spring renewal (Patreon)

I was smoking a cigarette on my porch this morning watching the snowflakes fall and melt in the sun on my sleeves. It’s really spring. My projects are mostly domestic these days. I am growing plants and baking bread and moving my furniture around to make room for, something else. In all of the transition, I came across the first painting I did when I launched this blog, the one of the corvid holding a shiny trash bauble in their mouth, and thought of how it was supposed to be reflecting back an ivory tower. I couldn’t figure out how to paint such a distorted reflection in oil, so I hung it up and told myself I’d do it later. Life is just ripe with things-I-almost-finished. Maybe at a certain point I expect all of these almost-done things will just finish themselves.

I live above a garage in a nice place in the hills where I have a sunny porch and plenty of clean water and everything I need to be happy. Yet I am reminded nightly by noise from the military base at the base of the hill that I live in the belly of the largest and most despicable empire in the world. And that empire is crumbling, alongside our biodiversity, ecosystems, and water supply.

The world is shifting, fast.

There has been an incredible show of radical cooperation going on at an international scale over the past few months. Since Lula was re-elected in Brazil, he has wasted no time revitalizing the BRICS trade agreement, creating networks of healthy dialog, resource-sharing, and allyship with other countries around the world. The global south is getting serious about protecting the Amazon, and many of the countries we have wronged are working collectively to get the American boots off of their necks.

One of the biggest moves they are making is what’s been called “de-dollarization” by economists and journalists. A bit of history is important to understand how radical this is.

The International Monetary Fund holds 59% of its wealth in US Dollars. The United States has largely forced other countries to do trade with each other in US Dollars since it became the global reserve currency in 1944. This really became an issue when Richard Nixon de-linked the currency from gold in 1971. This is what has allowed our government to freely print money with little-to-no-consequence and facilitated the modern speculation market. It’s why we’ve seen so many recessions with slapdash facades of recovery, huge swings in “financial solvency,” and it’s why wealth distribution is so whacked up in the US. It has also allowed our government to trap other countries in unpayable debts and force them to privatize their resources so that we can pillage them with capital. Anybody who has ever had a student loan or a mortgage should have some idea of how this works. (Financial theory is kind of a robust topic—Economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson have been publishing a pretty comprehensive series of podcasts through Geopolitical Economy Report on de-dollarization that I think is worth listening to, especially for anybody who considers themselves financially stable).

So, BRICS countries have pledged to do trade in their own currencies and get around the need to use US Dollars for any reason other than trade with the US. Furthermore, Lula has been working on tying South American currencies to a kind of trade note called the SUR, based on “a basket of commodities” (like when USD was tied to gold, but with other resources). At its inception, BRICS was a trade agreement between Brazil, Russia, India, China, and eventually South Africa. Today, I’ve lost count of how many countries have signed on, but it’s catching fast. Without the agreed upon global hegemony of the US Dollar, the United States will lose a lot of its dominion over the world-at-large, and it is not unlikely that our own economy will be brutally destabilized and need a radical restructure as well.

This is exciting, and scary. In an empire with so much roiling inequality, a militarized police force, a deeply propagandized individualist society with an insatiable want for *money* and *things*, and straight up nukes, I suspect the throes of transition will include some violence. Hopefully we can help soften the blows.

What would you do if you couldn’t rely on affordable oil? Clean water from the tap? A quick trip to the corner store for smokes and cheap calories? The grocery store having enough toilet paper or whatever? Who will take care of you when you can’t do it by yourself? Who do you take care of? How do you want to be taken care of? Do you let people know, or make them guess? Do you know who you live next to? There have been people living in poverty under your nose this whole time, traumatized by war and debt and untreated wounds, physical and psychological. Who is helping them? If push comes to shove, they are the ones who will know how to survive, because they do it every day. Do you know how to take care of yourself, ask for help, and adapt to change?

I urge you to grow a plant this spring. Just one. Try it. Something you can eat. Mint is easy. Learn a new recipe. Something simple, with fiber. Maybe a bean-y thing. Learn how to filter water from a stream and make it safe to drink. Throw your organic waste in a pile outside instead of trapping it in a bag. Throw some hay on it and mess it around a bit. Maybe you’ll make some dirt for later. Take a day and read that book, and then talk to somebody about it. Practice taking only what you need and sharing what you have. It isn’t easy when you’re taught to always want more, but you’ll get it. Spring is good for this stuff. We can’t keep doing things the way we’ve always done them. It’s not working. Try something new.

Do it because it’s important.

Do it because it’s hard.