The living past.

Sweet Antebellum. Putting aside all of the rampant racism and slavery, the time itself was a simple one. It embodied the American standard. You work to live. That sort of simplicity lives on in the deep south. Tucked away in the backwoods and the corners of time, people live simply. They fear a wrathful God, work all week, and rest on Sunday.
They live a simple and sparse life, but the deepness of the world never factors into it. There is no time to ponder death and mortality, it surrounds you. The time and energy saved by the automatic world of today gives birth to thinking. We live our lives in a safe cocoon that at the same time is overborne with the troubles of the world. Living with safety and with all the time in the world to imagine the dangerous things that lurk in the great Dark to take it away from us.
In the simple lands of Antebellum there is no wondering about what might happen. The dangers are all known and faced on a day to day basis. Upkeep of the family, the crops, and the livestock. The death of one means the death of all three. Not that the labour takes away from thinking. Quite the opposite, in fact. The wonder of the world can be found in both sides of the spectrum. In our world we see how very small we are and how little we understand. It strips us of our ego and how superior we think we are in the world. In Antebellum they know the world is large. They are aware of their ignorance. And just as long as the giant world keeps to itself, the industrious residents are happy to keep to themselves. They stick to mending fences, shoeing horses, and plowing fields. And while they work they let their thoughts drift softly at the greatness of things. There is no preoccupation with where life is going or what the future holds. In those little eddies in time the future holds exactly what the past holds. Life is going to stay exactly where it has always been. When today is like yeaterday and yesterday has a strinking resmblance to what tomorrow is starting to look like, thoughts can be soft.
It lets one look at a cloud for no other reason than that clouds are truely spectacular, when you get right down to it. Simply because they exist. It makes me smile to think that somewhere out there life refuses to be rushed. It's a dying way of life, but, for a time, it clings to that life with an aloof determination.