The artist Marc Séguin offers his unique take on current events and the world.
The end of January is perfect for burning in the forest. The CH is on leave and we miss the “open lines”. We come back to this below. A happy fact: physical work leaves a little less time to ruminate.
This year, in my part of the country, the snow cover on the ground is almost non-existent and that makes things easier. The ground is frozen and the machinery is carrying.
Clarification: so that the ecological activism does not arrive here or file an injunction, it would be good to specify that it is only the dead elms that I cut down. And not for a battery factory, caught between the tree and the bark of virtue.
Elm trees, since 1944 in America, have had a disease (Dutch elm disease or MHO, which appeared in the Netherlands in 1919): a fungus, often spread by an insect, blocks the tree’s ability to transport sap to its leaves, thus causing its death. A type of toxic relationship, we understand (that sounds like us); ultimately the tree dies and so does the fungus. Whether or not we demonstrate for the rights of elms, bugs or mushrooms changes nothing. We can still see a few isolated individuals still alive, standing in the middle of the fields on the 20, the 10, the 40… Majestic trees which survive, because they are alone.
Several hundred, therefore, died behind the house. I harvest them for the wood stove. The combustion tool is certified to the latest official standards; we repeat it to avoid being indicted by a charge of ecological heresy, because in the divide between urban and rural there are a few (several) blind zones.
The art of felling is above all a matter of understanding a natural force: gravity. Trees are hard-headed and prefer to fall on the side where they lean, and to paraphrase the coach : they do not always bring their game in my game. This then requires pulleys, a ladder, cables, a tractor. And some basic notions in applied physics. After destroying gutters, corners of buildings and equipment, you end up learning a little and scratching your head less to figure out what went wrong. We adjust.
Speaking of rurality, we are delighted to see French farmers demonstrating around Paris.
The institutions that govern (generally located in cities) often have an unfortunate propensity to infantilize those who feed us with rules, practices and hallucinatory and heavy administrative restrictions. When will there be standards to limit, standardize and regulate the waste of bureaucracy?
But we’re moving away. An idea like this: will we see tractors blocking Paris during the Olympic Games next summer? Will we be entitled to a competition of “social causes”?
Recently, two activists sprayed the window with The Mona Lisaat the Louvre, with pumpkin soup to draw attention to the right to healthy and sustainable food. Come on, friends! Manure, acid or radioactive liquid, OK, but please, not good soup. Especially in winter, because even if the ice at the village ice rink is more or less beautiful this year, it warms the heart, a broth, and it feels good after a hockey game.
It’s been more than a week since the CH has been on vacation and we’re bored of real business and real social issues: when are the series and several victories in a row? No question this week of talking about wars, injustices, Trump, health, education, unions or artificial intelligence, nor about anything that is going wrong or paralyzing us, and even less about this worrying universal sport what has become of the indignation. So strange in fact that it reveals a less flattering portrait of oneself than the desired one. Portrait, Mona Lisa… You follow me ?
Maybe the carriage we dream of is actually a pumpkin? It’s past midnight, Cinderella, we’re barefoot, alone like an elm in the middle of nowhere.
The use of a pumpkin is to decorate autumn or to make a soup. We doubt the usefulness of it being launched on the mirror of oneself, other than to entertain and add a murmur to the atmosphere.
For everything to go smoothly and the results to be profitable, the trees must fall in the right place without damaging anything. And everything is better after a victory; fewer questions. And it helps when, docilely, we pay for our beer several dozen times what it costs to produce. Hockey players, young men, we remind you, earn several million dollars each per year and we are happy about it, without criticizing the system too much. We have the world we deserve.
One metaphor for another, and it still comes from coach : for a happy and kind world, “we must play there game “.
We return to the woods, sharpen the chain and let off steam as best we can. “ Timber ! », shout the loggers.
What do you think ? Express your opinion