Ash Tree Dieback

The latest in a long line of diseases that is apparently going to exterminate a species of tree from the English countryside is Ash Tree Dieback caused by the fungus Chalara fraxinea. In recent years there have been a number of scares threatening the extinction of various species of tree, including horse chestnuts, oaks, larches etc. etc. The whole idea of losing an entire species of tree, as happened to the Elm in England in the late 20th century is deeply emotionally affecting and has a strong resonance with the British public, for whom the idea of the wild wood is tightly bound with national identity.

The Ash is a mighty tree. If the oak is the symbol of England (and of Germany), the ash is the tree that makes the oak make sense. The oak is proud, resolute, the captain of the team. The ash is the first mate, as grand as the oak, if shorter lived, providing contrast and grounding. "Ash before oak, you're in for a soak, oak before ash it's only a splash."

In winter, the silvery greenish bark of an ash is clean and youthful even amongst the mud and leaves of the dead season. The black buds hold mystical significance for those who are tuned into them, and the seeds (called keys) are familiar to any child due to their helicoptering aerobatics. The ash is an important and well-loved tree. Fraxinus excelsior indeed.

We all feel we have a stake in the continued existence of the ash. We all feel like the wood simply being there is something that is owed to us, a duty that beholds God to us. Nature has a responsibility to provide us with ash trees.

Vanity. Agathon said: "Own nothing it would grieve you to give to another." If we suffer because of this, it is to our own egos that we must look. The ownership we feel over the ash, the identities we have formed that use the ash as an integral unit; these we must be willing to drop if need be. To worry or get upset over the future of the ash is a lesson to look within and remember what ownership is.

I sincerely hope that the ashes survive this threat. We should do everything we can to help them. We should allocate money and resources to this problem. I believe that even with limited resources we have a good chance of containing the disease, and also that there is a good chance we have over-emphasized the potential harm. But, in the end, if the ashes die, it's OK. I am proud to have been alive to know the woods of England in the 1990s. And I will be proud to greet the forests of 2020, no matter who lives there then. Own nothing it would grieve you to give to another. If the ashes are taken I will still be smiling.

Ambition

There have been periods of my life when I have voluntarily been out of work. These have been both good times and bad times, but they have been free times, responsible times, my time.

Economic arguments are bullshit. You don't need to earn money to live. Money buys lifestyle, nothing more and nothing less. There is food and waste everywhere in our landscape and society. There are burdocks breaking the tarmac in the corners of car parks. Bins overflow with useable produce. It is ego and fear that keeps people in work. It is the need to appear financially solvent, to puff ourselves up in the face of our fellow men and women that keeps us in work. It is our desire for fresh coffee and familiar brands that keep us going back to the same shops and supermarkets. Like a child in McDonald's, we all buy Jack Fulton's oven chips or Ecover washing up liquid.

There's nothing wrong with that. But no one needs to work to live. Work for your lifestyle all you want, but don't come to me saying there's no food on the table. There's food and shelter everywhere. Why is there such an overabundance? Because the West exploits the rest of the world in a trade game designed by the winners.

From the opposite angle, it is morally reprehensible to participate and condone a system in which people have to struggle for the essentials of life. What is necessary to life? The answer is necessarily subjective. Whatever you think you need must be made available to you by society. You are a human being. To be denied what is necessary to your life is the greatest sin that can be committed. There is nothing more fundamental than the dignity of humanity. You can't talk to someone without recognising that their humanity is equivalent to you own. It is not possible to communicate without theory of mind.

What about the gap between what is needed and what is given? The dissonance here will cause suffering if it is not addressed. Once the talking is over, there is nothing that can be done about the agency of others. If someone with a pile of food fails to share it there is no solution. The only realm over which you have control is your own agency. Your choices are: to suffer, or to modify your expectations about your needs. Perhaps you do not need Sky TV. Perhaps you do not need a KFC bucket meal. Perhaps there are plums rotting on the tree at the corner by the post office.

The picture gets harder for those that have dependants. It is easy enough to condemn those that have children. If you chose to reproduce, it's like taking out a mortgage where the currency is duty rather than dollars or pounds. Can you provide for your children without an income? Yes, but I would not recommend it. You have a duty to defend yourself from the expectations and prejudices of others - what good can you do should you be attacked by society? You have a duty to provide as socially normative an environment as possible for your children. There is more to being a human being than the mathematics of ethics. You must be able to pass in society, otherwise you will look unhuman in the eyes of the ignorant. The complexity increases if you are looking after the weak or the old. Tough hand, bro.

Despite these solutions being so tangible, I have felt guilty when I have not worked. I had thought people who asked "so what do you do?" or "when are you going to get a job?" were incredibly rude. I tried to forgive them - some were only making conversation and others were disturbed by their own unprocessed internal issues. But I could not fully move on because I was disturbed by my own unprocessed internal issue. I was puzzled. How could I so thoroughly lack ambition? But the problem wasn't one of appetite, it was one of definition. My ambition was at once larger and smaller than a career.

I started working again because it was easier than not working. The routine allowed me to shut off my overactive mind. It is hard to see through the structures of reality when you are tired from work. You fall into fellowship with others - this person is working to pay their rent, oh yeah, so am I. That seems reasonable and noble. It is reasonable. It is noble. But it is not the whole picture, and it is presented misleadingly. Why were we paying rent?

There was once a powerful wizard. He could see things that were occluded in fog to others. But he grew tired of explaining. To wade through the errors and emotions of the ignorant is exhausting. So he took a job at the sawmill and cut up timber all day long until he was able to go home, watch X Factor and pass out with a half eaten takeaway balanced on his growing gut.

Then I bought a house. Someone on my wage with my contract could never afford a house, that was the wisdom. It wasn't for us. Get back in line, know your place. Buying a house was easy. It was cheap; the mortgage was much cheaper than renting. All that had kept me in slavery to landlords was a tissue of fear. When I went to the bank in the boom time not believing they would accept me, they did not accept me. When I went in the recession with a tank of self-belief it all fell away and the clerks eyed me with reverence. Who was this buying at the height of a recession? I talked all the problems away. I didn't even sign their piece of paper. I just talked it away. I guess no one checked.

For some people this is enough. It is painful to want more. You must confront a million internal sufferings to deconstruct your slavery. Some people work their whole lives apparently satisfied with the reward of a box of bricks on a housing estate. Buying Tesco Finest. Living the high life for two weeks in Tenerife. That extra pint at the end of a night out.

I see them growing old. I see 60 million wasted lives. Newton invented optics, mechanics, calculus and ran the royal mint. Just make sure the kids have got a Spongebob Squarepants doll, but you don't need to mow the lawn this week.

I will set no limits on my ambition. Somewhere under the surface the goal has always been there but I have not been able to codify it or to say it out loud even when I could bring it into focus. "So what do you do?" I am preparing myself with the mechanisms and ideas to be able to make a lasting change to the ethics of our culture.

I have been toying with the pieces for a long time. I send ideas out into my immediate society and wait for them to come back. They do. I suggested musical things here, and they took root and somebody else grew them. I was constantly flattered, and I witnessed the corporeal body of the Zeitgeist. Clarity of sight. Brevity of communication. Say it in five words, or ten if you must. I have been staring at the mess that passes for ethics for far longer than I have been able to understand it. I have been constantly improving my communication skills. Toying with structure and rhetoric. As much as I am an outsider amongst men I have been watching, remembering, processing. I have been consciously writing this algorithm since before primary school. One of my earliest memories is making a pact with the universe: I will accept being socially awkward in exchange for it being necessary to understand the mechanics of what others do not even see is there.

Things can be better. I can help; I have been specialising for this. We've divided the labour. I've scouted it out and I'm starting to report back. Not today: I'm not ready yet. I've got too many things wrong, there are too many mistakes, too little understanding, too many neighbourhoods unvisited. But this is what I am doing. I am an archaeologist, I am a drummer, I want to be a writer. But above all of that I am going to improve. Am I an imaginier? That was rhetoric, a ruse. I am a human being.

How am I going to do this? What makes me think I can do this? The answer is the same to both questions. I have been working on my relationship with fate. I have looked inside of myself and I have seen the reflection of the garden. I am floored by tautological inevitability. Or, if you don't mind the language, I have knelt before the golden throne of God.

This is what it means to burn like the sun.

Explaining to his Wife

Explaining to his Wife

He pushed open the door into the kitchen, the mud from his hand marking where he had touched. A few drops of rain were in the air but he hesitated at the threshold.

Inside, his children sat at the table. One had a pencil and was scribbling on some paper. Next to the range his mother sat in her senility. His wife was the most animated; moving from pot to sink, labouring over the dinner.

They all knew that it was hard times elsewhere. They had heard that in the next county families shorn of dignity had suffered themselves to go up to the big house and been turned away. Prices had increased at the store. On the road, shabby men were moving on.

But there in the kitchen the dinner was nearly ready. The smell filled the air and all present felt that comfortable expectation of a meal in preparation.

Everybody felt that except for the husband at the door. He waited until he could catch his wife's eye. She was busy and it was no easy task to get her attention, but he had something to say to her that could not be said in front of the children. At last she noticed. He pointed outside with his head.

She picked up a towel, wiped the surface, threw down the rag, tidied her apron and bustled her way outside.

A moment's silence as the two of them stood together in the rain.

“I've looked at the crop.”

Neither of them showed any hint of emotion or reaction.

Then, plainly: “It is spoilt.”

“There's nothing to sell,” he said, “and nothing to eat.”

“You can't sell it if it's black, but we can still eat it, we've eaten worse.”

“We can't eat it.”

“Why not?”

“It isn't there.”

“You'll have to plant something else then.”

He was hurt. “It's August already and anyway we don't have any seed.”

“We'll buy some then.”

“With what?”

“We'll sell the cow.”

“We damn well won't. We're eating that beast, and the bitch too most likely.”

“Then what?”

“I don't know.”

Silence.

“There's blackberries. And limpets.”

The man walked inside and washed his hands. He touched his mother on the shoulder and sat down next to his children. Then his wife served the dinner.