There's a part of me that loves the eerieness of H.P. Lovecraft, who reveled in all things old and decrepit, of secrets and fathomless time and space. Lovecraft was heavily inspired by Boston and old former Pilgrim villages in the northeast, the crumbling mortar and black bricks, the old Indian legends. It's one of the oldest settled areas of the US.
Boston has nothing on Germany. Boston is a kiddy pool in comparison to the black depths of time which is this part of Europe. The old mysterious Celtic tribes of England didn't come from there: they came from here, southern Germany, where some of the oldest artifacts shaped by humans can still be found.
Beyond the horrors of the Nazis in modern times, the ground should be red with the blood shed over the 30 Years War, the wars of the wars of religious conflict, and wars fought even earlier between Roman legions and Germanic tribes. The current manicured landscape, polite little villages, and formal, conservative people who live here in some ways make me imagine something massive and ancient beneath the surface, a secret river, a rusting forest of iron, an imprint of primeval skies locked into the substrate.
And true to the apex of Lovecraftian horror, finding the "Otherness" in yourself, English is really not so far removed from German. Since the linguistic split millenia ago Engish has changed drastically, German not so much. Studying German is a bit like archaeology on an alien planet where you keep finding odd family resemblances in the things you uncover...
Boston has nothing on Germany. Boston is a kiddy pool in comparison to the black depths of time which is this part of Europe. The old mysterious Celtic tribes of England didn't come from there: they came from here, southern Germany, where some of the oldest artifacts shaped by humans can still be found.
Beyond the horrors of the Nazis in modern times, the ground should be red with the blood shed over the 30 Years War, the wars of the wars of religious conflict, and wars fought even earlier between Roman legions and Germanic tribes. The current manicured landscape, polite little villages, and formal, conservative people who live here in some ways make me imagine something massive and ancient beneath the surface, a secret river, a rusting forest of iron, an imprint of primeval skies locked into the substrate.
And true to the apex of Lovecraftian horror, finding the "Otherness" in yourself, English is really not so far removed from German. Since the linguistic split millenia ago Engish has changed drastically, German not so much. Studying German is a bit like archaeology on an alien planet where you keep finding odd family resemblances in the things you uncover...
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