But Still There

 Labor Day weekend. Typically ending with one last barbecue, one more time hanging out on the deck. One more Corona. Doing our thing one more time even if it is no longer the heat of July. Even if it is getting dark a little earlier. 

This year, however, is different. Oh perhaps folks will still get together but it is done with a certain consciousness. Regardless of whether they take COVID seriously or not. Even those who think it a conspiracy or something that will not effect them, they are still conscious of it, of its risks. Regardless of how we frame it; it is still there. 

Myself, this Labor Day I am asking what this summer will be remembered for. I ask that question not looking to my summer but to us as a people, as Americans. I do not normally ponder such. Certainly not on Labor Day. Typically I am much more in the camp of barbecues and the like. There is little thought involved. This year is different. With COVID, the violence of the political protests, and the political campaigns we are in the midst of and the heat of those campaigns,  all seem to require one to pause. 

That said, It is none of those that really bring me to this question. They play a role in the question but they do not drive or propel me to the question. Rather, I ask the question as we seem to miss, even ignore something. In some respects it has been done, played out, but not. We have in some way exhausted the topic perhaps. Regardless, for me this summer entails what is not on that list. 

For me personally this summer has largely been solitude, of trying to grasp, once more, what Wittgenstein was trying to convey in his Philosophical Investigations. That is my project and it will continue on. It started a long time ago and continues. Comparable perhaps to trying to make sense of the Beatle's White Album or Zeppelin's fourth album that is not even titled. 

Again, I ask this question as an American. What was this summer for us Americans? Even though I sat home reading some Austrian who was filling notebooks with his cryptic ideas some seventy years ago. I would pause, from my reading, and see what was happening in the news, on TV, online, and I saw something, and today it is ignored. At moments made light of. Discounted. But still there.