Living in the future
“Haunt the dreams of your comrades, and the nightmares of your enemies; live in a future that never came—be a specter, a memory, and a herald. Remind them that the current state was not inevitable until it came to be. Do not occupy yourself with the question of why this very possible future failed, leave the victorious to grope for answers. Be the question, and do not heed your impotence. A ghost has no need for material presence or action, you just need to shimmer.”
- Alaa Abd el-Fattah, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated
For over a month our area hasn’t gotten any municipal water (or any mail), because of what we’ve taken to calling the fear hole. No real fear involved, just a small amount of shifted earth that has completely disrupted the modern infrastructure essential for life—which, let’s be real, most people take for granted.
In response, we reconfigured our own water storage system, to put a tank in the back of the truck to haul the water ourselves from the pueblo.
Fermentation Festival Debrief
Festivals in general are difficult, in that capitalism is exhausting. We are much more interested in the conversations we can have and the connections we can make. An example, at the festival we met someone who brings food to the elderly and home-bound, and meeting them made doing the festival totally worth it for us.
Before (and immediately after) hurricane Fiona we tried to get our excess produce to folks claiming to do food sovereignty work. Unfortunately, it seems the people who say it the loudest online, aren’t actually doing much in the real world. Getting connected to someone putting the work in, week in and week out, means so much more to us than whatever capital could have been snatched away from festival goers.
If you missed us at the festival, our zines are available online in our Farm Store. All of our large zines open to 11x17 inch art posters (check out the photo below). Hang them in your window or carry them at a protest. We’re with you.
Farm Store: buenocompartir.bigcartel.com
Living in the future
Most of our neighbors are not connected to municipal water because their homes were built before the waterline from the city made it out here. Even those who are connected face sporadic shut offs due to storms, blackouts, or in this case, giant sinkholes.
So throughout the forest there are community-built concrete reservoirs that collect spring water or that store municipal water for such times of crisis. Communal water in the realist sense.
Read more about the drinking water situation:
We feel like a broken record, but we don’t have access to electricity, internet, or running water (in our case our water is not “running” because we have to haul all of our water, occasionally all the way from the pueblo). When online, we’re expending an immense amount of our literal and energetic battery.
Living in the future means adapting to such restrictions which haven’t yet become the reality for most people reading this. We reuse water as many times as possible and plant strictly with the weather, never relying on irrigation.
The next few newsletters we’ll be getting into a number of ways people all over the world are currently living in the future. We’re just privileged enough to have access to technology, digital literacy, and some time to write these to you all.
The repercussions of settler-colonialism are not a lifestyle choice; don’t call us sustainable.
