Month: May 2021

Day 1895, growing down.

Daily picture, Poetry

In pop culture they say often that you have to trust yourself above everything else, chase your dreams and that you can be whatever you want.

A few generations ago most people had no big worries about their future in regards to their career choices, where to live and how to live. Only when you where rich or exceptional adventures you had the opportunity to struggle with these questions. Now, in 2021, many more people have the chance to choose their own path in life. The problem is that this change happened quite fast. The generation of parents that live now are one of the first that had to struggle with these choices and are now confronted with their own children and their struggles. I think that this whole “trust yourself and you know best” that parents give as advice nowadays is their way of saying that they have no clue and they don’t want to be responsible for the choices of their children, traumatized as they are by there own experiences. This whole “follow your hard” thing is sold as this hip and progressive idea but I suspect that it is born out of cowardice. I can mostly write about my own generation and somewhat about the current, but choosing your life is not something we are good in. I was already reluctant to listen to advice but I see all around me that it only gets harder for parents to guide their offspring and they don’t make it better by telling their kids that they can become anything…let start by saying that they cant.

By the way, I am pretty sure that 5000 years ago someone carved a blog-post on a piece of stone with a similar massage

Day 1894, shadows.

Daily picture, Poetry

The shadows we make

don’t always come from the sun

Nochrisis

 

We need tremendous energy to bring about a psychological change in ourselves as human beings, because we have lived far too long in a world of make-belief, in a world of brutality, violence, despair, anxiety. To live humanly, sanely, one has to change. To bring about a change within oneself and therefore within society, one needs this radical energy, for the individual is not different from society — the society is the individual and the individual is the society. And to bring about a necessary radical, essential change in the structure of society — which is corrupt, which is immoral — there must be change in the human heart and mind. To bring about that change you need great energy and that energy is denied or perverted, or twisted, when you act according to a concept; which is what we do in our daily life. The concept is based on past history, or on some conclusion, so it is not action at all, it is an approximation to a formula. So, one asks if there is an action which is not based on an idea, on a conclusion formed by dead things which have been.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Day 1889, fields of joy.

Daily picture, Poetry

I saw that the earth was turned

and landed on it

~

while resting on a root from last year

I patiently wait

till the flowers bloom

and I can die

 

I grew up in the country side. When I biked to school in the next town or walked besides the river, I saw all the farmers working. I saw what they were doing when they let the cows on the fields or plowed the soil, but I never really understood why they were doing all these things.

I started reading a book today called: The knowledge illusion written by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach. In short, the book goes about our knowledge, how we think that we know a lot but in reality, we know very little. The gave the example of a toilet and asked people how it works. Most people are confident that they know how it works but after questioning they realize that they only know about the button you have to push and that there are some leavers. Most of us don’t know how you calculate the length of the different parts to make the mechanism work or the rubber quality of the seals, we know how a toilet works, but also not.

That is what I have with the work the farmers do, I see all their work and enjoy the products of their labor but I have honestly no clue how they do it. But this weekend I helped my landlord planting potatoes. She told me about the crop rotation, how she has 4 plots and only uses one at a time so the soil can “rest” for 3 years. She plowed the ground once and flattened it later. After that she had to make sure she planted the potatoes before it started raining again otherwise, she has to plow again. Then we use a machine from the 50s that she pulled along with a tractor that opened the soil again and buries the potatoes automatically…To make a long story short, I know now a little bit more about the whole process and gained some appreciation for all the work that you have to put into it.

As some kind of thank you to nature I decided to use the field with the newly planted potatoes as a photo…model…canvas…for the summer. I will try to go out there every day and take pictures of all that is happening on that small piece of land. Today it is just sand but I sat down and after a few minutes a sow movement and started taking pictures of the insects that are also exploring the newly turned soil.

Day 1887, potato.

Daily picture

Do you sometimes realize something that you already knew? I helped my landlord planting potatoes today, every few centimetres a potato from last year goes in the ground, and in a few months…every potato has made many more potatoes. My realization was that some labor gives you an endless supply of potato’s year after year. I knew of course that nature works like that but I needed to put the potatoes in the ground for myself to realize it. It make you wonder how many things you think you know but not realize or appreciate.