I'm moving out of my current diggs for a while - having to head back
to the suburbs to live with my folks until I land a new job and can
start renting a new place somewhere in town. Mixed feelings about this
move, so hopefully it's only temporary. It's useful to remind myself a
few things about the suburbs that will be nice though. One point that
is no way insignificant is the air quality: even though my folks'
place is still within the M25 that circles round the broader edge of
the suburban sprawl that surrounds London, the air quality down there
is noticably fresher than what I'm used to getting closer to central.
Typing this, it feels a bit of a Dickensian point to make - and I
think/hope that one day these observations will appear as such. I find
it absurd that we've created a built environment around so much
pollution, where fume-chugging automobiles are the main creatures that
cities are built to accommodate. I long for an alternative city
culture.
Another positive is that I'll be ending my current job, which has
eaten into my time and headspace more than it should have in the past
few months. Mainly I've had 'supplier woes' working with some external
organisations to deliver some IT/digital services, but have been a
real headache in doingso. I've worked with some quality external
developers but then some that just don't deliver as well. I don't know
the way around this - unfortunately it seems to be the luck of the
draw in some cases; you get sold something, you take the external org
on board, and then the project(s) either get delivered in good time
and in good quality or a series of misfourtunes, time-draining detours
and poor quality outcomes seem to plague the thing.
A third positive is that I'll have a little bit more time to get on
with a few personal projects and self-directed learning in
programming. For employability reasons I'm continuing to brush up on
my front-end Web development, but I also have a few personal projects
that should let me dive into coding and systems a bit more. I need to
remind myself that even though I'm so much less experienced than many
peers, I've still come a long way in just a couple of years of
learning, so shouldn't be too hard on myself for feeling a bit more
'behind' than where I could be.
* * *
For the past two days in a row, the UK has consecutively beat the
record for the warmest winter day. Yesterday the temperature hit
21.2°C in some parts of London. The day before was the first time
temperatures of over 20C degrees were reported in winter, and broke
the 21-year record. There's photographs on news websites of surfers
out at the beach and people walking around town in as little clothing
as though it were a Summer day. This is so upsetting. A few days ago,
I caught that footage circulating of some grade school kids in the
States confronting their representative Senator to act now on climate
change, getting in return some wild dismissals and 'you didn't vote
for me' comments. The thing is, short of structural/systemic change, I
don't think there can be effective action. The entire nature of
production is unsustainable and needs to be scrutinised: production
places economy above ecology and that seems to be one central factor;
an economic imperative is driving widespread misapplication of
processes of production, and the biosphere is the ultimate victim.
Unless a dialogue of action can form around this, I can't see us
making the right moves.
* * *
A game: do you live in a city? Try this: in everyday life, everynow
and then, just drop in and 'check in' on the soundscape. What do you
pick up? Have you found either (a) silence or (b) a space of only
natural sounds? If so, I envy you. It's an interesting experiment. I
thought about it when I had a terrible headache the other week. I
longed to find a space free from the sounds of human machinery. Right
now, afternoon on a Wednesday, I can hear the repeat smashing sound of
a pneumatic drill of some-kind in the neighborhood, the spooky endless
howls and hover-buzz of flightpaths, the nearby hum of engines on a
major London road a few streets away from my flat.... ah, and a dog
barking, reminding me this city isn't just some kind-of factory of
machines..
~ moji ('Moving to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches')
