The only conversations I had on the front steps today were with people I knew well already. Sue supported me in her gentle and amicable way; Andrew, dear friend and fellow therapist; Claire, therapist too (we are collectively raising the EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE at parliament! It’s the easiest thing to do ;). Brother David who has cultivated deep loyalty in his life. Lovely Jackson again. Dear Richard came again too.
Claire and I are on the organizing committee for a series of online symposia in March next year titled ‘In the Climate Crucible’. We want to engage with the psychotherapy community on the psychological and unconscious aspects of what’s playing out. The culture of uncare. The disembodied disconnection from the living world. The culture of individualism and unpleasure. Of denial of grief and disavowal of our capacities to respond. I made up the word ‘unpleasure’ but it isn’t like our cultural myths are fulfilling people, is it?
It rained in the afternoon. I drank lemon and ginger tea without any honey and shuffled home.
I thought about the suffering of all the creatures in the wildfires. Three billion in the Australian calamities??? How many in California?? The Arctic circle fires?? In the Amazon… I want to add a thousand question marks to punctuate their suffering. It’s hard to stay in the awareness of this magnitude of loss. I notice rage and anguish and tremendous sadness within me surfacing as I write.
“May the earth feel your sorrow” This is a line from the poem Blessing for Anyone by Caitlyn Johnstone adapted for music by Michael Brunnock. I find it extraordinary https://youtu.be/11Bha4iSICg
My dear friend and cousin Lesley is writing to me each day of this hunger strike. She is an insightful one. And said today that in taking time out of my usual schedule I have the privilege of space. Space to feel what many are too absorbed in daily life to feel. Maybe performing a function of feeling and digesting some of what needs to be felt collectively. Maybe.
Enough for now. Blessings and a heart of love to all the creatures, human and non human caught in the wildfires that our betrayal of them has created.
