There are of course scientific advances and technology. We’re sending people into space and soon to Mars. We believe we are informed at all hours of the day and assured of a radiant and promising future because we have the illusion of being free and having evolved. We name atrocities, there are NGOs, the United Nations. We demand human rights through a certain idea of morality and benevolence. We also try very hard to convince ourselves that we are better than those who came before us. That finally, after centuries and millennia of barbarism, we would be able to rise.
We can predict orbits, tides, weather and economic cycles with certainty. And like a violent reminder, we see, in the light of recent weeks, that deep down we have misjudged our nature, that, on the one hand, of existing for the beauty of a look and that, on the other part, of being a kind of animal that some try to say socialized. Wars and attacks continue.
In the blink of an eye, we take this step, quoting the deceased Hubert Reeves: our species may not be the one that survives, after all.
It’s OK, in the end. We may say that these are crimes or atrocities, but the bottom line is that these are acts committed by and on humans. And that’s without counting crucial information heard between the branches: we are seriously worried about the Iran-Russia-China triangle for the future of the world.
We cannot blame the insatiability of the media or the continuous information to explain the heartache and the nausea of the soul. We will not attempt explanations here. Let’s have a distraction, if you allow us. The time of a walk on a piece of land in the middle of the river, during bad weather (literally and figuratively).
The fields turned pale, and everything began to bend under the idea of an end. The honey is harvested. There are still squashes and beautiful orange pumpkins in the vegetable garden. A few apples (Russet and McIntosh) still hang from the branches of the apple trees through their brown leaves. Almost all the flowers have dried, apart from a few white and red clovers which are stubborn. Angelica plants, proud even when dead, remain standing and their skeletons sometimes pass through the winter, like sentinels walking on the snow.
Isie isabelle caterpillars, so numerous this year, have been crossing asphalt and dirt roads since September. It is said that the length of their black bands can predict the length of winter. Bullshit, obviously, but this is interesting: these caterpillars feed on plants and know how to discern between acute toxicity and the benefits of plants. A bit like us this fall, we say to ourselves. One day, after winter, they will be chrysalises, then butterflies. But everything is not always so happy. Many are crushed or eaten by snakes and birds. This is how things are going.
Geese and bustards, like flying stars, mark the sky in their migrations these days, a reminder that not everything is ugliness and that, like them, rhythms connect us to the ground and the territory that the We live. Fortunately. After the rain comes the good weather, we like to think. Fingers crossed with a backdrop of horrors.
The tides swing. A lazy sun breaks through the clouds and reveals quilts of color on the October mountains. A little painting in the workshop through the obstacle course.
We say to ourselves that when everything goes wrong, it’s lucky that there remains a little eternity hidden here and there, between words, looks and a little art, in the shadows of worries.
A rosehip flower (wild rose bush) which persists on the coast. It is in the fall that the fruits are good; taste of rose. I spit out the glitches one by one, it makes the hours pass and it keeps my mind away from the disaster screens.
And I walk into the wind as if to compensate for reality. It makes you cry and dry your eyes at the same time. It’s a handy excuse. The realizations are sometimes violent. We are not made up of beauty and hope, we keep repeating ourselves.
In a few days, with the children, we will prepare for Halloween. This year, the pumpkins will have huge smiles.