An interregnum

In the city today – Left: Seeds from the tree of heaven, a gift to the Borough of Southwark by socialist mayor Ada Salter in the early 20th century, part of her mission to beautify lives of poor people in the docklands. Right: The concourse of Canary Wharf rail interchange This used to be a dock, clipper ships and all. These days, an absurdly towering glass financial district, could be anywhere within the globalised reach of capital. More or less anywhere, then?

Life is of course taking its course, and the scheme for expanding my ‘melancholy territory’ exploration (May 17th, June 1st, June 11th, June 18th) is on the back burner. An interregnum. ‘Four horsemen’ are riding: familiars. Let them occupy this blog space today then.

A politics of language(ing)-of-struggle

Patterning. Left: A yew, 1,100 years old, in the churchyard of the Norman settlement of Sullington, under the South Downs in Sussex. The manifest patterning results from fluids being pumped, woody material being deposited, space filling and light seeking by growing wood-fabric and leaves, seasonal-generational expansion, seasonal weathering. The patterning appears like a storm, slowed, materialised and enduring: in a calm green secluded churchyard. Right: The railway station of a small town in the Pennines, West Yorkshire. The railway is here because the settlement was here, because the pass over the Pennines was here, because the river was here. The town is the town that it is today, arty and busy and self-consciously a haven, because the railway was here, running from city to city, Leeds to Manchester, bringing regular access from all parts of the railway network. The town also is a slowed storm – even if this picture fails to show it. Very few of these patterns were intended. Intentional patterning is order of some other kind, some other composite of kinds of work and contingency.

This is part 4 of Melancholy territory, activism in deep time and life in the collective – Dancing a living economy. One intention in the Methuselah papers is to (eventually) generate and continuously evolve a pattern language of making a living economy that powerfully supports activism beyond the fragments, and beyond the hegemonic present, into deep time. Thus we can close this introductory subset of papers by nominating some patterns (as patterns in triage) which seem to be implied by what we’ve identified in this introductory stream, and mean to explore in four papers to follow.