I crush the milk carton, it’s plastic

I know I have failed

The thing to do is to screw the cap back on, after the air is expelled

It’s been over 18 months now,

I even filmed making oat milk

But, I haven’t made it, again

This way the cap and the carton stay together through the sorting.

But oats don’t taste half as nice as nuts

and nuts are expensive.

I think of my crushed carton on its journey to the recycling centre where it will be sorted.

For more than a year I could have avoided making this waste.

I could have made oat milk each week

and had nut milk on special days.

Will the plastic be recycled – where is its end of life? I sense doom, as I’m told recycling plastic isn’t a solution.

For a treat we could have almond milk,

my ‘milk’ friends some in surprise,

some in envy or is it guilt? will smirk and grin.

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I want to bind the idea that we are all human, our lives with the same beating hearts and breathing lungs, we all fear, we all will die; To bind that idea to the fact that our home, the place where we grow, that nurtures and provides for us, is shared, not only shared now but beyond now. Far beyond.

How do we bind ourselves together in common purpose to defend our home?

When beyond certain simple factors we are all so different? – in fact quite uniquely so.

Where is the thread? The link of connection – Are they feelings of Love / compassion / guilt / confusion and of hope – Are they strategies and visions? Are they family – perhaps time or seasonal rhythms, stories and ancient ways  – is it science and measurement – or progress, but where to?

I was trying to imagine the things that everyone, every single individual in the world has experienced – considering our diversity and inequality, what is it beyond being homo sapien? Our lives don’t even start the same, ‘genetic difference’ will see to that. Would it be a fact? known to all, I doubt it, a feeling – but which one? and when? As love can be all types of love through the passage of time.

The only thing I can figure out, is a moment at our birth, it has to be that first contact, the touch by another person – when we were all held – our heads and tiny bodies supported out into this world – by another person. Unknown to us then and made be still – a nurse, a friend, father – perhaps our mother. For a short instance we depended entirely on that person – that support which cradled us into ‘being’.

So think back to that – although in truth you can’t – But still imagination is powerful – We can imagine just how vulnerable and needy we were. To me we all need to place ourselves back there and then to look to another person to be our support – and should we all do that, for each other, to be interdependent, if we could do that, our trust would be fearless. Our love will have to be radical.