This is a life raft. The simple act of carving out space, word by word, moment by moment.
To rebuild my fragmented sense of self and navigate a place to be in the world. In this cranky, achey fifty-three year old body, leaning in to eccentricity, with all the choices I have made in the past and continue to make each day. Catching at twigs as they rush by in the stream of consciousness, weaving together a vessel that can start to hold some of these impulses – to create a new foundation. To rebuild community, to re-engage my creativity, to find a spark of hope, swimming sideways out of the riptide.
There is a thing no-one tells you about burnout and depression, which is the constant dread. Imagine it like a black hole at the core of your being, that sucks all the joy and light out of every atom and you start to get the picture. Compounded by decades of poverty and life-long precarity, and it’s a wonder I can function at all. And that is with all the privilege inherent of being born in Australia, having access to education, self-determination and all the choices that go along with that. However. Apparently I haven’t chosen so well, at least according to the metrics of success that society pushes on us, ie to be a good functional member of capitalism.
This does give me insight into ways of being in the world that are not defined by the socially approved forms of accumulation (ie regular income, housing, status, security). The knowledge that everything is transient, and a certain highly attuned capacity for being in a state of uncertainty. That can be a super-power. Being able to create and work to build meaning through constant impermanence, to hold on to the relationships that matter most, to keep finding that next step forward, and the next.
It is exhausting. To be in a state of constant hyper-vigilance, never really able to rest. At least that is one thing the cancer gave me. Time off. It was kind of non-negotiable. Although I am lucky to have been home in Australia with access to public health care and a family member with room to let me stay while going through treatment. It’s not quite over yet, but that is another story. This is simply to give context to the bone deep exhaustion and sense of imminent mortality I have been grappling with over the past year.
That is the framework for my journey into solarpunk bibliotherapy. More on that later, I will find some explainers and links. Essentially, those stories of post-climate apocalypse that explore how people have found ways to survive and thrive on a climate-smashed planet, with social + racial justice and ecological responsibility at the core, exploring different forms of living in connection to the world. It’s not just about solar power and green technology, the elements of eco and social justice are paramount. And this takes a paradigm shift, where the value is not in extraction of resources for shareholder profit, but in care taking of life and community. The values of Indigenous societies the world over, the First Nation’s knowledge systems, that in Australia are crystallised into caring for Country, Culture and Community.
“Cultural Heritage is the legacy we inherited from our Ancestors. And it includes responsibilities to protect both the physical aspects – land, water, flora, fauna and today, archaeology; and the intangible aspects – our story, language, mythology and lore. Our Ancestors understood that caring for Country allowed Country to care for them.”
Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council
Indigenous Land Management in Australia (PDF)
Imagine if we lived in a world that based all decisions on what is the greatest good for a healthy and flourishing ecosystem and social equality? Where the absolute basics of the right to shelter, education, health, self-determination and a life of dignity are respected for all humans – and indeed, all species.
The housing crisis, the cost of living crisis, even the climate crisis may not have occurred. But they did and we are forced to deal with them all. The one thing that neo-liberal capitalism can’t steal from us is our imagination. There are ways of living differently, that are better for the 8 billion, not the 8 billionaires.
Freedom Dreaming
That is why I have found hope in Solarpunk, because it reminds me that we can imagine the world in a different way. And if we can imagine it, we can create it. The first step is to remember that we have the capacity to dream of something different…
Tourmaline says:
“The thing is, freedom dreaming isn’t just about the big things—the huge world changes that we are manifesting in our movements, like police and prison abolition, free universal healthcare, and gender self-determination for all. When I give myself permission to slow down like this—and particularly, when I wonder what we already have that we want to keep—what I always notice are the small things.
(Or I should say: What seem like the small things, but really are the big things! The everyday acts of liberatory glamour, care, and openness that keep us alive.) I notice how much I am already surrounded by the world I dream of…
I’ve begun to realize that I freedom dream every single day:
When I dye my hair blue at home in my bathtub, reclaiming the color from its capture by racist police—and then do my eyeshadow to match—I’m freedom dreaming. I am allowing my very existence to be an aesthetic resistance.
When I take a walk down my block, and slow down to touch and smell the blooming flowers, bursting with vitality, I’m freedom dreaming. I am allowing myself to live in a world where nature is a teacher and friend.
When I Venmo my friend $25 with a heart emoji, so that they can safely take a cab home from a protest or a date or a doctor’s appointment, I’m freedom dreaming. I am creating a world in which we can all move around safely, without fear of harassment.
When I stay in bed all day, luxuriating in rest, moving in and out of cat naps, I’m freedom dreaming.I am living in the knowledge that I don’t have to be productive in the ways capitalism demands of us in order to deserve relaxation and recuperation.
When I write to an incarcerated loved one, on colorful paper, enclosing exuberant childhood photos, I’m freedom dreaming. I am reaching through the walls designed to prevent connection and delight, and announcing that they have failed in their intent.
When I walk naked from my bedroom to my kitchen, adorned in nothing but lipstick, I’m freedom dreaming.I am communing with Marsha P. Johnson, anti-police activist and sex worker, and her naked walks down Christopher Street five decades ago.
When I sext all my friends, trading sultry photos into the late hours of the night, I’m freedom dreaming. I am envisioning a world in which pleasure isn’t a scarce resource, but is something to revel in and share.
When I refuse to make myself smaller to accommodate the demands for respectability put forward by mainstream institutions—when I wear sheer dresses and chokers to art openings and airports alike, when I don’t tuck, when I am my fullest and freest self in the most public of places—I’m freedom dreaming.I am expanding in the power of my unruliness and refusal to conform to violent and oppressive normativity.
When I care for sick friends, and let sick friends care for me, I’m freedom dreaming. I am remembering that we do not have to be afraid of each other, and that contagion has historically been weaponized against us, used to stoke fear amongst and alienate trans people, queer people, sex workers, and disabled people from our loved ones.
I want you to know that your freedom dreams can be immediate: the DMs you want to receive tonight, the quality of sleep you want to have, the screen break you want to take, the conversation you’re hoping to have with a family member or friend. I want you to know that it’s not frivolous to have dreams about seemingly small or pleasurable things; it is vital.”
Filmmaker and Activist Tourmaline on How to Freedom Dream, Vogue 2022
Tourmaline in Vaquera NYC top and skirt. Photographed by MaryV Benoit
Rest is Resistance!
The second is to give ourselves time to rest, and daydream. Listen to Tricia Hersey (the Nap Ministry) talking this morning on ‘Soul Search (ABC RN) about how “rest is resistance” . She advocates rest as a form of social and political justice that pushes back against grind culture, and offers liberation from the oppression inherent in capitalism and white supremacy. Whose bodies are allowed to rest, is a political question. Not to be seen as having value only if we are productive cogs in the extractive machine.
If we are over-worked and exhausted, we lose the capacity to connect with ourselves, our spirits and each other, that reclaiming this space and giving ourselves permission to simply be human is a fundamental right. Also reclaiming our imagination to start dreaming of how we want to live.
How will I be useless to capitalism today? Rest Deck, Tricia Hersey
I was introduced to her work by Rodrigo of Verdensrommet Migrant Artist Network in Norway, while researching the CR8VX White Paper on Artist’s Solidarity Economies. We invited her to give a nap workshop at one of the events in Oslo but she practices what she preaches and never replied. I have to respect that level of embodied value – the ABC reporter joked about trying to get an interview when the book came out last October, but having to wait until now because Tricia was taking a break for 2 months.
Homes for all! (not just the rich)
Third, we need to start taking better care of each other. Instead of being isolated units of individual striving, disconnected from what actually makes us human, locked into survival mode in our silos.
It’s the stealing of our softness that I resent most about constant hustle grind culture. There is well documented a loneliness epidemic, lowest levels of social cohesion since they began measuring and these conditions all speak to how out of kilter the majority of urban global societies have become.
- Is loneliness the next public health epidemic? InPsych, Australian Psychological Society, 2018
- Social Isolation and Loneliness, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2023
- The Loneliness Epidemic, University of Sydney 2023
Sydney Ideas: The Loneliness Epidemic, Melody Ding
Not that I am advocating a return to feudal village life, far from it – the whole ethos of solarpunk is that we can create greener, more liveable cities for the billions of people who live in them. So let’s get started.
I just drifted into a doco by “Invisible People” about how Finland has solved homelessness. It was interesting, they used an American model “Housing First,” implemented with the Finnish socialist sensibility for people also needing not only a physical space, but care, community & connection.
Finland Solved Homelessness: Here’s How (Invisible People) Dec 2023
The housing minister responsible for helping get policy and funding identified as being a centre-right politician, which gave a certain resilience to the project despite the changes in government – ie that it wasn’t only an idealist, leftie kind of enterprise. Social housing is still seen as a last resort, at least in Australia. But as the homelessness epidemic grows with each interest rate hike and the increasingly out of touch landlords whose return on investment makes properties spiral into venture capital rather than being primarily seen as a way to house people.
If housing was a human right…
“We consider that a dwelling of good standard and equipment is not only the need but the right of every citizen – whether the dwelling is to be rented or purchased, no tenant or purchaser should be exploited for excessive profit.”
That was written in 1944 by the Commonwealth Housing Commission… last week the NSW Housing Minister, Rose Jackson, said we’ll have to treat housing as a “fundamental human right” if we’re to fix our current housing crisis.
ABC News If housing was considered a human right, would it fix our housing crisis?
By business reporter Gareth Hutchens 12 Nov 2023
- The housing crisis is coming for everyone
- Australia’s Housing Crisis – How did we get here?
Housing for all, not just the rich! It’s that extractive economic worldview that got us into this mess in the first place – grabbing and colonising and stealing land, from people who lived on it responsibly as guardians and caretakers of the earth for future generations. That’s why economic, racial and social justice are at the heart of solarpunk and why I believe it is one of the best hopes we have for a future we actually want to live in. Wherever we are – because there is no bunker or planet to escape to, realistically.
The divide between corporate owners and renters, that leans heavily towards the dystopian (“Unauthorized Bread” story by Cory Doctorow) – and the invisibly homeless, like I am – especially in single women over 50 – being basically an underclass in society, we really need to address this as the nation slides deeper into inequality. And the kind of feeling that if you don’t own a home, it’s your own fault, you made the wrong choices in life. Instead of valuing creativity, freedom, adventure, you really should have just got a mortgage and knuckled down to work harder. (Ok that is a very personal take, but you know – I have skin in the game here). How do we reconfigure the social contract so that housing cooperatives, co-housing, solidarity economies (as we see in the scandi countries) can start to shift the narrative, and embed values of caring for all members of society?
“Unauthorized Bread“—a tale of jailbreaking refugees versus IoT appliances—is the lead novella in author Cory Doctorow’s Radicalized.
I’ll add examples later of the green corridors in Colombo and other various strategies people are using.
But right now, I need to rest. I’ll leave you with this blast from the Aus music past with Deborah Conway, played on the the ABC breakfast news this morning.
“I feel like making daisy chains and playing hide and seek. The fairy dust is still intact… this could be the love of a lifetime, even if it lasts a week. Or maybe just a daydream…”