TREES 200

 This tree is in Clifton Park in Rotherham.  It reminded me of John Ruskin saying that it is hard to feel angry when looking at a penguin.  There is something about trees that can helps us to feel connected.  I have been trying to dig up a tree stump new garden, I've been fighting with it on and off for 3 months and keep remembering this scene from Shane . The farmer refuses to hitch up the team and says 'Sometimes when wrestling with something its important to sweat and put the effort in, over-wise it would be a kind of defeat. When the stump has gone it will still be the place in the garden where there used to be a tree-stump.    I was going to write about Plenty Coups and radical hope and I was proposing to write about propositions and obliquely point towards  idea of prehension but instead I will take my axe to the tree stump in the garden as it has slipped into that time of day, with the dying of the light.

    A proposition .   The exquisite corpse drinks the new wine. A simple way to pass ideas, where anything goes. Yet it is a game of consequences. To be taken seriously. to be thrown away.   Like the chain letter to the future. To anticipate what is to come. Please contribute the next words. Share an image of your choosing. To imagine a walk through. Our urban treescapes in 200 years.   I grew up near Skipworth Common. A World War Two airfield. Some patchy shrub land and woods. A place people go for their first driving lesson. They also do other things.   In 1940 the land was cleared. Pan scrapers peeled back the topsoil. Hardcore and tarmac leveled runways. Lancashire bombers flew. And flattened Europe.   Over 80 years the land was taken back. The runway strip looks like a scar healed over. Among the discarded shell cases. And rusted metal life began to thrive. In 200 year...

   The ghost labs are in full swing.  The Dutch Elm people had a head start - they had been going for ages and had their own dogma associated with elms, and they even had an elm password and digital toolkit.  Ash people have a massive online conference every year with individualised avatars.  The Beech ghost lab was slow to start but now it is going everyone wants to join - they are the most expansive people and have the best after work online parties.  The Oak people seem sad. Maybe it is because they are often the oldest, and also the most frail, they find the avatar system difficult to navigate and often drop out at the last minute.  Elders and Hawthornes are positive, young, spiky and often identify as queer, their conferences are full of song and strife.  The sub groups, including Rowans, are quite superior and are trying to achieve cult status.  Down in the galleys of the labs the scientists sit and pore over the spores and tr...

   I found my piece of writing about Europe in 200 years - I thought I had lost it. What will Europe look like in 200 years? Nation states will have eroded at the centres and the edges.   What used to be called wars will be skirmishes; people will all feel the same so will not remember what to fight about. Cars will no longer exist; long distance travel will be slower using solar powered airships that fly above the clouds. Virtual reality will be seen as a phase, everyone will be interested in feeling inside their bodies and experiencing life first hand. Technical augmentation of the body will be possible but few people will choose to have the procedures. Cancer, infection, blindness and most illnesses will be cheaply curable through programmable Bio Nano Bots. People will still be making art. The Sahara desert will be reforested in a massive global collaboration using underground water supplies and highly efficient solar energy. It will be renamed carbon si...