by Lisa Alexander
All is well[1]
There is an accidental rewilding of my mother’s garden due to neglect; the beginnings of a small forest manured with dog shit.
I have been in hospital recently.
During the pandemic I cleared my mother’s garden and house before she was discharged from another hospital outside London in June 2021. I do not live close by. I did what I could with limited resources and no power of attorney.
There’s only so many times that you can perform the same task for it to return again to zero.
My mother has miraculously survived bedbound in a hospital bed in her home with her little dog since then and the garden amongst other things never properly maintained, continues to seed and sprout.
Whilst their very existence is shocking, the process of random reclamation by self-seeding trees emerging from excrement was almost wondrous upon first encounter.
A rat found its way into the house a few months before the photo was taken.
The day before my surgery –
I made a series of phone calls to social workers, GPs and sitters from a charity; to ensure that my mother would be safe and that any vermin had been thoroughly dispatched. Lacking the legal authority, proximity and physical health to manage the whole situation including the care package, or at times even be believed, did not prohibit me from making these calls.
I was going to be out of action for some time.
The mini-trees in my mother’s garden are symbolic of a no-man’s-land, quite literally its physical manifestation.
It reminds me of a book I read earlier this year; Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn.[2]
A study of exclusion zones and ghost towns in which nature left to its own devices without the intrusion of human presence or activity, develops its own way to overcome (for the most part man-made) catastrophic disaster.
It demonstrates a resilience that confirms not only the continued existence of the natural world but an abundantly creative proliferation of adaptive species in a post-human world.
This is uplifting somehow.
I also worry about power cuts.
My mother’s bed requires a power source to keep it inflated. Circulating air guards against life threatening pressure sores. A medium of seventy on a circular dial. UK Power Networks seem to have at least one ‘unplanned’ power cut per quarter in her specific postcode. Unusual instance of media underestimation.
In late March I spent a week in University College London Hospital. A diagnosis of early stage cancer three weeks before came completely out of the blue. I’m lucky it was caught early, and other surgeries could be performed at once. I’m recovering well and grateful for the exceptional care that I received during my stay.
During the week spent on ward T7 –
I spotted a book I’d just read about in Islands of Abandonment two days before being admitted on a trolley of donated books being wheeled past my bed:
The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard.
I ‘borrowed’ it and immediately started reading and took it home with me to finish.[3]
Most of my diary for 2023 is taken up with hospital appointments
thoughts sit beside instructions in red as per one of my surgeon’s discharge notes, for example:
how many kilograms I can pick up
how far I can move
and in what way
how to wash, sit, stand or lie
the duration
week by week by week
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
reviewed again
and so on
the level of detail
equal to the level of care
in contrast to level of control
a no-man’s-land[4] equals a state of fear
from ingesting toxins or from risks posed
for encountering a warring faction
even if you have the antidote
(or love the person concerned).
My mother loved her garden when she was aware that it existed, it makes me sad to see it in this state.
But this is not about a garden.
It’s more a question of what remains after a disturbance and the potential not only for basic repair but the quality of renewal in an environment that we want to – more than just safely physically exist in – but truly live, care and connect in.
The day before I was given the cancer diagnosis I was informed that I had to move from a temporary flat (a ‘decant’ from another flat deemed unfit to live in). Given the seriousness of my hospital stay I had to find and secure a place before the surgery; literally within days.[5]
Since December 2019 I have become overly acquainted with the Housing Act of 2004. The existence of laws (inadequate or not) does not mean that they can necessarily be enforced. It also depends on the agenda of those in power.
As the horror of the 14 June 2017 at Grenfell sadly testifies to. Still a mesh of duplicity has been precisely calculated to maximise uncertainty in the face of obvious wrongdoing...Time itself became a weapon favoured by the powerful, who use it to generate fatigue and hopelessness among their opponents.[6]
It was the tenth time I’d moved since 2015.
It is in the eleventh chapter of Cal Flyn’s Islands of Abandonment (2021) entitled REVELATION that Flyn refers to The Drowned World. Near the end of the chapter Flyn writes:
…the hero, or anti-hero, Dr Kerans takes up residence in the penthouse of the abandoned Ritz Hotel, dressing in the silk shirts of the suite’s previous resident, a Milanese financier, and helping himself to the cocktail bar.[7]
We accompany Flyn’s encounter with an existing ghost town; once the de jure capital of Monserrat: Plymouth in what is still a British colony. It is easy to forget that fourteen ‘overseas territories’ still exist, five of which are in the Caribbean. Plymouth was abandoned permanently in 1997 following two years of massive eruptions by Soufrière Hills Volcano. Access was legally allowed during daytime up until 16 June 1997.
Municipal buildings, people’s homes; the entire town was buried beneath
pyroclastic flows and lahars.
Twenty three years on Flyn finds ferns sprouting from a semi-submerged police station and the city’s outskirts resemble a green hill of half sunken buildings in blankets of lumpen grass and vegetation. After what began as a series of instantaneous reclamations, volcanic eruptions –
it’s as if the earth is rising up to swallow ‘civilisation’ whole in slow motion.
The Drowned World paints a hallucinatory portrait of London submerged by rising sea levels, the ice caps long melted, and overgrown with tropical vegetation; where tides of silt drift against the flooded buildings and albino alligators lurk in murky lagoons. It is, Ballard’s vision, a return to a previous geological epoch – the steamy swamps of the Triassic – and over the course of the book, Kerans feels himself pulled by forces beyond his comprehension, as something resurfaces from deep within his psyche. As all humanity rushes north to the relative cool of the poles, Kerans turns his gaze to the south, and moves off through the jungle, towards the burning sun. He scratches onto the side of an abandoned building: ALL IS WELL. He knows he won’t survive for long.[8]
I am reminded of the metrics reliably predicting irreversible climate disaster should governments continue to ignore the need to initiate far-reaching disturbance of our current ways of life as distinct to continued profit and plunder in a frenzied economic endgame.
Something that also requires eradicating exploitation of both natural resources and humans. Social inequality is part of this.
The mini forest manured by dogshit in which nature has re-established itself – a no-man’s-land for other reasons is a microcosm of what is happening in society from changes made to the right to protest to the Hostile Environment policy – now referred to by the government as the ‘compliant environment’ policy as if renaming it will hide its portent
on who can and cannot enter, live and fully participate as a resident of the UK
and the current definition of ‘full participation’ for those that can.
I on the other hand cannot fully participate in my mother’s care and the Office of the Public Guardian was not able to help. I couldn’t afford a solicitor at a time during the pandemic when it would have made all the difference.
Worse than speech acts, we now live and die by administration acts –
then I try to imagine what it would be like if this applied to all the other services that I take for granted
(even if they’re patchy and inadequate at times having been drained of infrastructure, resources and personnel over the past decade or so by the ‘austerity measures’[9] of successive Tory governments)
– I’m talking about[10] health, education, the ability to rent affordable accommodation, to legally work for a fair wage, to benefits in the event of illness, frailty, redundancy and with reference to protected characteristics
and other key services that are part of the scaffolding of a person’s fundamental human rights in this country (apparently), your right
to personal liberty
privacy
family life
religion and belief
not be tortured
a fair trial
freedom of expression
non-discrimination
– amongst others
If you seem visibly foreign, these policies create a mandate for racial discrimination against you.[11]
Your right to life
is threatened deliberately.
I recently took part in an action in which singing was the form of protest.[12]
Regarding the Public Order Act 2023 it does not appear to be an offence to sing in a public place, as long as it is not in a discordant way and does not involve being attached to anyone or anything. Still this did not stop the gallery from closing down the exhibition, asking visitors to leave and kettling us into a corner whilst we sang.
But why can’t we be discordant? Dissonance is often where (the need for) creation can occur, where harmonies maintain.
We need both.
There are many grey areas extending police powers and restricting public assemblies.
Within acts of protest privilege also exists. It helps if you are in a position to devote time and if you’re white – whereas some need to be disproportionately aware of Stop and Search.[13]
My mother’s garden encapsulates a number of states at once – neglect, fear, control and it performs a wonderment of renewal in the sprouting greenery.
Its very existence grows out of actual and metaphorical shit, controlled and denied at once.
Disturbance can invite a productive contemplation of the interrelated nature of life (be it painful or otherwise) – AND the opportunity to envision and enact change in the steering of its trajectory.
Dissonance and discordance are part of this.
[1] J. G. Ballard (1962) The Drowned World. The whole sentence reads: 27th day. Have rested and am moving south. All is well. Kerans. This edition London, Gollancz (2001) p.175 and taken from a hospital library trolley on Ward T7, UCLH, London in late March 2023.
[2] Cal Flyn (2021) Islands of Abandonment: Life In The Post-Human Landscape William Collins, London
[3] I will donate one of my own books to UCLH soon!
[4] an area or strip of land that no one owns or controls, such as a strip of land between countries’ borders, especially in a war: to be lost/ stranded/ stuck in no-man’s-land. They found themselves trapped in the no-man’s-land between two warring factions. https://dictionary.cambridge.org › dictionary › english › no-man-s-land The phrase came into popular use during the first world war by poets such as WB Yeats and Wilfred Owen. Nomanneslond, c.1350, comes from the Middle English: a piece of ground outside the north wall of London, formerly used as a place of execution. https://www.oed.com/
[5] I can thank a certain Housing Association, that has merged three times in the last five years (now possibly the largest in the UK), for this added stress and waste of resources.
[6] The whole paragraph reads: PR propaganda has arrived from several different directions, and a mesh of duplicity has been precisely calculated to maximise uncertainty in the face of obvious wrongdoing. These well-known corporate tactics confounded definitive pronouncements and rendered the clarity of firm and final explanations inaccessible because they were constantly deferred. Time itself became a weapon favoured by the powerful, who use it to generate fatigue and hopelessness among their opponents. See Paul Gilroy’s essay, Never Again Grenfell written to accompany Steve McQueen’s film, Grenfell (2019)
[7] Op. cit. Cal Flyn (2021) p.292
[8] Op. cit. Cal Flyn (2021) p.292
[9] by disinvestment, decentralisation, decollectivisation and disintegration, see: Arrieta, T. (2022). Austerity in the United Kingdom and its legacy: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 33(2), 238-255. https://doi.org/10.1177/10353046221083051
[10] Safety, shelter, nourishment are prerequisites
[11] See: https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/fundamental/hostile-environment/
[12] I am part of the London Stop Shopping Choir and some of us joined this protest organised by Fossil Free London.
[13] For more information on your right to protest including free training see: https://greenandblackcross.org/
thoughts sit beside instructions in red as per one of my surgeon’s discharge notes, for example:
how many kilograms I can pick up
how far I can move
and in what way
how to wash, sit, stand or lie
the duration
week by week by week
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
reviewed again
and so on
the level of detail
equal to the level of care
in contrast to level of control
a no-man’s-land[4] equals a state of fear
from ingesting toxins or from risks posed
for encountering a warring faction
even if you have the antidote
(en if you have the antidote
(or love the person concerned).
My mother loved her garden when she was aware that it existed, it makes me sad to see it in this state.
But this is not about a garden.
It’s more a question of what remains after a disturbance and the potential not only for basic repair but the quality of renewal in an environment that we want to – more than just safely physically exist in – but truly live, care and connect in.
The day before I was given the cancer diagnosis I was informed that I had to move from a temporary flat (a ‘decant’ from another flat deemed unfit to live in). Given the seriousness of my hospital stay I had to find and secure a place before the surgery; literally within days.[5]
Since December 2019 I have become overly acquainted with the Housing Act of 2004. The existence of laws (inadequate or not) does not mean that they can necessarily be enforced. It also depends on the agenda of those in power.
As the horror of the 14 June 2017 at Grenfell sadly testifies to. Still a mesh of duplicity has been precisely calculated to maximise uncertainty in the face of obvious wrongdoing...Time itself became a weapon favoured by the powerful, who use it to generate fatigue and hopelessness among their opponents.[6]
It was the tenth time I’d moved since 2015.
It is in the eleventh chapter of Cal Flyn’s Islands of Abandonment (2021) entitled REVELATION that Flyn refers to The Drowned World. Near the end of the chapter Flyn writes:
…the hero, or anti-hero, Dr Kerans takes up in the penthouse of the abandoned Ritz Hotel, dressing in the silk shirts of the suite’s previous resident, a Milanese financier, and helping himself to the cocktail bar.[7]
We accompany Flyn’s encounter with an existing ghost town; once the de jure capital of Monserrat: Plymouth in what is still a British colony. It is easy to forget that fourteen ‘overseas territories’ still exist, five of which are in the Caribbean. Plymouth was abandoned permanently in 1997 following two years of massive eruptions by Soufrière Hills Volcano. Access was legally allowed during daytime up until 16 June 1997.
Municipal buildings, people’s homes; the entire town was buried beneath
pyroclastic flows and lahars.
Twenty three years on Flyn finds ferns sprouting from a semi-submerged police station and the city’s outskirts resemble a green hill of half sunken buildings in blankets of lumpen grass and vegetation. After what began as a series of instantaneous reclamations, volcanic eruptions –
it’s as if the earth is rising up to swallow ‘civilisation’ whole in slow motion.
The Drowned World paints a hallucinatory portrait of London submerged by rising sea levels, the ice caps long melted, and overgrown with tropical vegetation; where tides of silt drift against the flooded buildings and albino alligators lurk in murky lagoons. It is, Ballard’s vision, a return to a previous geological epoch – the steamy swamps of the Triassic – and over the course of the book, Kerans feels himself pulled by forces beyond his comprehension, as something resurfaces from deep within his psyche. As all humanity rushes north to the relative cool of the poles, Kerans turns his gaze to the south, and moves off through the jungle, towards the burning sun. He scratches onto the side of an abandoned building: ALL IS WELL. He knows he won’t survive for long.[8]
I am reminded of the metrics reliably predicting irreversible climate disaster should governments continue to ignore the need to initiate far-reaching disturbance of our current ways of life as distinct to continued profit and plunder in a frenzied economic endgame.
Something that also requires eradicating exploitation of both natural resources and humans. Social inequality is part of this.
The mini forest manured by dogshit in which nature has re-established itself – a no-man’s-land for other reasons is a microcosm of what is happening in society from changes made to the right to protest to the Hostile Environment policy – now referred to by the government as the ‘compliant environment’ policy as if renaming it will hide its portent
on who can and cannot enter, live and fully participate as a resident of the UK
and the current definition of ‘full participation’ for those that can.
I on the other hand cannot fully participate in my mother’s care and the Office of the Public Guardian was not able to help. I couldn’t afford a solicitor at a time during the pandemic when it would have made all the difference.
Worse than speech acts, we now live and die by administration acts –
then I try to imagine what it would be like if this applied to all the other services that I take for granted
(even if they’re patchy and inadequate at times having been drained of infrastructure, resources and personnel over the past decade or so by the ‘austerity measures’[9] of successive Tory governments)
– I’m talking about[10] health, education, the ability to rent affordable accommodation, to legally work for a fair wage, to benefits in the event of illness, frailty, redundancy and with reference to protected characteristics
and other key services that are part of the scaffolding of a person’s fundamental human rights in this country (apparently), your right
to personal liberty
privacy
family life
religion and belief
not be tortured
a fair trial
freedom of expression
non-discrimination
– amongst others
If you seem visibly foreign, these policies create a mandate for racial discrimination against you.[11]
Your right to life
is threatened deliberately.
I recently took part in an action in which singing was the form of protest.[12]
Regarding the Public Order Act 2023 it does not appear to be an offence to sing in a public place, as long as it is not in a discordant way and does not involve being attached to anyone or anything. Still this did not stop the gallery from closing down the exhibition, asking visitors to leave and kettling us into a corner whilst we sang.
But why can’t we be discordant? Dissonance is often where (the need for) creation can occur, where harmonies maintain.
We need both.
There are many grey areas extending police powers and restricting public assemblies.
Within acts of protest privilege also exists. It helps if you are in a position to devote time and if you’re white – whereas some need to be disproportionately aware of Stop and Search.[13]
My mother’s garden encapsulates a number of states at once – neglect, fear, control and it performs a wonderment of renewal in the sprouting greenery.
Its very existence grows out of actual and metaphorical shit, controlled and denied at once.
Disturbance can invite a productive contemplation of the interrelated nature of life (be it painful or otherwise) – AND the opportunity to envision and enact change in the steering of its trajectory.
Dissonance and discordance are part of this.
[1] J. G. Ballard (1962) The Drowned World. The whole sentence reads: 27th day. Have rested and am moving south. All is well. Kerans. This edition London, Gollancz (2001) p.175 and taken from a hospital library trolley on Ward T7, UCLH, London in late March 2023.
[2] Cal Flyn (2021) Islands of Abandonment: Life In The Post-Human Landscape William Collins, London
[3] I will donate one of my own books to UCLH soon!
[4] an area or strip of land that no one owns or controls, such as a strip of land between countries’ borders, especially in a war: to be lost/ stranded/ stuck in no-man’s-land. They found themselves trapped in the no-man’s-land between two warring factions. https://dictionary.cambridge.org › dictionary › english › no-man-s-land The phrase came into popular use during the first world war by poets such as WB Yeats and Wilfred Owen. Nomanneslond, c.1350, comes from the Middle English: a piece of ground outside the north wall of London, formerly used as a place of execution. https://www.oed.com/
[5] I can thank a certain Housing Association, that has merged three times in the last five years (now possibly the largest in the UK), for this added stress and waste of resources.
[6] The whole paragraph reads: PR propaganda has arrived from several different directions, and a mesh of duplicity has been precisely calculated to maximise uncertainty in the face of obvious wrongdoing. These well-known corporate tactics confounded definitive pronouncements and rendered the clarity of firm and final explanations inaccessible because they were constantly deferred. Time itself became a weapon favoured by the powerful, who use it to generate fatigue and hopelessness among their opponents. See Paul Gilroy’s essay, Never Again Grenfell written to accompany Steve McQueen’s film, Grenfell (2019)
[7] Op. cit. Cal Flyn (2021) p.292
[8] Op. cit. Cal Flyn (2021) p.292
[9] by disinvestment decentralisation, decollectivisation and disintegration, see: Arrieta, T. (2022). Austerity in the United Kingdom and its legacy: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 33(2), 238-255. https://doi.org/10.1177/10353046221083051
[10] Safety, shelter, nourishment are prerequisites
[11] See: https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/fundamental/hostile-environment/
[12] I am part of the London Stop Shopping Choir and some of us joined this protest organised by Fossil Free London.
[13] For more information on your right to protest including free training see: https://greenandblackcross.org/
Something Other 