Talk by Ginny Battson, recorded largely by the River Lugg (fieldwork of place) for playback at the English: Shared Futures Conference, Manchester, July 2022. Kindly introduced in my absence by Dr David Cooper.

Transcript.

[above gentle rush of water, some traffic noise, birdsong, including cooing woodpigeons, and occasionally duck wings flapping in water]

From Ginny Battson to Paul Evans

Hi Paul, I wonder whether you would be good enough to offer your thoughts on a new word I have been forging for this idea of introducing a little magic to non-fiction. You said you’d be disappointed if I didn’t come up with something!

I recently attended an online event with Catherine Wilcox and Charles Talioferro, and asked them what they thought of using highly imaginative interventions in non-fiction. Could they be considered a deceit or distinct opportunities to reflect in the context of ecophilosophy? Catherine was a little resistant at first, but very interested in the idea as research. Charles asked me to consider were they magic or science fiction additions? Of course, they would need to be distinct in order not to fool reasonable minds – the closer to real life the more likely they are to suffer falstalgia!

The word is miratic(s).

mir (from latin, mirus – wonder-full), as in miracle, mirage, mirror (looking, reflective).

atic  (from latin, aticum – belonging to, related to).

“ic” is also an adjective, and the sound may echo erratic (adjective or geological noun). Elements found perhaps where they shouldn’t!

I’m thinking of introducing it to the world via the recording I am making for the conference.

Warmest wishes, Ginny

From Paul Evans to Ginny Battson

The miraculous erratic! fabulous ……………I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed – the miratic is the fantasy of the commonplace, that liminal space between fact & fiction, not about belief but resistance to empirical hegemony – all the best, Paul.

I’m perched on a mud cliff above the Lugg just as it turns the bends through Mordiford in Herefordshire under an old bridge, and off down to join the Wye. I am watching swallows, swifts, house martins, flying right above the water and then dipping their beaks into the liquid lotic flow in order to take a drink on the wing. I am sorry I can’t be there with you today. I am actually awaiting the test results of pathology on a tumour that was removed about three weeks ago. And I felt that I’d probably be better to wait around the phone today than sit with you wringing my hands.

I am an ecophilosopher, writer, and walker, not necessarily in that order, and the creator of Fluminism, an ecophilosophy of love and ecology. I coined the term symbioethics to nurture a new era of recognising humans as fully symbiotic beings in flows of matter and energy living among many other symbiotic beings. An ecolinguist, I also create neologisms and I identify concepts to improve human/nature relationships.

So I’ll read you an extract from my research, which again is critical and creative combined. This is called Deus Ex Machina, and I wrote it after visiting the Severn Bridge, the old Severn Bridge, that is, with my daughter, watching the tide come in and out. The Severn Estuary of course is where five major rivers drain, with all their positive organic matter, but also their problematic matter and energy. Um… heavily polluted… ecologies that are just about holding on, species surviving seemingly at the very edge of what is possible. And with… with love. You’ll hear one of those additional imaginative miratics that I spoke of in my correspondence with Paul that I read out to you at the beginning of this talk. I’d really be interested in what you think. I propose that they might or might not … may or may not be little portals for the human imagination in the ethical, the moral imagination of… thinking about nurturing and caring, healing, putting things right with all that’s wrong in our relationship with nature as part of nature.

[Recorded earlier at home]

Deus ex machina, Latin for ‘god from the machine,’ is a term derived from ancient Greek theatre. In tragedy and sometimes in comedy, to miraculously resolve a dramatic plot corner or catastrophe, actors who played gods were carried onto the stage using some kind of machine. The machine could be either a winch, like a crane, to lower bodies from above, or some kind of lift to bring them up into vision through a trapdoor. Playwrights like Aeschylus and Euripides fashioned them as devices to wow, to draw a crowd, to evoke a feeling of awe and moral surrender to the idea of some greater power. And men still do it, with their grand openings of giant bridges and launches of ships and Space rockets, except this time the power is more honest and blunt ~ a self-aggrandisement of the human money-chain, domination of land, air, sea, and now space, the techno-brain, Western capital power labelled as “investment” and engineering prowess. There’s no masking anymore, no suspended disbelief. First, there must be the desire for something spectacular to resolve our plot corner or catastrophe – humans have been wired to find exhilaration in novelty—and these men meet that demand. They exploit for their own agendas, political expediency and money—it is usually both. Exquisitely controlled, it’s an assertion of the power that was once the domain of the gods, and we are all still buying in. But it’s a plot flaw, a device to replace the real work needed for life’s genuine resolutions, not least the peaceful and loving alignment of human life within all living systems. To do it often means overcoming many of our fears. Deus ex machina side-steps the need. It’s is an easy “out,” distracting when doom looms closer, where the long haul to resolution is seemingly short-circuited. There will always be a price to pay after the curtain call, and it’s usually borne by the vulnerable and voiceless.

…

Like a passenger plane crashed into the jungle, or a ship sunk in the ocean, the trauma is here right now in the estuary, perhaps overrun by roots and holdfasts and tendrils, a reef-like sanctuary of sorts for the animals that live in the shadows. But the wreckage is also a poison, with its paints and oils; an unwarranted picturesque artwork, bleeding its mythology into an ancient ecology. These are the sunken coal barges, the car ferries, the timber ships, The Brunswick, Ramses II, The BP Explorer, and a Victorian railway bridge demolished by deathly collisions in a place that is so turbulent and dangerous, yet full of life and those trying to love, even under a slick of oil. At the same time, this is also a place where old bones and magnificent auroch horns still dwell, trapped with split oak planks and mussel middens of long-dead ancestors. Even the footprints of Mesolithic human children still just appear at the lowest tides, real and tangible to those lives where murk is the ticket to life. Up here on the bridge, we don’t have to face any of it. We can cruise along at speed thinking about our busy lives and where we are going today, glimpsing the sparkle of the setting sun on the horizon, unaware, unconcerned, of what lies beneath. As if 14 metres of tidal rip, and all the junk and the heavy metals drained from the land—Cd, Cr, Ni, Zn and Pb—have no bearing on us and our daily lives. Enter, giant burnished silver bristle worms, filamented, glowing white heat in the sub-mud, articulating their armour in little, sudden jerks. Lead sabellaria worms the size of cranes harden to each rising tide, sucking in plastic, spitting out fire. Nickel prawns the size of men pop up from the vast trap doors to dance for bronze two-ton gobies; automaton puppets. The separation from reality—that suspended disbelief—becomes horrific, and the “jumpers”, by whatever turmoil tears through their minds, make an assumption that stepping from the bridge is the end of it. Broken bodies, broken minds, the troll of this bridge is in the myths of industrial Capitalism.

[birdsong]

I think being an ecophilosopher is already a creative endeavour, but when it comes with communication with others I do feel that with such new times, difficult times, with our planetary boundaries being so stretched, and overstretched,  that we need to think about new and creative ways of communication, and fluminism, as it is a philosophy of love, I do believe that it might have a place – I certainly want to find out whether there is any mileage…mileage in this idea fluminism has a place as literature.  After all, what do we do mostly when we write, if not care? It’s a devotion! Writing is a devotion. When it goes towards life, then I think it could well be fluminism. I hope so.

Please do feel free to visit my website, which is seasonalight all one word dot com, and you are welcome to leave notes beneath my posts, or contact me via Manchester Writing School, Place Cluster, David Cooper. My supervisors are Paul Evans and Gregory Norminton. Thank you for listening.

___

Miratic(s) ~ highly imaginative yet obvious fictional additions to creative non-fiction in order to make a moral point, to evoke emotion, or to raise serious questions.

We are entirely into the gardening season, and I am protecting my wildflowers that grow along my front wall with polite signs (and additional cartoon butterflies), asking neighbours kindly not to “weed”.  I am the only person along my row of terraces to allow the flowers to grow freely. Last year, we had red admirals breeding in the low-lying pellatory-of-the wall and plenty of solitary bees and wasps foraging among the dandies and groundsels. This year,  a tiny aubretia appeared from nowhere. I hope they grow into a fine clump of purple.

I understand gardening, and even farming, sometimes require us to make choices in confined places. Who do we allow to grow in order to save others? The balances are difficult, given Britain’s appalling declines in wilder species and their flolocas. Instead of using the words “weeds” and “weeding”, I want us to use alternatives that are more compassionate and positive – less derogatory and prejudiced. I offer “spulling” (selective pulling) at least, as the verb to describe the activity – we spull some wildflowers when they are too dominant over others, for instance, in order to save vegetables, crops, or other flowers we might be encouraging. As kin, we may choose to transplant them to places where they may thrive. In my community flolocas, there are no weeds, just herbs, wildflowers, flowers, plants…

I have “retired” from Twitter after 12 years. But I have an Instagram account @wordlycreations, where I offer more of my neologisms. I hope to “see” you there one day. Meanwhile, seemingly stuck between a rock and a hard place, I know I have cancer again (at least, a small tumour in the breast), but I don’t yet know the type of cancer and any treatment plan (more spulling, I hope). That is until tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I’ll know more.

Whatever the outcome, just knowing can help manage daily acceptance. My acceptance is to continue loving and living, do what I am best advised to do by the experts, and trust in the life-saving, healing processes once more.  This isn’t a fight, more a (rocky) path I need to travel. I hope it takes me to good living communities full of beautiful wildflowers, their valued symbiotic bacteria/fungi, and their gorgeous pollinating friends.

With fluministic love, Ginny x

~~~~~~

Boon or bane, I was born downstream from this place I stand now under unfurling beech leaves, just past the Victoria walking bridge. Down there, around the bend. See it? A red brick hospital is now apartments with annual ground rents and an alloted view. I’ve grown up with my feet in this river, with the mayfly larvae, on sunny picnic days at Bredwardine beach too, knowing— turning wet pebbles in just my toddler’s knickers and sunhat – I was part of it all. This river taught me how to listen and swim. When you are bred into quiet waters and their teresapien communal places, you’re bathed in that soft green song. It’s always jarring when being sent out by necessity into modern industrial life, each time under massive amps, like a bet, to survive the prevailing wantonomy. But this is my song, albeit still brimming with mystery. I belong to it, though mostly, still, despite everything that has happened to me, that particular melody from Builth to Hay.

As an adult, Earth sciences have revealed a small number of those mysteries in my head, connecting the flolocas of the Wye to the planetary-scale picture. More personal study of Environmental Ethics and various hard-won and generous Indigenous understandings from special places, say over the last 15 years, have led me to a broader view of the combination of processes, the most loving ones tending towards life, not against, has lead me to share Fluminism with the human world. Though the popular way of publishing has limited me to a very small corner of that world, I admit my own kind of language code—almost my entire inner world has been dominated by unfamiliar language to most who operate within a largely job-oriented mass vocabulary and education system geared to “capital”— has, more than likely, hindered me too.

I saw and heard Peter Kalmus’s emotional pleas on the Guardian website as he stood protesting in his white science lab coat. And I understand the rawness of this moment for him, especially as he has embraced the role of influencer in his writing and communication, and is devastated that the message on reducing emissions is just not reaching its intended spot.

Teresapien-centric people have been feeling this kind of pain for decades.

It’s a jagged, flesh-tearing and deep pain; breathtaking in its pervasiveness and in all aspects of one’s being. Climate change came, for us, on top. We bear witness, daily, to war crimes against those we love, and immediately feel the pain of all our peoples, of all walks, oppressed by the same structural abuses.

But it’s almost impossible to earn sympathy from those who are unknowing. When life is about political intrigue or ratings, or even putting food on the table, we are dismissed as sentimental or as having too little else to worry about, despite life, by the longest, farthest distance, not in subservience to human life but its indifferent foundation.

What should it take to make a real difference, to make the unknowing know? Shall we lay down our own lives in front of mass media cameras to protest—to rely on editors—to risk being outdone by celebrities or dismissed as more waste: shall we go to war with the employers of the unknowing, bashing those too who struggle to exist: or shall we instead radically for-form the shape of our collective morality and fluministic consciousness through mass, egalitarian education?

“I’ve tried everything else.” No, we haven’t.

I now stand still on the Old Bridge. So many people rushing to the banks in town to check-in money or cheque it out. My river, life’s river, is the Wye. The Wye asks questions of us in every ripple. Listen to those questions flowing beneath us all. All the upstream feeder tributaries reach this very point too.

This is a collective, but a collective overfed. I have watched our symling kin of the water and banks dwindle in energy transfer, shrink in territory, and wither under the strain of obesity and noise. River lives need few nutrients but for the cycling drifts from their own flolocas and the rocks the water scours. They need peace [I will write more on this in time]. As ever, the landscapes and flolocas in which we participate, knowingly or not, are burdened with the fat of all our human wastes. Human excreta— including pharma—washes in with the wastes of a meat industry too, but also from the silt from the inefficient machined numbness of commodity ag-tech, the maximalist financial schemes of the boroughcrats, the steel plough blades washed off by an ever intense rainstorm or blown off in drought; in-filling and culverting of the brooks; roads-more-roads and individualism, the poisons and shipped-in minerals from all over the globe not taken in by the living bodies of the fields we have fenced out from the rest of nature. The fishhooks. The tourists’ money.

Yes, please do test the waters with your proprietary chemistry kits and citizen projects – I’ve lost count of the times I have called on those paid to do it – and try to prove to the regulators that they need to enforce each separate unit of Law in order to punish the ignorant or entitled through the Courts (at least, the community—in its very Western way— is now trying to belong).

But if you sit and “feel” it happening for a lifetime, you also feel the atomic devastation seep into your own. There is no gap. The pain is soul-splitting, trust me. And few hear, or even wish to hear, the real meaning of those particular cries.

I look around at all my fellow Herefordians crossing this bridge at their speed, and wonder at their bliss when they stop to look over the thousand-year-old war bridge (to facilitate or block the trade with Wales). It must be an utter joy to find delight here (I remember the feeling as a child). But I now feel less to celebrate—though kingfisher balancing on the willow whip sprouting from the litter debris downstream does give me momentary hope. I ask these people, do you know this place? Do you really feel our belonging?

You do belong. All of you. Not to the tarmac nor the thousand-year-old bridge, nor the banks you are racing towards (that still fund wars). But to this place beneath. This kind of flower-bank laying slant into wet eddies of a living continuum. Let there be peace, just here.

~~~

Note: I wrote this before learning of the life given to raise ultimate awareness of this kind of pain outside the Supreme Court, Washington DC.  Rest in peace, Wynn Bruce, of Boulder, Colorado.

~~~

21 April 2022

Dear Jesse Norman MP

Another week, another bereavement. Could the grief bus just stop. I want to get off.

~~~

Meanwhile, thoughts are whirling around my head, several key projects stacked in my brain’s in-tray. I am returning to studies after a two-month bereavement break and, in all honesty, I am finding it difficult to concentrate on these longer works (though I’m trying), and much beyond my daughter’s imminent A’Levels, or bursts of 280 characters.

I am moving through a period of deep loss, ADHD diagnosis ~ also some kind of loss, but of my old identity ~ and medicine titration; a battle to even get anything from the NHS. I am also still in recovery from my first (and I hope, last) bout of clinical depression I had last Summer. I have no means of official therapy now. Waiting lists are months long, money is tight-to-zero, and Adam’s support money for Gracie until her 18th birthday has evaporated into probate. I try things myself to alleviate fast brain syndrome. Two delightful kittens play their part in lightening daily life, I attend weekly art therapy courses at Mind and doodle-draw in fly-wheel states, and I am volunteering now, ad hoc, for a local Help for Ukraine charity, packing boxes of donated sleeping bags and baby medicines to be sent to the insanity of bomb shelters underneath Kharkiv.

But today, I’m compelled to write this blog. It’s been a while.

~~~

Dysenergy

The Johnson government has announced its energy policy to be put in train for decades, and the major TV stations are accepting without criticism. In fact, there seems great excitement over the projected stimulus of such a gigantic infrastructure build ~ the contributions it will make to what I now call the wantonomy – the wanton economy of growth and greed.

Instead of a care-full, just, and sensitive energy transition from “fossil fools” (Antonio Gueterres, 2022) ~ mass insulation projects, new building regulations, 20-min -journey-time-planning, onshore community-owned renewables, reduced international logistics, agro-ecologies, et al, The Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein) has been fully exploited for the benefit of the BIG business of corporate nuclear power, so-called blue/green hydrogen, and vast offshore wind. Russia’s abominable war crimes against the Ukrainian people, together with global inflation have given the billionaires are generous tip, and there are future billionaires – let’s call them pretenders – salivating in the wings. I will write again soon on Ukraine, and also about the ecological hit by such giant infrastructures compared to the alternatives (of course, there are alternatives)! And don’t forget these long-term projects do nothing to help people suffering today.

I’ve no doubt the Johnson energy policy is not based on logic, morality, sincerity, or a real practical response to the problems of international energy, climate, or security, but on the ideology of extreme capitalism. These are Leviathan capital projects, requiring Ziz capital investment, with the expectation of Behemoth capital gains, and, of course, the exploitation and exclusion of most people and all teresapien life.

There is a centralising core to it (against the flows of nature and symbioethical distribution) to ensure the human population of Britain is completely reliant upon the companies that supply them. The coffers are therefore guaranteed. Loyal friends of the government are financially secured and will be offered Royal patronage and other powerful positions of cultural and economic influence. Despite the Russian lesson, foreign wealth will still be embraced. Neo-colonial forces ensuring uranium supplies and other materials will, again, be set in motion. Hydrogen cells – as stored energy – are simply replacements for natural gas as a globalised commodity, the fossil fuel industry’s preferred fuel of replacement, a fuel of the loco-motive, to keep stuff moving ~ and selling ~ at even higher levels than today. These planet-sized corps can even use the same pipelines and ships. Never mind saving costs from the “public purse”, there are continuing overheads attached to such schemes paid for in the deaths of entire flolocas, symlings wrenched away from symlings, vast broken ecologies, for the sake of whitemanthropocentric business-as-usual, grid-leak inefficiency over distances (more dollar for waste). At best, these people are visionary-less to all but increasing narrow pressure to reduce emissions and, at a push, cleaner air (not clean).

More, do not ever consider that military forces around the world do not map and plan attacks, including tactical nuclear attacks, on centralised energy sources and processing plants. Someone very close to me studied and worked in this field, including tracing potential radiation pollution – at high levels of security, even if in a “defensive” capacity and unable to reveal to me any detail except with his facial expressions.

I ask myself whether I am more or less depressed by this news. I think I’ve gone into an intensive state of trauma-laced-suspended optimism. Few will want to listen – really listen – to what I am saying. Even the climate science community, now desperate for people to listen to them, seem bent on simply shouting louder, grabbing attention via protest (fair enough, it gets in the papers), but continuing to exclude from their main circles experts on human values and vital pedagogies that are PRE-REQUISITE for an egalitarian, equitable r-evolution of the masses. At least, I will have made this note for my own mental state if not for repeating incessantly on Twitter.  Though I truly love my friends, I am giving that particular dysenergy a break!

~~~

PS I am currently listening to the UN expelling Russia from the Human Rights Council. There’s no current mechanism for them to be ousted from the Security Council, but they should suspend them pending acts of aggressive war and war crimes against the Ukrainian people, including the elderly, disabled, children,  but also foreign migrants and students. If they don’t, the UN itself is at risk. Far too many people, including senior members of the Conservative Party, wish to see that whole institution burn down. We need to reform it to protect it! Its core philosophies are absolutely worth protecting. IPCC supporters, take note.

~~~

Ergonvast ~ energy wasted, akin to ecocide, impacts social, ecological and climatic systems in a negative way, and adds to planetary crisis.

Ergon ~ Ancient Greek ἔργον (érgon). Doublet of work.

Vast ~ from Latin vastum. “Empty, desolate.” Origin of “waste”.

For example, light and noise pollution, uninsulated housing, wasteful advertising technology.

~~~

Chapter Severn – The Mouth 

Danger.

The Mythological.

Jumping.

Without you, I would not have known enduring love, no matter how complex, because it is complex.

Without you, we would not have the most stunning child, who takes my breath away in all she does and says.

Without you, we would not have known and loved Ben.

Without you, I would not have read Riverwalking and walked the philosophical path since. This blog was your idea, one I will always treasure because it was yours. Your name is mine, and always will be.  It’s a good strong batty name.

Without you, I would have remained parochial. I would not have read Lopez and Matthiessen. We have lived and experienced, haven’t we, all the “stuff” in the world could never ever match.

Without you, I would not have regained myself after Mum’s death; enjoyed our daughter and her absolute vibrancy; I would not have embraced the camera that you bought me and “seen” this beautiful world again alongside you, Gracie, Ben. I would not have walked the rivers again. I would not have really listened to music. Music is life, laughter, and dance. There is so much more. So much.

You have been the most thoughtful lover, father, son, brother, and man. I have missed you, miss you now, and will miss you until the day I leave this plane of existence we knew to cherish.

Without you. I am utterly and totally bereft.

I have truly lost my best friend. I will care for our daughter and take her where she needs to go on behalf of “us”. I will listen to your voice in all things. Relish the cadence on that dream bike and those biggest views. “Kudos” to you.

~~~