A New Yorker Cartoon, Existentialism and The Absurd

Byrichard
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Today I saw a picture of a frog sitting in a sauce pan on a cooker speaking to another, saying “I Know the water is heating up but that’s the next generation’s problem” and this can be a comment on a few things. The first, linear comment is of course about global warming and its consequences for current and future generations. Every generation, we, as children, want to make a better place when we grow up. The realities of adulthood make this more of a challenge than we had anticipated.

The second comment, and the one I leapt to is about the habit of saying “We’re safe, everyone can remove their masks and meet in big groups this summer, before, when winter comes, seeing that there is a huge new wave of Covid cases. In my eyes summer is the best time to work towards Covid Zero and be like most of Asia, New Zealand, and before recent changes, Australia.

The existential part of today’s blog post title comes, from knowing that the pandemic will get much worse again, and that we are windmilling towards another wave. Data I saw today suggests that the next wave is already on its way back. If this is true then self-isolation is not absurd.

In Summer it does feel absurd to self-isolate but at the same time there is evidence that it is not absurd, that it is rational, and normal. Another existential question is whether I want or need friendships anymore. It has been at least five years since I have had any. Any need, or deep desire has been muted years ago. Years ago I cried with pain, due to solitude. Now I think I’m blazé about solitude. I feel that if I wasn’t growing older I would be completely fine with the pandemic solitude I am currently living with, as well as the solitude I felt before the pandemic.

We couldn’t live in self-isolation for two years, going into the third if we were convinced that we needed to have a social life and all that other crap. People will think this is posturing but I’ve been solitary since some of my earliest memories. The pandemic doesn’t help. Neither does job insecurity, and neither does having to drive to see people who will never return the favour.

One of my reasons for not wanting to do things, either alone or with people, is that if you do things with people you need to walk close to other people who are not wearing masks. If you go to walk a mountain path it will be narrow and people will not be masked. If you wear a mask you will looked at as if you were swearing at them whilst playing a bagpipe. You do get strange, disapproving looks when you wear masks.

I don’t mind in the shops when I buy food, but in stairwells and other places it is uncomfortable. This discomfort is the government’s fault, for spreading disinformation about the pandemic being over, when it clearly isn’t.

Trevor Noah was at the correspondent’s dinner two nights ago and called it a super spreader event. This morning I saw multiple reports of people testing positive for covid, and aranet4 readings in the 2000+ range of c02 parts per million. Western countries are constantly selling the lie that the pandemic is over, when all of the data and previous seven waves prove are premature. The Northern Hemisphere should work towards Covid Zero but has chosen covid denialism instead, so the window of opportunity to stop covid before window is being missed. Spring and summer are the ideal opportunity to get to Covid Zero with the lowest social cost.

We have provided the virus with a pilot light of opportunities to spread this summer and we will pay the price in September, yet again.

When I check glocals I see that no events are planned anyway, so i am not missing out at the moment. Those that do sports where groups meet, and use cars, are still self isolating. it is only the alcoholics and others that are meeting and socialising without masks during a pandemic.

And that’s it for today. Less euphoric than sometimes, but this situation induces a level of fatigue that we just have to get used to.

Similar Posts

Climbing to La Barillette
|

Climbing to La Barillette

Byrichard

The first time I climbed up to La Barillette on a bike it took me two and a half hours. This time it took one hour and sixteen minutes. I was going so slowly that I had to work to keep the bike upright. Since then I have gone from a mountain bike with tyres that weren’t pumped enough and soft suspension to the same bike with slick tires, hardened suspension and higher pressure in the tyres. I then swapped that bike two or three years later and tried the same climb. I struggled with the road bike as well. I had to stop at least two or three times. I also found that clipped in pedals on such steep gradients are a hindrance because you can’t stop until the flatter bits.


This time I wore normal shoes and I set off from around Nyon. I cycled up to the start of the climb and i just started climbing. Above Cheserex I already had to stand on the bike to get enough thrust, then sit down, and then repeat. As I went up I saw two or three groups. One group set off just as I was getting to them and the second stopped where the first had been.


I like having a group in front of me. The group in front gives me a goal. It gives me a pace. I want at the minimum to keep up with them and ideally to overtake them. The person I used for pacing gave up within the first four to six kilometres. I then continued at my own pace as the other people were now a long distance away.


As I go up this hill I often daydream and my mind wanders to something completely different. It’s the closest I’d get to meditation. You’re making a physical effort but the body is so used to it that the mind has time to think of other things. I don’t remember what I was daydreaming about.


I’m used to doing this climb in the heat of summer when it’s 37°c or more. This time it was no more than 20 or so. I didn’t need to take two litres of water with me but I would have been happy with a rain coat and a third layer. The reason for this is that the beautiful weather I set off in turned overcast and cold.


As I got closer to the top I could feel the temperature begin to drop, and i felt the need to close the zips, to preserve heat. I even thought of putting my spare layer on. I continued.


When I set off you could see the top. By the time I got back down this is what it looked like.


When you’re climbing you know what your previous times were and during this time I got to a certain point where i saw that I was going to beat my previous best times by a nice margin so it encouraged me to keep going, but also not to stop and rest, and not to wait for two cars to figure out how to pass each other. I cycled through the grass to overtake them.


When I finally got to the top I saw people get out of their cars, smoke cigarettes and talk loudly. I had two Balistos and then headed back down. The view was so bad that I didn’t take any pictures.


As much as you think you suffer during the way up, which I didn’t this time, going down is the difficult bit. When you’re going back down you’re cold and you’re not doing much. You’re letting gravity undo the work that you just spent an hour doing.


My tyres have over 4000km in them so as i went down the hill I was slower than I needed to be. The surface was also wet and therefore could be slippy. I was holding the brakes for a good portion of the descent, to such an extent that I thought this was a good finger strengthening exercise.


Just before I got to the pond my rear tyre suffered a puncture. I can see two marks where I think a thorn or some other object punctured the tyre and deflated it within seconds. It didn’t matter as I had a spare tyre with me.


This winter I changed tyres frequently for the indoor trainer so the process has become automatic. What I especially enjoyed about changing a tyre on the side of a mountain slope is that you don’t have to worry about getting the floor dirty. Within minutes the tyre was changed and I could continue the descent.


This ride is unique because the night before I decided to do this climb we were discussing a via ferrata with two friends but they don’t have the equipment. The compromise was going to climb indoors but I didn’t feel like doing that because 1. the weather was nice and because 2. there are free sports to be enjoyed. I woke up that morning, opened the blinds and because of what a beautiful and warm day I saw it would be I decided to go for a bike ride and enjoy it. It felt so good to get on the bike after several days, or even weeks of not riding.


I was fully within the moment yesterday. I profited from the good weather, I set a goal and I achieved it, and I lived in the now, rather than later. This is rare for me. This ride, despite it’s physical nature, was relaxing.

Pretending To Be The Invisible Man
| |

Pretending To Be The Invisible Man

Byrichard

If you’re wearing a mask, glasses, a hat, and have a fleece that covers your neck you look like the invisible man. I have been thinking about that recently, as I look at my reflection. Imagine if I was completely transparent. Pandemic times would be an excellent moment to hide that we’ve had an accident in a lab that made us invisible.


Of course we are not invisible. We are just dressed for the weather, and the risk of being contaminated by Delta or Omicron, or the next variant of interest, whenever that may be.


En pleine 5ème vague de Covid-19, comment contrôler la transmission du virus chez les plus petits? Genève prend un décision inédite en Suisse romande: masquer les élèves dès 8 ans. Une mesure qui suscite la colère chez les parents et le corps enseignant. Fribourg de son côté préfère le dépistage massif dans les écoles à chaque apparition de cas dans une classe.

RTS, today


If a canton decides to make children safe, by asking to wear masks from 8 years old then parents should be happy. If they are angry then the RTS has failed to inform and educate Swiss television viewers, and so has the government. I am currently in Spain and I see plenty of children wearing masks to go to school, but also to sit at tables, and to play. The idea that masks are uncomfortable is rubbish, especially after you wear them a few times.


I think something else is uncomfortable. The idea that the pandemic, in Switzerland could go on for years at the current rate. We are five waves in, five. By now you would think that people had read a few articles, watched a few documentaries, and had a few conversations that had informed them about how this virus has worked. They don’t seem to. They seem as clueless as during the first wave.


We are in a pandemic, but people are not being given an accurate image of the situation. They are being massaged into thinking one thing, rather than another. They are being kept malleable. This malleability makes it hard to get everyone vaccinated, but also makes it hard to get people to mask up.


That is why Spain is so nice. You see that not everyone is wearing a mask, but whereas in Switzerland, you are an eccentric lunatic for wearing a mask in the street, in Spain you are almost normal. That feels pleasant. You see people walking alone, speaking on their phone, young people, not so young people, and others. You even see children playing while wearing a masks.


These are the images that Switzerland should show Swiss people. “Look, people do like wearing masks” or at least “look, life, with a mask, is almost normal.” I don’t understand the hatred of masks.


That is why emigrating from Switzerland might be worthwhile, to move to a nation where there is a hope of the pandemic ending sooner, rather than never.

Flitting Between Water Bottles and Rows of Corn

Flitting Between Water Bottles and Rows of Corn

Byrichard

I thought that when I bought two cycling water bottles and two normal day bottles I would be done, but then I found a nalgene bottle for a reasonable price, and then someone mentioned drinking from a steel container, rather than aluminium so I was distracted and tempted. I did tell myself that this would replace my habit of drinking other types of drinks. I thought “Stop with these drinks for three weeks per bottle and you amortise the cost”.


It goes deeper than that. If I stop drinking the two drinks I normally drink, then I will save money within three weeks, and not have to spend it again for weeks at a time. It may be materialist to want more water bottles than I can use in a week, but at least it’s a lot less plastic to be recycled on Monday afternoons. I don’t mind recycling. I just hate that there are set times when it is possible. I hate that it has to be scheduled, rather than spontaneous.


If I have less aluminium and PET then my trips to recycle are diminished. In reality my goal is just to switch the budget from one luxury to another, without having a new expense. If I find that I am happy with the new system then that is all the better.


Temptation 1 – to replace the half litre bottle that I use daily, because it’s easier to clean


Temptation 2 – to replace the 1l bottle I have used for over ten years, because it is easier to clean, and because it should be easier to carry.


If we were not in a pandemic, and if we were not in a society where people still do not wear their masks properly, and where people respect the 2 meter safety distance then I would go and look at the products in person, and probably lose interest. It’s because we’re in a long protracted pandemic that I am growing curious about such things. It is a coping mechanism. As dull and boring as it may sound.


A few years ago I looked at mobile phones, new watches, climbing gear etc. Now I’m looking at water bottles. I like water bottles. It is something that you use every day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep.


Rows of Corn


Have you ever considered that we always look at rows of corn from the same angle. We always look at them along the line of plantation so all we see is a wall of corn. Today during the walk I saw that some corn had been cut to reveal the seed rows of corn and it’s interesting to see the cistern like rows of columns of corn plants.


Rows of corn
Rows of corn


It’s interesting to see that corridor down which animals and other small creatures can run along. You never think of how distinct it is. You always associate corn fields with a jumble of corn, like a forest of trees. Unlike in old films and cartoons this is highly organised, so walking in one direction is easy, but not perpendicularly.


A walk Above the Woods
|

A walk Above the Woods

Byrichard

Sometimes a walk above the woods is easy. I don’t mean walking while flying hanging from a parapente. I mean walking at an altitude where there are fewer trees.


The walk from the transmission mast of La Bariellette to La Dôle is an easy walk that I have done many times. Sometimes I have done it at dusk. Sometimes I have done it with snow and sometimes I have done it when I was walking through clouds. Usually people do it when the weather is nice



There are two routes. One Route is safe for children, dogs and people who are not used to exposed paths. It is on the Jura side. The other option is more dangerous because the path is not maintained. If you slip you could fall to your death. There are no ropes, cables or chains to hold onto. When the dangerous option is wet it is slippery.


Today the weather was nice but the visibility was crap compared to what I have experienced on other walks. We couldn’t see the Alps, for example.


It’s amusing because on this walk I heard a lot of English spoken. Usually you hear a lot of French as French speakers enjoy the walk. The only wildlife I saw on this walk were groups of birds going after insects. They were feasting. With good weather the wildlife like to hide from human attention.


This was day five of week three of the Escape plan. I have easily managed to reach the goal as I do fifteen minutes or more of exercise every single day.



The walk to La Dôle is a good way of getting exercise because of how much walking you have to do uphill one way and how much walking you have to do going the other way. If you feel ambitious you can walk from Nyon to La Dôle and from La Dôle down to St Cergue. In St Cergue you can catch the train back down. I have only done the long variant once.


Walking from La Barillette to La Dôle is a seasonal walk. It can only be done when the road to the top is open. As soon as the snow comes the road closes to ordinary traffic and it is cut off from the world. In Winter you would need to do it with snowshoes and the walk would be considerably longer.


This is a nice walk to do during a day off or during the weekend. Some people even use the routes to practice trail running. It’s a 8km circuit and will definitely give you a workout. For walkers it is a nice walk to a nice viewpoint to see the bassin Lemanic.

Outdoor Sports and Pandemics

Byrichard

In theory, pandemics are terrible for your social life because you go from socialising in bars, pubs, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, and cafés to having to stay home like an indoor cat or a fish in an aquarium.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrHkKXFRbCI


For people like me, the thought of not being in crowds of 50 people is not worrying in the least. I love summer sports where we’re never more than 20 or so people anyway. The biggest hit to my social life comes in Autumn and winter when we shift from outdoor sports like cycling, climbing via Ferrata and others to indoor sports like drinking in a crowd and other less vibrant activities.


Events are being canceled left and right. The Geneva traffic jam show (Salon de L’auto, officially) is canceled. Polymanga has been shifted to August, the Giro D’italia is suspended, and more. Schools are out. Office workers are finally allowed to work from home. Pollution levels in China and Italy are going down.


À cela s’ajoute la fermeture des lieux de divertissements (cinémas, théâtres, musées, centres de jeunesse, centres sportifs, centres de fitness, piscines, centres de bien-être, discothèques, pianos-bars, boîtes de nuit, clubs érotiques).

Source


The debate people were having about whether indoor climbing was safe or not is now moot in Switzerland. The answer is “nowhere is open”. It’s going to be an interesting month. I should go out and gather footage with the 360 camera. This is a historic moment. It’s worth documenting.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqw-9yMV0sI


SARS was a memorable event and COVID19 will be more memorable. I think it’s the first time I’ve lived through a serious pandemic.


Cycling, hiking and other less sociable sports are still possible. In theory, so is swimming in the lake. We can enjoy these sports.

Of Beets, Columns of Black Smoke and Finished Books

Of Beets, Columns of Black Smoke and Finished Books

Byrichard

If you walk around at the moment you see that they have cut corn, sunflowers and beet. You also see that there are piles of beet in fields, queues of tractors waiting to send them on a train journey and more. Agriculture is busy at the moment.


Plenty of Beets
Plenty of Beets


This morning I heard quite a few sirens of emergency vehicles and as I looked out of the velux I saw a column of black smoke rising. I was curious as to its origin. I thought “Is it a car or is it a building.” It turns out that a car had decided to start burning while being driven on the motorway. I saw no mention of injuries or other. It seems a strange thing, for a car to spontaneously combust. I wonder what mistake led to the fire.


Recently I have been very good at picking up books, but terrible at actually reading them. I want that to change. There was a time when I was reading 8000 pages a year, and this year I have managed just 2900, in theory. I want that to change. I want to get into the habit of finishing books again. In 2015 I read 29, and this year I read just twelve. My reading habit has really changed since then. I took a journey back in time and read plenty of James Bond books.


I skipped recycling today because the experience of driving and shopping this morning was unpleasant. The obligations of normal life, without the rewards. Pandemic life.


See you tomorrow.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.