🌱The Slow Hush

A Journal of Post-Extractive Life #1

“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” - Robin Wall Kimmerer

In the end, the old systems - extraction, hierarchy, domination, and growth over everything - collapsed in a slow hush. A decrescendo. Like a rotten oak finally giving way to the root void, a crack followed by a sigh.

No one cheered. We were too tired. Too full of grief. But from the mulch, something tender emerged.

I live in one of the Dividend Cities now, places once called “special economic zones,” repurposed as living commons. Regardless of Capitalism, capitulation or capitalisation it’s no Utopia, and we’re not tree-hugging hippie elves.

But, it’s alive, nutrient-dense and we’re meaningfully connected: to it, to each other.

I’ve been writing these notes to remember how we got here, and why we stay. We yielded to something older than law - untangled our pansentient selves from the recursive mirrors and machinic dreams; our own Concordat of Worms.

We didn’t rebuild the world.
We composted it.

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