knew, my ancestors, what they were doing. They knew what was in the way and they followed the game plan. To. The. Letter. Unspeakable horror and devastation – to be locked up in a Residential School system. Tell it for what it was – they were concentration camps – with a well-engineered veneer of respectability courtesy of the Catholic Church.

Breathe.

And now there is an urgent need to take a pause. Before the lights go out – or at least before keeping them on becomes one whole lot more difficult.

The dominant (sic.) culture is running out of steam. The cracks are showing. My home country (the UK) is seemingly a poster child for dysfunctional leadership. The current PM lays claim to one of the largest fortunes in the UK. He knows money. I assert however about people he is clueless, and is being blown about by the winds of those that require from him to be a convenient puppet whilst they pull the strings. He is a human being and the product of a world view of privilege. Nope – privilege still seems to bear no relationship to wisdom. There are voices in the UK that are proposing an alternate world-view that have access to that missing wisdom. Here in Canada (as everywhere) the Pandemic kicked the crap out of our sense of comfort. There has been a half-hearted attempt to claw back some sense of normalcy, whilst I think, very close to the surface there is a barely spoken dread that ‘normal’ is gone. I do not think that is a bad thing. The scales of illusion are being pulled off. I am not surprised by the amount of mental illness issues that we are seeing. Staring life in the face and not loosing your nerve is tough. I am not sure I am sane – however I am pretty sure I have not gone off the deep-end yet. Playing the game of moment-by-moment chicken with life.

We need truth. We need reconciliation. Because quite frankly I believe we are going to need each other in a big hurry and pretty soon. I want for people to stop saying ‘once in 200 years’ or ‘once in a millenium’ to describe extreme weather events. That is old-model thinking. Pioneering work by some intellectual heroes (read ‘out on a professional limb, and made it work’) has given us a new model. In the language of probability that we are culturally only just starting to learn to speak, Gaia is speaking with us. If we collectively fail to get with the program I think that will be a disaster, possibly the end of us, and it will be on us. My generation.

“What we do over the next three to four years, I believe, is going to determine the future of humanity. We are in a very very desperate situation.” Sir David King. Feb 12, 2021

Unseasonal warmth. Unseasonal cold. Unseasonal rainfall. In the same place. In quick succession. These are the signs of a climate system that is flickering and looking for a new equilibrium. Unless we drop emissions fast and stop dicking around (technical term) with Gaia’s ability to self-regulate I think we might look back on this recent spate of ;weather-related disasters as the good-old-days.

Whilst we wait for those we put in charge to get their fingers out of their ears long enough to realize that narrow lobbied self-interests have been drowning out the voice of what is now abundantly obvious to everyone who cares to look – to wake up. I think we need to stop waiting. Unless we shake them out of their slumber, we are all in unimaginable trouble. Actually scratch that. If they had listened 40 years ago we might have stood more of a chance. The problem is now that those industries which have profited hansomely from the ignorance of all of us, which they have been actively generating, whilst the last 100 years of the oil and gas bonanza played out – are trying to shape-shift. Trying to convince us that we can keep doing the same old thing with a little bit of greenwashing. Keeping the ad dollars flowing to keep up the illusion that we can live in a world where another cascade of billions of tonnes of fossil CO2 spill into a biosphere that is doing what complex, living, dynamical systems do when faced with stress. They adapt. Where the biosphere adapts to clearly has nothing to do with us.

Which brings me back to Indigenous peoples. Before contact they knew (and know) how to live in intimate partnership with the Land. Skies. Waters. My culture has forgotten. Only one way has a future. And it depends on remembering and putting that remembering into action.

On the 25th of February I will lend my voice and presence along with my sweet Partner and with those others who believe change must come urgently. We need wisdom. Save old Growth rally at the BC Legislature.

There are those who will, for their own reasons, attempt to portray this as another iteration of ‘us versus them’. Power is like that. I remains powerful by keeping everyone looking over their shoulders rather than into the eyes of those making the rules for others to live by. A just transition whilst we figure out how to work with each other for a better future – or business-as-usual and crash. That is the choice.

This has been a ramble. Thanks for sticking with it until the last sentence. Still breathing. In and out. And figuring out what to most intentionally do with the next ones.

Campbell River, 4Feb2023.