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The last six weeks sure went by quickly
Aug. 11th, 2021 11:20 amThis night, I dreamt that I was driving the kids home, but we couldn't use the usual road, so I had to take exceedingly long deviations that all ended at another road block because of yet another mudslide or yet another damaged bridge. In the end, the latest deviation took us down to what looked like the seashore (although my rational mind decided that it must be the Great Dhünn reservoir because we don't have any seas around here), and the road along the shore was flooded, but there were cars going in front of me and I just anted to get home at last, so I figured it would be alright, and then suddenly the road broke away and we were underwater and, presumably, drowned, because that's when I woke up.
My region isn't actually that badly affected by the torrential rains and floods, although curiously some uphill suburbs have been affected (more than, say, downtown Cologne which is right along the River Rhine). Maybe those marsh areas were there for a reason and the city shouldn't have declassified them for building? Just a thought. The bridges down in the valley have, for the most part, been damaged (some have been clean swept away O.ó), but those are pedestrian bridges. On Sunday we did have to take a detour because one of the road bridges was blocked, and I expect that's where the dream took its inspiration from, but we didn't have to drive through actually flooded streets at any point.
Well, very briefly, while we were in Normandy. The rainstorm that later devastated parts of Belgium, the Netherlands and central Germany parked its ugly ass there first, probably to soak up some more sea water, but it also rained on us the first two days of our stay before it moved on north-east, leading to some flooded streets while the sewerage tried to catch up. BUT all water will eventually follow the call of gravity down into the adjacent sea, there's a reason why the towns and villages and fields sur mer are all raised above the roads, the fields can hold a lot of water if they have to, and it's a sparsely settled, rural region (Bayeux, the largest town, has one third of the inhabitants of my (small!) home town). Back home, more and more free fields (even the marshy ones) are getting sealed and built on, and that means that the water has nowhere to go. Which doesn't make the losses any less awful, but many of them are the results of decades of mismanagement and turning a blind eye on a) pre-existing weather conditions (WHY DO YOU THINK IT WAS A MARSH) and b) exciting new desasters brought to you by humanity.
It is also a problem when people still think that actively taking measures against the consequences of climate change is defeatism (or too expensive). Awareness and self-flagellation alone will not save us. Do we need to lower our CO2 emissions? For sure. Do we need to invest in flood and heat protection etc. to deal with the damage that cannot be reversed anymore? Damn it, yes!
Some people complained that the reservoirs were "too full" even before the rainstorm, but after last summer was so arid, you can't be surprised when reservoir management holds on to every single drop of water. Now they overflowed (or in some cases dams were opened to let the water go in a controlled manner), which I understand is shitty for already soaked places downstream, but let's be honest, if the dam bursts, that's even shittier.
(By not entirely coincidence, climate change and the extreme/unpredictable weather conditions that result from it were the last topic I covered with my 10th graders in geography before they left school for good. I couldn't have asked for a better demonstration, but somehow I can't be pleased.)
Anyway. It has been A Summer.
As it was, the dream wasn't really about the flood, of course. My final exam is now just a month away and I haven't gotten nearly the amount of prep work done for it that I wanted. In part, this is to blame on going to Normandy for a week, Erfurt for two days and the Black Forest for a long weekend. You're never away just the time you're travelling, there's also the packing and other preparations. All of these trips were much-needed breaks, but they did take away from my prep time. In between, a week was spent on restauring our wastewater wetland (NOT as a result of the rains, but because the rhizomes of the reeds were starting to push out the gravel after 10 years of growing), which also required my help and again tore me out of the core curricula and school laws brainspace. It doesn't help that the stuff I have to write is thoroughly boring and redundant, and I have to try and make it less redundant while still satisfying all the formal requirements, which may be an impossible task. And next week the new term will start, so all the remaining work will have to be juggled alongside regular school work. Joy.
It all adds up to, I guess, dreams about drowning.
The problem with such dreams is that the sense of doom and despair stays with me for hours after waking up, even when the whole thing has been safely identified as a dream, and I need to actively think myself back into the dream (which, for obvious reasons, I Do Not Want) and mentally continue the storyline in a way that leads to a safe ending just to exorcise the damned thing.
Meh.
My region isn't actually that badly affected by the torrential rains and floods, although curiously some uphill suburbs have been affected (more than, say, downtown Cologne which is right along the River Rhine). Maybe those marsh areas were there for a reason and the city shouldn't have declassified them for building? Just a thought. The bridges down in the valley have, for the most part, been damaged (some have been clean swept away O.ó), but those are pedestrian bridges. On Sunday we did have to take a detour because one of the road bridges was blocked, and I expect that's where the dream took its inspiration from, but we didn't have to drive through actually flooded streets at any point.
Well, very briefly, while we were in Normandy. The rainstorm that later devastated parts of Belgium, the Netherlands and central Germany parked its ugly ass there first, probably to soak up some more sea water, but it also rained on us the first two days of our stay before it moved on north-east, leading to some flooded streets while the sewerage tried to catch up. BUT all water will eventually follow the call of gravity down into the adjacent sea, there's a reason why the towns and villages and fields sur mer are all raised above the roads, the fields can hold a lot of water if they have to, and it's a sparsely settled, rural region (Bayeux, the largest town, has one third of the inhabitants of my (small!) home town). Back home, more and more free fields (even the marshy ones) are getting sealed and built on, and that means that the water has nowhere to go. Which doesn't make the losses any less awful, but many of them are the results of decades of mismanagement and turning a blind eye on a) pre-existing weather conditions (WHY DO YOU THINK IT WAS A MARSH) and b) exciting new desasters brought to you by humanity.
It is also a problem when people still think that actively taking measures against the consequences of climate change is defeatism (or too expensive). Awareness and self-flagellation alone will not save us. Do we need to lower our CO2 emissions? For sure. Do we need to invest in flood and heat protection etc. to deal with the damage that cannot be reversed anymore? Damn it, yes!
Some people complained that the reservoirs were "too full" even before the rainstorm, but after last summer was so arid, you can't be surprised when reservoir management holds on to every single drop of water. Now they overflowed (or in some cases dams were opened to let the water go in a controlled manner), which I understand is shitty for already soaked places downstream, but let's be honest, if the dam bursts, that's even shittier.
(By not entirely coincidence, climate change and the extreme/unpredictable weather conditions that result from it were the last topic I covered with my 10th graders in geography before they left school for good. I couldn't have asked for a better demonstration, but somehow I can't be pleased.)
Anyway. It has been A Summer.
As it was, the dream wasn't really about the flood, of course. My final exam is now just a month away and I haven't gotten nearly the amount of prep work done for it that I wanted. In part, this is to blame on going to Normandy for a week, Erfurt for two days and the Black Forest for a long weekend. You're never away just the time you're travelling, there's also the packing and other preparations. All of these trips were much-needed breaks, but they did take away from my prep time. In between, a week was spent on restauring our wastewater wetland (NOT as a result of the rains, but because the rhizomes of the reeds were starting to push out the gravel after 10 years of growing), which also required my help and again tore me out of the core curricula and school laws brainspace. It doesn't help that the stuff I have to write is thoroughly boring and redundant, and I have to try and make it less redundant while still satisfying all the formal requirements, which may be an impossible task. And next week the new term will start, so all the remaining work will have to be juggled alongside regular school work. Joy.
It all adds up to, I guess, dreams about drowning.
The problem with such dreams is that the sense of doom and despair stays with me for hours after waking up, even when the whole thing has been safely identified as a dream, and I need to actively think myself back into the dream (which, for obvious reasons, I Do Not Want) and mentally continue the storyline in a way that leads to a safe ending just to exorcise the damned thing.
Meh.
