Tell everyone that the future will be radiant and beautiful. Love it, strive toward it, work for it, bring it nearer, transfer into the present as much as you can from it.

Chernyskevsky, What is to be done*

.

The Garden At The End Of The World

We are together in a garden. It is, perhaps, the garden at the end of the world. Or this is how
it feels to those of us who are there, at least. We can hear/ smell/ taste the destruction
of the rest of the world around us, of all the other gardens that have been destroyed,
everything green and bright and luscious, everything tended to with care, collapsing
into grey, swallowed into nothingness. We tell ourselves this is our own fate
too, and that this fate is looming closer
and closer.
And yet.

We are together in a garden. And in the garden everything is green and bright and luscious.
Amongst the bright green lusciousness are things like joy and dew drops, little seeds and
big ideas, mishaps, misgivings, giggles and raspberries and a shared delight of leaves
in autumn that crunch under feet. On the days where the grey looms close by,
these little things are easy to overlook, end up forgotten, sights focussed
instead on moody and darkening skies, ever-present,
enveloping the garden in a shroud of hopelessness.
Those days, we feel powerless.
We tell ourselves that
there is nothing
to be done.
And yet.

We are together in a garden. And together, we tend to the garden. We find joy
in dew drops, we plant seeds and give them everything they need to flourish,
to be green, to be bright, to be luscious, we break things and cry and fight
and get angry and fix it again, turn it into something new, plant
another seed. We feel/ smell/ taste the burst of a freshly
picked berry on our tongues, and under our feet
autumn leaves crunch, and in the air
are sounds of delight,
and above us
the sky opens up
and pushes the grey away.
On those days, it is
the little things that
make us whole.
Yet.

At the end of the world, if we tend only to our own garden, nothing and none of us will survive. We tell each other that all our gardens will be radiant and beautiful (luscious, green, bright) we love it we strive towards it we work for it we bring it nearer and we transfer into the present as much as we can from it. Spring will come again. We let go of our impending fate, hold dearly the little things, try to make ourselves whole together. We tend to each other as though it will end, we tend to each other as though it will not. We tell ourselves there is always something that can be done. It is today and

in the gardens

we are together.

*Chernyshevsky, quoted in Ghodsee, K.R. (p.8) Everyday utopia: Better ways of living equally. Vintage. (2024)

Ellie Williams grew up in West Yorkshire, then moved to Scotland to study and now considers Glasgow her second home. Inspired by the people she meets as a youth and community worker, Ellie writes across ages and genres, using subverted and hybrid forms to confront the realities of late capitalism and to celebrate the power and joy of collective resistance.