Footnote: Nachsommer
We all deserve a moment of contemplation sometime
Today, I’ll give you a few images from my neck of the woods. Just as this year’s ‘Indian Summer’—the locals call it ‘September Summer’ and I would call it a Nachsommer (After-Summer), referencing the writer Adalbert Stifter’s 1857 eponymous novel—is winding down, I’ve planned this one for a few days now.
Perhaps as a reflection of this posting from 1.5 years ago:
The World We Left Behind
Dear readers, first of all, feel free to skip this one if you don’t want to check out my somewhat mad—and dark—ramblings.
Some Nachsommer Thoughts
The weather was spectacular—those autumn morrows with loads of mist floating above the little creek and the nearby meadows, followed by bright-blue skies, almost like the ones I remember from my childhood; as the afternoon progresses, due to our little farm sitting in a little vale that runs north-south, the western ridges block the sun from reaching us, an early reminder of what winter will bring.
While waiting for the ferry, a gaze across the majestic fjord.
My ‘street view’ across the paddock, with the gang being out and about.
The little creek across that road, on a somewhat overcast afternoon earlier this week.
That’s the view of mine when I get out of the house; if you’d follow that little road uphill, you’re bound to meet our sheep and horses.
For the time being, I do think about these past years, sometimes glumly reflecting on all the dreadful things and human misery they entail. This isn’t a time to give up, nor is it an opportunity to cast in one’s lot with those who—let’s face it: they never stopped—wish you ill.
This is a time of remembrance; this is a time of stopping, even if it’s ‘only’ for a moment, and contemplate the little things and tiny creatures.
They, much like this bug, presumably don’t know much about history, mathematics, or gene editing. I’m unsure we’re better off, but being outside a lot is a very apt reminder that all these creatures, big and small, have their place, their purpose, in this universe.
If anything, Covid has, perhaps strangely, reinforced my lingering belief that the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Pandemic™’ was, first and foremost, an attack on the human spirit, that strange body-and-soul continuum of ours.
The world has become so monstrously grotesque that sometimes it is advisable to just stop, look at a tiny bug, and think about the confluence of events that brought you—and that tiny bug—to this point.
Or a walk on a sunny morrow with my wife and the horses.
Or being followed, for whatever reason, by our chicken across the meadow, stopping, watching them wander off to seek out little insects.
Doing so brings perspective, and it renders many of the things I typically write about quite…not-so-important, if not irrelevant, for a moment.
Remember that moment; it won’t come again, but it matters.
More than we can imagine at the time.
Beautiful photos, thanks. Spring has been exceptionally beautiful here - more beautiful than I can ever remember, and the flowers are incredible. They are in total abundance. A daily walk just in the suburbs and one is greeted with the most amazing colours and smells at every turn.
I re-read your linked post with the scroll of drawings by your children. Before 2020, my phone was full of photos of holidays, work conferences, and family. After 2020, it was documenting hell on earth via news headlines. There has been a distinct fracturing in my life and it is difficult to comprehend that it is nearly 5 years later. I feel (and look) a lot older, and very, very sad.
Hence the worship of ideals (instead of living them), and the ugly-fication of everything:
The simple yet complex beauty that just exists for no reason or cause (barring mythological ones) makes, to the social engineers, the very rich, the powerful and so on and on. . .
. . .that beauty, quietude and simpleness makes all their strife and toil and labour and all they hold up as ideals the same way the donkey follows the carrot affixed to a pole in turn affixed to its back - it makes all that completely pointless and meaningless to them.
Imagine investing all that life sitting in lectures, board meetings, learning the game, eating shit and being kicked in the teeth for years as you ascend the ladder so you get to pass it on downwards, and then when you start preaching your gospel to The People, the best you can hope for from normal people is a disinterested "Meh. Good for you I guess but I'm not interested, nor am I impressed".
Imagine the bile and hatred this engenders within, since they lack humility and humbleness before existence, that simple [Is] despite them.
This is the driving force within, that causes them - no matter what -ism or creed happens to be the paradigm they meld with - to destroy and wreck and ruin everything. This hate that you are not impressed, do not acquiesce just because, do not live according to their diktats, and that you are perfectly content and happy and able to get by or even thrive without their salvation.
I've seen it in mikro-format, and makro: old friends who question "How can you stand to live like that?" when we were impoverished due to neither me nor my wife being willing to eat shit and violate our ethics for profit or career.
The rage when I simply answered: "It's your choice what you do, make it consciously and live with it without excuses or rationalisations, and let us do the same" was indescribable. In one case, it almost came to blows that we could live a happy and contended life on less than 20 000:-/month net income, and afford to donate to a school-for-poor-children in Ghana (a vetted charity), and not feel any anxiety about not "keeping up with the joneses".
To say nothing about the man who quit all ties to me when I simply explained to him that he owns nothing more than what he can carry and defend using force. I think to this day the only reason he didn't dare hit me (he was inebriated, which in my book is no excuse) is that he knew I would hit back, and that I fight like a rat.
Well, didn't that little text of yours kick my internal hornet's nest of thoughts. Well done! ;)