Home from Home.

Rahona

Fiona and I are as it were just about getting our heads safely above the flood of chaos and disruption involved in our move back 'home' to West Clare, and beginning to enjoy life in the townland of Rahona, despite the onset of winter and its storms. The three houses in the photo above are our own and our two eldest sons, and we are surrounded by their land; you really couldn't make it up. Pure gift, I call it, in spite of the fact that I have been banging on about the necessity of reinventing community for about half a century, and celebrating for instance the beautiful clachan social structure that we encountered first in Glencolmcille. Anyway, it's wonderful to be seeing so much of 'children' (now in their fifties) and grandchildren. 

Brandon beckons!

     I have not had much time for reading or thinking about covid for a while, but insofar as I am getting my head around it again, I am more appalled than ever by what I can only describe as evil. In the case of the mainsteam media, it takes little effort to get the message of the incessant propaganda. That it is mostly mere propaganda is easy to spot also, since the 'opposition' is so thoroughly marginalised and suppressed, in spite of the fact that anyone who would rather think and investigate for themselves can find this out, contrary to the narrative that such opposition is a matter of ignorance. Still the evidence is piling up that the theory of vaccines being the way out of the pandemic is nonsense, and it will be very interesting to see what happens as the testimony of many highly qualified people, who are frequently acting to their own financial detriment, becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. People will eventually see the collaborators for what they are.

     Unfortunately 'collaborators' is a word one might use not only for those also who are making money out of the pandemic, but who endorse 'vaxit' - the idea that vaccines are the way out - frequently more for reasons of convenience or conformity than anything else. Not that I do not sympathise with them, nor underestimate the very considerable pressure that they are coming under, yet even if one rejects the view that the whole vaccine effort is counterproductive and is making the situation generally worse, it should still be possible to recognise that such pressure is outrageous. For a start, whatever happens to Habeas Corpus - the principle at the basis of our legal rights that our bodies belong to ourselves alone?

     However talk of collaborators begs the question, who are the principals? One might start trying to answer this question by looking at the millionaires busy becoming billionaires on the back of it, but it doesn't simply seem to be a matter of money. Here is fertile ground for speculation and conspiracy theories. I doubt if these are helpful, but all the talk from people who claim to be environmentalists along the lines that 'there are just too many people in the world' gives justifiable ground for suspicion and indeed alarm.

     What kind of scizophrenia results if one imagines one can love life but hate human beings? George Monbiot concludes a rousing call to save the planet thus:- 'We will endure only if we cease to consent. The 19th-century democracy campaigners knew this, the suffragettes knew it, Gandhi knew it, Martin Luther King knew it. The environmental protesters who demand systemic change have also grasped this fundamental truth.... What they understand is history’s most important lesson. Our survival depends on disobedience.' It is curious how he completely fails to so much as countenance the application of this lesson to Vaxit.

     Maybe however we would fundamentally agree that the pandemic and the environmental crisis call jointly for us to rapidly adopt a more organic way of life, and to turn away from excessive individualism. The fact that the official, sanctioned response to covid heavily reinforces precisely this individualism, and the anxiety that goes with it, tells its own story,- one with Brexit and Vaxit in there together again! You might think also, especially from perusing the Guardian, that a dose of climate anxiety is what we all need, but I do not think that people act sensibly or reasonably under the influence of anxiety, but rather are prone to all kinds of foolishness.

     Anxiety will not get us out of the pandemic nor solve the environmental crisis, and neither will it enable us to envision and build the exciting future that beckons if we can only find our way to it. We will not do so by way of the politics or powers that be, though they might help or hinder a little, but supremely by building solidarity on the interpersonal level. It will catch on in its own time, but cannot be achieved by mere human design or will, certainly not unless we are willing to abandon the little fortresses where we imagine we find refuge. It involves an exodus. 

     Bridge or boat, one can choose one's own favourite image, but they both involve a figurative crossing of the water, - at least, I rather prefer them to the idea of the sea parting! Boats are my favourite, and I particularly enjoy the sense of comradeship involved in both their making and their manning. I spend Saturday mornings at present doing a boat-building course by way of building a St Ayle's skiff with Steve Morris and a handful of other stalwarts, including one Tony Whelan, in Kilrush. In the strong hope of getting the Anna M back on the water next year, without any leaks, I'm enjoying getting to work with the famous epoxy resin.... Maybe Tony will be back aboard yet, filming whales and dolphins or what not else, as he was in the Cape Verde Islands making the film The Return of the Humpback Whale nearly 2o years ago! He too has found his way to settling in West Clare.

Bridge of Ross