Queen
Adult
I am a slow grower. In my early years i grew sort of average. But in my twenties it was clearer. I had sex with someone when i was twenty-eight years old. A bit late. After that short time of only two months of having a boyfriend i decided that the next time i would like to be really in love. Not that i didn’t enjoy that first friendship, but it didn’t feel like i was in love at the time.
Then I didn’t understand the concept of being in love. I am not even sure if i completely understand it right now. When i was younger it was a mixture of physical attraction and a feeling of admiration and adoration. I am not sure i can actually describe what it felt like at that time to feel in love.
My years of solitude, described in Eight years of silence, are still so important to me. A stop to my work on lfs.nl, a stop to seeing my old friends, a massive World of Warcraft playing addiction. No love in that time for me.
At the end of these eight years i did fell in love. It was completely imaginary. All in my head. It was physical too. But, not real. A safe escape from the more ordinary, daily reality of being in love with somebody who loves you back. Something i until this day have not experienced with somebody else.
The past years i did fall in love with men i met, mostly from the garden. But those were short time experiences, lasting only a few months at the longest. Nice men, yes. But it didn’t stick to me. I learned every time though.
So here i am, 56 years old for only a couple of weeks more. So many things i have not experienced. Never been truly in love in a happy relationship. I have never had children. Something i had to deal with.
But over the past five years i did grow on. I felt it. Sometimes i fell back, sometimes i stumbled. But i did grow. This past year, in which i lived in rooms in other people’s houses, was a learning experience.
This will not stop. Until i die that is. Every single day each person can learn something new, big or small.
I do hope one day i will meet someone i will fall in love with and who will fall in love with me. But that is not the story of my life. The story of my life is me struggling and trying and failing against all hope. For the past fifty-six years.
Entrance
Present
A present i got from my then best friend, this Lego miniature with a little girl and a glass and a cat and a stove and flowers and parasol in the back. So me. Then.
Over the past year i went to my house storage and brought more things there. This Lego present i kept. It is small of course. But it also means a lot to me. A gift from a good friend.
You might already know this little piece. Well, a bit of repetition doesn’t matter in my world. It is standing in front of the television these past weeks, visible while i watch some film. All the time.
Snowwalk
Snow ahead
It is gonna be cold. Freezing temperatures. The coldest days predicted are Tuesday and Wednesday next week, around -7ºC / -2ºC during the daytime. Snow is also predicted, Sunday especially there is a 90% chance on snow, and quite a lot of it. A good day for a walk to make photographs.
I usually watch for weather predictions on knmi.nl.
I am still happy with the post i wrote yesterday. It is hard to keep on my subject, i needed a break halfway to get my thoughts together. Apart from the first sentence i wrote the entire post yesterday.
Enjoy your weekend. Salute!
Contagious
I am not afraid to get infected with the corona virus. Most of the time i am alone. I make walks outside all by myself. I work in the garden outside where there are limited possibilities of infection. Inside i’m rarely with other people.
The COVID-19 virus is contagious. Most of us have learned in the past year what the the letter R stands for in epidemiology, if it is above 1 the disease will spread, if it is below 1 the disease will diminish. Right now there are several mutations spreading which have different contagious affects, the British, South-African and Brazilian mutation right now. The virus itself is constantly mutating. A new one can be around any time.
The current de-missionary minister of Health Hugo de Jonge was on the Dutch television answering questions about one of the current scandals in the Netherlands, the one about the security issues with data concerning people who have been tested for corona. He said that this is an unprecedented pandemic. Unprecedented.
There is a Wikipedia page with a list of all known epidemics sofar called List of epidemics. Some are small, like the 2020 novel bunyavirus outbreak in China with only 7 deaths. Others are big, like the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide with 2.2 million+ deaths so far.
But the COVID-19 pandemic is not the biggest one. There is an even bigger one currently. The HIV/AIDS pandemic from 1981 till the present has cost 35 million+ deaths so far. The influenza pandemic (‘Spanish flu’) from 1918 till 1920 cost 17 – 100 million deaths. The Third plague pandemic from 1855 till 1960 worldwide cost 12 million+ deaths. And then the one still lingering in our memory, the Black Death. From 1346 till 1353 in the areas Europe, Asia and North-Africa the Bubonic plague cost 75 to 200 million deaths, 10% till 60% of the European population.
To say the current COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented means an unawareness of the major role diseases have played in human history for the past thousands of years. A role which will grow with the current globalization, flight movements and the destruction of nature worldwide.
Feeling safe and secure seems to me the leading motive in the current medical governmental strategies in the Netherlands, in western Europe and worldwide. This is war! We fight! We will not let this virus thingy win!
All the voices appear in the current channels of transmission: the news, twitter, facebook, the papers, the talk shows. It is extremely difficult to make up your own mind is this deafening cacophony. Me, i do my best. That is all.
I remember in April or May 2020 while walking on a street i smelled a lovely scented rose. Someone on a bike passed and yelled to me ‘hey! you will get corona from that!’ I was dumbfounded. In what world do we live where in we can not enjoy the flowers blooming and smell their enchanting scent.
Life is so worth living, so valuable, so ultimately enjoyable, so full of surprises. Yes, life is also full of failures and decay and rottenness. Life is a treasure to be cherished in all aspects.
It is difficult, of course. Not to me to make decisions. But i do think about current events and try to understand what my position is in these.
I am not closing this post with a cheering shout out yelling ‘this is the way to go’. No, i keep on thinking and puzzling. There are more thoughts hidden inside my head. Happy to see them coming outside!
Back
Under the spell of technology
Monday morning i watched this video from De Nieuwe Wereld (The New World). While i watched this my mind did wander a bit. Fantasies about me being in a talkshow and asking a politician what he had learned the past year 2020. But i tried to keep myself focused on this video.
Halfway i decided to make a post about this video. I posted several other videos from this channel before. I do enjoy the tone and content of these people most of the time.
This video does center on Heidegger and his view on technology most of the time. I just did a search about this and found this Wikipedia page on his article titled The Question Concerning Technology.
I must confess, Heidegger is difficult to read, for me anyway. I never was able to really understand his work. I actually bought his book in the Dutch translation Sein und Zeit and was never able to get a grip on this content. But i persevere!
The text posted under this video, translated into English by me:
Marlies Dekkers in gesprek met filosoof Ad Verbrugge over zijn werk en de coronacrisis. “We dreigen voorbij te gaan aan allerlei facetten van het leven.”
In dit gesprek bespreekt Verbrugge op filosofische wijze het discours waar we ons momenteel in bevinden, en dan met name in relatie tot de coronacrisis. Hij schetst het moderne mensbegrip dat vanaf de 16e en 17e-eeuw opkomt. “Daar speelt techniek een belangrijke rol in, ook samen met wetenschap.” In de moderniteit heerst een bepaalde mentaliteit en een manier van leven. In navolging van Descartes en anderen beschouwen we de werkelijkheid primair als mechanische uitgebreidheid dat we naar onze hand kunnen zetten. Verbrugge: “Je ziet een homogenisering optreden in de manier waarop wij kijken. Alles wordt eigenlijk berekenbare materie.”
Verbrugge vertelt dat dit volgens Heidegger een voorbode is van wat hij ‘het gestel’ noemt, “een benadering waarin de sturing en beheersing van de werkelijkheid als bestand leidend wordt.” In de geest van Jünger spreekt Verbrugge over een ‘technisch collectief’ “waarin je ziet dat de werkelijkheid in dat collectief proberen te sturen [..] dat wij daarin de neiging hebben daarin te automatiseren.” Ieder tekort moet worden opgelost, een drang naar perfectie. “Ook het lichaam wordt onderdeel van die machinerie.”
De moderniteit heeft ons veel gebracht, maar heeft een keerzijde. Verbrugge: “We worden geconfronteerd met onze eigen eenzijdigheid op het moment dat die perfectie [..] niet goed kan toelaten dat de dingen gaan naar hun eigen aard.” Dat zien we nu bij de coronacrisis: iets breekt in. Dat proberen we met maatregelen en vaccins, het technisch collectief, weer beheersbaar te maken. Refererend aan complotdenkers en ook de rellende jongeren stelt Verbrugge: “Ik denk dat er een groeiend wantrouwen is ten aanzien van dit technisch collectief.” We dienen de eenzijdigheid te erkennen, anders leidt ‘het gestel’ tot destructie. Verbrugge: “Het gaat er niet om dat je techniek vaarwel zegt, maar wel dat je onderkent in welke mate we voorbij dreigen te gaan aan allerlei facetten van het leven”
Marlies Dekkers has a conversation with philosopher Ad Verbrugge about his work and the corona crisis.”We threaten to go past several facets of life.”
In this conversation Verbrugge discusses philosophically the discourse we are in at the moment, especially in relation to the corona crisis. He sketches the modern human understanding emerging from the 16th and 17th century. “Technology plays an important part in this, together with science.” In modernity a certain mentality and a way of live reigns. After Descartes and others we consider reality primary as a mechanical expanse we can shape with our own hands. Verbrugge: “You are able to see a homogenization in the way we look. Everything becomes computable matter.”
Verbrugge tells that according to Heidegger this is a harbinger of what he calls the Gestell, “an approach in which the steering and control of reality as file becomes leading.” In Jünger’s mind Verbrugge speaks of a ‘technical collective’ “in which you see that reality in the collective tries to control. [..] that we have a tendency to automation.” Every shortage needs to be resolved, an urge to perfection. “Even the body becomes part of this machinery.”
Modernity has brought us much, but it does have a downside. Verbrugge: “We are confronted with our own one-sidedness the moment this prefection [..] can not allow things to follow there own nature.” We see that now with the corona crisis: something breaks in. We try to control this with regulations and vaccins and the technical collective. Referring to conspiracy thinkers and also the rioting youth in the Netherlands Verbrugge claims: “I think there is a growing distrust with regards to this technical collective.” We do need to acknowledge the one-sidedness, else the Gestell will lead to destruction. Verbrugge: “It is not about saying farewell to technic, but to recognize in which degree we threaten to go past several facets of life.”
Walking in the freeze cold
Published on February 1, 2021 at 6:00 by Ellen