On The Future is Already Here | Monday 1 December 2025
Published on HivePostify by @shanibeer · Tue Dec 02 2025
A 1951 grocery bill of Dylan Thomas’ from J Eric Jones in Camarthen. Featured in [The Guardian 28 November 2025](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/nov/28/from-dylan-thomas-shopping-list-to-a-note-from-sylvia-plaths-doctor-newly-uncovered-case-files-reveal-the-hidden-lives-of-famous-writers).
> Field Notes Having passed the nadir of the transition, the arc continues, time appears to stop as we get ready to jettison the booster stage. The leaving party last Thursday, champagne and rice and peas, Caribbean curry chicken, macaroni cheese pie, today the ceremonial handing over of the planned activism and, in two days, welcoming my successor after references are checked, email address put in place.
Monday 1 December 2025 Leicester, s/rise: 7:53
There's a song by Van Morrison in a medley on A Night in San Francisco. It's called Four O Clock in the Morning (Try to Sleep) and for days it's been playing in my head.
Today it was a little after five when my lizard brain decided it was time to get up. Still dark outside, but maybe astronomic time was already bringing the dawn and I was waking ready for it.
Over here Taraz is writing about the space between two photographs. I don't have a photograph but I remember, clear as day, crossing the landing and opening the door, life before and after that moment. Would it have been any different if I had not wondered what was going on, if I had not mounted the stairs and crossed the landing. Would the intervening thirty-five years have been any different?
It's curious how it sits there, pristine, not black and white but monochrome,
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... dim from the lack of windows, the two steps up to the door, the shocked, chagrined faces. Did they finish what they were doing, captured in the moment, or was it lost, too late, no win for anyone.
I came across Dylan Thomas' grocery list in an article in The Guardian on Friday. Fascinated by the hand-written artefact, the thin paper, the dog-eared corner, the orderliness of the supplier with the carefully recorded bottles and nips of gin, Guinness, tobacco and strangely tomatoes sitting among the necessities.
Imagine the days where you could run up a bar bill when you already owed a hundred pounds and then writing [to] the Royal Literary Fund for a grant to cover it. Troubles then, as troubles now: in spite of the fabled long-tail, the average writer only earns £7,000 a year, barely in the tax bracket, although stung for national insurance contributions, I'm sure.
Nearly there now, just three more days ...
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before I break for a month and then into a whole new life of the Literary and Philosophical Society, "Providing lectures at the cutting edge of modern thinking since 1835". The incongruity of modern and since 1835 strikes me, although modernity is a long project gradually encroaching since the Renaissance, much like the Information Age has been creeping up on us for some time. Bruce Sterling always says the future is already here, it's just patchy in places. Or something like that.
I moved my art cupboard yesterday. A lengthy job involving emptying, cleaning, shifting, sifting and placing all of it back, plus the new things that have encroached, neatly tessellated into a tiny pine dresser. The work table cleaned of everything but a tasteful pottery jug, hand-cast, will have to go and some other arrangement found.
The light creeps in, grey and muddy, no burst of brilliant gold sunlight bathing the house opposite in pinks and amber, only dull, flat, rain-sodden grey. Time to move.
> Field Notes It seems the quote, "the future is already here, it's just poorly distributed", is attributed to William Gibson, and I probably heard it from Bruce Sterling way back in 2006 at the Lift Conference in Geneva. Like the original meal providing the leftovers that feed a family for thirty years, it seems no one has been able to track down the precise occasion the quote was written or said. Bruce Sterling's talk was about spimes: a term coined by him for a ubiquitous, highly-trackable, digitally-connected object that generates extensive data throughout its lifecycle. His presentation explored the implications of a "world with spimes".
References
[Book by Covers](https://peakd.com/hive-126152/@tarazkp/book-by-covers) (December, 2025) by Taraz KP. [Bruce Sterling: Spimes and the Future of Artefacts](https://youtu.be/E2Fb7ezbVtY?si=vf23Ug6uj0gvfvkA) (2006) LIFT06, Geneva. [Bruce Sterling's Talk at LIFT06](https://www.nicolasnova.net/pasta-and-vinegar/2006/2/9/bruce-sterlings-talk-at-lift06/) (2006) by Nicolas Nova. [Distrust That Particular Flavor by William Gibson: Review](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/books/review/distrust-that-particular-flavor-by-william-gibson-book-review.html) (2012) in The New York Times. [Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society](https://www.leicesterlitandphil.org.uk/) since 1835. [Lonely Avenue Medley including 4 O'Clock in The Morning](https://youtu.be/rKDYoRpXpwE?si=eRCoJcwcGpYx0Wno) (1994) in A Night in San Fransisco, Van Morrison. [Royal Literary Fund Archive](https://www.rlf.org.uk/our-archive/) (accessed 2 December 2025).
Previous posts in this series [On False Starts and Fragments](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-false-starts-and-fragments-or-tuesday-28-october-monday-10-november-2025) - Tuesday 28 October - Monday 10 November 2025 [On Tea at the Tate Modern](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-tea-at-the-tate-modern) - Monday 17 November 2025 [On Loss, Grief and Origin Stories](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-origin-stories-flanerie-or-monday-20-october-2025) - Monday 20 October 2025 [On Pens, Diaries, Mrs Dalloway and Oliver Cromwell](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-pens-diaries-mrs-dalloway-and-oliver-cromwell-or-friday-10-october-2025) - Friday 10 October 2025 [On Rain before the Code](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-timid-usually-needless-commas-or-friday-3-october-2025) - Friday 3 October 2025 [On Transitions](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-transitions-or-friday-26-september-2025) - Friday 26 September 2025 [On Bringing New Audiences](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-bringing-new-audiences) - Saturday 20 September 2025 [On Liminal Spaces](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-liminal-spaces-or-saturday-13-september-2025) - Saturday 13 September 2025
Tags: #psychogeography#flaneurie#hive#scifi#palimpsest#williamgibson#brucesterling#vanmorrison#creativepractice#teamuk