Today was sunny. It is unbelievable the difference this makes to life here: the gloom of a stormy day which merges into darkness in the afternoon seems to bring all sorts of pressures, not the least being the sense that there is so little time to do anything in a day, so that you feel your life is drifting past - or galloping past, more like. But today I was walking on Loch Striven, surrounded by the rushing of the many small torrents which had erupted on the hillside above, looking at a lonely seal doing back exercises on a rock and a disdainful cormorant-like bird ignoring it. All very peaceful, very restorative.
And then there was the naval vessel refuelling at the NATO fuel base on Loch Striven. It looked enormous against the sun, filling the end of the pier, looming rustily in my viewfinder. I remembered how, in my activist era, I once wove a CND symbol from snowdrops on the wire gate there. And I reflected on how simple the cold war era now seems, with Iraq once more boiling over the execution of Saddam, and how it feels to have voted for a government which made such things come about.
And I realised how glad I was to have the joyous frivolities of my blog comments to return to. Heads back in the sand, chums - quick.
Chris, you said, "I reflected on how simple the cold war era now seems."
ReplyDeleteI reflected on how simple the cold war era now seems
Yes. We justly feared the constant knowledge that one madman, or worse, one sane but evil person could tip us into Gehenna in a heartbeat in those days, and we feared the ultimate evil effects the protracted conflict was having on our fragile freedoms.
Today, we are so distracted by the fruits of our arrogance that we tend to forget both the ever-spreading access to ultimate destruction in this world and the seemingly accelerating disdain for human rights by our governments, all in the name of preserving those same rights!
Fire and ice. Fire and ice.