Changing the World one Nervous System at a Time

by Monica Corish

Thrutopias deal with complex, multi-systemic change. It’s hard to cover more than a few aspects of this in a poem or short fiction. This month’s contribution dips beneath the surface to the heart knowing which runs alongside theory and from which wise praxis flows. When so much is drastically out of balance it speaks to the homeostatic healing of heart, mind and body within nature. Is it thrutopian? I think it’s one of the keys. In any case it’s beautiful. Would love to know your thoughts in the comments.

Changing the World one Nervous System at a Time
– Deb Dana

i 	Seven Weeks Post Positive

Time was, I swam in the flow.
All winter, all summer, arm over agile arm, 
the sea cleaving to my touch, an underwater world 
of sand and light and skitterings, a crab, a sprat, 
strands of waving kelp, and out there, somewhere, 
the humpbacks still humming
their bone-thrumming, resonant song. 

I swim fast.
My heart races, I gasp for breath,  
it takes hours for my pulse to settle –
snips of viral RNA are blocking streams, 
diverting flow, the damaged world is in my bones –
the logged forest, the homeless bat, the interspecies jump, 
the bustling wet market, the cough, the sneeze, 
the intercontinental flight, the ventilator, 
the funeral pyre.

I am one of the lucky ones. 
Surely I am one of the lucky ones? 
This will pass, I will not be like my neighbour, 
her young heart damaged, maybe for life. 
She stands still while the world moves on, 
logging forests, burning carbon, 
jetting in planes, eager to be elsewhere, to forget, 
to act as if that pesky trouble had never been,
those years of lockdown and mask and argument,
those months of holy silence.

Some people cannot forget. 
They are the canaries in the coalmine of the biosphere.
A warning has been stitched through their bones:
The seams of the earth are on fire.

ii	Beyond Consolation

I am unmoored from my life. My body is a stranger, I’m too hot, I’m too cold, my energy’s unreliable, my heart races, my blood pressure dips and rises, wobbly as a toddler.
I have a good day. I do too much (it doesn’t feel like too much at the time). 
The next day, I am a weeping mess, a bawling child, sobbing in my husband’s arms. A storm has blown in from mid-Atlantic. I can find no shelter. The storm is in me and I am the storm, pouring tears, thundering waves, leaden clouds, lightning rage. 
One wrinkle in my brain tries to hold on to a life-raft. This will pass, this is the virus, this outsized grief and terror for the future. But it is useless. I am swept away. 
And then it is gone. There is sunlight, dappled light. Clouds come and go, my feet touch the ground, my body is my own. 
Until the next time.

iii	At Thirteen Months, My Novel of the Good Future Falters and Dies 

hope is a desert,
I am a lightning struck tree –
sit down in the shade

iv 	A Hut at the Edge of the Village

“When I arrived here, I became disordered because I was in a disordered country. So I had to wait for three days, until I came back into the Tao, the natural order of things. And then naturally the rain came.”
The story of the rainmaker, as told to Carl Jung

The dream of the rainmaker is not heroic. 
It is the blue of fallen rain become azure damselfly, 
morning glory, the flight of a kingfisher. 
It is turquoise-cerulean silk, 
a marvellous wing-backed armchair, 
a throne of rest, a haven-home
(out of the swing of the sea). 
It is not future, nor hope, nor tomorrow. 
It is here, looking out at ever-changing green. 
It is learning to love a hut at the edge of the village, 
to listen for the birdsong of the Tao. 
Now. 
This wounded, wonderful world, 
my awkward body, my altered self, 
this window, this view, this breath.
A blue ribbon-marker in a notebook of dreams. 

Monica Corish is an award-winning writer of poetry, short stories and memoir, and an experienced Amherst Method certified writing group leader. Her debut novel ‘LeafLight Moon – a novel of prehistoric Ireland received two prizes at the recent CAP awards in Dublin.