Music of choice to go with the story: Just another day
Little old lady from two buildings down the road sticks her head into the January sun. We greet each other for no particular reason other than acknowledging we share the sidewalks of our neighbourhood and have an equal right to trot them. She has been wearing the same clothes for as long as I’ve lived here, every winter the same brown felt coat which must have gone out of style somewhere in the mid nineteen sixties, dirty and worn but still more or less in one piece. Everything about her is old, her body, her hair, her shoes, the shopping bag she is carrying, even the bread sticking out has this dull, dry shine. You must be fond of salmorejo, I sometimes think.
Last year she lost a tooth, the one just left of the middle on the upside. She clearly can’t be bothered to have it replaced. Or perhaps she lacks the means. Or perhaps she likes to think she can’t be bothered, because it’s so depressing to succumb to financial realities. Anyway, she sports a hole. She knows she is lucky to still have her wits, which not all of her age can say. We say hello and share the belief the worst of the frost will soon have passed. She smiles her bright old lady’s grin.
More people sticking their face up to the sun. With the crisis deepening and winter getting colder, people flee their frozen homes, looking for warmth elsewhere. A cup of coffee over free newspapers in a bar seems a sound investment. For a euro and twenty cents you might stay indoors for a good hour and even make it to the chess problem.
People on the street. The one good thing about frost is that the sun usually shines. It’s the last thing that comes for free these days. With prices up and wages down people are looking for new balances to keep. If they’d stop going to that restaurant on Sunday afternoon and replace their meat by nothing in particular, they might be able to keep paying the rent and avoid co-operating multinationals finding excuses to force them out.
People sticking their face up to the warmth. Away from the wind, the sun can be quite comforting. It makes them think how clothes may well be cheap this winter but it’s still cheaper to wear last year’s for another season. People smiling. They’re driving the amount of money going round further down with such thinking, they know, but is recovery their responsibility? Are they, if partly, to blame for the mess we are in? Everywhere and all the time people make conscious decisions to spend less. With every next budget cut the government does the same, dragging the consumption based economy further into the mud. That’s how it goes. When times are tough, people stick to their old ways, making matters worse.
People putting their face up to the sun. Where is the end, they might wonder, who will bring back the happy days of careless spending. Are they ever going to come back? We were taught to believe in progress. By definition, tomorrow would be better than today. Where are they now, the better days?
With all available signs pointing in the direction of uncontrollable events, be it nature, food or energy, people realise the belief that progress would save us has brought humanity on the brink of great disaster. We thought we could tame the world we are part of, but in the end we’re just giving mother Earth the cancer. She’s got every reason to have the hot and cold shivers running over her.
People hands deep in their pockets. How do we change all this, I like them to think, we got stuck to the machine. We would need to rid us of the corporations and their commercials and their news bulletins and their banks who tell our governments what to do. The whole system has become just that, a system. It doesn’t matter who is in the driving seat, it goes its own way surely and assuredly. People maybe thinking, after feeding us for many years it’s now feeding itself on us, taking us out one by one and when collapse is due by the millions most likely.
People realising it’s not reasonable to think we can stop it. It’s too big and too much is involved. But we do have the power of denial, I silently tell them. We must starve the dangerous monster, turn to each other and create our own reality. We will be forced to anyway when the next downturn hits - from now on only downturns, have you noticed? - so why not do it in the conviction we are part of the solution?
People in the sun, January warmth flooding their body. They like the idea of hoping for an exit. All around the world people feel the need to take matters in their own hands, they now believe. Look at Tunisia and Egypt, maybe it is time to seize the moment.
People entering the shade, suddenly cold. Is there no end, they fear, will the old structures remain and will it merely be worse afterwards? Everywhere people are confronted with a sudden and alarmingly persistent lack of need. Nothing and no-one is needed anymore. Once you’re out you won’t get back in for a long, long time.
Back in the sun brush aside such thinking. Wouldn’t it be nice to live in peace with direct responsibility for food and shelter, they dream. People thinking of the books they have to read. The Lokalizer’s Handbook. How to Live off an Acre. The End Of Money. The Matrix & Other Predictions. Cooking with Ganja. Solar Power to the People. I Don’t Like My Neighbour But I Don’t Care. So many titles.
Sun losing force now. People contemplating there’s a long tradition of writing about reality in the recent past, commenting on what might have gone differently or who did what wrong when. This has drenched many with a sense of disbelief any outcome other then failure is possible. People must leave that idea behind if they want to move away from the abyss we all feel is approaching rapidly.
Subterranean traveller above the stairs to the beaten clay park where sweet young mothers flock. Let us accept reality for what it is, he mumbles. I don’t believe we have to go back to olden times, we have learned a lot and we have machinery at our disposal. We’ll just be without much energy for a while. But there’s no need to be scared of that as long as people help each other.
Subter travler louder now: let’s do it already, not wait for 2012 when doom and destruction are due, but now. Let 2011 be our last chance to enter history in more favourable terms.
P.S. There’s an interesting lecture to be found on NowTube by Dimitri Orlov, an American citizen from Russian birth who compares Post-collapse Soviet Union with the upcoming Former USA. Orlov says the Russians survived by virtue of their gardens, the small patches on the edge of town, often communicated by tram or bus. America doesn’t have any of the kind, Orlov notes. http://fora.tv/2009/02/13/Dmitry_Orlov_Social_Collapse_Best_Practices
P.P.S. Which of the aforementioned books has actually been published? Answers to mail@janhamminga.es
