Perhaps it was echoes of my last post, or meeting somebody at a gig just now, who lives where I grew up, but memories of my childhood keep bubbling up. What’s interesting for me is the way that these memories keep linking in with the now.
When I was kid we were pretty poor. My parents didn’t own a car, so my grandparents used to drive over, and take us out for trips, six of us in a little Ford van, the little one that was the size of a small car, but with no back windows. One of the things that I remember is the number of bugs that used to get hit, and ended up flattened against the window, and the front of the van. Loads of gooey mess. Now I can drive hundreds of miles and barely see a bug, let alone hit one. Our industrial farming has killed them all. Billions of little living things, no longer living, and feeding other living things. Watching ‘A farm for the Future’, the sheer noise and number of insects at Fordhall Farm reminded me of what a day in the country used to be like. Full of the sight and sound of life. I’ve included a link to their site Fordhall Farm. Walking out today, the countryside is as empty as most peoples’ lives. A real reflection of what our current society is like, and the strongest reason for the need to change that I can imagine. That’s why I’m involved with Transition Horncastle. I want to help create a world, and a society that is full of life, interconnected, not stuck away inside boxes, watching boxes, and communicating with other people only through a machine.
The gig that I went to was a result of an e mail from a new friend in Transition Louth. Her band was playing, along with two others. All three were great, but I was blown away by ‘This is the Kit’. I bought a CD, and it’s playing in the background while I’m typing. Their site is here, and I’m really enjoying it. Itried to add atrack to this post, but my computer wouldn’t allow it. Sorry. http://www.thisisthekit.co.uk/
At the gig I met friends from Transition Horncastle, Louth, and Lincoln. Chatting during the evening, I was struck by how many really good people I’ve got to know over the last few years, and how I seem to be meeting more than ever. Many people are frightened, and think that the world is full of badness, yet my experience is completely the opposite. Again I’m reminded of childhood car trips, where we amused our selves with watching for things, like looking for different makes/colour of car. Until you start to play, the other traffic is just ‘white noise’, surface clutter, but once you play the game, you see blue cars everywhere, hundreds of them. Where are they all coming from? Are there more blue cars than all of the other colours? I guess that the people that we don’t know yet are like the motorway traffic, and we only see what we’re looking for. If all we think about is the bad in the world, that’s what we will see, and that’s how we will experience the world. The world is the same, but we will perceive it that way. I see good people all around me, so my world is full of good people. I live in the same world as somebody who only sees the bad, but our experience of it is different. Of the two, I know which experience I prefer.
Time for bed
Deano
P.S. I filed this post under ‘uncategorised’, because when I started it, I couldn’t see how it fitted in with Sustainability, but in reality the change in the world that we want to see, has to begin with a change in ourselves. So as well as learning new skills, we have to learn new ways of thinking, and all of a sudden the post was relevant.
Posted by Deano 
