Ungovernable softness
The necessity of refusal
There are geese. A lot of geese. This time of year the Trent river belongs to them, their hefty monochrome bodies sprawling along the foreshore, footpaths transformed into minefields of their neon green shit.
Every morning on my walk I watch as they steadfastly hold their ground. A flock of 10, 20, 30 geese lounging across the footpath that traces the curve of the river, entirely unbothered by humans trying to hit a personal best on their 5k or walk their cocker-doodles.
Every morning I watch people leave the path and cut a wide arc around the flock, skirting deep into the grass verge as the geese give them a lazily watchful side eye. I am one of them. I learned the hard way that a goose who doesn’t want to move will simply not be moved. There will be hissing.
I wonder what would it be like to claim this level of refusal in my own life.
I wonder how I could become ungovernable and uncompliant. Become unoptimised in a hyper-productive world. The goose on the path that changes the way things work.
In the past this desire to rebel has come in the shape of riot. As a baby feminist punk in the 90’s, a dirty petticoat-wearing riot grrl, the fight response was the way I learned to say no to systems I refused to comply with. Aggression. I learned to scream and shout, bear my sharp teeth, push back and (metaphorically) smash windows.
There’s power there for sure. A catharsis and a reclamation – especially for someone raised female where compliance was the neighbour of safety. That fight response serves well. The problem comes when it’s the only form of resistance we have to hand. That violence and hardness replicating, in our own bodies, the colonial capitalism we’re resisting. There needs to be a yin to the yang.
So what if we began with NO?
No to our attention being scattered to the wind by the attention economy.
No to leaving our bodies’ needs out of the equation of our life.
No to replicating the playbook of a system that was never built for us.
No to frantic energy and urgency.
No to numbness and exhaustion as a default setting.
No to the hyper vigilance of bracing for the next fight.
What if resistance included laying our soft bodies down and simply saying “I’d rather not”? What could emerge in the space that refusal creates? What if we made our whole lives a protest, not with a constant fight but by choosing to embody the soft, supported, nurtured world we wish existed?
Basically I’m wondering - what if we channeled the geese? Not afraid of a fight but also capable of redirecting the flow of life by resting in the way of normal.
ps – Want to spend summer experimenting with goose-y soft resistance? I’m running Summer of Rest in August and this is exactly what we’ll be doing.
Think of it like a summer camp of radical rest and regeneration for burnt out creatives, tired change-makers, exhausted witches, and queers with noisy brains. If that sounds like you, I’d love for you to join us.
Snippets and bits:
My love has recently re-opened the doors to her group coaching program Emerge. Joeli is wildly good at what she does. She’s a coach without all the coach vibes, y’know? She has a knack for lovingly calling you on your bullshit, asking miraculously astute questions that cut through the noise, and holding a space where you can learn to belong to yourself, shamelessly.
I’m entirely obsessed with Smith & Sun’s (literally) magical jewellery
After devouring the first two books of Juno Dawson’s HMRC trilogy last year, I can’t wait to dive into book three this weekend
This is Body Magic, a letter on embodiment, liberation, and magic.
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