This is temporally sympathetic (that's my solve for not using "synchronistic", which annoys me for some reason) and encouraging, as I just felt like I got something about the raw shape of unbodiment.com right yesterday. But somehow, despite having written a thesis on the uncanny about a decade ago, I didn't make the connection between that and what I'm going for with unbodiment. It was kind of just a reaction to the way "the body", "the body", "the body", "mind-body split", etc feels like it gets more reified the more it's talked about. And also spurred from contemplating like, if the solution to our woes is connecting with our bodies what happens if we take as a starting point a way of being beyond the horizon of the mind-body split. Another corollary, that could be applied back onto unheimlich, would be that the body "-uns" or has the capacity to undo all conceptual overlays. But formally I didn't see how I really am... like it works out like unheimlich! Thank you for that.
Unfortunately, this queering of climate is almost certain to lead to a major world-scaled food crisis very soon -- as in this year or next... or maybe the next. But soon.
World agriculture will be dramatically disrupted, as it's long been based on predictable and relatively stable weather and climate systems -- which are now behind us, sadly.
FWIW, while climate change is probably not a good thing, absolute doom has been prophezised to us for years now. It hasn't happened yet. You might say 'terrible things have happened - wild fires and floods' - yes. But local doom is not the same as absolute and utter doom everywhere all at once, which I feel is what people mean when they say things like 'world-scaled food crises'. So we'll see what happens.
The holocene climate regime appears -- to most of us who study this stuff -- to have ended. This means that floods, droughts, heat domes, heatwaves (both on land and in the oceans), and myriad other holocene conditions of relative predictability and stability of weather and climate are in an ever-amplifying divergence from recent climatic history.
This will make crop failures very significantly more common than they were when I was born in 1965, and for the past hundred years or so. These changes will only amplify over time, as they have been doing -- even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today.
The world you and I were born into will not be the world of the near-ish future. And food simply will become increasingly difficult to produce at the required rates and scales. We're in a worsening food crisis, no way around it.
As you probably know, there has been a food crisis going in many colonised countries for many years now. It's not actually the weather that causes hunger most of the times - it's other human beings.
Increasingly, it's changes in climate which will make food-production and distribution problematic. But, at present, most food crises are not about weather or climate, but about who has access to money and who does not. Money decides who has access to land ... and food. The dominant form of food crisis in the world today is about access to money, which is also access to land and water, etc.
I think the double meaning of heimlich and unheimlich carries over into English a little bit if you look not at "homely" but at "canny" (which is related to "cunning", too). Something uncanny is odd and spooky and out of the ordinary, but someone who is "canny" doesn't feel to me like they just have old-fashioned common sense but that they're a little bit of a keeper and observer of secrets and plots. And of course someone who's "cunning" may well be a bit of a village witch, just like the heimlich folk magic. And if you dig deep enough canny and cunning are related to another, now rather vulgar c-word, for a body part that's just plain common sense to half the population and the mystery of mysteries to the other half. But that's getting pretty far afield. Anyway, as a farmer I always feel like conversation about the weather's never as banal as people make it out to be, case in point here. Thanks Rhyd.
I love this meditation on queer. It reminds me of how the mythographer-storyteller-singer Michael Meade talks about our unique genius, something rather like the daimon Plato writes about in "The Story of Er." It comes with each of us at birth and tends to hide behind our wounds. This genius is far from conventional and takes boldness to develop. Meade calls it "a strange wind, wyrd not conventional." It is most often not what family or society wants from their children. He says to become creative in whatever way or walk of life, our unique genius needs to be blessed by someone who understands our wounds and probably shares some that are similar.
A beautiful piece, Rhyd - glad I found my way back to it from your end of the month post! The detail that set off ripples for me is the secondary definition of "Heimlich". In Swedish, this is the only definition that remains, so until reading this, I'd hardly paid attention to the etymology of "hemlig", the Swedish word for "secret", the literal meaning of which (it now dawns on me...) is "homely". Which brings a different angle to being "a school called HOME" and working out how to explain that to our friends and neighbours here. The temptation to translate the name as "Den HEMliga Skolan" (The Secret/Homely School) is strong...
In German ""heimlich" is also only really used to mean "secretly" or "secretively". I can see why Melinda has interpreted it as meaning "homely", but at least in modern German they use "heimisch", "gemütlich" or "häuslich" for that. But "unheimlich" definitely means strange, weird, uncanny etc. Which is confusing now I'm thinking about it!
Rhyd - sorry to pick you up on your German again!! But I still love this essay!
This is temporally sympathetic (that's my solve for not using "synchronistic", which annoys me for some reason) and encouraging, as I just felt like I got something about the raw shape of unbodiment.com right yesterday. But somehow, despite having written a thesis on the uncanny about a decade ago, I didn't make the connection between that and what I'm going for with unbodiment. It was kind of just a reaction to the way "the body", "the body", "the body", "mind-body split", etc feels like it gets more reified the more it's talked about. And also spurred from contemplating like, if the solution to our woes is connecting with our bodies what happens if we take as a starting point a way of being beyond the horizon of the mind-body split. Another corollary, that could be applied back onto unheimlich, would be that the body "-uns" or has the capacity to undo all conceptual overlays. But formally I didn't see how I really am... like it works out like unheimlich! Thank you for that.
I will now demonstrate the Unheimlich Maneuver to those students gathered in the surgical theater. Please remain seated for your safety.
Ha! Actually, Melinda entitled her chapter on the heimlich and unheimlich, "Unheimlich Maneuvers."
Also, I'm about to send you an email. :)
I can prove that I didn't read it. There isn't a court in the land that will take your plagiarism suit. The possums are with me.
hahaha!
Rhyd, I love this piece! Beautiful.
Thank you. :)
Engaging and thought-provoking.
Unfortunately, this queering of climate is almost certain to lead to a major world-scaled food crisis very soon -- as in this year or next... or maybe the next. But soon.
World agriculture will be dramatically disrupted, as it's long been based on predictable and relatively stable weather and climate systems -- which are now behind us, sadly.
FWIW, while climate change is probably not a good thing, absolute doom has been prophezised to us for years now. It hasn't happened yet. You might say 'terrible things have happened - wild fires and floods' - yes. But local doom is not the same as absolute and utter doom everywhere all at once, which I feel is what people mean when they say things like 'world-scaled food crises'. So we'll see what happens.
The holocene climate regime appears -- to most of us who study this stuff -- to have ended. This means that floods, droughts, heat domes, heatwaves (both on land and in the oceans), and myriad other holocene conditions of relative predictability and stability of weather and climate are in an ever-amplifying divergence from recent climatic history.
This will make crop failures very significantly more common than they were when I was born in 1965, and for the past hundred years or so. These changes will only amplify over time, as they have been doing -- even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today.
The world you and I were born into will not be the world of the near-ish future. And food simply will become increasingly difficult to produce at the required rates and scales. We're in a worsening food crisis, no way around it.
As you probably know, there has been a food crisis going in many colonised countries for many years now. It's not actually the weather that causes hunger most of the times - it's other human beings.
True.
Increasingly, it's changes in climate which will make food-production and distribution problematic. But, at present, most food crises are not about weather or climate, but about who has access to money and who does not. Money decides who has access to land ... and food. The dominant form of food crisis in the world today is about access to money, which is also access to land and water, etc.
I think the double meaning of heimlich and unheimlich carries over into English a little bit if you look not at "homely" but at "canny" (which is related to "cunning", too). Something uncanny is odd and spooky and out of the ordinary, but someone who is "canny" doesn't feel to me like they just have old-fashioned common sense but that they're a little bit of a keeper and observer of secrets and plots. And of course someone who's "cunning" may well be a bit of a village witch, just like the heimlich folk magic. And if you dig deep enough canny and cunning are related to another, now rather vulgar c-word, for a body part that's just plain common sense to half the population and the mystery of mysteries to the other half. But that's getting pretty far afield. Anyway, as a farmer I always feel like conversation about the weather's never as banal as people make it out to be, case in point here. Thanks Rhyd.
I love this meditation on queer. It reminds me of how the mythographer-storyteller-singer Michael Meade talks about our unique genius, something rather like the daimon Plato writes about in "The Story of Er." It comes with each of us at birth and tends to hide behind our wounds. This genius is far from conventional and takes boldness to develop. Meade calls it "a strange wind, wyrd not conventional." It is most often not what family or society wants from their children. He says to become creative in whatever way or walk of life, our unique genius needs to be blessed by someone who understands our wounds and probably shares some that are similar.
Gorgeous piece, Rhyd, thank you.
A beautiful piece, Rhyd - glad I found my way back to it from your end of the month post! The detail that set off ripples for me is the secondary definition of "Heimlich". In Swedish, this is the only definition that remains, so until reading this, I'd hardly paid attention to the etymology of "hemlig", the Swedish word for "secret", the literal meaning of which (it now dawns on me...) is "homely". Which brings a different angle to being "a school called HOME" and working out how to explain that to our friends and neighbours here. The temptation to translate the name as "Den HEMliga Skolan" (The Secret/Homely School) is strong...
In German ""heimlich" is also only really used to mean "secretly" or "secretively". I can see why Melinda has interpreted it as meaning "homely", but at least in modern German they use "heimisch", "gemütlich" or "häuslich" for that. But "unheimlich" definitely means strange, weird, uncanny etc. Which is confusing now I'm thinking about it!
Rhyd - sorry to pick you up on your German again!! But I still love this essay!