AARDVARK SOUP - 8 NOVEMBER 2022

CENSORED POST, LET US TRY THIS AGAIN NOW 

Up here in the North, September/October are special months

(like April/May is for you upside downers), the summer is officially

over, along with the day dreaming, iced tea, and leisure time blamed

on the heat, school restarts for most of us, and the preparations for

winter stumble to a start. Things like getting ready for harvest, and

that “do before the rain/frost” list that never gets fully completed.

Unless you are royalty, wealthy, elitist, or posh, the last three months of any year (North or South) are exhausting, in all ways and all at once… financially, physically, and stress-wise, there is simply too much to do before the "real" weather hits.  My being “stuck” on job sites in different places around the planet at this time of year, allowed me to see how important this time of year really is … for all the world's people.

We too often overlook “sameness”, and become overly aware and sensitive to “differences”... to the point that we become blinded, separated by language, religion, politics, money, prejudices and stereotyping of race and social class.  But, when Autumn arrives, in most places I have been, it’s all hands on deck, for the common good… “energy” ends up the prize.. food, heat, animal feed, it is all energy.   

The common good… is a strange concept in 2022, having assembled foreign work crews in many odd, remote and primitive places to build chemical, steel, refinery, refrigeration, power plants, boats, canneries and other crazy stuff has required using the local workforce, almost always assembled with uncanny misfit characters, often times speaking uncommunicative languages, their “skills” speak volumes.

I used to equate it with the old sailing ship days of collecting together shanghaied pub crawlers, some prisoners, and mixed foreigners, drunkards, and run-aways, then hoping to call them a “crew” after you sail away into the middle of the ocean, everyone becomes a critical part of the effort, this is team work at its best, creating a “crew”... building an “idea” where everyone is equal, welder to clean-up, cook to pipefitter, superintendent to parts chaser, it blurs the identities, and enhances your purpose. 

Sometimes these mixed work crews from different places and cultures, put aside centuries old differences (as in “very” big differences) to create (build) impossible feats and impressive achievements in their homelands or in some far away (even remote) country, months later at project completion, the results are as much about the relationships built, as the smokestack rising… I was educated in America, but schooled, and taught by locals in the bush about the Aardvark soup, and to never ask about the skewered meat, or things that taste like chicken… (but aren't), in the end, the magic of human interface was the real education, the characters, food, failures, tragedies, communication and differences (of opinion, methods, spirit and ethics) all ride home with you on the train, in the air, or sailing back “home”.

This year (2022), as we head into Autumn harvest (or the Southern Spring planting) things will be different, after the US mid-term elections settle, our “sameness” and “human interface” had better begin creating some “common good”, all the global indicators are dire, and with 8 billion people aboard planet earth, crammed into 25 percent of its surface area, these are going to be special times food-wise, and energy-wise. 

Like waking up shocked in the morning to see the Circus has arrived, and raised their tents quietly overnight while you slept, I fear this planet may have surprises coming, like sitting down to a dinner bowl of Aardvark Soup. 

Click "OLDER POSTS" @ bottom right