Bramble's Best: 2025

or Painting Pretty Pictures of a Dying World

“I’ll let you be in my dreams, if I can be in yours”

Bob Dylan

Talkin’ World War III Blues

Greetings from deep in the heart of an empire in decline. I have been unable to write a clear update to this Almanac for the past couple weeks, largely on account of an increase in time-sensitive winter labor, seasonal depression, and a lack of inspiration. Truth be told, nothing much has changed on those fronts, but in preparation for another year of oppression and humiliation, I thought it might be helpful to offer you, dear reader, if not myself, some buoy of hope in these darkening currents.

I’ve watched my country consume itself my whole life. From time to time, when this self-inflicted cycle of extraction eats its way too close to the spine, I’ve watched it strike out at other nations. Each and every time this happens, it is clearly in pursuit of hydrocarbon energy. I cannot dress this up as a piece of thoughtful prose for y’all. Oh, there’s suitable, if well-trodden metaphors; we are subjects of a cannibal state, an addict state, a state that has entered a murder/suicide pact with the biotic world. I don’t want to sound paranoid, but our planet is hemmed in by a handful of physical/chemical/biological boundaries, and the world’s leading military-industrial power is thrashing up against those boundaries like some injured beast in its death throes. Do not, for a moment, assume that this will work itself out, or that cooler heads will prevail.

Words are as cheap and plentiful as oil these days. For three years, I’ve added to the increase of cheap and plentiful words on this platform, and I stand by a good two-thirds of them. Why watch the world die if I can’t paint a pretty picture of it? I’ve long wanted to depict something different– a world engaged in solutions, repair, and regeneration. It has felt important to me that I do my best to illustrate a viable alternative, but I haven’t quite done so, yet. My experience, not to mention my intellect, are limited to what I can see from 700-something feet above sea level in rural Northeast Missouri. I can dream up utopias all day long, but I do not know what essential spark causes some folks to strive for a better world, and others to actively destroy this one.

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It is the first sunny day in nearly two weeks here. The ground is bare of snow and beginning to thaw into a muddy, dormant mire. The still, sleeping thatch of the prairie stands empty of birds, without wind, or so much as a flicker of movement. If I were to take the proper route, I could walk down to the Long Branch Creek, climb over fallen logs and low, icy pools, from confluence to confluence, deep in the cleft of the Mississippi watershed, going back in time or forward toward some potential future without humans. This is my strange, comforting daydream, though I have worked years at fighting my most misanthropic impulses. I sometimes wonder if the world’s most earnest do-gooders are motivated out of some form of shame, or if that’s just me.

I do believe that we are capable of righting our course, even without the support of the world’s most powerful people. It’s at least a possibility, a game of chance whether or not they take everyone down with themselves. Recent actions by this crumbling empire have been violent and scary, but they do hint at a kind of animal desperation. Still, we can’t merely rebuild after a collapse, we need to lay the foundation for a sane and safe future now. I’m not sure what my value as a writer is, in that larger project. I know I can paint a pretty picture, even of a dying world, but that isn’t enough. I’ve made some attempts to describe a strategy for change, but I’m afraid of being wrong; in a world with so many cheap ideas and cheaper words used to describe them, I don’t know that mine are helpful enough.

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I haven’t made a New Year’s Resolution this year, though I could stand to improve myself in many areas of my life. Perhaps I can resolve to do more than paint pretty pictures of a dying world, or an impossible one. When I began writing this Almanac, it had been my intention to merely stay in the practice of writing, to compel myself to do the work steadfastly, no matter what. I didn’t believe it would become my main form of livelihood. It has, and gratitude for your support is in order. But I’ve been unable to write for two weeks now. It happens I suppose, but I’m not clear on how to break through yet.

It’s as if I’m standing down in the still grass, halfway between my home and the distant, sleeping creekbed, where I can finally shut my eyes and return to a world that maybe never existed, but I don’t know where to go. The earth is still hard with ice, though a thin layer of sliding mud is forming in the bare wounds. Maybe the words will return. This world needs the right words, and only the right ones.

The very reason I began writing on this platform was to reinforce my practice with external pressure from an audience. I’ve been surprised and amazed by how much this little Almanac means to some of y’all, which is precisely what makes writer’s block so hard. If I felt truly alone here, sitting in front of the flashing cursor on this blank document, I’d have turned the computer off and walked down the hill awhile, but I am ultimately among you, and in your debt, dear reader.

And in a way, that’s the problem with Substack– it reduces writing to content and creates competition for scarce economic resources. In other words, it is a mirror of the larger, dysfunctional economy we are hostage to. A person might feel forced to write when they’re uninspired, and the world doesn’t need any more uninspiration. I suspect things will shift for me, that the freeze will lead to a thaw, that the sedentary ice clouding my view will begin dripping down the eves in due time. And I resolve to write something that matters this year.

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As for that buoy of hope? I don’t know. The best I can offer at this juncture is advice— watch your corner. Do what you’re good at. Take care of your neighbors, even if they suck. And do more than demand a better world… build it.

I got a lot of new readers this last year, so until the time is right and my words return, I’m doing the lazy thing and re-posting what I think were my best, most essential pieces from the past 12 months or so. Many of them were written in more optimistic times– may we all recapture that urge to save the world and be strategic about it in the process.

For now, here’s my most “optimistic” picks from the past year. Thanks for looking.

Sincerely,

BB

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