The Collapse CCXII: The Day Of Christmas

 25 December 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

“’Sire, the night grows darker now, and the wind grows stronger.

Fails my heart, I know not how. I can go no longer.’

‘Mark my footsteps my good page, tread Thou in them boldly,

Thou wilt find the Winter’s rage freeze Thy blood less coldly.’”

Christmas Day came this morning with nary a whisper of clouds or snow, only the clear cold sky with fading stars and the hint of sun from the East as we bundled up and trundled out towards The Post Office. As we got closer, occasional bobbing lights betrayed the progress of others, Christmas Will-O-The-Wisps’ making their way across the snow.

I had not been into the The Post Office for some time following its initial remodel by Young Xerxes and the team he had cobbled together – not really since Young Xerxes’ plea some months ago. The room itself was much changed, widened by the removal of interior items and warmed by a wood stove which had been relocated from somewhere else – the efforts of my wood collection now being apparent.

Most impressive, however, were the Christmas decorations.

Somehow, Lucilius, a Christmas tree with decorations and of all things, lights, blazed away in one corner of the room. The room was hung with green and red tinsel, relics of an industrialized age that produced such things in abundance. Pictures had been applied to the walls, pictures from Christmas decorations of long ago, even before my time.

Along the back wall sat a table.

Having come in, we were of course put to work, pulling out folding chairs that had been transferred from the court room as hot tea in cups was thrust into our hand. Another of those irresistible was pressed into my hands.

As we worked away setting up chairs, more people kept coming in. And coming. And coming.

As they came, the back table began to fill up with, of all things, food. Oh, not the sort of feast that one would associate with Christmas once upon a time. There were quite a lot of jars of preserved food there, along with bread and what appeared to be cookies. But that was a spread that I had not seen in some days.

By the time it was a reasonable hour of the morning, I think almost every member of the community was there – yes, even some members of our Erstwhile neighbors though sadly not all. Still too soon, I suppose.

Still, with almost 60 people there, we had more than enough.

After a brief (very brief) prayer, breakfast started – topped by, of all things, venison and half a boiled egg for each of us. Yes, it was the oddest of Christmas breakfasts – my bowl filled with sauerkraut, pickles, venison, yet another biscuit, half a boiled egg, and a cookie – but it was a meaningful and delicious a Christmas meal as I had observed in many year.

After the meal ended, two to three of the folks I remembered having instruments pulled them out. And, of course, we sang the Carols of Christmas.

I say “Sang”. That may be a misnomer of sorts as not everyone could sing – at least well. And to be completely fair, some of the verses were perhaps a little different than I might remember.

After the songs went on for a while, Pompeia Paulina pulled me up and handed me a Bible opened to the New Testament. And so, after many years of reading it silently, I read the Christmas story out loud and openly.

There is something, Lucilius, about sharing the Christmas story verbally. Perhaps it is tied to memories of hearing it years ago, in church on Christmas Eve with family now long gone or reading it aloud to my own family. That story, so simple and yet so profound, can speak to us in every era.

Even in an era of a Collapse.

After I finished and sat down, one of the musicians started picking out the notes to Silent Night. And so, we sang to the crackle of a fire under the garish lights of a Christmas tree made truly magical by the fact that such magic did not happen like this at all.

At the end, there was a natural moment of silence. We all sat there in the glow of fire and lights and sunlight through the windows.

Perhaps not truly Peace on Earth, Lucilius, but perhaps as much as we are likely to find in these troubled times.

“In his master’s steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted,

Heat was in the very sod which the saint had printed.

Therefore Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing:

Ye that now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.”

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

2025 Cambodia And Vietnam: Random Phnom Penh

 Independence Monument, built in 1958 to celebrate Cambodian Independence from France.  It is meant to reflect a blooming lotus and stands 37 m (121 ft) high:

Behind it is the Norodom Sihanouk Memorial, built in 2013 to commemorate King Norodom Sihanouk:

Apparently it was graduation time; students were getting their pictures in front of the monument:

Looking back from the Independence Monument:

Looking back from the Norodom Sihanouk Monument:

A rarity for an American:  The North Korean Embassy

Armistice Day 2025

 In Flanders Fields

 In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place: and in the sky

The larks still bravely singing fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead: Short days ago,

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved: and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe

To you, from failing hands, we throw

The torch: be yours to hold it high

If ye break faith with us who die,

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Lt. Colonel John McCrae 03 May 1915

A Time And Place That Does Not Exist Anymore

 

(Note:  Possibly AI generated.)\

One of the unusual advantages afforded me by going to Old Home so often over the past 5.5 years that I regularly drive through my old home town and, upon occasion, go up my old street.

I grew up in the same house for my entire life.  The street - a small one with maybe twenty houses back then with a dead end - was a sort of community.  For years - probably until early high school - owners did not change very often and thus we knew everyone that lived there.  Some of my grade school and high school classmates lived on the street.  Even today, there are a few families there from that period of time.

When I was in what is now the equivalent of middle school (6th - 8th grade), one of my best friends moved up just up the hill from my house.  To get to his house, I could have walked all the way down the street and around and up the hill with their drive way - or, I could (and did) walk up the gravel road next to our house, cut through the property next door, go under two fences, and just arrive.  It was the same with my other school friends who were farther away but within walking distance - in fact, walking the fields and forests that were between myself and them was far safer than trying to walk the roads that led to their houses.

---

I could take you back there now.  The street is still there, although it no longer dead-ends but runs into the previous pasture next to it which itself has become built over with houses.  At least two of our original neighbors live there; the rest of the homes have turned over in the intervening years, including the one I grew up in - which is now worth 7.5 times the amount my parents paid for it.

The pastures and woods and paths I walked are now more built up or fenced off.  I could, if I wanted to, get to the back woods where most of my 7th and 8th grade years were spent running through trees and building forts - but somehow a man in his 50's on private property is a little more of a concern than a boy of 12.

---

That sort of nostalgia clouds my entire view of that time of course.  It is fair to say that life was "simpler" back then - but then again, I was a child and then a teenager in a middle class household where we went to church every Sunday and had breakfast and dinner together almost every night.  Part of my extended family were near.  The great "issues" I faced in life seem almost ridiculous by today's standards, a combination of unrequited love and role playing games and music and drama and the sorts of things that seem so far away both from my life now - but also from the lives of my children when they were that age.

The world, in the intervening years, became far more complex and complicated.

---

Am I homesick for a time and place I can never return to?

In one sense, no.  Heraclitus' admonition that we can never step into the same river twice remains as true as it ever was.  Even when I go back to visit now, it is not the same.  Even if I relocated there, the people are gone, the world has become much older and sadder, and I am have grown older as well, with the wear and cares and scars that life as an adult brings.

And yet, in another sense, yes.

As much as it is impossible to recreate, there is a part of me that wants that simpler life - not from the sense of re-creating it (that can never happen) as much from a sense of enjoying the same feeling from it.  There was a certain sense of place and being surrounded by those that I did life with, my school friends and family that has been extracted over years of moving to a series of destinations that were home, but only for a while (as it turns out) and a series of people that I associated with (and they with me) that was driven as much by proximity as by mutual interests.

That - that sense of place and people and, in a real sense, purpose - seems lost in a way that it is unlikely to return.

A Year Of Humility (XIVL): Decency

I would not expect to find an aspect of humility from Kurt Vonnegut, of whom I have vague knowledge of a writer (and having been scarred by his book Slaughterhouse Five at an age I should not have been reading it) who once described himself as a "Christ Loving Atheist", but the quote above struck me pretty deeply.

Decency strikes me as the common man's kindness. Decent (per Merriam-Webster) means "Proper and fitting; not immodest, not obscene, chaste; conforming to social standards, respectable; reasonably good or adequate; fair and kind".  And if you think about it, those things are all pretty easy to offer to one another.  The phrase "Common Decency" conveys the whole meaning, really:  a common sense of responsible fairness and fitting behaviour of respect for others.  

It can be as simple as waiting for someone else to enter or helping someone with a heavy item.  It can be as meaningful as keeping quiet in a moment where others shout or laugh away or taking upon ourselves the unkind or uncharitable comment meant for another. It can simply be not noticing a thing that, were it called out, could create a moment of embarrassment.

It becomes even more important, as Vonnegut points out, in a society that is none of these things.

It had never struck me before that to be humble is to be decent but upon consideration, why would it not be?  Part of being humble is to think of others; is not decency the simple practice of thinking of others in our everyday social situations?
 

Be Like A The Cat

I went from being an lost waif on the street to an upper middle-class income lifestyle including 24 hour servants, indoor plumbing, free medical care, two full meals a day, exciting cross-country travel, and 18 hours a day for naps.

Follow Me for more lifestyle hints!

Modernity And Nature's News

 This quote by Muir strikes me both as grounded and fanciful.

It is grounded in that it so clearly describes a condition I (at least) suffer too much from:  the degeneration into a machine for making money.  Arguably of course this is a real condition:  for better or worse, the modern world runs on money and I (for better or worse) am in the modern world.  

And it is easy - too easy - to get drawn in by all of this.  How easily my allotted and expected work time of 40 hours a week creeps upward into the 50s or more as tasks appear on my list, important things which "must get done" - even as I remind myself that my life has been full of critical projects and timelines that all "had to get done" but which 95% went absolutely nowhere but into the abyss of failed products and failed products.

And yes, it is easy to say that I often learn nothing from "the trivial world of men".  Certainly not in the current events or popular culture of the modern world; if anything, the more I step away from it the more I realize it has little to offer.  I do learn from the world of men, but it is a world that is now past us, a world of the ancients and the historical, of things that have stood the test of time instead of the flush and flash of modern thinking.

But fanciful as well.

Do the mountains (or Nature) have news?  Of course they do, for those with ears and eyes to see it.  And yes, perhaps Muir was able to "break away" to hear it.  But most of us - certainly myself - are not in a position to "break away" at will.  We have to take our news as we can get it, through walks or working outdoors or the hikes or outings fit in to that mundane world of work. 

There is, perhaps, a combination where such a thing works -neither degraded into a money-making trivial loving automaton nor fleeing the world without a consideration of responsibilities - but it seems beyond me at this point.  At best I can try to find an uncomfortable compromise, pushing back work to its acceptable boundaries and increasing the other world in a planned and thoughtful way.

Is this the price of civilization?  I am not sure.  But it is certainly the price of the modern world, which makes both royalty and servants of most of us.