Bill Gates, wild horses and the legacy of our passage through the world

Hey Sam,

this morning at the farmer's market (still open) the woman who sold me olives said Bill Gates engineered Coronavirus as a covert way to microchip humanity. She didn't explain the connection between our current state of lock down and the microchipping, but I think it had something to do with the 5G network. The olive woman herself was not a believer in the theory, she was just passing it on as an example of how stupid her friends are. The olives, incidentally, were $12 and delicious.

We used to go to the market every Saturday as a family. You’d play on the playground, I’d get the food, your Mum would buy the gozleme, we’d catch up with friends. Currently I head there on my own, enter the market from one side and shuffle along with everyone else in the same direction, following the arrows and exiting next to where I came in. A quick squirt of hand sanitiser once I’m back in the safety of the car.

At home now, I’ve unpacked the shopping and I’m sitting down at my new desk, which was only $20 on Gumtree and which you believe is partly yours to use. I'm determined it's not, it’s my writing nook, which I’m trying to use productively but right now I'm listening to you through the wall as you build a submarine from bits of cardboard with your Mum. I want to block the sound of you out even though I'm writing this letter to you. That contradiction probably goes a long way to explaining parenting.

It’s become a weekly thing to share conspiracy theories with the olive woman. She’s from Byron Bay and all her friends are obviously a bit radical. She told me a hundred people were involved in a protest against the 5G network in Mullumbimbi. When she shares her friend’s theories I shake my head and laugh but between you and me, I don't disbelieve the theories themselves. I’m laughing out of companionship. Secretly I like to keep my options open.

My indecision might be a weakness of character, I still haven't decided, but at the moment I don’t think there’s any theory that shouldn’t at least be considered. I have a few of my own to share with you, even if I haven’t mentioned them to the olive woman yet.

I think that nature has released this virus to make us shut up and listen.

And it’s working. There's no doubt the natural world is bouncing back. Not surprising either. If you were the natural world wouldn't you like us all to just bugger off and stay home sometimes? A few years ago I visited Chernobyl in the Ukraine, the nuclear power plant that melted down and spread a cloud of radiation across Europe in the 80’s. It was part of a research grant I got to make a show about quarantine, which seems ironic now, but that’s not my point. In Chernobyl, and especially Pripyat, the local city that was evacuated, nature has reclaimed everything.

There are moose, wild horses, boar, red fox, raccoon dogs, Eurasian lynx, deer, beaver, owls, brown bear, lynx, and wolves roaming the empty streets. It's a kind of natural paradise and weirdly peaceful. It occurred to me then that Mother Nature appears to like it when we get our arses kicked.

What's on my mind this morning, as I sip a cup of tea and listen to you through the wall, is the legacy of our passage through this world. Another weakness of character I have is that I need to construct something positive out of chaos. If we construct theories that mean we're all screwed it pretty much makes me feel like we're all screwed and that leads me to a state of inaction. If I am going to create theories out of the state of the world, they won't involve Bill Gates and the microchipping of humanity. A theory is a creative act that fabricates a future and personally I prefer to make futures I want you to see you inhabiting. Positive acts.

Never before have we all just stopped like this. The whole world, all of humanity with time to reflect on what we do next.

I hear you through the wall laughing with your Mum, that deep throaty, dirty laugh you have. It always makes me smile.

I sit back on my stool, take a sip of tea and feel it pass my lips. In doing so the tea becomes a part of me. Something that was outside me is now a part of my body. It’s a kind of miraculous act I am performing and I am humbled by it. I breathe out and that bit of me goes back out into the world, returning the favour.

In Chernobyl there is always the invisible threat of radiation. It creates a hyper awareness of your environment because the thing that might sicken you, even kill you, could be anywhere and you wouldn’t even know. But that becomes part of a state of peace, an understanding that our place on this planet, even the planet itself, is fragile.

My life. My breath. My acts in the landscape of time. They carve a small valley in the rock, a place where water flows, and time collects.

Love, Ragnar