Walk
We took a pretty long walk today. We didn't really mind looking at the weather forecast or where to walk, we just met in Darmstadt and went straight for the forest.
We ended up walking almost 20.000 steps, exactly 333% of the “daily goal”. In our conversation, without really knowing it, I think we cycled through all the Quadrants, and subsequently went through almost all the interesting thoughts we've both had in the past weeks and months.
At one point, Luna didn't want to continue walking anymore. She just laid down on the forest floor. So we turned around and walked straight back. Soon later it started raining unexpectedly heavy and we eventually found shelter under three pine trees who were standing close together.
I always thought that it is bullshit that the presence of trees gifts us with a special access to wisdom, but I'm not so sure anymore. It might have simply been the relaxation of having found a dry patch in a leave-less forest, or their calming shade, but somehow, at the centre of these three trees, our creativity was flowing better than before.
We realized the most probable way for our societies to eventually overcome capitalism (which reminded me a lot of how I think we can overcome the patterns inside our minds: grow the alternatives until they overgrow the old patterns.)
You told me how when reading Jesus' Sermon on the Mount you noticed how he told his followers to not swear to God, but to just say “Yes” or “No” and that there should not be any need to involve God.
And how you then came across a statutory declaration the next day and had to laugh because it contained exactly this oath to God that Jesus had despised so much for its implicit double standard.
From a conversation about the inability of our current drug law to effectively outlaw LSD we then ended up in a conversation about better alternative drug laws.
I proposed that we could simply adjust prices by means of taxation to regulate consumption. This would of course affect people differently depending on financial wealth. So to compensate for this, I proposed to create local currencies that create more equal wealth among local people that can then be exchanged locally. Drugs would then be sold in local pharmacies rather than online-shops.
Eventually, when the rain stopped, we continued walking, listened to the wind in the trees and ended up on a field (it could only have been the Oberfeld), and without any orientation just walked all around it.
When we were at the opposite end from the city we started crossing it towards the city. A bit into the field, we could suddenly hear the wind in the forest behind us pick up speed, and a few seconds later the wind also reached us, but not from the direction of the forest but from the direction of the field.
My hypothesis was that actually warm air from the forest had started rising and was inducing this wind, this flow of cold air that was coming from the field, suddenly pressing into our faces with lots of rain mixed into it.
On the open field, the intense rain and wind was strong, but I enjoyed it, and only felt bad for Luna because with her fur she wasn't really able to adapt well.
So once we reached a small crossing we got behind an information sign (“Schild”) and used it as a shield (“Schild”). I found it funny that it was serving us in the second meaning of its name, on the opposite side of that which had the text on it.
On the way back from the train station in Dieburg I listened to Deutschlandfunk Nova and they surprised me with this song:
To me in that moment it transported the feeling of:
Let's get going with what we have to do
We can enjoy everything along the way
But we have a mission, and time counts
It sets a new pace, but it's not stressing me. I appreciate it.
Here is the same song on Youtube:
A bit later they played this song, which I already knew but sounded different while walking towards my parents' home: