Otherness; 2022
It's been 10 years since I stayed for 6 weeks on Darnet Island, and wrote a book about it. I've now revamped and reissued the book, complete with lots of pinhole and colour photos made there, and in the wider Medway Estuary. The book is in PDF format. Pay what you want for it via this 'Donate' button.
Your email should show up on the Paypal notice to me, and when it does, I'll send you a link to the PDF. If there's more than a 48 hour delay in between you paying and me sending, please email me on drwise100@gmail.com and let me know, thanks.
If you'd like to view the hour long film I made of the stay, it's here.
Please share this around if you think it's worth something, I rely on word of mouth. Thanks.
For a taste of the tone of this new version of 'Otherness', here's the preface.
"10 years ago I was sitting at camp on Darnet Island, consumed by thoughts of freedom. They feature heavily in the original ‘Otherness’ book. A decade later, notions of ‘freedom’ are always accompanied by phrases like ‘obligation to the earth’ and ‘responsibility to my community, and the land’. In this respect, at least, I have seen some personal advancement.
The pressures I felt then have increased over the past 10 years. There are more people than the land can sustainably feed. More people voting the wrong way because they’ve a narrow view of what they stand to lose. More people trying to sell us goods and governments that we don’t want or need, and misusing some of the finest words and ideas ever uttered in an effort to do so. More people trying to teach us faulty or outdated ideas. More people trying to control us for their own ends. More people ‘just doing their job’ or ‘obeying orders’. More artists and survivors scattering their trauma far and wide. More people struggling to see a way to live; how to grow food, or make clothes, or build shelter? More people being absurdly positive as an antidote to the traumas inflicted upon us by social media and globalization. More people laying in wait to ambush us when we’re not right or left wing enough - or hysterical enough - for them.
I try to live small these days. Whilst I unwrap the layers of racism, sexism, mental laziness, and general nonsense that the patriarchy has swaddled me in I try to limit the damage I do. Try not to work destructive jobs, engage in destructive pastimes, or be lulled into ways of thinking that seem different but are merely the same old stuff in disguise. As during the summer of 2012, I now spend much of my time outdoors. Running, walking, reading, painting, birdwatching, learning about nature, and volunteering at the local botanical gardens. Trying to live the life that's best for both myself and the world, and also the life that my words lay claim to.
I’ve been asked about the odd use of capital letters in the book. The simple reason is that I felt that capital letters could be used to indicate importance, and since nature was of prime importance to me during my Darnet stay (and still is) it’s nature that gets capitalized.
I’ve published this as a PDF because it’s my understanding that they can be read more easily and widely than EBooks. I decided against a physical book because I don’t have access to a printer who offers recycled paper, and anything other is beyond justification for me. It takes at least 10 years to grow trees for paper and at least 10 years for a forest to become diverse, so in reality even a sustainably managed forest can’t provide the diversity we need to survive. Some books - such as Silent Spring or The Practice of the Wild - might well be worth the cost, but I don’t believe this one is. When I can locate a printer again that uses recycled paper, I may go back to physical books. For now though, it’s a PDF available through my website.
I’ve edited the manuscript quite heavily. Originally the idea was to reprint it as it appeared in 2012. Many people have asked for that. But my growing sense of responsibility means I can’t reprint something that I'm now suspect of. What we write - the ideas we drop to the soil to make up future humus - is important. I don’t want to re-record words if I feel they don’t add something healthy to the soil, just for the sake of keeping the document as it once was.
I was flailing around during my 6 weeks on Darnet, rejecting the modern way of being but with no real plan of what to replace it with. I was too eager to ignore my role as ancestor, and to appear literary by emulating Borges, Kerouac, Chatwin, or others, in disguised ways. But there are passages that have stood the test of the past decade, at least to my eye of 2022, and it’s modified versions of those that I include here. I dare say many of them will mortify me in 2033. That’s how it is if you grow, I find.
In the years following my Darnet stay I’ve travelled widely, moved to Canada to get married, got divorced, became vegan, took up long distance running, won the Canadian National Championship 24 hour race twice, gave up winning when I understood what it cost me and others, and after 6 years in Toronto have now settled down in a city called Hamilton.
I never saw Juno again. I heard she found a new home with an elderly couple who had all day to walk her. If she's still alive she'll be 13 now. Not quite as lively a Dog as the one I knew, probably, but I'm sure her eyes are just as keen and bright. Fires that fierce don't tend to fade.
Note; It’s my belief that almost all art, this book included, is like a Trojan Horse. It carries the artist's trauma and ignorance as well as any beauty, insight or talent we have, and it smuggles all of it into your safe places, where you are most vulnerable. Your living rooms, your garden, wherever you chose to connect with it. Many of us are going to record our mistakes without knowing they’re mistakes and often they’ll walk into your heart hand in hand with any beauty we might offer, so perhaps bear that in mind when you view this book, or anything that any other human produces."
