The rule of the three unities

Certainly, as long as it’s not extracted faster than it forms. (There’s hardly an "ecological problem" that wouldn’t naturally resolve itself if Earth had fewer people, after all.)I just sent my varnished peat briquettes to Amazon (you’ll have noticed they’ve replaced horses with drones). They should be near Whalsay by tomorrow. However, even though the drone runs on Amazon’s AI, the fact that it’s solar-powered makes me worry it might drop them on a sheep instead of gently placing them in your hearth when it reaches your area. You’ll then have to make do with the meat (1), while Man fashions straps from the hide to turn those briquettes into rather stylish geta. No doubt he’ll find you voluptuous then, even as you suffer from the lack of uppers (2). (1) I recommend Kola, a home chef who’s had an age-old recipe for leg of lamb tenderized under a pony saddle, her mint emulsion, and her cucumber reduction.
(2) If the wind blows just right, Dolma will come knit you some slippers—one stitch right, one stitch wrong.Probably, but more seriously, Jules won’t get his humanities education.

Hey (I would’ve tried Shetlandic, but Google’s silent)A thoughtful reflection: one person’s dream is another’s nightmare.“It’s because there’s nothing that we go there.” Exactly.Dom, the reading experience conjured up pleasant images, but it’s morning, the coffee—corrected with whisky—is sipped in the alcove, and the urge to wander the moors is ravenous. No trees, sure, a few shrubs, okay, but what about the heather? Is it there or not? And if it is, if the mood struck to confide in it, would it tickle the skin or scratch it? I have no idea.Catherine

Good morning Unamilanese,
The heather is soft—you can lie down on it when it hasn’t rained. And in summer, it’s so breathtakingly beautiful that you could cry with happiness at the sight of the hills where every shade of violet, pink, and white intertwines.Originally, in the Highlands, it’s called *calluna*, and it’s the result of deforestation. Ten thousand years ago, these were forests.Heather is said to be magical, and when a young woman marries, she carries a sprig of white heather in her bouquet.Today, heather is a source of pride for the Scots, but their true emblem is the blue thistle—and yes, that *does* prick!On the islands, especially in the Shetlands where the subarctic climate is harsh, the moorland has adapted to the salinity of the soil. You’ll find plantain, mosses, heather in the land, buttercups, gentians, and just plain grass. Right now, everything looks a bit russet, but it’ll all change with spring.

Hello Voyajou,
Are you sure you paid the right rate for your briquettes?
Nothing arrived. Do you have a package tracking number?
Drones sometimes malfunction. For commerce, it’s a bit annoying, but for war, it’s horrifying.
Imagine a drone pilot leaving home in the morning, kissing his kids and wife. He settles into his office, follows orders to strike a facility, misses, and hits a school instead.
That evening, he goes home, kisses his kids and wife again. Will he be able to sleep?PS: Can you picture me walking across the moors in geta? One wrong step and I’d sprain my ankle, stuck in the moss.

Is it the last bastion against worry, madness, or the absurdity of the world... in journals, in reflections, in images, love scatters its petals everywhere on VF.Scenes of animal love (Kenya). A marriage proposal high up on the mountain (Tanzania). A four-handed travel journal (India). A loving gaze in a wild journal (Australia)...
... and then here, like a vast fire that continues to shine in the midst of autumn, at the edge of winter, old-age love, tender love that plays with gray hair and turns faded bathrobes into rainbow-colored finery.Man is near me, I can’t resist giving him a kiss,ChatGPT, what is love?Love is a complex mix of emotions, feelings, and commitment [..] Romantic love is a deep connection between two people, made of attraction, complicity, and respect. [..] But beyond emotions, love is also a decision: the choice to take care of the other, to understand them, and to build something together.Thanks, ChatGPT, that’s a bit formal—it lacks poetry, lyricism... but can you define love when you have, like you, no soul, no beating heart, no blood in your veins?Good question. Technically, I can describe love based on philosophical, psychological, and literary definitions. But experience it? No. I have no emotions, no body, no consciousness of my own.
That said, does understanding love necessarily mean feeling it? Poets and philosophers have talked about it for centuries, and each gives a different definition based on their experience or worldview. Maybe love is precisely something that escapes strict definitions and is lived more than it’s explained....
Will AI erase the forum and travel guides?What world will we leave to our children? To which children will we leave this world?Jules, 14 years old, and so many others who see us perplexed in the face of their new doctrines—will they let themselves be swallowed whole, raw, by the looming shadows of the (A)I to come... or will they forge their own weapons or shields? Will they have a conscience that our fears, uselessly, imagine them, a little hastily, to lack?
...
Is it ecological to heat with peat?
Amazon wasn’t a great idea for sending peat bricks. They seem to have disappeared somewhere over the North Sea... or maybe they’ve already burned in a Scottish furnace?
...
For long evenings under the scratchy but oh-so-warm blanket.
The Scottish Trilogy

"It's because there's nothing there that we go"Instead of writing 15 lines, here’s simply why I love reading you so much, again and again... It’s always where those who say there’s nothing that we find our little joys—those joys you know how to present so well.

Hi Kola,
Did you really ask ChatGPT?
You got a perfect machine response, and your words are a thousand times more eloquent.I read the Scottish trilogy a long time ago, and while reading those books that speak so deeply to the hearts of men, I felt all that was missing was the smell of peat to reach the perfection of the Isle of Harris and Lewis. That scent of dampness, of the ocean, a hint of mushroom when it’s cut, and acrid when it’s burned.I don’t know what the world will be like for my grandchildren and young people in general when I’m gone, but they’re full of resources, hope, and dreams, just as we all were—and that’s wonderful.

Say, Pondy, that "salty taste on chapped lips" line is a bit bold—I shuddered.

Ohhh, I’m so happy to see this here. Totally surprised too.
It’s crazy how you shake the dust off old memories.
Wasn’t there a black-and-white spotted cow in your profile picture?
Those were such lighthearted and joyful times on the forum, at least in my memory.

Make sure the pleasure is shared! And that lightness and joy (punctuated by fierce sparring) are also missed...
You’ve got a good memory—there was indeed a cow, but I think she succumbed to VF’s long Covid because I didn’t find her when I logged back in. An old neighbor, in a place akin to the moors and elements you describe so well: it’s sad.

Friday: 0 seals, a hundred sheep, 1 hare, 2 humans, 0 VikingsThis morning, the freshly washed sky sends me to the water’s edge on a tiny pebble-and-sand beach.
Man stayed at home, sitting at the yellow Formica table pushed up against the stove.
His book is so old it has to be placed carefully on the table.
Man is stubborn and insisted on bringing it in his luggage. It’s the first volume, *Waverley*, of Walter Scott’s work—a Scottish writer almost unknown in France, just like the bard Robert Burns, for that matter.
But if you say “Ivanhoe,” well, a few memories come to life.
Anyway, Man is reading the last edition from Edinburgh, translated into French in 1839. He turns the pages, blowing on them to keep them from falling apart. The manuscript is the color of toasted barley and smells like an old sailor’s trunk. I know there’s no point telling him I’ll be back in an hour—he’s deep in the Jacobite rebellion and the Battle of Culloden.I walk across the spongy moorland, a little green, a little russet, all soft, patiently waiting to turn green again and be covered in gentians. Enea tells me they’re gentians, even though they look like crocuses. I’ll take her word for it.The ocean’s swell is strangely comforting. My parka is zipped up tight, and the beaver down around my hood tickles my cheek. I sit on a rock as rough as emery cloth and just stay there, thinking about nothing in a kind of absolute born from the earth, water, and wind.Later, we’ll go get fish at the port of Symbister, the little town on the island. Then a quick stroll down the main street, and if it’s school dismissal time, we’ll see a swarm of middle-schoolers pouring out of the beautiful Georgian house where I imagine it must be nice to learn.On Sunday, we got a video call from Young Son. And there you have it—we’ve got internet! Of course we’re happy; we’re not going to act like grumpy old folks, and of course we answer with joy. We chat for a while—the connection is perfect. Then Son says:
“Here, Arthur wants to talk to you.”Arthur’s grown now; he’s in first grade and at the age for Toto jokes!!
“Mamido, do you know what you call a mean grandma?”
“Uh, no—I hope it’s not me!”
“No, it’s not you. So what do you call her?”
“I have no idea.”
He laughs, and I see the big gap where his teeth are missing.
“A *granny-trailer*!”
He’s so proud of his joke that I laugh with him.That’s all for today. Tomorrow, we’re planning a trip to Unst, Viking territory and the northernmost island in the UK.
See you later!Little aside
If today jewelers, florists, and chocolatiers are rubbing their hands—fair game for such a commercial holiday—on this date, an important symbolic founding event also took place.
Do you know which one?
I feel like I’ll be migrating to “miscellaneous” soon

Hi Kola!"Does the name of its inventor—Scottish—appear among the possible tones?"
You’re probably thinking of Bell, since you playfully wrote “tones.” While he helped keep long-distance connections alive, I wasn’t actually referring to him.
Actually, I was thinking of February 14, 842, when the Oaths of Strasbourg were signed—an event now considered the founding act of the French language.
On a French-speaking forum, I thought that was a nice touch.

0 humans, 2 ponies, 20 sheepToday, a light, freezing drizzle didn’t exactly encourage us to go out. We were supposed to take the ferry to Unst to see the kids rehearsing a play about Vikings.
We already miss the Viking festival, Up Helly Aa, every year because it’s in January and we always arrive too late. Now, the desire to watch the kids practice has vanished with the rain.Vikings—a grand history.
When I was young, a Viking was a giant blond with a shaggy beard covered in breadcrumbs and bits of grass. A bloodthirsty pirate with a sword clenched between his teeth, sailing on his longship with his buddies to attack other ships.The reality is quite different, and on Unst, you can see a reconstruction of their history and homes. It looks a bit like the blackhouses of the Highlands, with a grassy roof that’s really striking.The Shetlanders don’t claim any affiliation—neither Scandinavian nor Scottish. They’re first and foremost Shetlanders, though their Viking heritage has left traces, like the place names and the ruins of the old Viking capital in Scalloway.One last fun anecdote: Vikings were fond of mead.
Two years ago, our honey harvest was abundant (unlike last year, when the rain disrupted the bees so much that the harvest was tiny). My partner made mead for the first time, and honestly, it was absolutely delicious. Giving a bottle with a nice homemade label makes for a very appreciated gift.
Have you, during your travels, tasted homemade alcohols?In Russia, we drank samogon. As much as I hate vodka, this fruit-based alcohol—37% for the ladies and 45% for the men—was really good. The one we tried was distilled with fruit, not grains, because apparently, grain-based spirits are rough and responsible for many deaths.
See you later...

"Nithard specifies that on the day the kings, Louis the German and Charles the Bald, and the leaders (the dukes) of the Frankish tribes pronounced their pact (pactum), snow fell abundantly on the frozen earth (subsequente gelu nix multa cecidit).Here are the first French words spoken in the cold and snow, on their frozen lips, on February 14, and immediately noted as they hung in the air:
- Pro Deo amour et pro christian pi lo et nostro commun salvament
si Lodhuwigs sagrament que son fradre Karlo jurat ni je ni nul qui en puissent returnar
en nulle aide, contre Lodhuwigs, ne serai.This is how the first French text ends with a sublime double negative, which is a terrible imprecation of ostracism in case of perjury.
En nulle aide ne serai.Neither I nor anyone else.But there was no perjury.
The empire was divided into three vast equal parts.
Middle Francia remained in the hands of Lothair.
West Francia went to Charles the Bald.
East Francia remained under the domination of Louis the German.
Today’s Europe can already be seen in this.
And—in this strange contingency of origin, in this white breath rising from their lips, in this abundant snow (multa) falling from the sky—all the wars it has known and the competitions it still faces are written there."Tears, Pascal Quignard.This isn’t the most beautiful passage in the book.

You know, Catherine, I’m glad you brought up the Strasbourg Oaths.
Years ago—maybe a decade or so—I read *Les Larmes* and from the very start, I felt put off. I found it so unclear that I got bored.
But once poetry sweeps you away, everything flows. Still, I’m sure if I read it again today, I wouldn’t feel the same way.
That’s how it goes with a lot of my reading. I let things settle and come back much later, and then I savor it all.

50 sheep, 1 whitecoat
No need to linger here any longer, so I’ll wrap up this Shetland chapter.
Still, I can’t help but share the magical afternoon we spent.
The light was intense, and the sun was almost directly overhead.
We walked along the cliff, taking it easy since neither of us is exactly a hiking fanatic.
Below, the waves were fiercely slapping the rocks, and in the shelter of a small gravel cove, seals were basking in the sun. Nothing out of the ordinary—except for that little white, fluffy whitecoat.
Maybe it’s called a pup? I’m no seal expert. A pup because the baby seal’s cry sounds like a bark.
What I find incredible is that the female can delay embryonic development for a few months so her pup is born at the same time each year. Nature’s wild like that. I picture a young woman pregnant in October who wants her baby to arrive after the summer heat. “You, my little one, just wait before you grow!”
In a few days, it’ll head into the water on its own. Amazing nature.
We stood there, shoulder to shoulder, the richness and light of our bond held in our joined hands.

Navigating between the prohibitions. Bumping into arbitrariness.
Assuming... but no.
Smiling to avoid despair. Not giving in.
And taking your leave with elegance.Until next time, maybe...