Evocative objects
Scanning notes from events I’ve helped organise, I came across this list — almost a collaborative prose poem — of evocative objects that participants brought, sharing feelings on our climate predicaments.
Discarded beach toy: disposable child’s plaything; plastic pollution; gun. Irresponsible use of the industrial machine.
Broken angel, dug out of a garden: broken wings, hands pressed together, human, more-than-human. Made of earth, then consigned back to it.
Passport: emblem of freedom, colonialism, travel, capitalism. Need to change our view of ‘rights’.
Pair of flip-flops: a casual present, but accumulating meaning over years. Complexity and circularity.
Wooden box and pack of cards: cards made by a grandfather captured in war and held in solitary confinement; the box made by an enemy POW he then guarded in peace. Together: forgiveness and reconciliation; hard times and hope.
Rachel Carson’s Into the Sea Wind: other animal voices, and a view onto northern seas. Interconnectedness.
A photograph from India’s 1899 Famine: the larger horror we’re trying to avoid as the CO2 rises.
Flying fish recipe: a Caribbean national dish, they used to be big as trout, now the size of large sardines because of overfishing.
And as seasons change the harvest moves.