for The Guardian (UK), June 6, 2012
I create my future fantasy city everyday by not doing a lot of important things…starting with not using any ‘products’ before not showering in the morning (because we don’t need as many as we think we do), then later in the day I don’t drive my car to shop at all of the truly shitty soulless exploitive toxic anonymous chain retail establishments where I don’t buy all of the things that I really don’t need and won’t last anyway, and then for the food that I can’t grow myself at home I don’t buy products from animals (mistreated for my sustenance and pleasure under circumstances I don’t know, at industrial farms engineered to feed the carnivorous urban masses), and later in the afternoon enjoying the outdoors I won’t rake up and remove all of my beautiful organic matter and leaf liter scattered on the ground that will be piled up to house happy healthy organisms before decomposing into more fertile land that will feed me, then I won’t mow the grasses which are just allowed to do their own thing, perhaps evolving into a pollinator and avian sanctuary meadow, and that dead tree over there? I’m not taking it down – it’s going to stay right where it is, for woodpeckers to find, creating hollows for all of the native cavity-dwelling species who used to live here, and with whom I’d like to start to share the city again, and finally at night when it’s time to go to bed, I don’t leave even the faintest glimmer of light anywhere inside or out, promoting a lunar-lit landscape, the way we first found it.