I think we’re all agreed that another world isn’t just possible, it’s imperative. So what is that other world to be? That’s the main question, damn it. And there are flickers of light all over our world as people ask that question and try to answer it in their own, creative way.
That’s what we’re doing here. One more little flicker of light to add to the others, in hope that something catches and the entire landscape gets suddenly illuminated in a blaze of transformation.
So one question leads to another. We’re asking questions here in the quarterly magazine, and we’re inviting anyone who asks an imaginative question to join in.
Also, we’ve started a Facebook page, The Arcadia Project, where anyone can play with any kind of transformative idea. Or share an idea they’ve found somewhere else, from a light that maybe shines a little brighter than the ones surrounding it.
For example, Rose Jermusyk, who this issue shared “The Question and The Answer,” also contributed to the Facebook page an article from Medium, an important look at how visionary fishermen are changing our relationship to the sea.
It’s a story. It’s a real story, but I think it’s important that we all remember that real stories start with stories of the imagination. If it can’t be imagined, it can’t happen. And that is where we come in.
It’s never ‘just’ imagination. Imagination forms our reality; we forget that, we have forgotten that, to our immense cost. We have built ourselves a little over rational cage, and then bricked in the walls, and we wonder—where is the door? And where, once we find the door, is the Key?
We’re joining in searching for them both, because if there’s one thing everyone who ever joined in the EAP conversation believes, it’s that there’s a whole unexplored world out there, one where we can become something rich and strange.
In this issue, don’t miss my interview with social activist and poet Walidah Imarisha, about the function of visionary fiction in that process of Becoming.
As usual, Brian Griffith imagines a better world is possible—with animals, our partners on the planet.
Ellen Morris Prewitt wrestles with the question of Death and finds another kind of partner there, as well.
I do some wrestling on my own, about why Fantasy is truly important—being tired of hearing from so many unthinking people that ‘fantasy’ is so boring, so ‘not real life’. Fantasy is where our lives begin, and should we not be careful of that beginning?
Start fantasizing. And welcome back.
(PS: For you married cooks, if you want to read about how another world is actually possible, check out how my Dear Husband has, after 25 years, suddenly shown an interest in cooking mussels. You see—miracles do happen…)