Van de morgen, de babbel met de drie Russels, nee, geen familie van de
filosoof, maar wezens met een eigen manier van filosoferen over het leven,
gewoon hond zijn. Zo blij als zotten
worden wanneer ze snappen dat er een fiets in een camionette wordt gezet
en dat ze in de bijna eindeloze
boomgaarden en velden van het Hageland vrijelijk mogen gaan crossen, snuffelen,
op muizen -en rattenjacht gaan. Wijl
weer de kievit op dezelfde plek zijn mannetje waarschuwt dat we door hun
broedgebied trekken…kan ook een vrouwtje zijn, van zo hoog zie je dat
niet. Aan het kapelletje van 1628 ongeveer staat een hoge meiboom in bloei,
niet de klassieke struiken meiboom, maar een echte dikke stam, recht omhoog en
een verzameling meiboombloemen met een welhaast hemelse geur. Laat de kerken maar zeuren over de hemel,
alles is eeuwig zowel als vergankelijk, maar het leuke is dat op manieren waar de
meeste mensen toch al ook niet veel in geïnteresseerd zijn, alles misschien wel
eens weerkeert tot alle verhalen weer hun voltooiing benaderen en dan plots
weer andere wendingen krijgen. Fietsend
tussen de honderden meters lange rijen fruitbomen die hun sexy look voor een
groene reeds hebben verwisseld, deze zesde mei van 2018, denk ik terug aan toen
ik als peuter of kleuter bij een wandeling met de klas met mijn korte broekje op
de soms rode, soms bruine of zwarte grond van de streek zat en de rode mieren
serieus wat plekken op mijn benen en billen achtergelaten hadden. Deze beestjes denken niet na, ze doen gewoon…zoals
de eerste slogan voor de komende gemeenteraadsverkiezingen zegt. Wat er niet
bij staat is dat dat ‘gewoon’ ‘doen’ in dit deel van de geschiedenis als gevolg
heeft dat naast de welvaart, de armoede en oorlog ook voortduren blijft. Voor de mensheid vandaag valt of staat de
welvaart met zoveel mogelijk economische groei of de boel valt stil…dus met
zijn allen maar ‘fakken’ (streekdialect voor werken als ezels) …met zo weinig
mogelijk mensen om zo goedkoop mogelijke producten te maken terwijl dat niet de
bedoeling van het leven kan zijn. Meer
en meer mensen moeten hun hoofd bezig houden met zien dat ze toekomen op het
einde van de maand. Wat me trouwens
sterk aan die mieren doet denken. Dan
liever een hondenleven, nat als ze zijn van hun tochten door het lange gras en
de eerste reeds voor drogend hooi van klavers, ‘pisbloemen’ (paardebloemen) en twintig
soorten gras gemaaide velden; ruikend naar kip; trekken we weer huiswaarts.Present
stage of the World
Everything
is recent. Writing somebodies biography, one can start in the now and go back
from time to time or one can start in a certain past and the even jump into the
future, projecting things in the future becomes more possible ones you get very
skilled in the two first methods. The preacher whose biography I will write
will intervene in the present time, I will start in the past.
Once upon a time there was a man who descended from a long line of people which
all had some ties with a Spanish officer who married a Flemish farmer 's
daughter. His name was Vicca and he arrived in the South Netherlands to do the
dirty work for the Spanish king and all the wealthy persons that surrounded
him. Vicca did not like what he was doing and in those days (16 th century) one
had to tell ones conscience that it was all for the victory of the Catholic
church.
Vicca obeyed his general Alva and was rewarded with a piece of land about 45
kilometers from Bruselas (Brussels). He married a local woman, Josephina Blueyd
and witnessed that period in history when the northern, dialects of Dutch
speaking people broke away from the Roman catholic church. For the next 400
years the southern part, the Flemish part, was not as free as it comes to
religious interpretation of the bible as the northern part. Spanish clergy put
the accent more on suffering as a necessity to reach heaven then the followers
of the different branches of protestants. Understanding the world in a more
scientific and philosophical way, still had a long way to go for the large
majority of people. Whether one believed in God or whether one felt oneself as
a part of everlasting nature, life was hard in those days. Feeling a bit guilty
about his military career, Dionysus gave money to construct the 'chapel of the
sad people' in Wever, near the village of Attenrode where he died in 1584. The
Flemish nationalist with the name of the first village in his name, wasn't born
yet. Telematics and the telecom company ATT didn't exist yet and there was
limited class struggle, which did not call itself 'red'(rood) yet. Officially
the chapel was to be dedicated to one of the victories over the army of the Dutch
leader Willem Van Nassau...but in fact more psychological reasons drove
Dionysus Vicca. Speaking of psychological or spiritual reasons…that chapel over
there, also became known as the place where hundreds of years later a nun got
rid of her religious cloths, even before the time of the modern women ‘s
liberation period which started in the sixties of the twentieth century.
History and psychology would affect, as they do for everyone, the lives of the
descendants of the local Josephina and Dionysus Vicca who descended from
Scandinavia. It would affect following
generations in a special way, because the confrontation between the South and
North of Europe would not only lead to descendants with blue or dark eyes
etc... but also at the confrontation of psychological and philosophical
attitudes. After a number of historical episodes and generations who passed on
their negative and positive emotions in order to let Life continue the search
for wisdom, some 4 centuries later a modern
preacher
was born from the midst of the descendants of Dion. His name was Arthur Tomboy,
also called ‘the Observer’ . He would never go and fight for King neither
Church and from a certain period in his life, he would take more interest in
Atoms and ions then in the Bible or other religious texts. He discovered that it was possible to prove
that dying wasn't the end and wouldn't have the same kind of continuation for
everybody. Al dough a socially progressive person, the ‘Oserver’ wasn't
conservative because of his philosophical approaches concerning life and dead.
As he would say one day "replace the word God by the word Life and try to
understand what Life in fact is". He would at least write 108
philosophical essays before his picture about Life became complete, but he
never would have been able to fully understand the impact of his social,
philosophical and psychological and spiritual ideas, without the intensive
practical life he was to lead on all those fields. And that is where we will be
writing about ones we have jumped over the gap between the sixteenth and twenty
first century.
As what social and political issues are concerned, the gap can be overcome by
the same stories that some of the descendants of Dion left behind. Some of them
were in constant conflict with nobility and looked for land of their own to
make a living. Some even immigrated, others tried to make the laws applicable
in a more just way. A lot of them were a blessing for their local community,
just by being respectful farmers, artisans or caretaking house wives or good
friends. Some of them organized artistic events or song on weddings. Others
were more trusted in in advice then they would have trusted some priests. Even in
the twentieth century there was an editor who supported books on culture and
progressive policy making, who lived in Sweden. The direct descendants in the
masculine line were farmers in Attenrode, living in the shadow of a castle,
saying no when they got too much exploitation of their backs in return for
being good hard workers, willingly to do good. When the first world war came,
their son flew to Holland and in the second world war he was as a farmer,
trader and café holder a leading member of a left wing resistance group. Before
and after the second world war, there was a lack of work for young sons of
farmers and so it came that the sons of Mesure, the resistance grandfather of the Observer ,
had to go and find a job as Flemish people near the industry in the French part
of the country…but there wasn’t work enough at Cockerill Yards, so the sons
took up an independent trade.
Those of the pump, the baron and… 150 years ago, in the middle of
nineteenth century, Jozef with its dad Piehe, lived in a small farm to the
rural pump in the village of Attenrode, in the neighborhood were their later
descendants lived. His father, once again, had to go with his horse and
bear hamper to the surrounding city to collect the town occupants excrement.
The village folk worked in the local sugar factory and lived poor in houses
that were ready for demolition. Back in the local pump village, he started
putting the shit on the fields. Again and again throwing a basket of human shit
on the field and again and again asking the horse to continue a few meters.
Piehe, the grandfather of the later son of Mesure, was tired of working for the
elite that day. The baron was inspecting the work and he said to Piehe that the
shit wasn’t being put tick enough on the field. Piehe got angry and threw the
baron in the shit; shouting “is this tick enough now baron” ? Piehe was sacked
on instance, but he was happy, now he would have more time for his own little
acres of land to grow crops and fruit on and to try to extend his number of
animals. Piehe returned to the farm and his family and together with his wife
and son, made plans for their new way of life, after he told what had happened.
In the end he added : "enough is enough, all farmers and working people
should rise against Tsars and Napoleons that use them as animals and canon
food". Years later capitalism would prove the decadency of its
system and long in advance of 1914 would plan to offer millions of workers
lives during the first world war. There was a positive reaction in
Russia, where workers took power afterwards being attacked by 14 Western powers
to restore the old powers. The revolution in Germany after those wars was shoot
down by the same social democracy that voted the war credits. Rosa
Luxemburg and 13 others did not. But 96 members of the social democrat party
voted in favor of war. Mesure fled to Holland. During the
second world war he warned the village resistance to keep a low profile and no
more attacking the collaborators, because the allies had already started their
march to Brussels. Some from outside the village didn’t listen and
after the murder of Flemish nazi the village suffered the consequences of a
terrible razzia. Mainly ordinary people with no political links died
by the dozens in a German concentration camp as a consequence.
the before world war II new generation
"And I sit and wait and anticipate what is coming", was a phrase
Observer 'got' from somewhere, when he was sitting resting between moments of
looking on the internet for what others had to tell. Within a few hours there
was that church meeting remembering the dead of his father Sincere, who would
have been 88 yesterday, but lived until 83. That is, Observer believed he was
still present by in everything he left to others the day he passed away with a
long deep bread. Everyone present in the room taught it was his last. But he
waited some eternal seconds and took a very deep breath for one last time. Holy
moment, such a last breath. One would like to see the number of breaths taken
in his life. The task of understanding what this life of his meant, for so many
people and to himself, is not an easy one. It is quite easy, but only if you
remember his soft and sweet part mainly and the moments of wisdom he tried to
share on some occasions, mainly outside his life as a very hard working
independent fruit cultivator and trader. He looked very peacefully in his
coffin where numbers of people showed him their last respect. He was born in a
house build by his father in 1935. His father had three sons and two daughters.
His father Mesure wasn't the kind of man that one cannot have as a friend. He
was very reliable in every way. He was a kind of wise man that tried to solve
family rows or helped to lay down the dead in their coffin, so that they looked
peacefully. In those days people were kept for three days at their home, before
being buried. Mesure (from the French word ‘mesurer’
‘measuring’ cultivated potatoes and lots of fruit and vegetables and
was elected again and again in the council of the village, for a party that did
not depend on the traditional main parties, until the 1960's where the man he
appointed as his follower became the youngest mayor ‘burgemeester’ (learn
Dutch, it is easy if you know English, it’s a kind of deeper soul, closer to
the spirit) ‘mayor’ of the country all at ones. Mesure had gained much
credibility during world war two, as a member of an independent resistant
group. As the owner of a cafe he had to be very prudent to hide all those who
wouldn't go and work for the occupying foreign state. Even in 1944, in a time
when he kept on warning not to take revenge by murdering collaborators, but
supporting the hideaway of people and some economic sabotage, even in a time
when at last, with the allies at the gates of France; when a collaborator was
shot dead and there would be revenge from the part of the occupier and much
collaborators from all over the country, he knew that his wife Softness had
again go into hiding and his sons and him again as well...so he saved his
family and the rest of his life he found it difficult that many in the village
did not return from the camps of concentrations they were taken at. He had
warned that even in sight of the Allies, it was not safe to let young men
openly work at the guest farms they were in hiding in, young men that refused
to work for the occupier and had left their homes to hide themselves. Mesure
knew that the Gestapo and the own Belgian collaborators knew too much already
about the activities in the local region, because not enough security. "It
must have been hell, having to take care of a family in those days, with sons
that were tracked down", Observer taught. Mesure ' s son Sincerity, who
had become ill during the war, escaped enlisting in the war machine that way
and a second son, sweet Calculator, got off the hook as well, by using his
brothers medical papers under a false name...with his brother waiting at the
corner of the occupier's bureau to see how this risk taking story would end,
ready to go in and defend his brother if he was to be taken for arrest, when
the deceit would be discovered.
The brothers survived the war and began to adept themselves at the new area of
being a farmer. Together with their youngest brother Traveler they had looked
for a job in the steel industry of the French part of the country, but in vain.
So after the war, when the brothers
married, Travelar became an excellent roof repairer and much more and Sincerity
and Calculator began to expand the small business of their father, who stopped
going to the local markets in nearby towns, him and his horse. The brothers
started out from practically nothing and bought their own station wagon car
with was partly build from wood, can you imagine those days. Along with the
buying of the English car, came the ’heard say’ that in England fruit trees
were planted in to pots. As in Flanders, farmers had those big trees still. But
that changed, more and more little fruit trees replaced some areas in Flanders
to beautiful scenes, especially in springtime. Mesure from then on only took
care of his animals, cows and pigs as it was done in the days of his youth. on
a small scale. He occupied himself in his old age as well with a folklore dance
group and with going to funerals of people he knew, trying to forget the scars
of the war. On these occasions, as well as on funerals and weddings he spoke or
sang songs, and was very proud to buy his first pickup which he took to the
1958 world expo in Brussels and were the guild of Saint Sebastian danced on for
an international public. It must have meant a lot for these dancing farmers,
coming out of a terrible war and trying to forget about it. A big farmer in
some part of the other side of the village in those ware days, was a member of
the collaboration and walked around in black uniform, trying to win some poor
people over for his case, then his brother was killed by the end of the war and
the collaborating family wanted to take revenge by 'punishing' the entire
village by taking some 78 hostages...and only 8 returned.
But those days where gone, the sons of Mesure bought their first tractor and
with their first Magirus truck they started doing business with their fruit and
those of other farmers in the area. First only in a town in Mechelen in the
province of Antwerp, years later they started exporting as well to the rebuild
nation of the former nazi occupier. Sincerity 's first idea for making a living
was to go to Congo and cultivate fruit over there. He had followed colonial
school and was ready to leave, but did not in last instance, some years before
much Belgian cultivators were thrown out of Congo for a while. Again he had
some luck one could say. The wife he would marry was the often
joyful Sceptic. During the war she was wounded high above her leg, by a
splinter of a bomb thrown from a plane...she almost bled to dead...and was a
war victim who almost couldn't have had children because of 2cm more to the
left, one can say. Observer often wondered if he, as the ripping part of an egg
he ones was, did not feel her anxiety as well at the time. In any case, he had
reason enough to become a war resister later on. Sincerity and Calculator and
Sceptic became a trio that worked very hard in order to follow the needs of the
welfare system after world war two and the ever growing scale of doing
business. Starting in the sixties, everybody wanted to have a car and a lot of
workers in factories, not only farmers, in their free time, when they returned
from work, they started cultivating strawberries for example. So, during
Observers youth each day after school he had to do a lot of work to help with
getting all kinds of fruit in to up to two trucks each day, charging them at
the hangers at home or going to get them at the auction mart . Next to this the
own plantations kept on growing as well, so more and more work had to be done
and the number of workers working for the brothers grew up to 5 at a certain
point. Wives of farmers came to sort the fruit and a young men who wasn't able
any more to live from the carpenter workplace of his father, because ever
bigger concurrence from big enterprises, joined the team, together with a few
mineworkers, who stopped their activity under the ground to get back in touch
with nature again.
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