Co-imagine the future

Rambling composition

Audio version

We had fresh snowfall recently, which was sadly washed out by rain for the next several days, but before it went I took a long walk around town to soak it all in. Look at that light! The photo brings out the blues, but in person it was more shades of gray with blue tint, and this light is precisely why gray is my favorite color. The clouds, the river, the flat light on the snow, the rocks in the riverbank. The way a splash of indirect sunlight gives all of it depth.

It’s hard to believe this river was a Superfund site not that long ago, that its waters were siphoned off and temporarily drained to allow a massive cleanup from a century of contamination from the rail yard. A friend of mine says that when her parents were growing up, the river used to catch fire.

I spend a lot of time thinking about that kind of contamination, what property rights allow and what they steal from the rest of life. But just as often, the beauty of this river snags me, pulls me to pause and sit alongside, dangle my feet in her gentle current. When there’s yet another leak from the rail yard that requires quick containment and a warning to people to stay clear of that area, it’s a reminder of how precious it all is, how easily these gifts are used up and discarded. Yet with a change in perception and a clarification of what we value, it’s just as easy to respect and care for them. The more people I listen to, the more it’s clear how many yearn for a reality that reflects those values. They just want to know how to get there.

For the next few weeks, I’m going to be republishing some older essays. There are many more people subscribing than when I started this newsletter over three years ago, and I wanted to share revised and updated essays that directly speak to what this whole project is about: ownership, private property, the commons, and the book I’m working on. These essays will go out as emails and comments won’t be enabled, but you’re always welcome to email me. I’ll try to continue adding an audio version to each post.

So far I’ve chosen essays from 2020 and 2021 on the East India Company and the dangers of corporate monopoly combined with state military power, the Doctrine of Discovery, an essay on loneliness that feels somehow timely again, and one on dirt, soil, and commodification. Anyone who’s been reading a while, if there’s one that stuck in your mind, feel free to make a recommendation.

I’m going to start with an essay that was in the winter 2014 issue of the small literary journal The Jabberwock Review. It’s never been published online. It’s a personal essay about a snowstorm in 2010 that brought home my own dependence on fossil fuels and roads, and was probably what got me started thinking about both car-dependence, and therefore walking, and private property.

Last week I attended a webinar recommended by subscriber Chad, who writes the newsletter Scientific Animism. It was given by designer David Dylan Thomas and was titled “No, Seriously, F*ck Engagement: Building a More Human Web.” It was billed as being for designers, which I am not, but it was really about capitalism, the insanity and injustices of the systems we live under and the stories that perpetuate them, and what people can do within their own work to forward a more humane world. It was uplifting, challenging, refreshing, and left me with more tangible optimism than I’ve had since attending the Reclaiming the Commons conference last summer.

Thomas ended with some advice about identifying our own values as well as identifying and challenging our assumptions—which reminded me of what one of my mentors told me over a long phone call after I got my first book contract: identify your biggest assumption (about walking in my case) and push at it from every direction you can think of.

Thomas went one step further from that, and I want to leave you for now with his words, one of the more solid pieces of advice I’ve heard in a long time:

“Co-imagine the future with the people hurt by the present.”

I imagine each of us walks with that idea very differently. What do those words mean in your own life?

May you and the weather find peace with each other, wherever you are.

This light!