Read the Beforeitsnews.com story here. Advertise at Before It's News here.
Profile image
By CoyotePrime (Reporter)
Contributor profile | More stories
Story Views
Now:
Last hour:
Last 24 hours:
Total:

The Winter of Our Discontent

% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.


“The Winter of Our Discontent”

by Hardscrabble Farmer

“A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.”  
- John Steinbeck, “The Winter of Our Discontent”

“We slaughtered the last of the turkeys a week or two after Thanksgiving in the new snow. We always keep a few of the bigger ones until they get up over thirty pounds and then break them down into parts for the rest of the year; swollen breasts the size of chickens, two pound thighs, enormous legs, and giant wings vacuum sealed and deep frozen until we need a meal and I turn the carcasses and gizzards into gallons and gallons of stock that we can use for soups and risottos.

For all of it’s rewards it’s one of those chores I look forward to the least. I will miss the sound of the turkeys and their odd way of following us all around wherever we work around the gardens and barns over now, at least until the Spring when we start off another flock. I have come to enjoy the turkeys about as much as any of the other livestock, for a number of reasons, and the final act of going through their ranks one by one until we’re finished strikes me as bittersweet. I am very grateful for the freezer full of plump, boned breasts and giant drumsticks that will feed our family and provide us with delicious and nourishing meals for months to come, but I miss the give and take, my calls to them whenever I pass, and their chorus of response that never fails to bring a smile to my face, over for the year.

Like the way the Sun has been steadily falling further and further to the south in it’s brief arc across the sky these days it points to more than just a seasonal nadir, but something more than that, a reminder perhaps of the way of everything, an inexorable decline towards silence and darkness. Standing in the snow and slitting their long throats, the hot blood spraying crimson streams into the pure white beneath the maples is a act of finality, not only for the big birds, but for myself as well. I am done with killing for the year and in only a few more weeks there will be signs of new life in the swollen bellies of the cows, bred in the early Summer and there is that to look forward to; and the slow ascension of the Sun once more.

“When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something–anything–before it is all gone.” 
- John Steinbeck, “The Winter of Our Discontent”

We have been at this for just over ten years now, and while we have taken on the skin of this new life every bit as comfortably as I had hoped we would, there is still so much to it that we have yet to figure out. We have tried to incorporate into our vision of how the world ought to be, at least in our limited sphere and to live it daily in spite of the cost and hardship because to continue as we had was simply not possible. For the first few years I tried to impose my own vision of what I thought farming was supposed to be, a kind of agrarian business where equal amounts of labor and material would equate to some kind of financial payoff.

It seemed like all of the other things in my life before this to be a form of economic give and take and we only needed to master the technical aspects of it to become profitable. It took a couple of years to recognize that farms, like boats, are something you could throw money at forever without ever seeing a sign of it again, but that what it paid us in return was ineffable. What we slowly discovered was that it built up a different kind of capital, and paid off dividends that were only recognizable if you knew how to look at them.

Where in the past we had gone to distant places in order to earn money doing specialized tasks in order to hire others to do the things we could have done for ourselves if we were at home, we now had to do those things for ourselves as the income we once had was no longer available to us. As we became more competent at doing the jobs we once had subcontracted out to other people our dependence on money declined, freeing up more time to learn even more skills that could be used for our benefit. We now produce where once we had simply consumed, we re-purposed those things that we’d formerly thrown away, and we shared with others things we would have jealously kept to ourselves.

In the past I have written about the economy of brotherhood, the kind of free exchanges of talents and abilities with other people that fed into a closed system of further sharing, a concentric ring of good deeds that ripple out and intersect with the countless other rings of other people’s efforts, linking us together in ways that money could never approximate. And so the man who showed me how to slaughter and butcher a hog nine years ago without taking a dollar for that generous gift allowed me to help three other young men this year to raise and slaughter and put up their own meat without anything more than a thank-you and a promise to do the same for someone else someday as payment.

In the old life everything had a price, every exchange was some kind of negotiation, and we were, without exaggeration, economic animals above all other things. I sensed something wrong with the way we lived long before I chose to do anything about it and so everything I wrote up until then was a reaction to something very powerful, but completely concealed from my conscious understanding. There was an impotent anger that seethed beneath the words because it was unable to understand the cause of my disquiet; it was not what was being done to us but rather what we avoided doing for ourselves that led to our discontent.

“I guess we’re all, or most of us, the wards of that nineteenth-century science which denied existence to anything it could not measure or explain. The things we couldn’t explain went right on but surely not with our blessing. We did not see what we couldn’t explain, and meanwhile a great part of the world was abandoned to children, insane people, fools, and mystics, who were more interested in what is than in why it is. So many old and lovely things are stored in the world’s attic, because we don’t want them around us and we don’t dare throw them out.” 
- John Steinbeck, “The Winter of Our Discontent”

I stopped writing anything more than some random comments about six months ago in order to recharge my batteries. Most everything I have ever written in the past has been extemporaneous, knocked out before dawn after a few days of cogitating on a matter, and then allowing the bits and pieces to coalesce in the silence of the den at a single throw while everyone else slept above.

There was, under this cessation of scribbling, a plan to put together a book length piece for publication, as much for the satisfaction of my children- “Why do you spend so much time writing if you aren’t going to write a book?” as for anything else, so I put my thoughts on hiatus while I went back to read the authors I’d always found to be the most moving, eloquent and aware of their time and place; Twain, Banks, Dreiser, and Steinbeck. And so in the days after the slaughter of the turkeys I found myself reading, for the first time, “The Winter of Our Discontent.”

I was swept away almost instantly by the tone of his last novel rather than by the eloquence of his words. There was, I was quite sure, a much larger tome lurking beneath the surface of his morality tale of a man looking to redeem himself through financial success at the expense of his character. Ethan Hawley was man travelling in a reverse arc of my own. Here was a character who possessed everything anyone could ever want in life- a good name, a loving wife, healthy children, a secure home, the respect of his community and a family line that traced its roots back to “puritans and pirates” but who lacked only wealth.

This he became certain was the key to his true happiness and it was not his own idea but the prodding of those around him that drove him to slowly trade in one pure gift of goodness and decency after another in order to fulfill his uncertain destiny. I am not one to spoil the plot of what is without a doubt one of the finest and most important American novels ever written, but let me assure you that no amount of money can ever purchase what Ethan exchanged in order to chase after financial security.

Throughout the first 250 or more pages I had read I was swept along by the story of an individual struggle, of moving beyond the past into an uncertain future, but as I closed in on the final few pages I understood what kind of story Steinbeck had been writing all along. This was very much in the vein of The Great Gatsby in which the man is simply a symbol of something much larger than himself. It was not so much an American story as it was a story about America. Everything that he wrote in those twenty-two spare chapters summed up the price of a man’s reputation by clearly demonstrating it’s cost for selling out.

“In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob.
 Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms” 
- John Steinbeck, “The Winter of Our Discontent”

Yesterday I trucked several hogs to a slaughterhouse for a friend. Every year he buys two or three piglets to raise in his backyard and every year around this time he asks me to deliver them to the abattoir. It’s an hour drive across the river and into a small town in Vermont and when I arrived there was no one at the delivery chute so I walked around the back of the building to look for a door to an office or to find someone who could let me in. At the top of small flight of stairs there was a big door with a wired-glass window and I stared in to the line where four or five people were working on a string of hogs hanging from hooks.

One large women wearing a wife-beater and a full body rubberized apron was spraying 200 degree water on the carcasses to loosen the stiff hog hairs from the hide. She was splattered with diluted blood and looked serious, her skin bright pink from the heat and the effort, her hair flecked with gore. Further along another man with a sharp knife was cutting efficiently along the bung to prepare for evisceration, and all around them there was a swirl of rising steam and the cold, pink water, circling the drain. No one looked at the door where I stood so I watched them intently, invisible as they did their work to the sound of an old boom box playing heavy metal music while they did their grim duty.

As I looked in on them I thought that if they could do this for eight hours a day, for the five or six hundred dollars a week that it paid, what could they be capable of if their motivations were attuned to something of greater importance? For the past couple of weeks I have watched with an almost cynical detachment the Yellow Vest riots in France as well as the continuing and seemingly endless political machination of the DC insiders and their Deep State apparatchiks as they continued their ceaseless route of our institutions and traditions. I know what they are capable of and am under no illusion as to their true motivations. I have been the man up on the wall, the point of the spear, and like Ethan Hawley, I have tried to reassure myself that while I may have taken life in combat, I was not a killer, but that is a lie we tell ourselves so that we can live with ourselves.

We are all part of the mechanized, industrial slaughter of living even if we want to believe in something else. We have compartmentalized our lives to such a degree that if we buy our turkey from the deli counter cut into thin slices and packaged in ziplock bags we are somehow free from the price of the bloody snow, but that isn’t the truth. Every tax dollar that we feed into the machine that strips away our dignity and demoralizes our children, every word that we keep to ourselves rather than stating out loud for fear of the cost is a price we still have to pay, a debt that we must carry to someone or something further along or behind. We are the ones responsible for making the choices that effect our lives, one household at a time.

“I guess we’re all, or most of us, the wards of that nineteenth-century science which denied existence to anything it could not measure or explain. The things we couldn’t explain went right on but surely not with our blessing. We did not see what we couldn’t explain, and meanwhile a great part of the world was abandoned to children, insane people, fools, and mystics, who were more interested in what is than in why it is. So many old and lovely things are stored in the world’s attic, because we don’t want them around us and we don’t dare throw them out.” 
- John Steinbeck, “The Winter of Our Discontent”

There used to be a time when I worried about what people thought, more so when we were part of the system and focused on the accumulation of wealth and status, but nowadays not so much. I have far more freedom now with almost nothing than I did when we had everything. I never would have expected that, and might not have even cared if someone had told me, but it’s something I have learned. There has always been an accepted reality built around the concept of money being able to purchase anything, but that’s not true either.

It comes with its own set of chains and restraints and a man who fears saying something for losing what he has is not free at all. In fact the most valuable possession we can ever own, and one which no one can ever take is our own experience. The choices we make, for good or evil, for right or wrong, for profit or for loss accumulate like interest in the account of our life and the only way we can make that kind of capital available for use is to share with others the value in what we have learned, even if we give it away.

I am as concerned and fearful about the future as anyone else I know, but I am also very realistic about my contribution. My circle or acquaintances and associates is very small, but it is filled with the kinds of people who have chosen likewise. We do what we can, when we can, where we are, and that adds to the final ledger the kind of tally that no accountant can reconcile. Ethan Hawley had everything any man could ever want and he sold it for a mess of pottage, but in his final moments on the page he reached deep into the past and remembered to keep a single flame alight. And that’s all that any of us can ever do.”

“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” 
- John Steinbeck, “The Winter of Our Discontent”


Source: http://coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-winter-of-our-discontent.html



Before It’s News® is a community of individuals who report on what’s going on around them, from all around the world.

Anyone can join.
Anyone can contribute.
Anyone can become informed about their world.

"United We Stand" Click Here To Create Your Personal Citizen Journalist Account Today, Be Sure To Invite Your Friends.

Please Help Support BeforeitsNews by trying our Natural Health Products below!


Order by Phone at 888-809-8385 or online at https://mitocopper.com M - F 9am to 5pm EST

Order by Phone at 866-388-7003 or online at https://www.herbanomic.com M - F 9am to 5pm EST

Order by Phone at 866-388-7003 or online at https://www.herbanomics.com M - F 9am to 5pm EST


Humic & Fulvic Trace Minerals Complex - Nature's most important supplement! Vivid Dreams again!

HNEX HydroNano EXtracellular Water - Improve immune system health and reduce inflammation.

Ultimate Clinical Potency Curcumin - Natural pain relief, reduce inflammation and so much more.

MitoCopper - Bioavailable Copper destroys pathogens and gives you more energy. (See Blood Video)

Oxy Powder - Natural Colon Cleanser!  Cleans out toxic buildup with oxygen!

Nascent Iodine - Promotes detoxification, mental focus and thyroid health.

Smart Meter Cover -  Reduces Smart Meter radiation by 96%! (See Video).

Report abuse

    Comments

    Your Comments
    Question   Razz  Sad   Evil  Exclaim  Smile  Redface  Biggrin  Surprised  Eek   Confused   Cool  LOL   Mad   Twisted  Rolleyes   Wink  Idea  Arrow  Neutral  Cry   Mr. Green

    Total 1 comment
    • Mike

      The Whole World Is In Denial. Normalcy Bias.

      “When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it.

    MOST RECENT
    Load more ...

    SignUp

    Login

    Newsletter

    Email this story
    Email this story

    If you really want to ban this commenter, please write down the reason:

    If you really want to disable all recommended stories, click on OK button. After that, you will be redirect to your options page.