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Queer ecology asks us to embrace the porous, to eliminate boundaries between self and nature, and to celebrate a diversity within our landscapes that can help us grow collectively and harmoniously. In this new relationship with nature, one embodied in pleasure, queer power, joy, kinship, one can find an intimacy that is erotic, generative and inclusive. It’s what Donna Haraway was alluding to, when she wrote in When Species Meet (2008): ‘To be in love means to be worldly, to be in connection with significant otherness and signifying others, on many scales, in layers of locals and globals, in ramifying webs.’ Or what Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, in their introduction to Queer Ecologies (2010), refer to as being ‘disruptive’ of heteronormative approaches.

Different wavelengths of light do exist independently of us but they only become colours inside our bodies. Colour is ultimately a neurological process whereby photons are detected by light-sensitive cells in our eyes, transformed into electrical signals and sent to our brain, where, in a series of complex calculations, our visual cortex converts them into “colour”.Most experts now agree that colour, as commonly understood, doesn’t inhabit the physical world at all but exists in the eyes or minds of its beholders. They argue that if a tree fell in a forest and no one was there to see it, its leaves would be colourless – and so would everything else. To put it another way: there is no such thing as colour; there are only the people who perceive it.This is why no two people will ever see exactly the same colours. Every person’s visual system is unique and so, therefore, are their perceptions.

Nog drastischer waren de zorghervormingen van het tweede kabinet-Rutte (VVD en PvdA). Zorg moest decentraal geregeld worden. Gemeentes werden tien jaar geleden verantwoordelijk en moesten het zo organiseren dat minder mensen in de dure opvang terecht zouden komen, en meer mensen thuis – ‘ambulant’ in jargon – zouden worden behandeld. Dit bleek een verkapte bezuiniging. Veel opvangplekken, niet alleen voor verwarde personen maar ook voor andere mensen met complexe stoornissen, werden gesloten. Mulder: „Normaal gesproken waren het communicerende vaten geweest. Minder geld naar de bedden, meer geld naar de ambulantisering. Maar zo is het niet gegaan. Er is afbouw geweest van bedden, maar geen opbouw van extra ambulantisering. Er is gewoon geen beleid op gevoerd.” Het huidige kabinet legt de verantwoordelijkheid voor het aantal opvangplekken volledig bij de markt. Minister Helder (VVD, Langdurige Zorg) schreef in een Kamerbrief: „Het is de rol van de verzekeraars om er zorg voor te dragen dat zij voldoende zorg inkopen.”

there’s talk of joining an intentional community, buying some land in Richardson’s native Canada, or finding a practice-based postdoctoral research role – he’s just completed a PhD about magico-religious practices in north-west England during the last ice age.

She is taking French lessons, though presently her literary enthusiasms outstrip her linguistic ability. “I say, ‘Shall we translate this poem of Apollinaire together?’ and my teacher says, ‘I think today, Deborah, we will try to master être and avoir.’”

“You wouldn’t even be waiting on the return money because you never paid for it in the first place.”

Before kick-off the stadium PA had played a gabba-speed remix of Love Will Tear Us Apart, while the City mascots Moonchester and Moonbeam did modern dance-style interpretative moves in front of a sign saying Abu Dhabi Find Your Pace. No doubt this was Ian Curtis’s distant dream when he bared his bleeding soul to the world.