[coordinates: in bed in Oaxaca]
Today’s missive is an experiment in sensing together with you, fair readers.
sentinel (n.)
1570s, "a soldier stationed as a guard;" 1580s, "watch or guard kept by a soldier stationed for that purpose;" from French sentinelle (16c.), from Italian sentinella "a sentinel." OED writes that "No convincing etymology of the Italian{ word has been proposed," but perhaps it is (via a notion of "perceive, watch"), from sentire "to hear," from Latin sentire "feel, perceive by the senses" (see sense (n.)). As an adjective by 1650s.
Sentinels are as useful as they are watchful. Sentinels who have gone to sleep are bad, but sentinels who are sleepwalking are worse still. They appear to be awake so we don’t notice that they’re not noticing.
The media writes so many stories and our feeds are so full it’s easy to forget that they don’t cover everything. It’s work to remember that the size of what cover is a few orders of magnitude smaller than what they don’t.
Even if/when we don’t have good sentinels, we still have good senses.
We, you and me, have to do better. I posit it’s not enough to rely on sentinels anymore. I sense the big pillars shifting, but not (yet) in any detail. I want to be like an elephant who hears the vibrations of my other kin walking across the land through the soles of my feet. I need your help to do so.
So then, I ask this – what signals are you aware of that are outside of what’s on your newsfeed? What are you or your friends aware of that indicates how the world is really doing? It could be observations about the health of nearly anything from individual mental health, agriculture or nature in your part of the tierra, economic trends, how many fights are happening at work… really anything that stands out as “oh damn, I’ve never seen this before.” Please put them in the comments so we can all benefit.
I’ll start with the observation that prompted this post.
I pay closer attention to Egypt than most, owing to spending six weeks there last spring. I now have friends and colleagues there. I went to pay a colleague and learned that Wise has suspended transactions. The exchange rate has dropped 42% since they unfixed the rate earlier this year.
I will offer no interpretation, as that’s not the point. I’ll leave us all to take in the data that’s presented and come to our own conclusions. Right now I’m just wanting to widen my bubble and see what happens.
Look forward to hearing what your senses have to report in the comments.
With love from Oaxaca,
Cris and Team Dragon
Note: I took a long time off of a regular publishing schedule to process the deaths of my mama, my housemate at my home base in Oregon, and my biz partner’s sister. I’m not now returning to a regular schedule either but will pop in as I have substance to report.
Anecdotally, I’ve read that there has been a rise in Catholic exorcism requests in recent years.
Also, receiving myriad signals indicating widespread economic hardship and difficulty in my circles.