A&E: a brief journal

I fell in love with the waiting room yesterday. The sort of place that usually makes me squirm and broil with general upset was suddenly a constant source of fascination. Perhaps my eyes were opened to this because I wasn’t in need of attention (my girlfriend possibly broke a bone in her hand) and also I was extremely hungover so all I really wanted was somewhere to sit and focus on nothing, possibly sleep, all of which was granted to me.

            On arriving in the taxi, we see three women waiting for a lift away. They were dressed in beautiful and precisely worn headscarves and shawls, of deep and satisfying colour and pattern. Inside, hospital staff are everywhere and attempting to get everywhere, in their various coloured scrubs with embroidered meanings on the back. It occurred to me suddenly that this place is never empty; the staff don’t close up shop when the last patient of the day leaves at 5pm sharp. The injured hordes will continually pour in, or stumble in at least (there seemed to be a lot of foot injuries.)

            The police appeared three times, an event that caught my attention as someone instantly alerted by sirens and their associated symbols. The first time they were dropping off a name and description at the reception. The second time, they brought in Barry, who was not under arrest; it appeared maybe he’d been found collapsed somewhere and they were helping them in. He looked like he’d had some form of stroke but it could’ve been something else. He wore a jumper back-to-front that should’ve had the Dr. Pepper logo on the front, but was instead of course on his back. Barry could not sit still; despite being told a number of times to remain in his seat by the patient staff, he would switch seats, converse with anyone, wander outside, wander down the hallways, and generally disappear. The third time the police appeared, they had someone in handcuffs. A short, unshaven man from the North, his arms covered in faded tattoos. From the conversations I caught between him and the officers, he was an alcoholic. He was obviously distressed, in his worn out blue t-shirt and grey jogging bottoms.

            There seemed to be quite a few Irish people working in the hospital and waiting for help. There was one Scottish man, in some deal of discomfort, with a young daughter who couldn’t sit still. She developed a slight fascination with the water cooler, and continually attempted to impress my girlfriend (who couldn’t care less what with the painful arm) with her acrobatic methods of getting onto and off of her chair. Inevitably Barry conversed with the child.

Some thoughts on WALL-E

            I can’t remember when I first saw WALL-E, but I definitely was under the age of 16. Rewatching it now, as a twenty-two year old student, I have realized what an ecological marvel it is; I was pointed to re-watch it in part by a brief analysis in Timothy Morton’s The Ecological Thought.

            I was struck by the overwhelming scale artificial objects were given; everything is gargantuan, such as the ship the Axiom, that blocks out the sky and is filled with unknowningly complex interior workings. Importantly, many giant things are defunct, and simply rubbish. A huge ‘Buy n Large Ultrastore’ sprawls in the urban wasteland, no longer used; enormous freighters are lined up in a row, rusting away and useless.

Most noticeably of all, the amount of waste rampant in the defunct planet is paradoxically larger than the environment it exists in, even in the compacted towers that WALL-E (and supposedly his deceased comrades) worked to turn it into. How can there be more waste than… well, anything else? We find this question crop up again later onboard the Axiom, where WALL-E is trapped in the waste disposal zone. Here, two giant robots work compacting the eternal stream of rubbish thrown into their compartment. Why would a ship with the purpose of conserving human life be so inefficient as to create so much waste?

Interestingly, the robots compacting waste on the Axiom are simply larger versions of WALL-E, suggesting that instead of solving the issue that has apparently followed humans onto the ship (i.e. over-consumption, wasteful lifestyles) humanity has simply upgraded the solution that was there, not necessarily solving anything, but with all the appearance of productivity.

“Perhaps if I knew them better I should like them better.” John Muir, People and Native Americans in 'My First Summer in the Sierra.'

As someone interested in history, in the environment, in wilderness, conservation, and writing, I am ashamed to say that I just learned about John Muir, the late 19^th century Scottish- American naturalist, last month. From a comic. Muir is famed for petitioning the U.S government for the creation of Yosemite national park, and also for his involvement in the Sierra club and other moves for conserving wilderness in the U.S. I decided to read the only of Muir’s books my library had on offer, My First Summer in the Sierra, to dip into oldey-timey conservation and naturalist writing, hoping to find connections and optimism for movements today.

            It is hard not to feel deeply for the environment as Muir sees it; he admires all life, even the ferocious bears and irritating Douglas squirrel, and laments the very undergrowth that the flock of sheep he accompanies lays waste in its trampling past. It is no surprise then, that he feels deeply the wound capitalism has created between man and the ever-connected and brotherly web of nature he sees before him. This occurs mainly in his observations of Shepherds in California, whom are degraded and exhausted by their economic strife, and may only be driven by hopes of escalating in the capitalist system by saving up to buy a flock of their own. I can think of no better summarizing image than the one Muir paints of Billy, the shepherd he accompanies, who’s clothing becomes entirely coated over time with the greasy, fatty dripping of the lunch he ties to his belt, meaning that “instead of wearing thin [his trousers] wear thick.” Billy has no emotional connection to the sheep, remarking often when one goes astray that he is not paid enough to keep saving them.

            It is thus greatly surprising, considering Muir’s deep-felt empathy for nature and his lamentations about the Arcadian shepherd being broken by American capitalism, to read his shocks and spites for Native Americans, in this era still referred to widely as ‘Indians.’ From the off Muir writes of the feeble and weak ‘Digger Indians,’ who are never specified by tribe, culture or nation, instead just a taxonomic ugliness akin to the South African settler’s naming of the ‘bushman.’ Muir frequently writes of the Indians sustenance on nature, of which he is jealous of as he and his colleagues must rely on deliveries of bread and other supplies which runs dry for an uncomfortable time. He also writes of their skill in living in their environment, as he is startled a few times by the sudden and silent appearance of a Native in their camp. Despite these admirations, he still affords them little acknowledgement for their ingenuities. He remarks on their ragged clothing, their begging for whiskey or tobacco, without really acknowledging the corrupting effect of white capitalist invasion in the same way he affords the white shepherd.

            I am sure there are a number of ways to understand his perception of native Americans, but I find it most hard to digest as a result of his perceived special ‘Scotchness,’ which I feel Muir stresses to tie him stronger to nature within the capitalist systematics of shepherding in California. When commenting on the Californian shepherds ill education, grimy food and overall depressing life, he compares it to the Scottish shepherd, whom he praises alongside the ‘Oriental shepherd’ for maintaining a keen intellect and interest in culture. Muir also retells an event where, in the dead of night, he ‘felt’ that a friend of his was nearby, and in the morning found that his friend was indeed in the valley he felt him to be in, to everyone’s surprise. This is written as being an event of extraordinary ‘Scotch farsightedness.’ I want to believe that, as result of his belief in himself as Scottish and thus different in culture etc. to other Europeans, Muir would understand other cultural uniquenesses and admire them in the same way he would admire a forested valley. I am no great scholar of Muir, but I feel that, between his heightened Scottishness and his flippancy towards the fascinating lives of Indians who understand and admire their environments as much as, if not more, than muir, exists the kind of Celtic, white-supremacist mythologizing that helped spawn various blights to the development of American culture(s) such as the Southern confederacy, which borrowed the very flag design of Scotland for their own, and also the Ku Klux Klan, who borrowed the symbolism of the 'clan' for their own twisted ends. Like I said, I am not great scholar of Muir, and also never knew him personally, but on closer critical reading I have dug up this dull residue of his understanding of the Natives of the wild lands he so greatly admires.

            I have written the above without even dipping into his mentionings of ‘Chinamen,’ some vague myths he recounts of Indian surrenders, and also an event in passing that was of interest to me, wherein he claims to have enjoyed the company of a general of the Florida Seminole wars, one of many wars between white invader and Native Americans.

(The comic that I mentioned is this one: http://noahvansciver.tumblr.com/post/159136532289/a-sequence-on-john-muir-from-my-upcoming-book )

'No Human Is Illegal' Yarl's Wood Protest, December 2016.

          

A short piece about a protest I attended outside Yarl's Wood detention centre, in Bedfordshire.

  Flat land, torn with ploughing and roughly covered in short, sharp scrub, with sudden bursts of fat, ripe, ruby-red rosehips drooping from scraggly post-autumn bushes. Sometimes there was a hedgerow of bare hawthorn bush decorated with rich, purple- red haws. We walked around a rusted fence and over ditches to a tall, dark green metal wall with fencing clad over the top, with Yarl’s Wood detention centre within its perimeter.

            As soon as I saw their hands reaching out and waving through the tiny amount the window could be cracked open, I shed some tears and held back some unexpected sobs. Those symmetrical square windows were the only contact the detainees could have with the two thousand odd people who wanted to reach out and assure them that they were on their side. Outside the window the detainees waved, swirled whatever clothing they could, and held up notes. In some you could see the full image of a woman looking out, and occasionally a Yarl’s Wood employee loom in the room. One window had a note pasted to it, that read, in large green letters, ‘TB.’

            We get to hear from the women trapped inside by a phone hooked up to speakers; a woman waves a reusable shopping bag or laundry bag out the window and claims that this bag held everything she was allowed to take with her. She is understandably angry, desperate for freedom. Another woman, audibly distressed, says she is not getting the correct medication she needs. Another says that outbreaks of tuberculosis and other diseases spreading through the centre, as the medical facilities are sub-standard. Another says that they don’t have access to sanitary products (a speaker from ‘Movement for Justice by any Means Necessary’ says that the detention centre stopped outside organisations from bringing sanitary products, which they defined as ‘consumables’) a Polish woman says she was punched in the throat, slapped in the face, and her legs were twisted. A woman from Trinidad says she lived in Britain for sixteen years, struggling with the ridiculous bureaucratic systems for applying for the right to work, and that she eventually worked with ‘Crisis,’ helping homeless people. Some women who aren’t in Dove block, the block facing the demonstration, are locked into their rooms in other blocks, but manage to call in to say thank you for fighting for us. We hear from Mabel, a woman who has been in the detention centre for two years, who is not allowed to see her seven year old daughter. Women cry for help from the windows.

            The detention centre system in the U.K. is a disgusting anomaly within our culture. The public recoils at horrors in Guantanamo, at war crimes the world over; people continually condemn regimes such as Kim Jung Un’s and rejoice in Fidel Castro’s death, while detention centres exist within out midst, where people are interrogated, tortured, raped, abused, denied their freedom, their human rights, their ability to see their loved ones, basic feeds of the outside world like television; these people suffer in prison-like circumstances, unsentenced, simply for making it to the U.K with hopes of escaping troubles the world over, as many are seeking asylum, or of simply beginning a new phase of life, which white British people afford themselves easily the world over. Many of the detainees originate from ex-British colonies, which would have been flooded with immigration from Europe and America years ago, but as soon as that flow threatens to reverse, it is condemnable, disgusting and a crime.

At four thirty, I had to turn my back on the detention centre, leaving many innocent people trapped in their block. I had the basic right to be able to make my way home, a right you don’t always realise just how much of a luxury it is, as it appears basic, boring, and universal. And yet across the United Kingdom, detainees, who want to work, study, and live in the U.K., wait for their fate to be decided for them, while the little money and possessions are confiscated and their families await for verdict.

Just before leaving, the police boarded every bus ‘looking for someone.’ The protest had a slight police presence, just a few police liaison officers, but officers swarmed the roads and blocked either end for public access. Whether or not it was intended, their intrusion into the busses waiting to leave left an unwarranted affirmation of power and control. We could leave but for the grace of their mercy; those in the detention facility were not given such rights.

During the journey back, the coach overtakes a large red van with ‘chevaux/ horses/ pferde’ written on the back in white. In a small compartment lit up within the van, a horse turns its large, beautiful head to look through its window, out at us.