Friday, July 8th 2022

It’s 15 minutes after 7:00 and Jenna has just finished his first cigarette break.

One of the details of working with him is to understand that he really, really, really likes smoking cigarettes. He likes drinking alcohol and he likes smoking cigarettes. I don’t think he eats very much and if he does, it seems to be something like cookies or some kind of sweet cakes. He talks about eating sausage and bread. I don’t think we need to discuss his diet any longer or to understand why he needs constant cigarette breaks. Or why he works so cheap.

I learned about this nuance trying to work with him last year. He actually showed up 15 minutes early, the first annoyance of the day, and then before the first 8 minutes of work had happened, he was off the property and bothering a neighbor for a cigarette. He heard them leaving their house, understood that they were working people so they probably had money and so he wandered off the job to bother them for a cigarette. The guy he bothered is also a chain smoking alcoholic. There is definitely a brotherhood here.

I am sitting in my kitchen. It’s another pleasantly overcast day. The garden looks terrific after all the hard work. It may be early to tell whether these sweet potatoes like being mulched with tree bark, every other plant we have used this on shows absolute glowing love for its presence. I had to pull an Anakin Skywalker in the potato box. Like I said, the actual Orange egg creams have been really small because of the heat and how little the potato beetles have had an opportunity to take a foothold. A few got by and unfortunately, the empire had to take a stand even against the younglings. I wiped my hands on nearby grass. I will not lose sleep tonight.

So far, no sign of Lena. As for today, my biggest debate is whether or not to make use of the local store. In one part of my mind, I have this thought of making tasty food and requiring something that they have. On the other side, I’m already rethinking this. I have more food than I can possibly eat, I am currently in love with raw green sauces and blender smoothies and I think I can probably put together enough tasty food not to require anything from the store.

Of course there are a few vegetables that might be nice. I don’t grow tomatoes for example and my zucchini have not yet arrived. On the other hand, I can live very well without them.

But the real thing is that when I think of the things I would buy such as macaroni or bottled tomato sauce, I suddenly realize that I do not want these things in me. Just a few days of raw food and now I am looking at all of this processed factory nonsense and is being exactly what it is. I don’t want to go directly to the word drugs but for sure, these are salable products looking to appeal to people on an emotional level. Extrapolating what happens when you live a steady diet connected to that store has a perfect and unbroken line to my friend Ghenna as well as the neighbors he bummed a cigarette off of.

It’s exactly 10 minutes now after he returned from his cigarette break and amazingly, it was time to leave again. His excuse was that he needed to check into work. He’s making a big show of saying that he is somehow shirking his responsibilities at work to show up here. Of course there is some doubt in my mind to everything he says but it really doesn’t matter.

His entire project today is to cut the grass on the back side of my property and rake it up into a specific pile that I’m going to let fade into compost. I’ll probably add to it somewhat but really, I’m not really so much into composting by removing to a certain place and then bringing back. I prefer to practice chop and drop. This allows all of the Dead and dying organic material to both act as a mulch and eventually fade back into the soil. I understand there are some negatives and positives to this. But it’s a very lazy method and so far, I haven’t seen any problems with the boxes except when they get beaten to death by excessive sunlight.

I talked about this a little bit with my ex partner and our decision was to perhaps put hoops over the boxes and cover them with a very fine mesh. Not plastic, I am not looking to greenhouse everything although there is some greenhouse effect to tenting. But it will allow a diffusion of direct sunlight when it’s really hot and yet will allow water to come in. I suppose it also acts a little bit as an insect barrier. I am not sure if I want this or not. My experience with the mosquito screen on my window has taught me a lot about insect barriers. Sometimes I think it’s better to just let them in as well as their natural predators. Doing things natural tends to lead to a balance except for potato beetles. Anyway, I have a year to think about it.

Haha! Lena has arrived. I guess we are about ready to get the floor cleaned here. She is already screaming at me for allowing Ghenna to take the potato job away from her. Excuse me for a minute while I practice my best suave.

Don’t worry. I haven’t been married in a very long time. I can get out of almost anything.

***

It’s about 9:00 a.m. and almost everything has already been done. The house has been cleaned on the inside and it has that freshly washed shine about it. Lena has head off home with a few dirty shirts and amazingly, two items of my ex partners clothing. My ex partner decided to work mostly naked at the end of the day yesterday and had simply disregarded her garments in piles. Lana is washing everything and will return our stuff a little bit later in the day. I have no idea what the conversation with my ex-partner is going to be like when she finds out that not only was it me washing her clothes for a change but that in fact it was Lena.

If I were to tell you that I myself am not jealous, would this strike you as a lie?

Ghenna has just finished his task and all of the grass in the back part of the house has been cut and moved to a pile to break down into a compost for next spring. We cut down a few of the wild growing trees as well. I thought I might be more nostalgic for them but honestly, I can’t argue with ease of access. I am not into cutting my grass if I don’t have to. But that region serves no particular purpose either as a wildlife reserve or even as a place of beauty. No wild flowers. It’s just a driveway. And now, it’s compost.

Ghenna also helped me out with one other piece of work and he found me four pieces of rebar that I needed. There are a few places where when we are watering with the hose, the hose has a tendency to want to drag itself over plants or bushes. Putting the rebar exactly at that corner protects the bushes and he was nice enough to find these. When I asked him where he got them, they were absolutely perfectly shaped with two right angles to allow themselves to be stuck in the ground, he told me he had taken them from the electric company. It wasn’t stealing, he explained, it was just a bonus for work done. God bless the Soviet Union.

And then that was it. The house has gone quiet for the first time in a few days. The place is clean and even the backyard seems orderly by my own standards. They say we are going to get some rain tomorrow but I might take the trouble to go out and spray a little water at least on the plant boxes just to make sure. But suddenly I find myself without a whole lot to do and looking at a really nice day off.

The only detail left to talk about really was my decision to let the store go. It’s hard for me to let go of the thought of some macaroni and perhaps tomato sauce or even some cheap vegetables that might be available at the store. But the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to eat anything from there. It’s a strange thought but it seems to me the exact same thinking that allowed me to break my connection with quite a bit of human cheat meal food. It was the exact same line of thought I used to get away from my 5:00 p.m.”let’s get wrecked” State of mind. I just thought it through and then thought about it again and then thought about it again and decided that I had a healthy replacement for almost anything they had to offer. Even if I don’t, I won’t die from letting it go. I have enough to eat.

I also overpaid everybody. Call it a tip. It wasn’t a lot of money but everybody got about 30% more than they bargained for.

Hemingway explained this at the tail end of my favorite book in the world, fiesta. Jake was on his way back from the debacle in Spain, torn to pieces by the physical and emotional abuse he had experienced. It had all been a vicious Bloodsport and now he was just empty and cynical and hateful of everything in the world. He had come across the border from Spain back into France and remarked how easy it was to make friends simply by tipping. The French, he said, we’re a much simpler people to deal with than the Spanish. Everyone was on a strict economic basis. If you wanted them to remember you fondly, you gave a little bit bigger tip and the next time they saw you, they would like you quite a bit.

This tip was from genuine gratitude. The gratitude comes from them showing up on time, doing their job and then getting out of here. With Ghenna, it came along with a request to let me call him first if I have some work to do and he seemed to think that this was just fine. With Lena, I’m not worried anymore. She’s happy to have a job every Thursday or Friday and that we are connected by telephone. I got the feeling that both of them were happy to be leaving despite all of the glad-handing. They are much happier, as am I, without this relationship going on longer than it needs to.

The potatoes by the way ended up in the forest. I’m assured that no one will notice or care. Nobody wanted those bloody potatoes. Everybody already has more potatoes than they know what to do.

***

I have just one more thought about money. This week, either the dollar rebounded or the ruble fell. The drop was a noticeable $0.10 or so from 250 to the dollar to 270. Depending on how you count your money, I lost a few dollars because I have some rules in the bank but perhaps my money goes farther or would go farther if I had access to it. It’s funny looking at economics during the time of War.

Cryptocurrency has also rebounded a tick or two. I don’t really know much about economics. I know it has something to do with the Americans hedging against a recession and fighting their dilemma to keep as much oil as possible available for the cheapest price possible. Everything always comes back to oil.

None of this stuff really affects me very much. I don’t really need anything anymore. I’m talking about large size purchases. I have some strange nostalgic dreams about going to visit my kids or perhaps my kids visiting me. But these are not givens. We’ve all lived our lives separately and I’m quite sure I’m the only one feeling any sense of nostalgia. And then even if I did pull the trigger to go out and say hello, I have this anti addiction thinking problem. I’m already deep into the thought of how pointless these exercises would be. There would be nothing for me to do there except cause problems. Even if there was a big hug at the end, we could check in on Skype anytime we wanted to.

Of course, someone could actually wake up and decide to stop the madness. Someone, some genuine influencer, someone with real Media power and access like a president of a large powerful country could stand up and make serious recommendations towards ecology. Biden could do this. Putin could do this really. The Europeans kind of say this but in a European way that leads you not to believe anything they are saying. I don’t even think we have one guy that everyone would agree to listen to on serious subjects like this. Everybody’s corrupt.

But what if they gave me the ball to carry? What if they said that all I needed to do was open up my phone, go to the Skype app and click a small series of numbers and suddenly I would be talking to everyone in the world at the same time. Translations are not a problem, whatever I say is going to genuinely get global coverage and I could say anything I wanted. What would I say?

You know, I have a few ideas but I think I’ll think about it for a second. Of course I could just go off extemporaneously and I would absolutely come up with the same thing I’m going to say later. You can’t practice writing every day and not be able to get pretty close to the 99th percentile at will. That’s the entire point of practicing your language skills. 

Let me leave this to you as a general question. If you had the opportunity to speak to the entire world and tell them your greatest philosophy and hope for the world, what would you say? What words would you bring forward if you knew that what you said would make a difference to the entire planet, to all life on Earth and even for generations to come? What would be your deepest wisdom and hopes for humanity as well as the planet Earth?

***

It just struck me that I haven’t eaten anything today. It didn’t strike me because I was hungry. It struck me because I haven’t eaten anything today and I’m not hungry. I wonder what all of this means?

***

This week’s Torah portion is called Chukat (חֻקַּ֣ת), which translates to the word “statutes”. It is a bit on the complicated side to wrap your head around because there are several distinct sections. I’m going to try to give a brief rundown on the highlights and I will probably make commentary as it comes to mind.

The reading starts at numbers chapter 19 and here Moses is getting ready for Aaron’s departure from the planet. He’s going to have to pass the torch on to one of his sons and if so of course, they celebrate with barbecue and some rules how to make really good barbecue.

They also go on quite a bit about who is clean and who is not clean and how unclean people should not come into the tent of meeting. There are some specifics about touching dead people which is important as they are getting ready for Aaron’s death. They have some ways for unclean to become clean and clean to become unclean. It’s a bit confusing but I guess it means that kosher is kosher and you shouldn’t play around too much with death, either for barbecue or for your religious leaders. Unclean meat is unclean meat.

After this we get to chapter 20 and there is a problem as usual the people started to complain. There was no water out in the desert and apparently at this moment, the traveling well we heard about a little earlier in the story had not yet come into existence or maybe it had run dry. But as usual, somebody got up and complained saying that they had it much better off when they were in Egypt, Egypt was a land of milk and honey, these milk and honey lands were not easy to come by and there wasn’t going to be any milk or any honey out in the desert and especially not if they didn’t have water.

So Moses and Aaron fell on their faces, they usually did this when people came to them as an angry mob, and then Moses got word from God that the plumbing would be fixed, and Moses tapped Iraq a few times with his staff and the water was turned on again. Everybody drank but of course, you have to pay the price for doubting. I don’t know why people should be doubtful about how much water they have when they’re wandering around the desert. Seems perfectly reasonable to me but in this case, the complainers ended up getting punished and snake bit.

Seriously, it’s very frustrating reading Torah sometimes. You’re damned if you do and your damned if you don’t and really, what exactly are the rules for how to play this game? It’s worse than being a Russian colony out there in the desert.

But with enough water to drink and apparently they could just tap the rocks wherever they were to get more, they found themselves traveling by the 4th portion to the land of Edom. They sent some Messengers basically asking for simple passage.

You know of all the hardship that has befallen us.

Our fathers went down to Egypt, and we sojourned in Egypt for a long time. And the Egyptians mistreated us and our forefathers.

We cried out to the Lord and He heard our voice. He sent an angel, and he took us out of Egypt, and now we are in Kadesh, a city on the edge of your border.

Please let us pass through your land; we will not pass through fields or vineyards, nor will we drink well water. We will walk along the king’s road, and we will turn neither to the right nor to the left until we have passed through your territory.’

The king though had absolutely no interest in letting several hundred thousand Jews pass through his property. But he had a pretty good standing army and the children of Israel thought it wise to just go around. This was not going to be the new Homeland.

Why didn’t the king let them pass through? Did he know something? Was there anti-Semitism already? Had heard how argumentative and litigious these people were? Did he get the idea that they were pretty tough characters from getting by out in the desert and banging rocks for water? Did he find out about the black cloud following them around?

I don’t know but for whatever reason, nothing happened and the reading goes on to the 5th portion.

Here, unfortunately, they arrive at Mount Hor and it is apparent that Aaron has reached his last days. They took off his priest robes, gave them to Eleazar, one of his sons, and suddenly Moses was again on his own.

Perhaps feeling that this was a good time to attack, Arad, the king of Canaan attacked the Israelites out in the desert and took a captive. This is pretty much verbatim from the story of The Godfather by the way. But then the Israeli army made a deal with God and took out Canaan without too much trouble and these cities became consecrated and holy.

This successful War however takes up all of three sentences and immediately thereafter while they were traveling around the red sea, people started complaining again about how tough it was and how much better Egypt was. And suddenly, there were no longer any pro-servicemen rallies and no more public thanks for people who served and they sent snakes to bite them. Apparently they didn’t like the bread.

After this and for the remainder of the 6th portion, the people quietly wandered around, sang some songs and lived peacefully at least for a little while. At the beginning of the 7th portion though, they ran into the amorites and again asked if they could pass through without bothering anybody. And again, Sihon, the king of the Amorites refused to give Israel passage. By this time though, Israel had had enough of this no you cannot use my roads nonsense. They were hard now from the desert walks, the snake bites and a successful War and this time, they did simply agree and take the long way around. This time, they smote him which is a pretty good word really meaning that it wasn’t much of a fight.

Then they wrote some more songs and said some more prayers and finally settled there in the land of the amorites. But not for long. Soon there was another War with Bashon. What do you think happened? Smite, smote, smitten. The children of Israel were now 2-0-1 in League Play and settled in for the victory party on the plains of Moab.

When I was a school boy, we had a PE class where we played all different sorts of games. I wasn’t a bad sportsman but I was definitely a heavy kid. You could say fat or you could say heavy. I was coordinated and I could play sports but I didn’t have that beautiful aesthetic body. No self-esteem either.

This one week, the teacher brought us into a little building and told us we were going to box. The fights were going to be two rounds of about a minute each and we would square off against people of our own weight. For me, this was a pretty bad situation. I really didn’t want to box and it was all made worse because the guys that I had to box against were all taller and bigger than me. They were older, they were the cool guys and I truly didn’t believe I had a chance.

A day or two went by and I quietly sat watching my friends attempt to pummel each other. I wouldn’t say there were any particular positive emotions from all of this. Some of the small skinny kids sort of slapped at each other. There wasn’t any real boxing going on. I don’t think anybody really got hurt. But then my name got called.

I will tell you the truth, I did not want to do this. I did not want these big guys putting their hands on me. I did not want to get beat up. I had had enough of getting beat up from my psychopath mother. The last thing I needed in this world was to be forced to stand up and take a beating from a bunch of bullies.

Literally, I was hyperventilating. I was so upset by this moment. I was in pure fear of my life while they put the oversized gloves on my hands.

A little bit earlier in my life, I had asked my father if we could perhaps get a heavy bag or maybe I could learn to fight. He was against it. He was in favor of team sports. He was a baseball player and he admired American football. and he had high hopes that perhaps I would become a golfer. You can have business conversations while golfing. But he definitely did not want me fighting for some reason, not for health and not for all of the shots to the head that I would end up having while practicing.

I guess I had been in a couple of schoolyard fights before this. I had one guy challenge me to a fight that I didn’t want to be in. He was a tough guy and I guess I had put dirt on his shirt and he decided this was a good enough reason to kick my ass. I took the first hit and lay down on the ground. True story, I took a dive. He went away and left me there but this didn’t do much for my school reputation. Because of this, another guy, another heavy kid challenged me to a fight just because he thought I was easy pickings. In the middle of our scrapple, I took a wild swing with my right arm and made solid contact on his neck and apparently hurt him bad enough to make him quit. This brought back my reputation for a while but again, I just never went into the fight business again.

But now here I was looking at a kid who to me was pretty much an adult already. He was a good foot taller than me and he had muscles. I was out of my mind. I was so scared.

In the moment before they rang the bell, a thought came into my mind and this thought has basically stayed with me my entire life as being a correct strategy for fighting your way out of a difficult moment. It occurred to me that the best defense was probably a wicked ass offense. If you’re going to go into a place where you know you’re going to get hurt, probably the best thing you could possibly do is get up into the other guy’s face as fast as you possibly can and make sure that he becomes as unhappy as possible for wanting to play with you.

I didn’t call it this but for the moment, let’s call this wolverine mode.

I went out that son of a bitch like a buzzsaw. I threw every possible punch I could throw from every possible angle. I hit him as many times as I possibly could and I never withdrew from the offense until they rang the Bell. I don’t know how many times I had connected with him. He looked stunned over in his corner. He had not expected such a violent explosion. I was back in my own corner still hyperventilating and crying. The coach smiled at me and asked me if I had been hurt that bad. I heard him say the words but all I could think of was probably yes. I don’t remember the other guy ever making contact but I was quite sure I was being beaten within an inch of my life. There was no way that this big monster of a semi man could not have killed me.

Round two started and about 13 or 14 wild punches into it I noticed that my man was covering up for dear life. There was no boxing for him to do because the assault simply wouldn’t stop. All he could do was sit there with his gloves up, covering his face. The moment I noticed this, and I was in the middle of one of these continuous combinations, I realized that if I stopped for a moment, he would peek to see what was going on. So that’s what I did. I simply stopped hitting him for a moment and when he opened his gloves to see what was going on, he exposed his face and I clocked him right smack in the middle of his big fat upperclassmen gob.

He didn’t go down but I will tell you the truth, that punch felt good. Suddenly, all the fear was gone. The Bell sounded, there was no doubt who won this fight. The upper class was beside himself with grief. “I can’t believe I lost a fight to Goodman”. These words have never left my ears.

The next day, they called my name again. Truthfully, I wasn’t over my fear and I really didn’t want to do this boxing bullshit. I mean these were the days before they talked about the after effects of concussions or before I knew about ex boxers getting punchdrunk, I just don’t particularly like people putting their hands on me violently. I don’t know why some people are so drawn to it. I would prefer not to have this be a part of humanity generally.

But what works once might work again and I again started badgering my opponent to the point that he couldn’t even think of starting an offense against me. This time though, I was aware that keeping my eyes open while I was beating the crap out of him actually helped because I started finding holes in his defense and instead of wild lucky contact, I started picking him apart like he was leftovers from a Michelin star meal. By round two, I had somehow worked myself into a classic right handed stance and was keeping him covered with jobs well I waited for an opportunity to bash his head in with my right. Unanimous decision. They never called my name again.

Anyway, they say that you’re supposed to choose your fights wisely. I don’t necessarily think that this wisdom has anything to do with boxing or MMA or martial arts or any discipline. I very highly recommend training young people to fight, boys and girls. I don’t believe they should learn savagery or to use their knowledge to be bullies per se. I don’t believe in bullying or causing unnecessary harm in the world. I have never in my life went out looking for a fight.

But I do believe there is a certain amount of self-respect that we all need to have and very often, self-respect comes from respect of your peer group. If you have a reputation of someone who will not back down, very often that respect that you get transmits to better possibilities. Sometimes all it takes is a little respect and no violence is necessary at all.

Having said this, sometimes you do find yourself in a situation where bluffing or reputation means nothing. Sometimes you find people who think you are larger than you really are and come after you like a badger simply because they think they have no other way to deal with you. In these cases, truthfully, it’s good if you understand that you actually can defend yourself in a difficult moment. It’s one thing to talk about it, it’s another thing to know that you could bring the guy down and cause him severe pain if push comes to shove. Don’t push and don’t shove and don’t ask for violence to be a part of your life. Don’t look for or make problems. But if you run into a situation or some psychopath will not leave you alone, as a teacher, I advise you to have done your homework and be ready for your test.

***

I’m finished doing most of my pre-cooking for tonight. There were no trips to the store and no factory products purchased. I went out into the field to get a nice selection of grains. I’ve made my cream sauce from peanuts, black sesame seeds and several interesting strong flavored greens. It’s nice. I’m enjoying this concoction.

The creaminess for this meal is coming from peanuts and sesame seeds run to my blender with water and a little vinegar and spices. You could consider this a cheese replacement pretty easily.

The bread has got a little bit of pea flour or at least pea meal in it. I went with a whole grain rye plus white flour for the bases but then decided to grind up some split peas in water as my wet ingredient. I’m just saying this because if I wanted to, I could have put this ground pea mixture, it doesn’t matter if they are raw or dried, into a pot and added heat until it all started to solidify. Once it gets to the consistency of mashed potatoes, you take it out of the heat and let it cool. This process leaves something very hard like tofu or again, cheese. Spice it up however you like.

Blah blah blah string pull, blah blah blah meltiness. Who cares! Whatever the actual feeling you get from cheese or whatever adding cheese to your dishes means to you, I can get something equivalent that is tasty enough and has that creaminess that you look forward to. Of course it is a creaminess that comes without the abundance of estrogen, salt, lactate or of course the suffering of factory dairy cows.

Of course you could write this off as vegan propaganda. I’d be guilty of that. But if you wanted to drop the hypocrisy and really get genuine, I suggest you find one of your best female friends who just happens to be a new mother and instead of allowing her to wean her child off of her breast, just make sure to adhere the suction cups and drain her as often as you can. This is human lactate and if you genuinely believe you are still in need of mother’s milk despite being more than a year or so old, good luck. Though, I would suggest making sure that your friend is chock-full of antibiotics and as much estrogen as you can put in so that she doesn’t turn around and stop lactating anytime soon.

How much do you think a job like that would earn someone? I suppose we have women in enough poverty to allow themselves to be used in such a way. Crazy world once you pull the wizard of Oz curtain away.

Or to say this briefly, we don’t need cheese. 

***

Perhaps this is a little early to be closing out but I am getting ready to do so anyway. I understand the traditional holiday has something to do with sunset. I do feel the sunset on Fridays whether you want to believe me or not. It’s just that this has been a long difficult week and I’m about ready to eat something.

I’ve heard people talk about fasting before Friday night meals but I’m not very good at it. I’m not very good at fasting generally. I’ve done intermittent fasting sometimes but aside from just not eating in the morning and having to deal with digesting food, I don’t know but it genuinely does anything positive or negative. If you’re not hungry, just don’t eat.

Today I didn’t eat anything. Well, I tasted my cream sauce. But I didn’t specifically eat any meals or even any snacks today. I just drank water and I don’t feel a bit bad about it. The only thing I can attribute this to is the raw food. I have been eating soaked porridge with greens and nuts all week. It seems to satisfy all of my nutritional needs and the fact that I’ve been preparing it without any cooking seems to have had an effect on my need to continue eating. I’m just not hungry anymore. Perhaps this is a bad thing or a good thing. I don’t know what it was today but I just did it.

I’m also pretty happy with my decision not to bother with store-bought food this evening. I think I’ll be fine and that I’ll have enough to eat. I made some bread and I’ve got a really interesting cream sauce that’ll go with some potatoes and onions. Why go to the store if you have everything you need in your own backyard?

A little bit earlier in the day I asked a question about what you would say if you had access to the entire world and absolutely knew that they would listen to your words of wisdom. If you suddenly found yourself at the microphone and truly had an audience waiting to hear what you had to say, what would you say?

I’ve been thinking about this question all day and I’ve been answering it for various people that I know. I have the unenviable habit of genuinely listening to people when they talk. Not passively but critically and with an open mind towards motivation and reasoning. A lot of this has to do with self preservation. The amount of people who play me for money makes me extremely cynical. Also, all of the writing I’ve been doing and attention I’ve been paying to ecology means that I’m pretty sensitive to those who think of nothing but money. They have a particular logic and insensibility to their words. They just don’t make sense except to understand their greed, jealousy and violent mood swings. If I were to be the doctor for them, I would go with food as the main culprit. You eat stuff that jacks you up and live only for your pleasures , you won’t be thinking too clearly. Simple as that.

But if they gave me the microphone and decided to listen to my words as having some relevance, I think I would say something like this:

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s time to go home. It’s time to close up shop. It’s time to shut it down and let it go. It’s time to relax and stop the war. It’s time to stop The killing and the fighting. It’s time to stop acting insane and chasing money.

We have got to allow ourselves to calm down. I know you are afraid. You’re afraid of money and you’re afraid of other people and you’re afraid of crazy governments and soldiers and people with guns and it’s got to stop. We’ve got to find a new way to live and we have to live peacefully together. And buy it together, I don’t just mean with other humans but with the planet and all of the living things around us.

Go home and find the people you want most to be with. Work it out, make a good decision, find a place where you don’t mind living and sleeping. Don’t worry too much about money. We’re going to figure everything out and make sure everybody gets fed. You can help. You can grow your own food and contribute as much as you can to public security. But we’re going to have to stop now. We’re going to have to stop killing each other and fighting each other for resources. It’s time to become very peaceful and quiet. It’s time to allow nature, it’s time to heal from all of the damage that we’ve done to it in our greed and selfishness. If you feel jealous of others, don’t. The best revenge is to live well and everybody simply must do their best to live as well as we can without causing any more harm to the world we live in.

Over the last several hundred years, human beings have discovered how to mechanize and automate and animate the process of living. We have learned to prefabricate the things we need everywhere from common food stuff to the homes we live in to the giant buildings in the cities. We have put all of our attention towards acquiring wealth and looking for ways to employ the entire globe in our search for profits. Certainly we have learned some good things. But the truth is we have caused more harm than we have done good.

Yes, we are much smarter because of our technology. Our intellectual advancement with the help of our artificial intelligence and access to great thinking machines has exponentially grown. We have done more to help the sick and to understand how easily it is to modify spaces and situations. We’ve achieved levels of engineering far beyond even what the science fiction writers were thinking. We have created miracles unthought of and even Humanityunthinkable even to our most recent past.

But through all of this we have never managed to overcome greed. We have never managed to curb our desire for power. We have never stopped competing or demanding that others compete. We have never managed to understand slavery and we have never managed to curb our own egotism, selfishness and disregard for others. We have never learned to be good people.

 needs a decent goal. People need hope and the belief that what they do with their lives and with their time will have a positive effect. I believe people wish to contribute, to be responsible and to be a part of things. I believe people take great pride in work well done and I believe people want to be good. And we can be. We just have to stop deluding and poisoning and drugging ourselves. We have to stop running away from ourselves. We have to stop dividing ourselves. It’s time to calm down and go home.

If we take into consideration our genuine basic necessities, all human beings everywhere regardless of birthplace, skin color, level of intelligence or social status. The human animal requires a few basic things to sustain life. We need good food. We need clean water. We need clothing that protects us from the elements and we need structures in which to live. We have evolved to need these things and we cannot live without him. 

We need basic medical Care for when we get sick or when we make mistakes. We need good honest practical education to help us learn how to do the things we need to do to be helpful. And certainly, we need amusements and recreation and time to play.

I say we can do all of this for ourselves. I say we can help each other both locally and as a global community simply to do these simple things. Food, clothing, shelter, helpful medicine and practical education. This is going to be all of our jobs, this and to be peaceful with each other and the planner.

We are going to have to live without cars. We’re going to have to live without running all over the place and wasting resources. We’re going to have to learn to live in smaller spaces. We’re going to have to restrict ourselves to our human limits. We’re going to have to learn to live without constant aviation. We are going to have to learn to live healthier and more physical lives. We are going to have to be a bit more humble and kind. We are going to have to be better people. More honest, more caring, less needy and smarter.

It’s time to go home and take responsibility for each other. It’s time to go home and find the people you love and make sure that they are comfortable and cared for and functioning. It’s time to remember how to amuse each other and friendly non-violent ways of enjoying our free time. It’s time to stop polluting the air and living a much more natural existence.

Mostly, it’s time to quit this economic system once and for all. It’s time to build a new system based upon peace. It’s time to quit playing with money and playing with each other because of our need for money. It’s time to be reasonable with our resources and for everyone to understand that we have no choice but to be as sustainable and renewable as we possibly can and to afford a decent habitat for ourselves and all living things.

It’s time to go home. It’s time to go home and learn to feed yourself without killing. It’s time to go home and learn to close and shelter ourselves without causing damage. It’s time to go home to our mutual home, the planet Earth, and to make our mother proud finally.