Looking at old photos can be a very nostalgic experience that sometimes "sends me" on strange time traveling journeys...mostly through my own mind.
I came a across a relatively unremarkable photo (being used as a bookmark) of a "certain" autumn day in Denmark, from around mid-November 1975, when it was suddenly clear and warm after a long period of miserable rainy days.
Scan of the original photo from 1975. Unremarkable, as I said...
Unremarkable, but I remember how the evening turned into us all sitting at the dining table, making Christmas decorations. It was the last Christmas my Dad owned the house on Fuglevangsvej. It was the last Christmas I remember there being any sort of *"family connectedness." There was always a "warm mood" that followed that particular day...
I don't know if it was ever my parents' intention that I should eventually "take over" that house — which they more or less built, by hand — and eventually it would become a "family home" through multiple generations. Hard to say. So much happened, since then.
Out of idle curiosity, I pulled up Google Earth to take a look at the house, today. Not sure why. Somehow, I knew I would be looking for something that likely no longer existed.
Nothing Stays the Same...
When I look at the aerial photos today, things have changed so much.
What was once Farmer Boserup's field outside the hawthorne hedge is now a housing development, Helleholm. Mr. Lauritzen's house with the giant property now has multiple houses — or maybe they are apartment buildings — on the land.
At nr. 7 — where we lived — the tree in the driveway is gone and the pavement is no longer dyed deep red. The cypress hedge around the parking area is gone; the beds where I used to keep my small tree farm are no more; paved over. The terrace to the back, facing the lawn... seems to also have been paved over.
The big willow tree where I used to have my rope and swing are gone... although I seem to remember it coming down in a storm some people called "the hurricane." The other big hawthorn tree — where I used to jump on the piles of leaves I'd raked — is also gone.
At the far end of the yard — where the tennis court sized vegetable garden used to be — the "footprint" of the kitchen garden remains, but it now appears to just be a bed with assorted trees and shrubs. When I back out a bit, there now appear to be two houses on what used to be the Ragoczy family's property...
It all sits there, somewhat the same, but also different, as a reminder that the only constant in life is change.
I look around our entire neighborhood, and most of what I notice is the ongoing reality that "in Denmark, there are no longer rich people who own large estates." We lived in a wealthy neighborhood, in what was a fairly modest house.
Those "big places" around us... those are gone. The "Smidstrupøre" estate sits as the lone reminder of days gone by... a giant red brick seaside edifice overlooking the Sound between Denmark and Sweden. It is a different world now. A world I barely recognize as something I once was part of; something I tried to call "home," a very long time (50 years) ago
Panning Out, Looking Around...
I move the Earth Viewer to the side, towards "Dortheaborg" where my Aunt Grete used to live; it was just a short bicycle ride from our house. There are still fields on two sides. I don't think anyone keeps chickens anymore. Mr. Pedersen's field of lupins has been mowed and is now "just another lawn," and what was once Aunt Grete's large kitchen garden is now just another grove of trees. I witness, again, how people remove the "hands on" aspects of living life.
Fagerhøj — where we lived after my parents divorced — still sits where it has been since 1760, but is surrounded by row houses where there were apple orchards. The Hoff family's land has most of those houses on it. Paved driveways have replaced horse paddocks. Oddly enough, the antlers on the end of the gable of Hanne & Viggo's house are still up there, 50 years later... just too hard to get to, I suppose.
Where my mom and I lived, a few of the cypresses and thujas I helped plant are still there, facing the street. They are tall mature trees, now. Our kitchen garden is long gone, too... now a paved parking area in front of a couple of houses. All around, there are new buildings. It feels oddly... claustrophobic... now, where before it felt rather "airy" and open. It feels strangely sad to look at it all, now.
As I look at all these images, they all send a similar message: "We don't have time to take care of things anymore-- let's just pave them over."
I ponder that, for a moment... and the strange way we humans so often wish for "better times ahead" when we are young, and then grow up to "long for the way things once were" as we age.
Halfway across the globe... there is our small town here in Washington, USA... our house, seen from the air. There is a circle in the back yard; our labyrinth... now finished, since the last satellite pass. In this moment, it makes me smile. But I also wonder what will people see, 50 years from now, when we are gone? Will there still be a circle? Will there still be the vegetable beds we have built, as "urban homesteaders?" Will people look at the building from above and observe that some "strange fish" who still had a "hands on" approach to the land lived here, at some point?
What Are We Chasing?
It feels like we go off chasing virtual worlds... and we have become so far removed from the tangible earth beneath our feet.
I worry, at times, that we have become so far removed from it that we no longer understand the basic "care and feeding" of the planet. I don't mean that in a creepy environmentalist way, but in the sense of being able to simply sustain ourselves.
And I worry, as wwell, that we have learned nothing from our time on this planet... and as people start moving off towards colonizing Mars, we will merely bring our same "bad habits" with us... having not yet learned how to develop "good habits" before we strike out to settle other places between the stars.
Way back in the when — when I wrote endlessly about "The Universe and Everything" in my red books — my version of the Universe was always of a place where people were not so angry, not so loud, not so warring, no so aggressive, not so competitive, not so aggressive, not so dirty, not so destructive.
I don't know what it says about me — as a 13-16 year old — that these were my core preoccupations in the fantastical worlds I visualized inside my head. In those worlds, there was no "slaying" of anything, and there were no "battles between species."
The beauty of it was cooperation, exploration and peaceful trade. Even by the few trusted people with whom I shared this, I was always told that I was a "delusional dreamer" and that "peaceful and gentle" is not in anyone's nature... we're all basically "primitive, evil, vicious, selfish and aggressive."
For 50-odd years, I have pondered why my state of mind — the place I "naturally go to" — is SO different from everyone else's? And to those whom ask why it always seems like I must be "sad" or "mildly depressed," and that is basically the underlying reason.
Yeah, yeah... I know. I'm "delusional." I'm "in denial about my true feelings." I'm actually "filled with repressed rage."
Bite Me!
I have grown tired. I have become somewhat of a recluse — at age 63 — because I have grown tired. Not only have I grown tired of the volume and aggression and anger of the world — and the inevitably destructive consequences thereof — but I have grown tired of "defending my reality" to the endless stream of people who seem compelled to impress upon me that MY reality can't be "real" because it's so different from their own.
Thinking about it all... makes me sad, and perhaps that's why I enjoy time traveling through pictures of the past.
Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy the rest of your Easter weekend!
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Created at 2023-04-09 00:13 PST
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