A Chapter of Life

Returned today from my Dad's Cabin up in the woods near the Lake. Labor Day Weekend has become the time to celebrate the German culture of the campground, as the Cabin is part of a larger collection of Cabins that were first purchased by our families over 50 years ago. My Grandparents bought their Cabin in the late 50's/early 60's sometime and I have been visiting for close to 50 years.

Going to the Cabin over Labor Day has become a tradition. The celebration is an Oktoberfest of sorts (minus the oom-pah-pah music) with the requisite German food and beer. I like to hang out with my Dad and shoot the breeze. I also get to see some of my Cousins and my Uncle. I always shake my head about how fast time flies, since the Cabin celebration is the annual bookend of the summer. Another 365 chapters as days read. Or are days pages? Hmmm.

The days and nights are turning cooler and the Cabin. being further North, is a premonition of sorts in regards to the weather changing. Google Maps took me off the Thruway without an explanation on the way up onto some back roads. Sometimes Google Maps gives and explanation why, others times it doesn't. This time I had to take it on faith that I was dodging something, which is usually a bottleneck, where a bunch of busy roads converge. On the back roads, I could see the leaves beginning to change.

Let it be said, I love Fall.

I particularly relish when my Dad relays some remembrance about my Grandparents (his Parents) and the decisions they made, the things they said, and some of the why behind such things. Every so often, amid the stories that I know so well that I could tell them, a new nugget comes to light. Something I have never heard before. I have to be patient and let the gold emerge.

I was reminded of my Grandmother's decision, when visiting the German Fatherland, to not return to Germany to live, which was something that she and my Grandfather were considering in the mid-1930's because she knew war was coming and that it was best to stay in America, as difficult and challenging as it was. Hitler was making Germany Great Again and it was prosperous (unlike the US), but it was in preparation for total war.

I didn't know Germany was prosperous then as it was the Depression (my Dad pointed that out). But, Germany was on a war footing and in a weird way, it was because of militarism and the Reich, which would soon plunge Europe and the world into despair. Hatred and revenge fueled the furnaces and factories of Germany.

A yearly tradition when I am at the Cabin is to read a chapter out of the book Irrational Man which is a thumbnail yet erudite explanation of Existential Philosophy. Last year I had polished off the chapter on Kierkegaard which I obviously am attuned to, as evidenced by me bogarting his name into mine. Let it be noted that a good and long-time friend first called me Bierkergaard. Nicknames, to be legit, must be assigned by another.

I faced a dilemma at the Cabin in that I couldn't find the book on the shelves. Like a squirrel who had forgotten where he had buried his nuts, I combed through the bookshelf several times but couldn't locate the book. I was mentioning to my Dad that I couldn't find the book and he suggested that maybe I didn't want to find it. I confess that I was somewhat intimidated that the next chapter was about Nietzsche. I had been able to resurface from my cranium the title of the book, and once I verbalized aloud what it was, my Dad spotted it on the shelf. He threw the 1958 book on my lap like a slab of meat.

Nietzsche was a highly precocious youth, mastering learning well beyond his years. With his formidable intellect of mind, it was paired with an infirmed and sickly body, a body that would never be well throughout his 40 some years on this Earth, as he roamed hospitable climates in Europe, seeking elusive healing. So, there is this gigantic irony that this towering Teutonic intellect was housed in a weakened vessel, full measure of vicissitudes. His ideal Overman (mistranslated as Superman) was one who embodied bold vitality in all aspect of his existence.

Eventually, he went mad, perhaps due to untreated syphilis, or perhaps that his ideas crushed him like like cannonballs from above. He signed his post-madness letters "The Crucified One." Although he had repudiated Christianity as a religion for slaves, in the end he identified himself with the one who became sin for us. The final irony. Nietzsche's work, already essentially nihilistic, was Nazified by his sister who promoted his legacy and work for her own gain after his sad passing.  A passing, not with a bang, but a whimper.

I still have been reading both the King James and Catholic translations of the Psalms. Intellectually, there is no doubt, I am Protestant to the neurons. I have little patience for Dogma and Catholic mumbo-jumbo. Bur, on an emotional level, the Catholic take on things has a hold on my heart. Psalm 31 in the Catholic translation says:

"For, day and night, your hand was heavy upon  me. I have been converted in my anguish, while still the thorn is piercing."

Nietzsche spent his short and volatile life attempting to repudiate weakness as a fact. He ran from it until he could run no more. It consumed him. Rather than  come clean and recognize his mortal coil, it hunted him down and choked him. Have we considered and contemplated that weakness in the way to Jesus? The Cabin reminds me of time passing. People grow old, familiar faces are no longer recognized due to the onset of Alzheimer's, walkers become a constant companion. There is youth but it is the next generation which will have its day in the sun until the sun sets and nighttime comes.

God knows our weakness, our frames, our fragility. Do we?