Summer is leaving us and autumn is on the way

Dear Bloggers, 

 

When I woke up this morning and gazed into the morning sun having my breakfast and nice cup of tea it came to me that also this summer is leaving us and autumn is on the way. I went with the kids to the fair in the village where I was born and raised, to me this fair is the end of summer and the beginning of the fall or harvesting season. 

You can feel that the air is changing. This is a special time of year, certainly not my favorite. The heat of summer gives way to cool, misty mornings and brisk nights. The sun hangs lower in the sky, shading some areas that got steady sun all summer. The equinox approaches, shortening the days and lengthening the nights.

This time of year has always been used to terrify ancient people who did not realize the sun would "turn around" and start rising in its orbit, come the time we now know as the winter solstice. Fortunately, we know that we can enjoy this time of year for what it is: the natural decay of the green, summer world, the turning of the leaves and the coming of winter.

Why do I love this time of year? It isn’t for the rain showers but let me count the ways. I am not a fan of extreme hot days and I am quite happy that we are running into cooler weather and as I see slowly some trees that are already changing a bit of color. The vivid, rich colors of the fall foliage in the Northern parts of the Netherlands. As it is getting a bit colder in the morning and evening hours, I can start wearing my favorite jackets and blazers. 

Drinking hot cocoa at the fireplace with a zip of beerenburg to kill an upcoming flu. Great memories of autumns that past many years ago: as they were the start of some special relationships with girls. Even though none of them had a happy ending as I met my wife in January just after the holidays.  

When I am walking outside in the brisk evening air and the smell of burning firewood it gives me a feeling of cosiness and when you look up you’re seeing the constellation Orion in the sky. And what about making on rainy days comfort food like stews and soups, roast beef and such. It was a great summer and the temperature was incredibly high. Now slowly things have turned back to normal and are back in the school rhythm again. Holidays are over again and soon we are living up to darker days with stormy weather and leaves on the ground in the most beautiful colors.

The Old Sailor,

Enjoying the Autumn Sun

Dear Bloggers,

Soon the holidays are coming and autumn is all of sudden there. The weather is a bit funny. Some days stormy weather is bashing on your windows and a day later you can walk around in a shirt as it is nearly 20 degrees Celsius. Anyway I am enjoying the beauty of the landscape that is passing by. 

Autumn colours are so beautiful. And this fall we have been blessed with a couple of sunny days and more than only a few rainy ones. The air is getting crisper and you can smell the lit fireplaces through the chimneys. I love that smell. It means winter is on it’s way.

I love autumn, for so many reasons, and yet it invariably manages to make me sad, I find that autumn turns the still pool of my nature to the very dregs, and kicks up all sorts of murky stuff while it is at it. Coals slowly turning into diamonds, the moon is trapped beneath a branch, and, like the coming winter, it can also cut to the bone, winter winds that twist and turn and are hard to evade.

A series of disappointments that a few years ago I would have either sublimated into hard physical work, or run away from, or sunk deep into and found it hard to get out of again.  This year seems to be different.  I am simply sitting with my feelings, even it feels impossible. 

I saw a butterfly today on my morning walk – a red admiral that settled on the muddy footpath, churned and turned by some farm vehicles. It flittered about, close to the earth as though weighed down by care, and couldn’t seem to lift its way up into the open air, and then it settled, opened its wings to the sun and waited. Just waited. And I waited with it. The sun seemed to fill it, to renew it, colours achingly bright on its wings, and then it picked itself up and flew away, looping and twisting over the fields into a new day.

Perhaps that is the lesson that I need to learn here? To open myself to love and pain in equal measure, and trust that whatever happens, the sun will always shine and I will always be able to pick myself up and move on. Autumn proceeds slowly, hedgerows turning golden in the sunlight, berries picked up by the birds as they prepare for winter. Sometimes it is hard to appreciate all this beauty around me, but it is always there, regardless, just waiting for me to see it once again and to know myself a part of it, connected to the land even as my feet walk upon it, my mind is a million miles away.

Accomplished a bit of Sunday cleaning today, vacuumed the house, rinsed the toilet and got myself ready for the evening shift. Last night I lit some candles. When I pulled the curtains as it was dark and wet outside.  “Hmmm....autumn is really here” I said to my wife. “Poked up” our central heating system and during the day I took the water ornaments out of the garden and stowed them in the shed. 

It’s getting too big for me to pack em all up about every year, so it’s going to a new home as soon as we sell this one and hopefully next spring we’ll live in a smaller home. It’s not that I’m getting too old to carry a big ugly chunk of machinery through the house. It’s not that. I just don’t know what is going to come. Maybe we need to change our garden plans. I really don’t have a clue. I see it as a waste of my time and energy.

Fall is settling into Friesland. The sun is lower in the southern sky, too tired to heat things up anymore. It’s cold enough outside that you could wear a jacket without sweating, and yet still warm enough to walk around without a coat at night. I know because we just got back from a nice little walk to the mailbox in the village centre which is just north of here by about ten minutes. There are already a lot of desiccated autumn leaves blowing around and the grass is still green in every yard. 

It is the in between season as we all know that in a couple of weeks this year will come to an end. The holidays are sitting at our front door and the garden is ready again for Christmas as the lights are installed again.

We are ready for the holidays, it is only a couple of weeks away.

The Old Sailor,

winter is on the way

Dear Bloggers,


This morning it was five o’clock to get up and get to work. As soon as I had my breakfast and rubbed the sleep out of my face, I open the curtains to few the world who looks brutal and dark at this time of day. When I walk to the car I feel the cold air tipping on my nose. It is a big difference to last week as temperatures have dropped to 6 degrees Celcius.


It’s getting cold. The nights are starting to draw in while the mornings seem to take forever to stir. I’m beginning to slow down, to curl up in bed for ‘just 10 more minutes’ in the mornings, to seek out sleep earlier in the evenings. I’m walking slowly, as my body is getting stiffer more painful again but surely this will be my first winter in a better shape than the last couple of years.

I’ve never found winter an easy season. Everything seems stark, minimal and asleep. My hands and feet wish to retreat into my body as they become freezing cold and numb. The layers I have to wear drive me nuts because I’m too hot inside and yet freezing outside. I feel constricted by all the clothes needed to keep me warm and I long for the days when I can slip on a pair of flip-flops, a pair of shorts and a t-shirt .



A week ago people hopped on the bus wearing t-shirts, summer dresses and shorts. Today I saw the first ones wearing gloves, hats, caps and scarfs. The air is cold and chilly and slowly night is turning into day. The hard blue sky is bautiful and explains the bittter cold breeze that hangs around. You can imagine that they were quite happy that I had turned on the heater in the bus. It is strange that in such a short period the leaves have turned colours and cold weather took position, weather men predict a cold and snowy winter. And that will spice up the job again as delays give trouble and I think that it is really funny.

For me, winter is all about slowing down, about stripping bare, going back to basics. It’s about inventing new ways of living a full life that focuses the majority of the time on indoor pursuits. It’s about connecting with friends and family, sharing the warmth of the holidays together. It’s about generosity with your neighbors, wishing each other well in this darker season. It’s about ruminating on the fact of life that everything one day will die.


We are still a good couple of months away from ice, winter woolies and the festive season, but already I’m preparing myself for the shifts my body and mind will need to take in the coming months. I want to take the next few months as an opportunity to reflect on my life thus far, to question ‘who I am’ right now and who I will be when this body also sheds its last leaf.

I want to take more time to sit, to question, to think about the circle of life, the parts of me that are dying in order for me to be reborn again next spring and who that makes ‘me’ when the old is perpetually falling away to make room for the new. It makes me sad as i realize how many people that have left us in the last couple of years. On the other hand I see my eldest daughter turning into a woman. Someday there will be the first love and a new circle begins.


I hope that the winter will not be to harsh and not to many snowdays as they only cost money. I start the car and drive into the darkness of the early morning with the radio playing softly and the heating is on full power. So, when I’m up in the dead black of the early morning and nothing is stirring, what will my first thoughts and actions be in that moment? Who will I choose to be when the world appears to be so still as if it’s not yet breathing? How will I make those moments count at a time when it’s much easier just to indulge in the warmth of my bed and my dreams?

The Old Sailor,

The preconceived opinion of the society

Dear Bloggers,

Slowly the autumn begins to enter and when I bring the children to school in the morning the leaves swirl around me. The first trees begin to bare all. I stroll on the pavement on speed dead easy (because of morning stiffness) trough this picturesque image and I am drifting away deep in thought. Until my youngest daughter suddenly pulls my arm and points her finger towards a toadstool. She also asked whether gnomes lived in there?
 

Suddenly I'm back in the real world and I tell her: “Well I think not, because I see no door or a chimney.” Meaningful is her gaze, her eyes he look at me intently. I give her the explanation that not in every toadstool lives a gnome. Meanwhile my brains are running at full strength. I have called the images in my head that this toadstool might be for sale and has a tiny sign in the garden. I laugh about myself and we continue our trip towards the school.

 
It drizzles outside and inside it is comfortable and warm and you would really like to stay here. (And while I hated school in my younger years.) But yes, staying is not an option. One of the students gives a swing to the copper bell indicating that the lessons start in about five minutes,. (So parents have to bugger off.) When I walk out of the door, I feel in my back a few eyes stinging and I think I can guess what these ladies will have as their next issue. “ Yes, the middle-aged unemployed seaman.” Yet I am not the one to be fooled, I greet them with a friendly look and walk quietly back towards our home.
 

I walk back turned into myself and start to giggle a bit and I think are there goblins without work? You normally see these little males usually armed with garden tools. It is not that they are the most active figures as I've never seen one of them move. Some goblins are fishing but this picture gives me even more to think. In my experience this is a sport for men who do not have sex. Because why else would you get up so early in the weekend to get out of a warm bed. And then sitting under a big umbrella staring at the extension of your genitals.
 

Yet it is easier to understand with goblins because you did not see many goblin females. Suddenly I realize something, this would be something not right? Are women oppressed in this culture? Tomorrow it will be in the headlines of newspaper de Telegraaf : “Dwarf men not affraid to use domestic violence.” Meanwhile, I arrived back home and I open the door, I make some coffee and listen to the radio. I make some telephoneconversations to ensure that at the end of the month again we will receive some money again.
When I pick up the kids from school it is around noon, I have decided to buy a winter coat for the little ladies. It is sunny autumn weather when we go on the bike towards the shops out there. Once arrived in the store with my princesses unfolds the grand celebration of the winter coats fitting.
 

We have a lot of fun and nothing is disturbing us. I am also suspiciously monitored by the saleswoman. A mother with children has just entered the store and she looks at me with an indignant glance at my oldest daughter when I say: “You have to choose a coat that is good and that you also should love to wear it because it is your coat.” I feel like a pioneer as seen in the sixties who fought for the rights of women. I fully enjoy this and help my youngest daughter pick out a total of seven new gowns. Walking in a hump of coats we move towards fitting room and again I get the same pair of Argus eyes that followed me earlier this afternoon. The saleslady asks whether we really need no help and i hear in her voice, that I am condemned to be the single father who knows all but has no control. As always I reply:” No thank you we are doing fine” and now I walk with mixed feelings through the store.
 

At one side I'm flattered and on the other hand, I feel hurt. After an hour we leave the shop with two brand new winter coats. As we are heading home on our bikes. suddenly I ask myself this question: What will my wife think of this? The weather is beautiful but because daylight starts to fade early, it cools down very quickly. My thoughts wander off again and I muse over past years. The years that I was a child. After playing outside you came home and often you would smell something nice that you could eat. Now I have to play that role. As it is already quite late, I choose to eat something easy.During diner those double feelings are there again and I really doubt myself. Actually now I recognize myself in the feelings that my wife must have had for years. She phoned me at work to ask what color the sun screen should have for example, she should buy. The children may stay up until mum comes home and of course to show the new coat. After dinner, we are still having some fun at the table and a little chit chat. When we hear the frontdoor open we are waiting anxiously. We have just hung up the new coats as they hung there for ever. My spouse comes in with one of the jackets and asks:” Who is this?” My oldest daughter also resolutely answers: “That is mine and I have selected it myself.” I am relieved that no vindictive remark follows a remark about the color or the scope: “Why was I not asked to go with you?” So I confirm to myself that I can do these things too. Yeah, Well I live in a "girls home" and the shopping I cannot escape from (not that I really mind.) I start to think again: Am I so different than all those other men? Do I have maybe one or more female gene, or are there are more of these dads out there?
 

At one side I enjoy my success and on the other hand, I doubt whether all this is normal. As the evening has fallen I sit with my spouse on the couch and then I doubt again. I'm too soft to determine what is on TV. My wife is usually has the remote and I must say I'm not really a typical male if it comes to preference for things such as football and Formula 1 racing. After all those years these things can not really fascinate me. Again I think: “Am I so different?” I just enjoy my time and I spend it with my children. The happy faces are magic to me when we do something fun again. Laughing I remember this afternoon with my girls. My youngest daughter took all seven coats that we had picked up and she said that she wanted them all to take home.
 

My answer was:”If that bold guy from the postcode lottery is coming along you can take all seven “ Bewildered the mother with children looks at me, after this remark she leaves towards the counter to checkout. I believe they fled the store because she was feeling uncomfortable. And perhaps because she also wants a man like this, and also one that could try things like this with his kids! Ok, I'm not a "superman" but then I do not play soccer on my free Saturday and on Sunday I am not going to fish. Once again I feel a bit double.
 

On one hand I am different and on the other hand, I enjoy all the time that I can spend with my “girls.” Luckely I am not so attached to the rest of the herd and pleased with myself. I am aware that the danger constantly lurks in me but I am not affected at this the point.
 
Enjoy of all the moments you get, because before you know they are gone.


The Old Sailor,

It is autumn and gnomes have no place to live

Dear Bloggers,

Outside the weather is miserable and soon they are coming back from the coffee shops, were they hardly sell coffee but magic mushrooms are the thing to buy.
As the gnomes did not have any shelter problems during the summertime. It now all of a sudden gets dangerous on the paths of fairytale forest.



With brutal force the gnomes fight eachother to find a place to live.
My backyard looks like little Sarajevo, every day I have to collect the dead gnomes from my garden, as these pictures are not to nice for my youngest daughter.
It is not only in my backyard happening it is all over.



As it was beautiful weather later today, I jumped on my bike and toured a little bit with my kids.
When we stopped for a break and sat down on the bench, you could hear the machineguns rattling in the distance.



A battlefield in fairytale forest as the need for housing becomes bigger day by day.
As we travel on we have to wait at the gnome crossing as hundreds of them march to the battlefield, with grumpy faces and loaded guns.



My poor kids will have never a happy childhood because of these crazy tourists that come to my country to eat so called magic mushrooms or paddo’s which is short for paddestoel
(Gnomes house)


I just thought what was wrong with smoking grass or drinking beer? As the people that use it got some awesome hallucinations it became all of a sudden popular.
I always learned that hallucinations are images that don’t really excist.



But that must be difficult for our new generation as they believe in a virtual world, they are fully brainwashed and don’t have a clue about service anymore.
They google,skype,date and od everything possible on the computer, but if it comes to normal
conversation most of them don’t know how to deal with it.
They walk around totally out of the planet, not knowing who they are and were they are.
I would say in this case stop eating these mushrooms as they are not that healthy for your brain and all the stories about gnomes will be only stories and myths.



So there is not much left to tell your kids when you grow up finally. I think it is as big as the greenhouse effect and it is also bad for the finacial market. Wall street is collapsing due to this, because leprechauns (close family to the gnomes) put a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.



No wonder that it goes bad with the economy as there is hardly any manpower left to place these pots of gold at the end of the rainbows.
Also rainbows are not that often there anymore due to the global warming. The weather has really changed as it was miserable this morning and nearly summers this afternoon. I hope that this world will stop with acting stupid and our new generation finds out it is time to just work hard and will stop using these crazy drugs.
Then the future can continue again where it stopped, who will be the next victim? Santa Claus? Oh my god it is worse then I thought. Were will this end, wake up for crying out loud.



I feel sorry for these little creatures it is heartbreaking to see the little women cry about their fallen loved ones. Carrieng the dead bodies of their sons and husband, and this all because of people eating their houses. Come on human beings think before you have fun as old fashioned stuff might be not that good but it does not harm that much.


(Maybe I should stop drinking now for a little while, as I have the feeling that I get carried away a bit.) But yes I have to be there for my kids tomorrow as normal as possible anyway I will end like always with:”Live life as long it is there, pray for less fights, spend your last money on a drink and fuck if your life is depending on it.”

The Old Sailor,