No one is crowing now
Sylvia Shawcross
Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger:
It is the first time the crows did not come in the morning. Under the red sun and yellow skies. In the forty years I have been here it was the first morning I did not hear their loud impatience.
The air did not smell of the smoke of the northern wildfires but of an acrid dusty taste, not quite plastic burning or electrical. Not really ozone either for I’ve smelled that before once but I can’t remember when or where. It just did not smell of wood smoke.
This too shall pass is what we know. It is always what we know. All things pass. Eventually. A lesson that can only really be learned over a long period of time. The youth do not know this yet. They know only the moment informed by that treacherous beginning. Their beginnings so much more terrible than we older ones know.
We didn’t wish it to be this way but it is the way it became. They were never children. They were the recipients of our fears in an increasingly hostile predatory world. We did what we did out of love and protection but it was ill-informed by traditions thrown by the wayside in our own youthful rebellion.
We gave them all our fears and nothing to hold on to—no sense of God or morality or responsibility or hope or predictability. They were responsible then only to our fears made their own. Taught to them. Encouraged. Schooled. We would change the world for the better but all we did was tell them what was wrong. We left them the greatest burden of actually fixing it and they are broken now themselves.
Before they even begin.
I sometimes want to take these children of the world who are hurting, raging, shattered and bring them to a warm safe place where the scent of lavender crouches in the corners and the feel of solid ground beneath bare feet holds them strongly.
I want to tell them to be still and not listen to the noise of this world that has betrayed them. Not to listen to the people who would draw them into anger and hate. Not to act in rage and indignation. To fight “for” something rather than “against.” To draw together in their pain and find their way to each other without dividing lines created not by them but by those who would profit from their fight. To stop the judgment that is not theirs to give.
I want them sadly to remember a hope they have not been given to remember. They only received the lesson plan and not the lesson. Broken before they begin but begin they must. And so, in our waning years we want to help them but who are we to help? We do not live their lives. We can only remember hope and courage. That is what we have to give. We sent them to war without it. These broken children. Mostly we have to give them the courage to hope. Hope is not for cowards.
We sent them to war with some of the most psychopathic enemies we have ever seen in history with only their passionate vulnerability. And now, in the tradition of the oppressed learning only to oppress, will we see a world they will flee to full of all those fears transformed into conformity, slavery and control? They will mostly know or see no other way. How could they? It is we who need to be enraged at what we failed to do. But then, how could we have known, walking as we did in the light that we had?
But not me. I never had children. I have my crows.
Sylvia Shawcross lives in Canada. Visit her substack.
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There are people who spend a lifetime lamenting the world and what it’s become. But when you know the truth – that this world is fallen, and why – you switch from crestfallen victim of satan to emboldened warrior of God.
Thanks Sylvia, yet again my heart is moved and somewhat shaken.
“…the scent of lavender crouches in the corner…”, “Hope is not for cowards.” – excellent.
I’m collecting the beautiful gems you express.
I see your kind heart.
P.S. Excellent ear-worm!
Thank you for your kind response Owen.
On perspectives and conflicting points of view and the necessity for the conscious realisation of their mutual equivalence and validity; toward the construction of an undivided class-consciousness.
The Blind men and the Elephant
I.
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
II.
The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! — but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”
III.
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried: “Ho! — what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ‘t is mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”
IV.
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”
V.
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“’T is clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”
VI.
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”
VII.
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”
VIII.
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong.
MORAL.
So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
John G. Saxe (1816-1887)
To this parable I added the following text: “After everyone thus spoke, each made a sculpture of what they imagined the elephant was like; then recognising their individual relative position as subjective and one-sided, thus insufficient, but equally valid in-themselves, they joined the sculptures together according to their relative positions and discovered what the elephant really looks like; they have superseded their individual consciousness into an undivided consciousness of what the elephant objectively is.”
Class consciousness needs to be cultivated by superseding the tragedies it contains into an undivided consciousness capable of action.
“Action (Handlung) in its original Greek sense is a stepping-forth (Heraustreten) from an undivided consciousness.” – Hegel, Aesthetics
I think crows are either cyclic or else every bit as contrary as people think.
For years the woods out back were filled with crows. Then for a few years there were none – that was about the time the Zika (West Nile) Virus was all the rage.
Then, out of the blue, there they were again. Now they’ve returned to their peek-a-boo mode again.
You gotta love crows – otherwise you go nuts!
Yes. They did indeed come back when the smoke cleared. Now I hear you people in England (if that is where you are) are going to get our smoke on the jetstream soon. Feed yer crows now. 🙂
I’m on the US East Coast and we got our Canadian smoke a couple weeks back. Maybe the crows left because the carrier pigeons gave them a heads up.
The smoke today is back with a vengeance. You have the ocean breeze? Lucky you guys! 🙂
Here in central Maryland we seldom get any kind of weather. But in North Georgia, where my sister and niece live, they do.
My niece posted a video of her raised bed garden to her YouTube channel (she paints custom fishing lures). I’m going to post it here; but it’s 19 minutes and unless you really really like gardening, it would be a bit boring.
Jekyll In The Backyard – YouTube
You write so beautifully Sylvia.
I’m optimistic about the next generation. And the one after that…
Throughout the ‘age of lockdowns’ those fearless fun-seekers continued to rave on and organise parties, much to the annoyance of the mainstream media. We who saw in lockdowns a grim glimpse of our distopian future must have seemed like overly dramatic lunatics to those youths who knew no better. Youth will find a way, even as we old souls continue to find fault and sound the alarm about how the world is on the wrong path. Sometimes I wonder whether its a curse to know so much about the evil doers. Children, with their gift of innocence, don’t carry the same burden of knowledge yet. I say long let them be unburdened. Let the old ones worry.
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster . . . when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you”
Friedrich Nietzsche
That is a wonderful way to look at it and perfectly sane. And puts the burden where it belongs. Actually… when i think of it none of us deserve this burden.
Broken children. Not all are broken. Just some of them. Many of them. Too many of them.
The most broken of them all is our President.
A naked emperor parading around while his broken subjects fearfully keep telling him how beautiful his silk garments are.
They will always be our children and will always need advice.
Whether they know it or not.
That’s a whole lot of whining! A whole lot of sad, hope, vulnerability, hurting, shattered, and defeatist crap.
Nothing can irk me more than hearing the fake phrase “This makes me so sad.” Fuck sad. Fuck hope. Fuck the rest of the shit.
Get real and if you don’t like something, do something about it.
That’s telling it like it is! Do something about it! Change everything that ever happened since humans first evolved – because EVERYTHING is what has led us to this particular moment in human history.
How about you and I get together and use all our brain power to force all of history to morph into something which won’t end up here?
I gave the only advice I could give already for those who sought it which was: “take care of your family, yourself and your community as you can; plant a garden.” If asked now I would add “do not comply with anything that degrades your humanity; recognize the efforts at divisiveness and don’t do it; support up the yin yang anyone who is fighting for us all.” Not all of us are in a position to do more than what we can. Be grateful if you can.
why does this not work?
trying to ad a picture.
FWIW, this is how I successfully upload images on this site. I’m only providing these instructions in case you’re using a different approach; if you’re already using this one and it’s not working, this won’t help. I’m appending a random sample image just to verify that the steps still work:
• First, upload the image file to a (free) upload site; Postimages is straightforward enough: https://postimages.org/
• Once uploaded, the Postimages page will display several URLS; copy “Direct Link” and paste it into the Off-G comments window. Add text as desired, but make sure the URL is on a separate line with spaces above and below.
• Do not use the “link” markup feature here, just post the raw Direct Link. Voilà!
_____________________________________________
Random sample image:
thanks. i swear that it used to work direct before. maybe i dreamed that.
Stone the crows! (An old Aussie expression of surprise). Thank you Syl. Very much 🙂
My pleasure. (And everyone else’s too)
PREPARATION FOR US FALSE FLAG?
Senators Graham & Blumenthal introduced a resolution declaring Russia’s use of nuclear weapons OR destruction of the occupied Zaporizhia Nuclear Powerplant in Ukraine to be an attack on NATO requiring the invocation of NATO’s article 5.
Declaration of war, even if not much done w it, wd vastly increase the power of the govt. [sic ]– actually TPTB
The two raving arses for war. Must be lots of money behind their stance.
Sometimes Sylvia you break my heart with your writing. Or maybe your words sooth my broken heart.
I do have a daughter and a little granddaughter. I also love the birds. I love to hear them every morning and every night. You are such a beautiful writer. I love your essays here and on substack. You just have a way of speaking the the words of all our hearts. ❤️
I responded to this piece earlier today- I self-edited the heart-breaking part…
Thank you Cathy. You are kind. We persevere. It is not always like this. Just some days. All part of the fabric of life.
Brava.
The crows will undoubtedly return when the dust settles (or at least some of them).
So, no need to fear. They understand what’s in their best interests and in the best interests of the world.
Their fight for great causes in distant lands currently takes precedence for such yang-filled feathered heroes. Let the ‘Yins’ stay in, waiting for their beloveds to return.
Heroes/heroines of the winged kind restoring order wherever there is disorder. Preventing societal disintegration into Chaos. Helping to impose the preferred order-of-the-day on behalf of the elites. Introducing updated Community-Rules-based ‘sociological law’ wherever there is the legacy antiquated Absolute Law.
Their training has taught them that those whose primary values are personal peace and personal affluence will never resist (as Covid proved, and as Francis Schaeffer prophetically pointed out in the ’70s). They know that such types will never murmur a word against their oppression. Rather, they will help its implementation, with the suppression of any would-be dissenters.
So yes, it’s a yellow, dust-filled sky. Clarity is certainly needed:
Coldplay – Yellow
Well said.
Thanks for this song. As with so many other current singers, I’ve heard of Coldplay but until now haven’t heard anything by Coldplay.
Today’s angst differs very little from the angst we too felt – that all children have probably always felt. It may well be exacerbated by the increasing senselessness surrounding them. But the difference is in degree, not in type.
It is the angst of finding oneself in a land of giants. The adult world, which only the tiniest infants are shielded from, if even them.
It is the world of rules, few if any of which make any sense to children. But they know they must obey and adapt to them or they may perish. Again, today’s rules may be more senseless than yesterday’s. But do children really cut it that fine?
We give them no God today. But yesterday’s God was little better comfort than none. It was a censoring rule dispenser, nothing more.
As to nature: we don’t always have to go to it, sometimes it comes to us. Somehow a lizard (I think these particular lizards are called skinks) has gotten into my bedroom. I wouldn’t dream of harming it; but I do have three concerns: 1) will my dog see it and go nuts? 2) will it crawl into bed at night? and 3) will it eat all the tiny house spiders I depend on to eat the gnats?
It’s a wonderful life!
The way things are going you might be fighting the spiders to eat the gnats and fighting the lizard to eat the spiders
5G TOWERS BURN in Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Cyprus, Ireland. Supposedly 50 5G towers in UK have been destroyed. Is this for real? (or only a dream?)
Here’s the link, but there’s no info
https://cairnsnews.org/2023/06/22/another-5g-tower-bites-the-dust-in-europe-uk-lost-50-so-far/
The ultimate frustration of our lives… how are we to know? Journalism being a lost artform.
There is no greater poison to the soul than the destruction of our children, because their innocence is our only redemption. Our children are being destroyed, and we will fall soon after them. Curse these demons. Curse them all.
Todd, the answer is to hang the evil doers. This has a double benefit: they cannot repeat their actions and it warns all the others who are contemplating anything similar that they too will reap unpleasant consequences.
As it stands at the moment, all the purveyors and beneficiaries of the tyranny are walking away into comfortable retirement or other positions. They can run but eventually they will discover that there is no hiding place.
If you haven’t run across dozens of people who would gladly move up the ladder to replace the current crop of “evil doers,” then I submit you have lived an unbelievably sheltered life.
Offer them riches and power and they will come, in droves. Evil is the ultimate Hydra. Whack off one practitioner and nine more will appear.
No, the idea is to somehow destroy evil itself rather than attempt to fell every evil doer.
Unfortunately I have encountered such people but the CV19 scam is on an altogether bigger scale. It is not about some ambitious person trying to climb the greasy pole but instead an coordinated plan to rig the system for the benefit of a few people, with no regard for any of the consequences.
Crimes against Humanity cannot be brushed aside.
corporate power has replaced nation state power.. No one has any input to what is happening any more.Its a crime to ask why..just comply, conform, stand at attention, no matter the rain, snow or hail of thunderstorms or the heat of summer sunshine, until you number is called you stand where your are told, for as long as your not yet being served, and quit complaining.. Why does humanity put up with the corporate controlled, oligarch owned, nation state system<=it has imprisoned us all?
Because there does not exist a “humanity” as a realised idea. It is divided in two classes, one of which, self-conscious, dominates the other through a historical process of relations of production, which then needs very little to continue moving.
The dominated class is still a multitude, and it being, in fact, a multitude of subjectivities, of diverging “I”‘s, and not a community conscious of its role as the means to abolish class-division, is equivalent, is the same, as it being “represented” by governments which is the official agent of the dominant class and whose historical role is to fill the void created by the inaction or ineffective action caused by it being a multitude.
this rings quite clear and true.
enjoyed it…thank you.
Indeed, schools in The Netherlands look like prisons these days. They are surrounded by high fences with sharp teeth. The entry gates have long lists of rules on them. They are open from 7 to 18. Leaving them requires parental pickup.
I have not seen a male teacher in years. I wonder why that is.
They are not schools. Not sure they ever were since at least the 1800s.
They are indoctrination centers that only train humans how to be a commodity.
Home Schooling is the only way to go, at any cost or discomfort.
The children need other children. I kept mine home until 2 yr old. But I could see they became crazy when they saw other children to meet some of their own.
I send them there and it was a big success the first year. Then they shifted to a new one, bad one, we had to change, and it never got really good again.
I have been in Latin and Africa, and the schools I saw there were better than Neu-European schools, because they are still based on traditional learning.
The schools system and teachers were bad, but in all cases the children survived because of their interactions with the other children.
They got friends, gathered, to stand together against stupid adults.
I have been in Latin and Africa, and the schools I saw there were better than Neu-European schools, because they are still based on traditional learning.
That is the most common unfounded assertion for home schooling. Where we lived my daughter had interaction with other children via the charter school events, she was a competitive figure skater until the age of twelve. From twelve to 20, she was in 4H and Sea Scouts. She had girlfriends and boyfriends.
Home schooling is not just sitting at home in front of a computer with books doing assignments. Home schooling is an opportunity for all kinds of education. Because Mommy and Daddy are the teachers, outside of minimum requirements, you get to choose. You are their guide.
A man gotta live. Especially if you have wife, children and two mistress and frequently walk to hookers. You cant just quit man.
Wow Erik, that’s some trail you walk !
Take your children back country camping. Teach them how to unplug from the artificial world and coexist with the natural world.
I took over a dozen backpacking trips with my daughter between the age of 14 and 21. At least one annual trip a year during summer breaks, and weekend trips here and there. I cherish the memories, and how the experience, and strenuous effort, helped make her a better and more appreciative person.
School (in England) put me off camping forever.
“Isn’t this fun?”, says the grim maths teacher who never used the word, “fun” under any other circumstances, and then only once a year.
Half the class did not think camping for a week in a rain-drenched no-man’s land two hours’ drive from home was ‘fun’ at all, but nobody dared to say so, because it was perceived that we were supposed to find it fun.
This exercise in obedience and tacit acceptance was presumably intended to ready us for future compulsory military service – the beginning of life-long brainwashing – which was mercifully abolished before I was old enough to be coerced into it.
After all, by then the war was something that had happened 20 years ago.
I love nature – the nature I see on walks which I take not too far from home, but the concept of camping out in nature still brings on all kinds of psychosomatic heebie-jeebies, conniption fits, galloping gunkies, 4th-stage lurgi, and even influenza. I basically need intensive care in solitary confinement…
But I accept that many people have fond memories to cherish from this character-building experience. Perhaps they lived in sunnier parts of the country than I did…
Of my experience children dont like it either. Its something they do only to help adults because the adults feel good and are crazy about it.
Depends how those children are being raised.
“Camping” is newspeak and synonymous with homelessness or living outdoors for the vast majority of those living that way?
Life is even harder when you are fully domesticated by the system.
Where someone lives isn’t relevant to backpacking or camping. There is always a good season(s).
If a person is not capable of living without all the niceties of modern society, then what chance would that person have of living outside of the beast system?
Yeah no shit. Lol. We did have the occasional fun, though it was few and far between. I love nature now that I can pick, choose and leave at anytime the mosquitoes get to be too much.