The people in the room, the people next door, the plant by the river

In the post-Unleashing days of the Heart and Soul, Arts, Culture and Well-being group (yes, we really called it that) in Transition Norwich, a lively group of up to fifteen people would meet once or twice a month and discuss everything from Deep Ecology to mental health and the NHS to Authentic Movement, Dreaming and how a sledgehammer might help us to be resilient.

We came from all walks of life, disciplines, classes, sexualities, ages and incomes, all with our different experiences. Some of us knew each other a lot, some a little, some not at all. We were all drawn by this new thing called Transition. What? Unleash creative genius – together? LET’S DO IT!

In the first months we would start each meeting by speaking about an object we’d brought along which revealed something about our lives. As we each spoke out from a knitted square, a painted tin butterfly, a photograph of a grandparent, a branch of bay leaves or indeed a sledgehammer, a kind of intimacy was created in the room which would have been impossible otherwise in a meeting lasting two and a half hours.

Over a couple of years the group shifted and morphed and ultimately dissolved; people got jobs, left, fell out, started other Transition projects, things changed.

And I wouldn’t normally be thinking about it, but five of the people writing this week* on how our relationships have been/are influenced by Transition, were in that early group. And four of us were in the room together when instead of an object we each brought a relevant night dream we’d had and spoke it out loud to everyone else. We were looking for potential keys and clues as we made our way along the road less travelled of Transition.

I chose a dream from an intense, experiential exploration of the relationship between plants and dreams I'd conducted with Charlotte over several years. This is what I wrote about it for a booklet we produced, Speaking with the Heart – How to Dialogue with Ourselves, Each Other and the Earth. The plant is Hemp Agrimony, an East Anglian native wildflower. And I was being taught about getting on with the people next door.

HEMP AGRIMONY Eupatorium cannabinum
decrystallisation

Hemp agrimony is a tall, strong plant which grows by water often in the company of great willowherb and meadowsweet. It blooms in July and August and its flowers are pink and fluffy. Sitting alongside the plant on the riverbank one day, I became aware that it remains rooted and maintains itself, whilst letting things go by. That night I asked hemp agrimony to inform my dreams, although I had no specific question. I dreamt the following:

THE END OF MORAL MARK

I am staying in a room somewhere overnight and a group of drunk ‘travellers’ and ‘hippies’ come to stay in the next door room. My attitude is nonchalant and self-amused, and when I talk with my rowdy neighbours I am outspoken and non-judgemental. I was aware of hemp agrimony informing the dream and clearly heard the words: That’s the end of Moral Mark.

I felt this was a poor dream but in dialogue with Charlotte the next morning she remembered a message she'd received when working with hemp agrimony: Go with what you have.
 
So who or what is or was Moral Mark?
 
Moral Mark is the opposite of all the things I felt in the dream. He is uptight, indignant and self-righteous, quietly resentful, bitter and very judgemental.
 
Moral Mark certainly would not enjoy having travellers and hippies come to stay next door, particularly if they were drunk.
 
Moral Mark says everybody must be clean and well-behaved and most of all quiet. Especially if he is around.
 
Moral Mark thinks there is him and then there are them, or rather THEM, and THEY are different from him and therefore wrong, or rather WRONG.
 
Moral Mark does not have a sense of humour, certainly not about himself. Moral Mark does not like the neighbours.
 
Moral Mark is gravely offended and takes everything personally.
 
Moral Mark remains in his room thinking negative thoughts about the people in the other rooms. He does not go out and speak to people.

Moral Mark was never a very real character, more a crystallisation of certain collective mindsets and opinions. However this is not to underestimate his power.

When Moral Mark was in the ascendant, my life would become restricted and miserable. These crystallisations dam the flow of energy and with time can take over one’s being. Hemp Agrimony was informing me that Moral Mark had come to his end. That my heart wanted something else. It was time to decrystallise.

All these years later and thanks to Transition (and hemp agrimony) I have decrystallised. I'm no longer stuck in a room next door to the party thinking negative thoughts about others. There are far too many people to meet and projects (and parties) to be getting on with these days.

So this post is dedicated to everyone in those early Transition Norwich meetings; to *Charlotte, Chris, Helen and Kerry; to all the travellers, hippies, reskillers, authentic movers, plant people, nurses and neighbours in that room and the one next door. Without you this decrystallisation would not have happened. And the world is less one negative neighbour. Thank you.

Photo: Purple Loosestrife, Gypsywort and Hemp Agrimony in Oxford 2011 by David Short; Painted Stone in Hand (MW)

Keep Making Sense - How Transition Changed My Life #2

Yesterday afternoon, I interviewed fellow-in-transition Nick Watts for today's installment of How Transition Changed My Life. Nick has been active in Sustainable Bungay since 2008. He co-ordinated the Library Community Garden project, is one of the key organisers of Happy Monday's monthly Community Cafe and is secretary of the initiative. He also grows-his-own vegetables at home and on two allotments.

Nick had come over with his chainsaw to cut logs from the dead elm I've been felling recently, so our interview was informal. We sat by the woodburner with a cup of tea and I said, "So Nick, how has transition changed your life...?"

Nick: In October 2008, I applied to do a Phd at UEA in Norwich, involving action research on how effective the Transition movement was on bringing about change in response to Peak Oil. At that time I knew nothing about Peak Oil.

MW: So that's when you first became aware of it?

Nick: Yes, and it affected me deeply. It was totally life-changing. I thought, 'This is it. I want to spend my my life doing something about this.' I realised our whole society rested on very shaky foundations. I'd been worried for some time about climate change and that there was a real social problem with addressing it. But when I put Peak Oil and Climate Change together it crystallised my thinking. I felt the solutions to these problems went hand in hand. On a personal level it also unleashed a huge surge of creativity - one of the first things I did as a response was make a Peak Oil collage...

MW: Oh, I remember that Nick, have you still got it?

Nick: Yes, I'll send you a picture of it.

MW: So what was your next step?

Nick: Well, I didn't get on the course. But I was totally fired up. I started reading the Energy Bulletin, John Michael Greer's Archdruid Report, James Howard Kunstler's work, got into the 'doomer porn' thing a bit (laughs)...

And then I went to a Transition Norwich Economics and Livelihoods meeting. Again, I didn't really know anything about economics at the time, but my own booksearch business had dwindled after more than a decade of earning a decent living with it, so I was at a bit of a watershed in my own life...

MW: And all this was happening at the same time as the economic crash? Around October 2008?

Nick: That's right. So I went to this meeting and met Tully Wakeman. He said, 'Did you know there's a Transition Group in Bungay?' I had no idea. He told me to get in touch with Josiah...

MW: And the rest is history...

Nick (laughs): Josiah told me later that Tully had warned him, 'I have to tell you Josiah, he's VERY keen.'

So I came to that Xmas party where the only person I knew was Margaret, so I talked to her most of the evening in the living room with a couple of other people. And I kept hearing bits of the conversation everyone was having in the kitchen... about Marx! I couldn't believe I was in Bungay!

MW: Yeah, it's a shame you missed that, it was really interesting... And you know Rob is a Marxist scholar. I'd also just been reading 'Capital' for the first time, an old version I got from the library. Transition gets you like that, especially at the beginning. You want to find out about all sorts of subjects you've never paid any attention to before. And talk about it with others.

Nick: Yes. You get a head of steam up and it takes over your life.

MW: Once you've had that end-of-suburbia moment, you get kind of hooked...

Nick: It's like a transition epiphany!

MW: So once you got involved, how did it affect your life then?

Nick: Well, practically speaking I started to co-ordinate the Library Garden project in 2009, which really got going after the Permaculture weekend in Jan 2010.

MW: What about transition's impact on your social life?

Nick: It's widened my social circle. And it's really good that you become friends with people you're working with on a common understanding, for a common good. You get involved with Transition and it casts a different light on everything you do. You're thinking bigger in a way about the systems that underpin our lives, but acting from where you are.

At the beginning I did want to tell everyone about it. It was a bit like a quasi-religious experience. I couldn't believe that people didn't want to know about how our economic system was so fragile, for example, or how dependent we are on our access to fossil fuels to live the way we do... Sometimes I felt a certain distance from old friends because of this.

I've been headed in the direction of voluntary simplicity for some time and now it seems more relevant than ever. Simplifying your life to where you're less dependent on a high income or high energy use. It makes you more resilient, less dependent on supermarkets and the industrial food system for what you eat. Peak Oil presents the very real possibility of these fossil-fuel energy-intensive ways of life being taken away. I see it as a responsibility, especially if you have children, to take it seriously.

MW: So three years on Nick, what's your approach to bringing awareness of the Transition approach to others?

Nick: I still tell people about it, perhaps not so zealously though. It's difficult to engage with people in a community where there's a reluctance to new ideas. So you get on with it yourself and with those you can work with. You build it up like that. Do things people can see and join in with. I think Sustainable Bungay's doing pretty well.

MW: Yes, me too. That's great, Nick and thanks for agreeing to the interview. Is there anything you'd like to finish on?

Nick: Perhaps this quote from Vaclav Havel:

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.

Pics: Nick in Bungay Library for Turning the Tide climate change play, April 2010; Peak Oil collage by Nick Watts; Nick shows me how to chainsaw logs, January 2012