Cork oaks and Holm oaks

The cork oaks (Quercus suber, alcornoques) didn't have many acorns, but here is one.

The local pines.

Young cone.

Holm oak (Quercus ilex, encima). The other local oak.

Cork oak bark.

Cork oak recently stripped. It's done at regular intervals... 14 years in some places, only 9 in others, depending on local growing conditions. 

Local people say that if the bark is not stripped the tree will die. That isn't true, of course. I speculate that the underlying point is that if the bark is allowed to grow too thick it's no longer the right quality to be commercially valuable.

Shelling chickpeas.

Cork oak leaves, with lupin seedling.

Holm oak bark, cracking into oblong plates.

Holm oak acorns.

Mature Holm oak acorn; they become a rich cocoa brown. The cup has rather a thin rim. I heard that these Mediterranean oaks have less tannin than the British ones; they feed pigs, chickens and even humans, at a pinch.

Roast dinner with Holm Oak acorns. 

Fat acorns of Holm Oak.

Cork Oak... the cups are thick and "furry".

Holm Oak: an acorn year.

Another evergreen oak: the scrubby Kermes Oak (Quercus coccifera), near Albacete.

Honey from Holm Oak blossom.

Aire de Saugon

 

Sparrows. Moineaux. Gorriones in Spanish, like the ones that Don Urbano Gil de la Cuadra pretends to be interested in feeding (7 de julio, chapter 5).

We're in Europe. Only scatty posts for a while!

Le long des golfes clairs ...

if sages had this world begun

 

So. One of the ancient wise men -- by accident, of course -- managed to say something very smart: "Love and hunger rule the world." Ergo: To rule the world, man has got to rule the rulers of the world. Our forebears finally managed to conquer Hunger, by paying a terrible price: I'm talking about the 200-Years War, the war between the City and the Country. It was probably religious prejudice that made the Christian savages fight so stubbornly for their "bread"*. But in the year 35 before the founding of OneState our present petroleum food was invented. True, only 0.2 of the world's population survived. On the other hand, when it was cleansed of a thousand years of filth, how bright the face of the earth became! And what is more, the zero point two tenths who survived . . . tasted earthly bliss in the granaries of OneState. 

* This word has come down to us only as a poetic metaphor. It is not known what the chemical composition of this material was.

[From Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (written 1920-1921), Record 5, translation by Clarence Brown (1993).]

Thus writes D-503, still very much signed up to OneState's narrative. As for Love, there is a system of Sex Days, organized by pink ticket.

I expect I'll write a lot more about We in other posts. But for now, let's stick to love and hunger. 

The ultimate origin of the saying seems to be the ending of Friedrich Schiller's 1795 poem "Die Weltweisen". The title means "The World-Wise". In English, it has usually been translated as "The Philosophers". The poem is essentially a satire on philosophers who only say what everyone already knows. In the meanwhile it's Nature who drives the world forward, as ever, through Love and Hunger.  

Here's the German text, interleaved with Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton's lively but not very literal translation in The Poems and Ballads of Schiller (1844). (His version of the end of the first stanza is contentious, as he explains in a note, but I'm not including that here.)

Die Weltweisen   /   Philosophers

      Der Satz, durch welchen alles Ding
Bestand und Form empfangen,
Der Nagel, woran Zeus den Ring
Der Welt, die sonst in Scherben ging,
Vorsichtig aufgehangen,
Den nenn’ ich einen großen Geist,
Der mir ergründet, wie er heißt,
Wenn ich ihm nicht drauf helfe —
Er heißt: Zehn ist nicht Zwölfe.

                    To learn what gives to every thing

                      The form and live which we survey,

                    The law by which the Eternal King

                    Moves all Creation's order'd ring,

                           And keeps it from decay --

                    When to great Doctor Wiseman we go --

                    If help'd not out by Fichté's ego --

                    All from his brain that we can delve,

                    Is this sage answer -- "Ten's not Twelve."

        Der Schnee macht kalt, das Feuer brennt,
Der Mensch geht auf zwei Füßen,
Die Sonne scheint am Firmament,
Das kann, wer auch nicht Logik kennt,
Durch seine Sinne wissen.
Doch wer Metaphysik studiert,
Der weiß, daß, wer verbrennt, nicht friert,
Weiß, daß das Nasse feuchtet
Und daß das Helle leuchtet.

                    The snow can chill, the fire can burn,

                      Men when they walk on two feet go ; --

                    A sun in Heaven all eyes discern --

                    This through the senses we may learn,

                          Nor go to school to know !

                    But the profounder student sees,

                    That that which burns -- will seldom freeze ;

                    And can instruct the astonish'd hearer,

                    How moisture moistens -- light makes clearer.

        Homerus singt sein Hochgedicht,
Der Held besteht Gefahren;
Der brave Mann thut seine Pflicht
Und that sie, ich verhehl’ es nicht,
Eh noch Weltweise waren.
Doch hat Genie und Herz vollbracht,
Was Lock’ und Des Cartes nie gedacht,
Sogleich wird auch von diesen
Die Möglichkeit bewiesen.

                    Homer composed his mighty song,

                      The hero danger dared to scorn,

                    The brave man did his duty, long

                    Before -- (and who shall say I'm wrong) --

                            Philosophers were born !

                    Before Descartes and Locke -- the Sun

                    Saw things by Heart and Genius done,

                    Which those great men have proved, on viewing,

                    The possibility of -- doing !

        Im Leben gilt der Stärke Recht,
Dem Schwachen trotzt der Kühne,
Wer nicht gebieten kann, ist Knecht;
Sonst geht es ganz erträglich schlecht
Auf dieser Erdenbühne.
Doch wie es wäre, fing’ der Plan
Der Welt nur erst von vornen an,
Ist in Moralsystemen
Ausführlich zu vernehmen.

                    Strength in this life prevails and sways --

                      Bold Power oppresses humble Worth --

                    He who can not command obeys --

                    In short there's not too much to praise

                          In this poor orb of earth,

                    But how things might be better done,

                    If sages had this world begun,

                    By moral systems of their own,

                    Most incontestably is shown !

        „Der Mensch bedarf des Menschen sehr
Zu seinem großen Ziele;
Nur in dem Ganzen wirket er,
Viel Tropfen geben erst das Meer,
Viel Wasser treibt die Mühle.
Drum flieht der wilden Wölfe Stand
Und knüpft des Staates dauernd Band.”
So lehren vom Katheder
Herr Puffendorf und Feder.

                    "Man needs mankind, must be confest --

                      In all he labours to fulfil,

                    Must work, or with, or for, the rest ;

                    'Tis drops that swell the ocean's breast --

                          'Tis waves that turn the mill.

                    The savage life for man unfit is,

                    So take a wife and live in cities."

                    Thus ex cathedrá teach, we know,

                    Wise Messieurs Puffendorf and Co.

        Doch weil, was ein Professor spricht,
Nicht gleich zu Allen dringet,
So übt Natur die Mutterpflicht
Und sorgt, daß nie die Kette bricht
Und daß der Reif nie springet.
Einstweilen, bis den Bau der Welt
Philosophie zusammenhält,
Erhält sie das Getriebe
Durch Hunger und durch Liebe.

                    Yet since, what grave professors preach,

                      The crowd may be excused from knowing ;

                    Meanwhile, old Nature looks to each,

                    Tinkers the chain, and mends the breach,

                           And keeps the clockwork going.

                    Some day, Philosophy, no doubt,

                    A better World will bring about :

                    Till then the Old a little longer,

                    Must blunder on -- through Love and Hunger !

[German source: https://kalliope.org/en/text/schiller2001102415 . Translation source. ]

Here's another, more literal, translation:

  The Philosophers

   The principle by which each thing
    Toward strength and shape first tended,—
   The pulley whereon Zeus the ring
   Of earth, that loosely used to swing,
    With cautiousness suspended,—
   he is a clever man, I vow,
   Who its real name can tell me now,
   Unless to help him I consent—
   'Tis: ten and twelve are different!

   Fire burns,—'tis chilly when it snows,
    Man always is two-footed,—
   The sun across the heavens goes,—
   This, he who naught of logic knows
    Finds to his reason suited.
   Yet he who metaphysics learns,
   Knows that naught freezes when it burns—
   Knows that what's wet is never dry,—
   And that what's bright attracts the eye.

   Old Homer sings his noble lays,
    The hero goes through dangers;
   The brave man duty's call obeys,
   And did so, even in the days
    When sages yet were strangers—
   But heart and genius now have taught
   What Locke and what Descartes never thought;
   By them immediately is shown
   That which is possible alone.

   In life avails the right of force.
    The bold the timid worries;
   Who rules not, is a slave of course,
   Without design each thing across
    Earth's stage forever hurries.
   Yet what would happen if the plan
   Which guides the world now first began,
   Within the moral system lies
   Disclosed with clearness to our eyes.

   "When man would seek his destiny,
    Man's help must then be given;
   Save for the whole, ne'er labors he,—
   Of many drops is formed the sea,—
    By water mills are driven;
   Therefore the wolf's wild species flies,—
   Knit are the state's enduring ties."
   Thus Puffendorf and Feder, each
   Is, ex cathedra, wont to teach.

   Yet, if what such professors say,
    Each brain to enter durst not,
   Nature exerts her mother-sway,
   Provides that ne'er the chain gives way,
    And that the ripe fruits burst not.
   Meanwhile, until earth's structure vast
   Philosophy can bind at last,
   'Tis she that bids its pinion move,
   By means of hunger and of love!

[Translation (translator's name not supplied), from here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6796/6796-h/6796-h.htm .]

I think Sigmund Freud credited Schiller's poem with giving him the idea of the two drives described in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). 

In fact Schiller himself had a theory of drives, according to this intriguing page of jottings (Encyclopaedia of Human Thermodynamics, etc.). In the same place, I found this:

“Hunger and love are two fundamental forces that reign in the living world, they are the primary source of all phenomena, mental and social.”

— Leon Winiarski (1899), Essay on Social Mechanics . (Leon Winiarski (1865-1915) was a Polish sociologist who taught at the University of Geneva.)

So Zamyatin might have been alluding to Winiarski rather than Schiller. 

The Burton Way

Powdermill Wood, Battle, E. Sussex, 3 September 2022.

 

Almost as soon as my brother awoke from his afternoon nap -- if he'd had one; even the neighbors would pray he'd have one -- I was waiting for Dad to come home. I'd sit on the chair in the bay window and hold vigil, staring along the rough, pot-holed road that was The Terrace. I'd see the bus hove into view and slow down opposite Pete Eldridge's garage -- which had once been stabling for the Duke of Kent pub -- and then I'd be up and out the door, running along the street and into my father's arms. As soon as he'd had a cup of tea, we would be walking across the fields with the dog, come rain or shine, snow or hail, daylight or darkness. Walking across the fields at dusk in winter was my favorite time. There was something mystical about it, feeling the frost crunch under my feet. There was always something to see, always something he'd show me, kneeling at my side and raising his paint-stained hands -- those knobby, flat-thumbed worker's hands -- and pointing so I knew where to focus my gaze, perhaps to see a rabbit, or a fox. And there was also the long slide down the Burton Way to dread. 

I'm always curious about how places come to have names, often linking people to something that happened long ago. We'd walk down the footpath at the side of the house, then along the track to Five Acres, the big field before we reached Robin's Wood. We'd pass the stinky place where overflow sewage from septic systems came out -- our community would not have a main sewer line until I was seventeen years of age. At the far end of the field was a stile and from the stile there were two paths -- one to the left, a steep descent, and one to the right, which was more of a meander through the woods. My father always liked to take the path to the left; it was probably because hardly anyone ever went that way and my father liked to assert his independence by taking the path less traveled. I think choosing the trail with a challenging gradient was a variant on pitching his tent on the wrong side in Germany -- he did things his own way. But so steep was the path, I always fell down, often ending up caught in brambles. The first time I tumbled, my father said, "Oh, you've gone for a burton there, my girl!"

Going for a burton? If you search online, "Going for a burton" originated with the RAF and meant you were going to die, or you'd had an accident. Interesting. And here's why it's interesting -- the locution was common in South East London, and there is a belief that it originated to describe the effects of Burton Ales. So, if you fall down, you've "Gone for a burton." My father would never have used any phrase that might link his child to a sad demise, and given that he'd used the term since boyhood I can only think that the internet is wrong in this case, though I can believe RAF pilots would co-opt the phrase "Going for a burton" to describe a fall from the skies following an altercation with a Luftwaffe Messerschmitt.

That aside, from the time of my first fall, I always asked Dad, "Are we going the burton way this time?" So that path became the Burton Way. Years later I was walking near the old house, long after my parents have moved away, and I heard some children shouting to each other, "Let's go down the Burton Way!" I smiled and watched as they ran off, gamboling down the track, past clean sweet-smelling woodland where the sewage used to come out, and on towards Five Acres and Robin's Wood. 

(Jacqueline Winspear, This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing: A Memoir (2020), pp. 104-106. Jacqueline's parents were a fiery working-class couple who abandoned London after WWII for a semi-vagrant life in rural Kent.)

Some sort of Russula. Powdermill Wood, Battle, E. Sussex, 3 September 2022.

*

... I remember that, in the course of our conversations during these walks, on several occasions she surprised me a great deal. The first time was when she said to me: "If you were not too hungry and if it was not so late, by taking that road to the left and then turning to the right, in less than a quarter of an hour we should be at Guermantes." It was as though she had said to me: "Turn to the left, then bear right, and you will touch the intangible, you will reach the inaccessibly remote tracts of which one never knows anything on this earth except the direction, except" (what I thought long ago to be all that I could ever know of Guermantes, and perhaps in a sense I had not been mistaken) "the 'way.'" One of my other surprises was that of seeing the "source of the Vivonne," which I imagined as something as extra-terrestrial as the Gates of Hell, and which was merely a sort of rectangular basin in which bubbles rose to the surface. And the third occasion was when Gilberte said to me: "If you like, we might after all go out one afternoon and then we can go to Guermantes, taking the road by Méséglise, which is the nicest way," a sentence which upset all the ideas of my childhood by informing me that the two "ways" were not as irreconcilable as I had supposed ...

(Marcel Proust, Time Regained (translation by Andreas Mayor and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright), p. 3.)

*

Sweet Chestnut trees (Castanea sativa). Powdermill Wood, Battle, E. Sussex, 3 September 2022.

Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.

(Jeremiah 6:16)

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

(Matthew 7:13-14)

*

Now, did you ever think, or do you believe, that the fact of a course of conduct, or of an opinion, being the conduct or the opinion of a majority, is pro tanto against it? 'What everybody says must be true,' says the old proverb, and I do not dispute it. What most people say is, I think, most often false. And that is true about conduct, as well as about opinion. It is very unsafe to take the general sense of a community for your direction. It is unsafe in regard to matters of opinion, it is even more unsafe in regard to matters of conduct. That there are many on a road is no sign that the road is a right one; but it is rather an argument the other way; looking at the gregariousness of human nature, and how much people like to save themselves the trouble of thinking and decision, and to run in ruts ...

(from Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910), "The Two Paths", exposition of Matthew 7: 13-14. Source: https://biblehub.com/library/maclaren/expositions_of_holy_scripture_a/the_two_paths.htm .)

*

Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) or something of that sort. Powdermill Wood, Battle, E. Sussex, 3 September 2022.

A week after the holidays began, my father was summoned to the office of the General Manager of Schools. There he was informed that he was being transferred to Ho, as headmaster of the Catholic school there. Teachers employed by the Mission had absolutely no voice in the decision as to where they would be posted. They would be sent anywhere in the diocese, and transferred at a moment's notice. This has always led to a lot of dissatisfaction, and been the cause of hardship and separation. Teachers were also transferred to other schools in the diocese as a punishment for reasons no made known to them. My father had only been headmaster of the Tegbi school for a couple of years, his family settled there, and his wife's trade was flourishing. It would mean a lot of inconvenience and financial loss to go. He was not pleased.

But the general manager was tactful and explained the position carefully.

"We are very pleased with your work here," he told Nani. "We see that you understand how to rule with a firm hand; we see that you give as much thought to the training of your children's characters, as you do to teaching them the three Rs. Your own little boy, now, we see how firmly you have set his feet upon the narrow path. You are the sort of man we need in Ho. There is a new school. It has only been opened a year. And now the headmaster, a really excellent man, has suddenly died -- God rest his soul. What shall we do if we cannot find another strong man to take his place? The school is in a town where superstition and witchcraft abound. We may lose many young souls, my dear headmaster, if you let us down."

The Reverend Manager paused. His words sank in. My father's resentment and annoyance died down, and was replaced by pride and enthusiasm. 

"I shall not let you down," he answered. "When shall I go?"

(from Francis Selormey (1927 - 1983), The Narrow Path: An African Childhood (1966), Chapter 6.  Semi-autobiographical novel of Kofi's childhood on the coast of Ghana, and his relationship with his stern, righteous father.)

*

Dried up plants of Wood Dock (Rumex sanguineus). Powdermill Wood, Battle, E. Sussex, 3 September 2022. 

"O see ye not yon narrow road,
So thick beset with thorns and briers?
That is the path of righteousness,
Tho after it but few enquires.

"And see ye not that braid braid road,
That lies across that lily leven?
That is the path of wickedness,
Tho some call it the road to heaven.

"And see not ye that bonny road,
That winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Where thou and I this night maun gae.

[Source .]

(from the ballad "Thomas the Rhymer" as it appears in Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (2nd edn, 1803). In some other versions the lilies really are on the heavenly path, e.g. the fragmentary Child 37B:

‘It’s dont ye see yon broad broad way,
  That leadeth down by yon skerry fell?
  It’s ill’s the man that dothe thereon gang,
  For it leadeth him straight to the gates o hell.
 
‘It’s dont ye see yon narrow way,
  That leadeth down by yon lillie lea?
  It’s weel’s the man that doth therein gang,
  For it leads him straight to the heaven hie.’

[Source .]

*

The choice of paths is a natural image for life choices, especially moral ones. It expresses a belief in the importance of the choice before us, and in the conviction that once we take a certain path it rapidly becomes impossible to change our minds. (A conviction that may be false, as Marcel discovers.) 

And in fact while the preachers appeal to our sense of other people's courses being grimly determined (especially the mindless majority on its broad way), they also seem to assert that our own moment of choice still lies before us and is still amenable to exhortation. Now, as in childhood, we are still standing where the paths diverge, and we can still make a different choice.

But not all choices are moral or apparently of mortal importance. Winspear, like Proust before her and like so many children, sees meaning in the seemingly unimportant leisure choice of which walk to do today. Every way has its different character, and the more times we take it or think about a particular path, the more distinct its character becomes. It is a choice that doesn't seem to lead to consequences: the daily walk is pre-eminently not about achieving a target or performing a task; for some it might the only part of the day that's entirely free of that burden. One might see a hare or a planet, but that's as may be, it is not one's rightful expectation and it is not the point of the walk. Instead there's a relaxation of utilitarian and moral pressure, but this relaxation, far from eliminating meaningfulness, actually seems to endow it. For, in hindsight and even in shadowy foresight, the familiar ways of our youth did carry meanings, though we can never fully read them. Without our knowledge the choice of paths, like the flap of a butterfly's wing, was giving shape to our individual experience, it made us who we have become. 

Powdermill Wood, Battle, E. Sussex, 3 September 2022.

The col in London

London Waterloo is where west meets east for train travellers. For more than two hours my morning train had wound mazily through the chalk of southern England, from Frome to Westbury, then switching direction to go via Warminster down the Wylye valley to Salisbury, then switching direction again to head north-east to Andover, Basingstoke, Woking and various other sleepier places that conveyed no meaning to me. Then Clapham Junction and finally Waterloo. And then, by a kind of miracle, you can skip London altogether,  with just a latte and croissant from a stall, a five-minute stroll through an elevated walkway, and a glimpse of the dome of St Paul's dwarfed by today's monuments to science and capitalism, and suddenly, like the moment when you finally reach a col in mountain country, here you are in Waterloo East and facing out on an entirely different horizon, among the trains to Hastings and Ashford and all points south east.  

I had a few minutes to spare, but not enough to make my way outside to where I might grab a smoke, so instead I opened my guitar case and played "A Matter of Time" and "La Mer"*, for the most part inaudibly, due to the hissing and squealing of trains. And I thought once more about how paying £12 to get a strap button fitted to my classical guitar was the best purchase I've ever made, and the most stupidly belated. 

* Songs by David Hidalgo/ Louie Pérez and Charles Trenet, respectively.