A post with no title

this is straight up the very last post in the Book Serialisation project

Part 2, Chapter 25 here we go. No preamble. It just is. Of course, do read Part 1 first here. And please start at the beginning of the book if you’re new to this book. Because this is, indeed the end of the last chapter…

<Previous Chapter | Table of Contents

---

HOMECOMING - Part 2

“We are searchlights, we can see in the dark
We are rockets, pointed up at the stars
We are billions of beautiful hearts
And you sold us down the river too far

What about us?
What about all the times you said you had the answers?
What about us?
What about all the broken happy-ever-afters?
What about us?
What about all the plans that ended in disaster?
What about love? What about trust?
What about us?

We are problems that want to be solved
We are children that need to be loved
We were willing, we came when you called
But man, you fooled us, enough is enough, oh

What about us?”

- Pink, What About Us?

*

It’s been almost three years of swirling research and eight months of corralling 100,000 words into 25 chapters and I have to tell you, my process of landing into myself and humanity has not been all soft welcomings and glorious awakenings. It has been ugly and I have never been more like a wild animal. It fascinates me to watch myself turn so “original” - railing and raging, clawing at my stomach. As I write this bit here, it’s 3am and I’ve swigged whisky and I’m listening to that Pink song in my AirPods, hunched over on a kitchen chair. What about us? What about the billions of beautiful hearts who trusted and who came and were fooled? I’m lock-jaw wailing the pain of the entire planet.

Dear Readers, I fear I’ve failed to emphasise this enough - collapse also and necessarily precipitates our own internal collapse. There is a lot of gnarly emotional, egoic and psychic buttressing that was required to hold us in that precarious Dr Seuss pile-up, which must now also come down as we confront all the truths. Oh, the resentment! Oh the indignant shock when I can no longer just reach for cheap dopamine hits or the cognitive platitudes that once sustained me!

The battle with my left-brain has been particularly heated. Wonderfully, poetically, absurdly, I met a beautiful right-brained Corsican man at a party on a Basque beach the week I started writing this book. We recognised each other in a suspended moment of silence that made us laugh. He says he saw my soul; I knew there was a parallel journey we were going on together. The guy doesn’t own a computer. He can fix cars and kitchen blenders (and even computers) using some weird intuitive “seeing through the layers”. He has to stare at the ocean a lot. But we both got overwhelmed by the wildness and wound up triggering in each other a violent need to jerk the steering wheel left (brain). We ultimately crashed.

As my dear late friend Tim used to tell me, life is a self-referring phenomenon. I know many of you here are also getting met with the most rage-inducing challenges and life-imitating-life losses that seem to be herding us through this collapse process before we think we might be ready for it.

But, and this is more helpfully where I land: We are more than ready for this.

*

At 51, some hectic peri-menopausal oestrogen drop-off has meant, as Jane Fonda once put it, that I have a whole lot less fucks to give about the wrong things, and a raging care muscle primed (after decades of oestregeinal conditioning) for the right things. Mid-life women - the hags, the black-belt aunties - I feel are particularly ready for what comes next. Not for wading in and being heroes about the place, but for simply getting jobs done. It’s time for the messy, surreal fairytale where we must draw on the “soft skills” of cooperating, coordinating, restraining, allowing and holding…yes Fierce Mother Energy holding.

This moment also belongs to anyone who has been to some sort of brink in their lives, perhaps repeatedly, or who has had to sit in the bleachers observing the patterns, an outsider to the main event. And for all the sensitive people out there who sat up trees as a kid trying to work out points and purposes, and who have always cried when they recognise essences in songs and children’s expressions.

But, really, it’s our entire civilisation’s moment.

After centuries of being enthralled by a system that took ownership of the means of production and rendered us deluded about our truest capacities, it’s a shocking about-face to realise we were actually built for this exact moment. Even our “bullshit jobs” that we regret, our despair and loneliness, our churning dread, our cringy hypocrisy …they laid the ground.

Not for fixing things with our meddling, overlord-y ways, but for rising. That’s what we are hear to do now, rise.

Sass Lark

:

“Picking up this mantle doesn’t have to feel like a burden—it can feel joyous and momentous, like the swell of music in a beautiful film when the hero realizes and commits to their purpose.”

*

*

As I tried to find a way to write this final chapter, I went back and skimmed my last book, This One Wild and Precious Life, which chronicled a three-year journey hiking around the world in the footsteps of philosophers and polemicists to find a path for “solving” the climate crisis. It was a hope-heavy read. It felt strange and a little sad to be reminded that five years ago I was advocating many of the same approaches and mindsets - the need to mature, to draw on our core human values and to reconnect with our wildness. But there was a major difference - I was advocating that we did these things within the system. We didn’t have time to overhaul things and start anew, I wrote. I very tentatively called capitalism a cult, but I pushed the green economy and degrowth economics.

Now, of course, we are not so ham-strung. The system is going down.

And this got me to realise something that almost feels too rude to verbalise. Not only does the truth of collapse produce relief it also enables an equally eerie ease. I put this here for you to sit with:

I think a lot of us have been slowly working out we don't have to try so hard!

We had been efforting so much. But as collapse would have it, the only way now is to simplify. Do less, buy less, grab less, meddle less, strategise less.

We have frantically been trying to stem climate mayhem; Big Capitalism drummed into us that it was our job to doorknock our neighbours and tell them to electrify everything and buy more “green” things. But now we have only one avenue left to us - to join the flow, the tangle, of life. We can only emerge our way through such complexity now.

We have been searching for someone or something to save us, to tell us what to do. But our guru is right in front of us. And it’s in us. Indigenous knowledge systems show that the emergent strategies of nature are far more efficient than our horribly efforting, linear ones. Have you seen that video where slime mould solves the Tokyo subway system in less time than an engineer can? Here, check it out:

Indigenous author Andrea Ritchie speaks of fractal activism - making small right moves that get replicated, like the repeated patterns of a snow flake that emerges to become an avalanche. This is the most efficient and effective way to go about change: Small, right moves, made in congruent ease, powered by fierce love, that allow for unexpected turns and mysterious transformations.

We have been going against the grain for so long and now we can only be ourselves. It is only via love and cooperation with all that is, and by bravely allowing, can collapse be rendered a beautiful transformation. This, somehow, gives me a snug, “looked after” feeling.

*

For a bit. Then I go rage some more and do some more internal collapsing.

This really is the process. And our resistance, confusion and outrage is fruitful - don’t forget this. I wouldn’t trust anyone who found this a synch; I’d think they were bypassing their full humanity.

But I feel a responsibility to remind everyone who has come this far, that ultimately we must rise. We must continue to pulse back to the truth, over and over. And bear it. We must build those islands of sanity and we must go first. As Nate Hagens says, this means we will have the harder path while the uber-elites and perhaps a lot of people around us take the piss.

But we do it anyway.

*

The conversation in the comments often gets stalled on this point - on what it actually means to build or be an island of sanity. And how to remain faithful to the mission. I will have to riff this one…

Right, so we must rise because we have no choice. You can’t unsee this shit, you can’t put the genie of truth back in the bottle once you’ve chosen to face it. Oh, the endless gifts of collapse! I get cold pins and needles to my scalp when I think about my nieces and nephews, and all your children, the kids in Gaza and my US agent Stacy’s soon-to-be-born little boy; the ball in my throat makes me throw up at times. I try to strategise a path out. But there is - I promise you - nowhere to go. And so I bear it, I bear it. I can’t breathe. I bear it. You will lose so much, you already have; I’m so so sorry. But you must bear it. I was previously a catastrophiser. But now I bear it. I get pummelled by another bloody self-referring phenomenon. I bear it. This is not heroic stuff. It’s just the way things are.

But in the process you change as a person. Or, more accurately, you rise into this new person. It’s a cosmic maturing.

I hope that helps.

Now, to remain faithful to rising I also repeat phrases I’ve written to you here, back to myself. Like, Be noble in your suffering. I remind myself people are relying on me. They’re relying on all of you! We are doing fractal activism! One of you posted the Osho line: “Move the way love makes you move”. I now sit and think through what these kind of lines mean. Love makes me enlarge. Love makes me glide, almost oblivious to the fear. Love makes me do it anyway.

To remain faithful, we need rituals. Humans have always created rituals to keep faithful. I move out into the world and find community. I seek out people to look at with softened eyes (and I wrote this book with you!). I also need mentors. I pull out a phrase from This One Wild and Precious Life - “I soul nerd” the wisdoms of thinkers from other liminal times. Oh, and I ask for help.

To do all this, I must get sturdier. And sturdier still. Again, there is no choice here because I simply will not get through a day unless I vigilantly dial down my parasympathetic nervous system by stabilising. It’s that simple. A lot of what I do in my day is Operation Calm Parasympathetic Nervous System. I can’t do coffee some days. I have to put down everything and meditate. It’s not a nice-to-have any more. I must move the energy through me. I listen to music and I dance when I feel numb…to allow the pain to come up and out. I maximise my menstrual cycle - I use my hormones to access depths. I cry, I hurt, I cry more. I trust that my emotions are moving things along.

I get sturdier. But I crack open, too.

When I get frozen in fear, I leave the house and I move out in the world. I issue another promise - when you do this, magical stuff comes to greet you. I tested it just now. I was hyperventilating and left my apartment and walked up the road to the cafe where the locals of my quartier hang out and the waiter with his spotted kerchief in his suit pocket greeted me, Madame, this is where you should sit. And then as I set up my laptop, Nina Simone’s song “Four Women” came on.

“My back is strong;

Strong enough to take the pain

Inflicted again and again;

What do they call me

My name is Aunt Sarah;

My name is Aunt Sarah

My skin is yellow; My hair is long

Between two worlds”

*

I get playful, but not because the pollyanna advice says I should. It’s because I’m compelled to. I find the paradoxes and absurdities funny. I chase awe (visit churches, run up mountains). I say “yes”. I watch fluff float in the sunlight like that plastic bag in the breeze in American Beauty and laugh out loud. Is it because these simple things are what’s left as the bullshit is stripped? Yes, I think so.

I gamify staying in pain and discomfort and not complaining or seeking attention. The best advice I’ve received is from Meg Wheatley. You may recall, she effectively told me to radically get over myself and my story. I write shorthand letters to myself explaining the truths and realities of the situation again. And again. I write what I’m writing to you here: You’re doing OK, all the things given. And, BTW, how bloody wild is this!

I choose not to descend into prepper mindset. If/when things go down I want to be with my fellow flawed humans in the muck and mire. Besides, it’s a gross thing to contemplate. I can spot the gross things that go against the grain now. My body recoils.

I roll more words and phrases around. Sufficiency feels good, for instance. So does the Bayo Akomolafe line I shared two chapters back: “The times are urgent, let us slow down”. I am going defiantly slower. And, who knew, I now sleep better. I still do all the small (fractal) right moves I did as a “climate activist”. Every fraction of a degree will affect nature and it will affect how we handle things. Because, and I don’t want this to be buried in all the words and repeat it to myself over and over: Everything depends on how we handle this.

Plus, it’s also simply, congruently right and decent and human.

A reporter asked the pacifist A.J. Muste who protested against Vietnam, "Do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night in front of the White House with a candle?" A.J. Muste replied softly: "Oh I don't do this to change the country. I do this so the country won't change me.”

And how do we keep the faith in the face of that onslaught of data and detail that I said I’d come back to? I woke today to news President Trump is going to “take over” and “own” Gaza. It just keeps collapsing and collapsing. How do we role model the shit out of our “island of sanity mindset” in such circumstances?

Short answer: we must.

Me, I outrage, but I refuse to internally rage at the data and details. I blast out to the world this is wrong, as a commitment to decency and to keeping humanity on the agenda. I allow myself to rip with full feminine (Kali-esque) righteousness and I no longer block the flow with “good girl” apologetics. I call out the men. I call it a genocide¹. But I do not get caught up in the back and forth. Because that’s exactly what “they” want. Flooding the zone with shit is a tactic to keep us overwhelmed and numbly resistant to resisting. Hannah Arendt’s writing is my guide here. She worked tirelessly to explain the power and ease of this subtle dance - resisting and fiercely loving life and finding it a hoot, which sticks two lots of fingers to “them”. I urge you to study her work.

Hannah Arendt knew 2024 was coming!

Operating fully and committedly from the need to preserve decency and our sense of humanity is the only way now (“our humanity is the path… and the reward”). Thank you

Emma Donovan

for pointing us all to this quote from another Sarah Wilson out there in the interwebs: “The way you alchemise a soulless world into a sacred world is by treating everyone as if they are sacred until the sacred in them remembers”.

Perhaps the most oft-repeated truism I chant in my head: We do it anyway. I’ve said it a few times already in this riff. Whether collapse turns out to be not as bad as the models predict (and it’s just a bit shit for a few decades), or whether the whole lot goes down, I would do all of the above anyway. And I’d be as grateful as I am now for having been so compelled into it.

And a little reflection that I add to the mix. For years, ensconced in the system, we thought we had certainty and stability, but we squandered living. We were “breathing just a little and calling it a life”. Now there is no certainty, and conditions are dire, and we can but live fully.

And ultimately this is what keeps me most faithful to the mission: the insatiable appetite I now have for living fully and in love.

“As an antidote to fear of death, I eat the stars.”

The more scared and wobbly I get, the more I must live. The urgency is divine, it hones my focus and commitment. I can no longer be a bystander. I want to be in it, to have it in me. I want to be in this, with all the flawed humans, I want to commune.

“I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp….

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space…”

- Rebecca Elson

*

Finally, a short, full-circling word on hope. Hope can’t hold us like it once did and hopium is existentially dangerous. Truth is a far more helpful ballast in these times. But, still - and this has plagued me the whole way - the human experience is too mysterious, too wildly improbable, for me to let go of …let’s call it… stunning possibility. “Wherever human beings are, we at least have a chance,” James Baldwin reminds us, “because we’re not only disasters; we’re also miracles.”

When humanity is working in congruency with nature, when it’s being nature, when it is not overlording, it is miraculous and miracles emerge through us. We lean into kindness and we trust despite odds, we rise when pots finally boil, we delight in absurdity, we write songs that unite billions of us, we do fierce Mother Energy to their Tantrum Energy.

There are many fearful, left-brained, rigid, atomised things that can be said and done and focused on. And there is stunning, infinite possibility in the space around them. I invite you to fall towards and dance in this vast space, to notice the song that comes on next, and to laugh at it. And to see that everything that is happening is taking you to that space. And that no matter what happens you would do it anyway!!! It’s what you’ve been falling towards, aching towards all along.

And I want you to reflect on what a miracle this is. And that this might just be what is going on.

---

I am going to sign off here, without too much farewelling fanfare. I will join in the comments after a few hours’ breather. And I will return in a few days to touch base…with news…with thanks…and where nexts…

And maybe go lie in the dark and listen to Pink’s song.

Sarah xx

1. I implore everyone in Australia to get very alive to how Peter Dutton is running with the Trump playbook at the upcoming election; call it out, vigilantly discuss it with everyone you know, via a decency and humanity preservation lens.