befriending the Kraken

a diatribe

The Kraken is not here for your bullshit

Or for any rationalisation you care to spin

The Kraken is Gaia's fury

Hard-earned and long, long overdue

It's the hyperobject
The wicked problem
The monster on the edge of town
It's the meta-poly-multi-crisis
Shapeless, beyond our co-ordinates
Stranger than any Stranger Thing
More dangerous than any Dangerous Vision
And it's coming for all of us

The reek of the Kraken

Already drifts through our windows

Filling us with nameless dread, with churning hyper-anxiety

Numbing our hands

Chilling our hearts

And there is nowhere that it goes away

For the Kraken is everywhere

In mycelia

And tree roots

In airborne pollen

And spores

In rain-drops

And sewage

And don't think you can seal yourself off in some techno-bubble

If you're rich or powerful enough, or wear the right clothes

Once the door slams shut

You will be what you were already becoming

Corpses, but still moving

Gleaming brains with hearts of ash

Zombies, walled inside

Exiled from connection

By the poison of the Kraken

Is there any way out?

I don't know

But this much I do know

The Kraken is something Wild

Ungovernable, untamable, uncontrollable

And until we can honour that place within ourselves

Until we can kin with 'wildlife'

In its true meaning, not as a category for curation

Our chances of befriending the Kraken are zero, zilch, nada

And that takes time

But we don't have time

Unless we reinvent our whole way of living in Time

Discarding false urgencies

Remembering old necessities

And unless our spaces become places again

Not the empty lobbies of post-modernity

Community

Comm-unity

One word, two thoughts

"Together as one"

Simple, simple, simple

Maybe too simple

For those enthroned in towers

Of ivory, steel or gilded lead

Dazed by runes of number

Consumed by games of power

Already half-asleep at the wheel

Yet if they choose to leave

They could join the rest of us

Here on the humble ground

The humus

The place of humility

The soil

The place of rootedness

The earth

The place of infinite, intimate entanglement

Convince me, convince me, convince me

O gatekeepers of knowledge, wealth and power

That the mangled chorus you bray leads us anywhere but into the maw

Of the Kraken

Or unconvince yourselves:

Join us on this ground, this soil, this earth

Sit in equal counsel, sit in unknowing

Sit, sit in humility

Listen, listen and do not speak

Until your tongues and throats are free of Kraken-summoning

Commune with us

For if there is any way, this is the way

The great circle of community

Encircling the Kraken

For each tentacle a hand extended

A wild heart reaching out

Meeting when and where it is needed

Sensing, feeling how the life and lives of place are faring and should fare

Life calling to life calling to life

This is the way, if there is any way

So...

BE REGENERATIVE

BEFRIEND THE KRAKEN

BUILD COMMUNITY

BE KIND

BE KIN