blue eyed snake

the harrowing stories were on top, yesterday remembrance day was. today was freedomday for the first time in my life I did not attend, I am not able to go out but I did not look at the telly either. I do not want to see someone from a party that fulfills almost all the characteristics of fascism to lay a wreath for the fallen. I do fear for my country, for Europe and I would like to hear your musings. so maybe @steve can snip this off starting with my long post and title it: WW2, what it means for us and how to proceed.

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this is Rotterdam in 1930, the city were my dad grew up, he was 10 in 1930. He walked those street, probably doing the things that boys do at that age, hanging out at the kays, looking at the ships. start at 4.30 the first part is panoramic. this is what happened when he was 20, when I saw ( and see) ruined cities in Ukraine or gaza I always see the pain in my dads eyes. My mom was at home with her mom and her younger sister in a town close by Rotterdam, they could see and hear the bombs falling and my gran had to grab my mom preventing her running towards the city that held her lover. Gramp had died shortly before, much too young from a nasty illness. "Whether he lives or is dead, I will not let you run into an untimely death, you stay here" dad came out of it, physically unscarred but it kept living on in him, in his soul. That is why all the current wars hurt me so, so many people will be maimed and dead and their homes destroyed and for generations the trauma will carry on. They will carry the pain in their souls for generations. and then the last winter, the Germans were inevitably losing but they kept up in the western half of the netherlands, traditionally the richest part of my country, Rotterdam was and is a big harbor which is teeming with activity. My mom, then 22 arranged for her younger sister ( around 15 i think) to be brought to family in a rural part and although granny opposed it, it happened as she said and my aunt went to a farm were there was food. that winter was very cold and there was hardly anything to make fire and there was no food, people went out to farms to beg for food, or to barter for jewelry, anything. Flowerbulbs were eaten my mom never really wanted to tell things from the war but this she told me: one day we had a slice of bread, one slice for several people so we carefully divided that slice in as many parts as there were people ( 8 i think) and we were all slowly chewing and savoring the taste of real bread. Then someone knocked on the door and came in. We all felt guilty because he could not share in the bread anymore. one bite of bread ... the dutch winter of hunger - 1944-1945 when I see pictures of Gazan children, i see this too later, much later I did talk a bit about it with my mom, she told me of 1962, the year of the Cuba crisis. That she was so scared, what possessed me she told me, to intentionally become pregnant again, how will we take care of 5 children and a new baby when war rolls over us again. We hardly survived when there was only the 2 of us. that way war trauma flips over to the next generation, we did not live through it, but we were reared with parents who did and we came off lightly I guess. The babysit of my son had no family except for her parents, all family of the parents had been killed in concentration-camps, i shudder to think about it, what imprint that leaves.

yes regarding the depiction of Russians in books and films But remember my parents lived during German occupation, my dad lived in Rotterdam and was there while it was flattened by bombs, half of the war he spend hidden between floors and such. His cousin was caught, the last winter all of western netherlands was hungry and many died because there was no food and no ways to heat the houses. I do not know how many friends they lost during those years, they never told me. But for them remembrance day was definitely very personal losses. Also the germans had stolen everything they could during the occupation so it was years of work and hardship to put the country back on its feet. So there was a good and personal reason to be very critical on the Germans and I remember that from my early years. "lets not sit there" ( in a restaurant) those are Germans. still these perpetrators were slowly getting back in a groove called friendly neighbors

My teacher also taught Karate, he was at a high level in Karate. Once he told us that the important thing teaching those lads was to instill a sense of care in them. To make them act responsible.

I caught myself "yes but-ting" You're right. were does it come from? I am from Europe, my parents lived through WW2 as young adults, I know their fear for Russia(ns) never faded but in the last part of their life the emotions towards Germans seem to have disappeared.

interesting read, thank you for posting

No need to be sorry I have thought so much about these things, when I was young the possibility to take hormones and/or surgery simply was nonexistent. I know that those days I would have jumped at the change to take testosterone and have double mastectomy. To become more male, to better reflect my inner being into the physical body But now I am glad the temptation was not there for me, as it has taught me how to live with the body I was born in. It brings its own set of lessons which weren't funny to live through but now I see their worth. I hd to connect with both the maculine and later in life the feminine part of me to find balance, to find I am just human and gender has become negligible ( for me). There has been a time where I thought that the modern term nonbinary is a good fit for me but atm it feels as if its all just past me, that these were all phases to arrive at: BES is a genderless human. But in the current society it's less hard to live as a very masculine woman then as a very feminine man and I keep thinking that it is society at large that has to change, so that feminine men and masculine women can easier find their place in society, without getting pushed in the duality male/female. That we all have to learn that male/female is not a dichotomy but a continuum. Just as not everybody can see colors, accommodate these people, or left-handedness, many things really. although were all human there are big differences between how our bodies and minds function. should we do away with very smart people because they do not conform to the median? how about people with very low IQ and if you say yes to one of those, why is that, and why not the other and who are you to judge? also, i deem the early interventions dangerous. When someone has reached adult age it's their choice as in modern society it is totally normalized to shape the body as you want it. I come from a time were surgery on a classmate of mine with very floppy ears was deemed over the top by many parents. My thinking mind is formed and shaped in those days, I shy away from surgery when the body is healthy.

what a nice surprise, I wish you a happy time.

a hard topic indeed. I live in a female body and have done so about twice as long as Maddie, i could be her mom ( hello darling daughter) during my life I found that women at large have a certain set of feelings around their bodies, about motherhood, about being female, about interacting with each other that I could not relate too. Let alone duplicate although I live in a female body Now the younger generation has opened up this closed off closet and those of us born with 2 spirits try to find ways to live their lives without having to play a role all their lives. When I was young I lived as a boy and later as a young man. I felt at home in myself, it was not a role, it was me. later i tried to be female, I even had a child. It became strangling, I had to play a role, I was playing theater without a pause. So a divorce followed and I am much better for it. Maddie may not be a biological woman, but she can now be herself and that self is much more female then mine ever had been.

well... I guess it was known somewhat that i could heal people who hurt. scenery - a bunch of hippie types, seventies I do not remember that part too clearly, someone brought me to him asking me whether I could help I remember kneeling at a mattress on the ground, looking at a drawn white face i remember my anguish when I listened to his ravings, telling stories that were not fitting in the here and now, stories about things deep in the past. I remember how my heart went out to him, wanting to heal his pain. It was my first encounter with big human pain, with real anguish, with something that exuded bad in large print. to keep to the subject, with a demon

I had a crystal ball ( of sorts ), but not all that much later one of my big sisters introduced me to the cards. Dad, can I borrow this one for the festivities tomorrow? You be careful, do not break it

ah, you are stubborn case, your time will come

will print it and read, lately my brain does not work as it used to. I think, as a kid I did not categorize in good and bad, I was not taught about it and I hardly ever met it. Meaning, the bad things were just not within my little circle of knowledge. I did not learn religion either, so the concepts of good and bad arrived quite late. uhm, there was a big dog that I had to pass when going to that little lake. He scared me every time with loud barking, but not bad- I was sorry for him as he was chained and locked away always. I was happy he could not reach me but sad he was locked up. and there was a teacher I did not like (at all) but she was not bad, just not nice. I mean, I was bad when i came home full of mud and forgot to remove my wellies but it was not a " heavy bad" it was just a child's bad. when I was about 14 someone brought me to a young man, 20 I think and that shook me, there was something bad going on. I sensed somehow his real person was overshadowed by someone else, what I now would call an entity or maybe a demon. I felt helpless but i spoke to him in a soothing voice and listened to his ramblings. I tried to imprint on him that his real persona was still there, that he would be allright, would come out of this and did the things I did when someone was in pain. and only now the thought strikes me: so someone led you, a 14 year-old, to this raving babbling man, thinking you could do some good , would be able to help Now, much older with some eddication behind my belt, i would dx probable psychosis, which does not rule out a demon or such. its just a different perspective and they can be true simultaneously. But then I was shook to my core as there was something real bad going on. later I heard he was brought to a psychiatric-ward.

Maddie is more woman then I will ever be

talk like this is exactly the reason why I closed my ( then 6 year old) mouth about stuff like this. I am not interested whether you think it has " value" and I am quite sure you do not understand me. At 6 of course i was unaware of things like civil rights , but I did know that people who were deemed unfit to live in society were locked up in a nut house. I've never called it supernatural, you do. to me it is all natural whether the fleshy humans and frogs or the voices and visions that are energy only i did not mentions demons either ( but I have seen and been aware of...whatcha call it in English, small nature-beings) think of perspective, we're looking at the same tree, at my side there is piece of bark gone and some happy person has painted a rainbow on the smooth underlying wood. So I say: I see a rainbow. you only see dreary bark and say, there cannot be a rainbow on the tree, for I do not see it. yes, those are the rationalizations, sometimes true, sometimes not. But you're free to rationalize the experiences of other's Until your own towers falls.

that reminds me of the middle ages festivities we had at school, we all had to dress up for the occasion and had free choice what to dress up as. I was 9 or 10 So I transformed in a gypsy, with a crazy dress from one of my big sisters and a headscarf from mom. For atmosphere i took some candles from the kitchen and asked my brother for a bit of incense. We build a tent of sorts and I was telling future and love and pregnancies... Friend of mine was standing before the tent and telling the public about the great fortunetelling lady residing in the tent, also gathering the coins, we had a good business. ( the whole setup was meant to raise money for the school) and several times I heard voices from outside, that kid does know stuff, how does she do that Fun that was. (But other times there really is language coming out of my mouth that I was not planning to utter about information I was not aware of and that information has never been wrong. )

hm, as a teen we had to cut up a worm and a frog to learn about their functioning. I told school I would not intentionally kill and cut up an animal, the worms and the frogs were part of me, of my world. As an argument I used that we did not eat meat in our family and that killing an animal was counter to that. It did cost me points, it also cost me baffled and angry teachers but I did not budge. How can one think that by butchering a frog you can get to know its nature. when I was a kid, this place was just around the corner, I remember how I used to catch toads there, part of my world. Kill them, for "scientific curiosity', to teach me something, no sir, i will not. -- I don't care how other people rationalize their experiences with " the otherworld" , I will not do that anymore. Voices speak, sometimes through me, visions show themselves, telepathic connections can pop up, clear knowledge sometimes tells me things of the future. it's all good, surfing the waves is better for me then counting the wave-crests

yes, that sums it up nicely

I've always known things that were impossible to know I've always heard voices ( as in, sometimes one hears a voice.) the information was often very useful, or sometimes information was just poured into me somehow these voices were almost always benign, i never feared them, they just were, just as the grass, the trees( that spoke to me too when i listened ) the animals and the humans populating my world. I soon learned to keep my mouth shut about it, for fear the grownups would call me crazy and lock me up in a nuthouse. Looking back that was a very good decision of little BES

yes, never made words of it like that but its true

Free lancing mystic cat

just a guess