This Day, Autumn 1918
World War 1. NY, USA
Life in the Anthropocene
We are all moments in time, like precious tears in rain.
So, pause, and take a few. View the day around you, breathe it in and inhale the fresh calm air and enjoy the taste of life just the way it is this day and moment.
Make yourself a cup of java while you are at it, and indulge in its scent touching sweepingly and teasingly, almost sultry on your senses until you succumb and let it taste your lips and tongue.
Enjoy, the fulfilling pleasuring of your soul and senses that such small treats can provide.
And while you are at it, bring with you a glass of water too, before you place your behind rightly deserved in your most comfy place of choice and get all snugly as we take a trawl down this history lane of rewind and fast forward. embarking on a mutually traversing journey across the fleeting vistas of our mind, from lost days to the present and the pathways leading..
Somewhere and everywhere .. That you´d like yourself to wander.
But if you come with me instead as you find yourself at the crossroads of your mind, I will take you on a journey back to the meeting of winter and autumn 1918 in NY, USA during the time of the mother of all wars, World War 1.

music of the day while you are reading our article
Strindbergian fire by Netherbird
The Ice Ladies got up at early sunrise delivering 200 lbs chunks of pure ice around the city.
Outside the rooms and lives of still sleeping people chilly city streets seemed to solemnly hold on to the silence and tranquility of the rapidly fading night as two female workers hurled a big chunk of ice off of their truck.
Small whisks of fog and condensing dew rose from the street and ice as their combined strained muscles worked together, holding the 200lbs heavy block of ice with the might of their arms and hands and two black steel claws that sank deep into the coldness of ice.
It was October, and autumn, but the weather was still warm and filled with sun filled days that washed away the colder temperatures of the night.
World War 1, 1918,
New York, USA
[ "2 girls
Carried
200lbs heavy
blocks of pure ice." ]
As they began to carry the heavy ice towards the nearby basement, far away, on what could have been a completely different planet mortar grenades continually took to the mid-day sky.
Like small versions of future space rockets, the elongated steel barrels hurled, screaming into the clouds and blue skies.
Like shooting stars, and fiery demons, for a few brief moments those angry metal slugs burned nothing but the air and clouds before they violently pummeled through dirt and sandbags, concrete and steel. Hot solid metal in angry, raging search for flesh and bone to tear to pieces. It´s hunger for blood and living tissue to consume and destroy was all encompassing.
Heavy thumping sounds accompanied the inferno that took place in this valley.
Shattered trees clawed blackened and broken towards the freedom of the clouds and blue skies as dirt and fumes of blood sprayed beautiful, hateful strokes of death and pain upon what had been a beautiful, green meadow earlier this morning.
An empty boot stood defiantly right next to a perfect white daisy.
Unbroken that daisy swayed in the most gentle of breeze, an utmost delicate declaration of all things beautiful and precious in a sea of ravaged soil and flesh torn asunder it was as if the flood of blood and mud did not want to soil that last piece of life.
Teeth and pieces of flesh piled up not far away, broken carcasses, a jaw left without words and whimpers to say, a shattered skull and limbs torn from the chest and bloodied stumps of dead men.
The flower witnessed it all as a new round of mortar shells took to the sky passing over its peaceful sanctuary.
Steel casings dancing through air as they kept singing that peculiar song in the thousands, a sonic boom and air that whirled all around the burning hot steel.
Air scorched and screaming.
Men died that day.
Race and religion did not matter, it never did in the tomes of war and life.
Not really when you think of it.
Who had you voted for?
Had you been a good boyfriend, did you go to church, and did you enjoy walking through the forest?
Or had you been a human manifestation of vile and derogatory hate and filth?
None of that ever mattered when it came time for war to unleash its dog-like jaws of death. Men and women from around the world always died the same way that day. Old or young, no gods and prayers would ever turn the tides of war when it came to hunt with its pack of wild wolves and dogs.
Alone and together metal tore their bodies to pieces of red meat, coloring the meadow of what once had been, and soon once more would be a peaceful valley.
People died that day, mauled to brown and red soup in mankind's faceless cauldron of war and hate as the girls back in New York carried today's ice down to the basements.
It was their job to do, so people could keep the greens and meat, the dairy and other produce fresh for a little while longer.
As they did, millions of people slowly came to life, opening their eyes to a brand new day. Across the neighbourhood, the scent of coffee soon mixed with the sounds of a city waking up, eager to taste the freshness of this day, to bask in the sunlight and newly baked bread.
Deep down in the cellars, those giant chunks of ice would slowly melt to water in the days ahead.
Drop by drop they reverted back to it´s lucid, life-giving form, while far away, back in that valley, everything had gone back to silence.
The guns had stopped.
The soldiers had moved on, like ants they followed their obscure commands and orders from hungry, greedy leaders far away, and right next to an empty boot, our beautiful white daisy surveyed the silence of the day as life slowly started taking back what mankind's war and hate had tried to steal so many times.
Soon, the blood would wash away, the greed and hate and exploding metal, it would all be gone in the lushness of this flowers meadow and in years to come, a lovers couple would lay down right in this daisies sea of flowers, they would kiss and make love and laugh at the beauty of their day.
A butterfly would swirl through air, hoping from daisy to daisy and ants would carry the crust of their leftovers away from their feet and blankets.
Perhaps a bumblebee would dance before their eyes, curiously hovering in front of their kissing lips and noses.
And far beneath their soon naked limbs, all the gods of war would be asleep in these days to come.
Dreaming in their slumber of lost days when priests and hooded men hated men for futile reasons and made up fantasies.
This day would come, and pass and slightly different come back once more as we traverse through time and space.
Down here on Earth, and beyond, life evolved, but war and hate and their punitive worshippers, remained the same, stuck in repeating dreams of old fermented rage until they too would perish at the hands of their own feverish creations, lost forever to the beauty of dripping ice and the swaying lush sea of the daisies meadow.
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