Welcome to the OtherWays, original essays and stories from the edges of modernity, written and curated by the otherWise team.

Our deepest humanity refuses to accept the conditions of genocide. This unsettling grief reminds us that this way of living is not sustainable for life itself. Choosing the actions that lead to more life is the only way through. Leading with love, keeping our hearts open to witness what our grief and love are telling us, through both joy and sorrow, is how we survive the end of this world.

In this viscerally bountiful essay, Nicole Civita, founder of otherWise, reflects on an intimate relationship to her home garden, the garden of her grandparents, and the cornucopial harvest shared between time. She invites us to lift every holy leaf, relish most ripe Jersey tomatoes, hang herbs on every possible hook, and most of all: to share with trust. Trust that more is coming through all possible avenues of care and reciprocity, not just of what we have given, but the returning of the cosmolocal laws – abundance trusts its destination. A warm invitation to provisioning dynamics for the Harvest Moon cycle.

Some ideas shape into sharp strategies. Others, over time, wear into ways of being. Cosmolocalism is one of those rare concepts that stretches from the practical to the poetic, from open-source design to planetary ethics. In this article, we explore what Cosmolocalism means to us and why it matters.

In this first essay from otherWise director Nicole C, she tracks her own journey of disillusionment and reckoning with the modernity. She invites us into a different, more humble posture. To ask questions, not to “seek solution or salvation, but that deepened our inquiries”.

When Emily Shaljian’s friend sent a photo of her newly registered car—an old black Volvo—with the words Pleasure Vehicle stamped across the license plate, she laughed. The label felt absurd for a car inherited after her father’s death, worn down by time and memory. But it also felt oddly true. This car, once her father’s, had carried her through grief, across state lines, and into unexpected moments of joy. In this piece, Shaljian reflects on how a stubborn, aging vehicle became more than just transportation—it became a quiet companion through loss, transition, and the slow return of pleasure.