This tiny spider has been exploring my workspace all morning and, watching her work, I feel an overwhelming sense of futility & loss. I look around & cannot see any green space to move her to. I remember what is outside & realised it’s more paving slabs, more tarmac, more concrete & steel, and now I’m filled with an overwhelming sense of sadness. I move the spider to a handrail outside in the hope she’ll find her way, but it’s concrete for as far as I can see. Perhaps living in the van is making me hyper-aware of these things. Or maybe vanlife is just reminding me of things the trees showed me some years ago. It was the strangest thing – I felt for a time the consciousness of the trees existed inside me, I couldn’t see a place where they ended and I began. On the first day this happened I walked into a shopping centre and nearly threw up. I felt dizzy & disorientated. I’d never experienced such a sense of revulsion before. It was as if the trees were horrified at this place I’d visited endless times. I couldn’t really process the sudden cognitive dissonance, and remember thinking ‘this is just how we live now’, so worked with every molecule of my being to ignore it. I was worried people would think I was mad. I didn’t want to be mad. I just wanted to be normal. These days I wonder if perhaps my response back then is actually a ‘normal’ response to our utter devastation of the earth’s green spaces. It took a long time but I eventually managed to reintegrate my thinking back towards what is probably more socially acceptable, but still, sometimes a tiny spider comes along & I feel a deep sense that really this is all just totally wrong. Can’t wait to get back in the van and get my feet on bare earth.
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