to relocalise is to become present. to arrive. to put down the virtual world and enter the palpable, the sensible, the tactile, the physical.
to abandon the hunt for a deal, always exploiting a cheaper option, and instead to invest in each other and in the place we are in, not for-profit but for all the rest. to nurture those quiet parts of life that flourish with deep attachment, much like a child who is unconditionally, whole-heartedly loved for simply being.
to turn from an economics of extraction and perpetual growth that flattens our characters in competition, emphasises greed, twists us into manipulations, chills our hearts against the suffering of others, other beings, other places. to turn toward a relocalised economy based in meeting needs that allows us to open up into full-hearted, generous, diverse community, thriving in our tremendously varied skills and tender interconnections, in our flourishing place.
to renounce a politics of expecting cheap, fast and easy to be supplied for the complacent comfort that dulls the pain of competing for scarce wages, even as wealth concentrates in a tiny elite. to take up a politics which might generate neighbourhoods and villages that take pleasure in making what they need, in making sure everyone’s needs are met. that might look like nurturing the seed-bank and the water-shed, the fibre-shed, the terroir, the beings long adapted to this place and the newcomers that form a patchwork-network to restore what’s needed to thrive right here.
to cease the exploration that emerged from conquering and colonising and return to a great settling down, arriving, committing, devoting. not a narrowing of experience but a deepening. to know this place, that supports us, and to support it.
to know that we are enough, right here, right now, and to become cultured in this place, not every-place and no-place, that cultural equivalent of the chainstore. to abandon world-travel as aspirational, the acquiring of places like proof, doing this city, that country, wearing them like badges, escaping to them from the ills of our lives, profiting from the difference between this currency and that currency like miniature colonists. to choose our home, our community, with devotion and create great thriving for our commitment to here, now.
to tend the land as the source, as our kin, our ability to thrive measured by our ability to tend. not to poison the rivers and kill the soils, then go in search of fresh territory, no. to pay our dues to the earth beneath our feet, in gratitude, and know abundance.
to create variety and diversity and health and safety and acceptance and affordability and flourishing attachment within our reach and not a restless seeking elsewhere, escaping, and while we may adventure and explore for a time may it be to reconnect with home more deeply for returning, welcomed. to reckon with ourselves and each other and do the work to restore interrelationships, to create intergenerational thriving.
to eat what grows here, to wear what grows here, to use what we can make here, to make what we use here.
to grow thrifty and inventive here and
use what we have with tremendous respect, not throwing it away, as there is no away. to revive a resourcefulness and a reskilling that mends what we have rather than exploit the far-away out-of-sight to merely replace. to seek quality, the lifetime investment, to reduce how much we need and to thrive for the simplicity.
to relocalise is to come home to what a resilient, regenerative, flourishing pattern of being right here with each and every other could look like.
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dear patron of the letters, thank you for reading. your steadfast support is deeply appreciated.