Louise Taylor – A Changing World

Louise Taylor – PhD Candidate with School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queens University Belfast

YOU

You are another me and I see you well

I wince at your inaction, your inertia, your intangible legacy of non-plussed, nonchalance

Your mysteriously, vibrantly, deafeningly silent, non- participation in anarchic anti-apocalyptic, protests for life preservation

Share your secrets, share your wisdom, bestow me with your disconnection, resurrection and inane, rumblings and fumblings of non-love

I raucously rage and cognitively riot at your carelessness, your carefreeness, your blissful, wistful ignorance

You breathe, I breathe

You bleed, I bleed

You die, I die

I see YOU clearly and not at all

Business as usual or despair all around

We are each other and we are dangerously alive.

I am mad, many know it, few disbelieve it and I wholeheartedly embrace it

This madness is my haven, because the sea of sentiments are swishing, swirling and unleashing a wildness that only a mother can contain

My mother – the earth

She holds me

She scolds me

She guides ME home

“Who?” she challenges “Could be sane at a time like this?”

Let the witches cackle

Let the unruly women rise like the swelling, pulsating, ravenous, furious seas

Let the emotions explode forth and allow the oppressed, battered, bruised and beaten feminine to rip through my mind, my body and my soul

We need it now more than ever- we need mad warrior women

We need maternal wrath

I am me, I am you, I am us

And this is wrong!

“Disturb the comfortable” the priest declared in our earth heating meeting

The goosebumps made their presence known, to show me the way

We must disrupt, disobey, alarm and disarm

We must impede, confront, alter, revolutionise and transcend

The earth is not in danger, we are

The earth will persevere, we won’t

The earth has been whispering and now she wails- like a banshee she is wailing

Eventually she will weep.

She warned us, she kept telling us, she tried to save us, but we didn’t listen

We kept raping, pillaging, murdering, hoarding and rewarding ourselves for harming our mother

There is no US when we keep doing this

Who killed us in the end?

They did

Maybe Gaia has sent us to our rooms for a reason?

By Louise Taylor, PhD student in Politics

When I think about COVID and the past year, I think of humanity being put on the naughty step. I envisage mother earth, Gaia or whoever you associate with the planet as sending us all to our rooms. We have been asked (on several occasions now) to go home and think about what we have done. I realise most people won’t think like that, but I enjoy this little fantasy. This image tickles me. The idea that all of this may be punitive makes sense to me. The reason I see it that way is because I am a little disappointed with my species, I am an environmentalist. And hence why I think a few restrictions and being shaken up out of our consumerist slumber would do us no harm.

Whilst the naughty step analogy is my light hearted way of interpreting and analysing events through an ecocritical lens, I am aware this playfulness could be considered insensitive. However, humour has always been a powerful and quite healthy coping and defense mechanism. COVID is a horror and what it has done to many is tragic.

Tragedies and catastrophes change people, they change society, they change collective behaviour. A pandemic has shaped the world and dominated events and whilst I am aware that change is inevitable; rapid, global change is alarming. Change at an accelerated and often uncomfortable rate can devastate and destroy. For many the discomfort has been regarding the uncertainty and the element of not having any control. For me the comfort has been in the uncertainty and the element of not having any control. The truth is I enjoy change, I actually embrace it and most certainly do not fear it.

My year, both on and off the naughty step, has been used to do what you are supposed to do whilst sat on it. I have used these experiences to reflect and think and to try and be a better person. As a third year PhD student, thinking is certainly not alien to me, but really thinking about my life and my choices was unavoidable and it pushed me to dig deep and be better.

I did many things during this past year as a result of COVID. I rekindled my relationship with my children’s father by taking responsibility and swallowing a lot of pride. I moved school to HAPP to complete my PhD whilst staying true to my beliefs and my academic preferences. And I went to a Psychologist and got assessed for Autism/ ASD and finally received a diagnosis in my forties. None of these things were easy, all of these things have helped me move closer to reaching my potential and living a life I feel content with. Would these things have happened without COVID? I very much doubt it.

The truth is pre-COVID I was busy, stressed and getting everything done. I was on the conveyor belt. Children, career, write thesis, go out, avoid discomfort, exist. COVID put the brakes on that life and forced things to slow and to change. COVID changed the world and COVID changed me. It was up to me how COVID was going to do that and I’m grateful for the lessons and the enforced reflection. I needed it, I think the world did too.