Tuesday, August 9th 2022

Perhaps the flaw in the argument begins with the word we. If it’s not the problem with “we”, there’s definitely a problem with “they”. It’s a pronoun issue. It’s a matter of technical understanding. Actually, it’s a matter of popularity. Maybe mob rule is a better way to say this. Groupthink? Populism? The problem is understanding the numbers. It’s definitely a matter of math.

I started today by talking to my conservative friend in California. I caused him some pain when he tried to agree that my argument in favor of ecology was a sound argument. The thought that the world is currently broken and that there are severe problems with our habitat due to human activity and enhanced by the oil business put him on a course of great discomfort. He suddenly realized that by agreeing with me, he would be forced to do something. He immediately blamed me for putting a leash on him and became extremely agitated. I think it’s a heart thing. Heart and money. I think that should be the title of my next book.

Listen dude, I do my part, I cannot do other peoples part nor am I going to try. I cannot change people, I can only change what I do.

The point here is not that he won’t. He obviously won’t because he can’t. He can’t because if he does, it will radically change his life which will lead to a radical change in economics which will lead to a radical amount of more work to do and he doesn’t want to have to do all of this extra effort. He himself is comfortable, he himself does not give a damn about people who are not comfortable because he suffered for a very long time for his comfort. Comfort versus more work is exactly the argument. He has been a rock of the system his entire life.

The point is however that this division of thinking is exactly at the heart of fake news propaganda. Somewhere in his native thinking process is not only the troll to find the “the problem is” argument, an absolute reflex that people substitute for genuine critical thinking, it is that he will find the one and only answer that nothing can be measured popularly successfully. At least not for long.

Whatever I am trying to do isn’t popular, he has no responsibility for other people, he controls no groups or mass thinking and therefore he will not help and I cannot win. And of course he’s right. No one can win. No one can win the propaganda War.

I’ve been thinking and writing quite a bit about noise lately. Noise pollution, noisy deaf people because of the noise pollution and of course the ever present terminal illness of adhering to Conservative Christian thinking. Now I’m beginning to understand that the noise has not only been weaponized, it is and probably has been self perpetuating forever. The key to this is in the dichotomy of forcing individuals into Mass thinking. And with the folly of actually trying to control them.

There’s an old saying that I suppose has its roots in business that people will fall to their incompetence. What this means is that given an opportunity, a person will eventually choose comfort over effort every time. If a person is given a heavy hammer or a comfy chair, it’s an amazing percent in favor of the comfy chair. If a person is offered pain relief, without any other stimulus at play, they will choose comfort. Of course there might be value judgments, there is always a Jesus Christ who will choose the cross, but us mere mortals will go with the flow especially if we get a banana or an avocado as a result.

This goes without saying but in a world where we can communicate with each other over vast differences, literally this ongoing conversation with my friend is in California which in standard measurement makes it a 10,000 mi daily back and forth. 10,000 miles, 16,000 km, literally on the other side of the world and we can talk together pretty much whenever we want. Actually, we have a deal between us that guarantees that we check in every day. We play chess online and have been doing so for more than 20 years.

With this sort of ability to communicate, it would seem as though it would be quite easy to find common ground. Actually, if we add in the positives of the travel and pleasure business or ability to study literally anything about everybody without ever leaving your house, it would seem as though the humanity of the world would be obvious. The “we” of the argument would seem to be a maniacally diverse culture of unique and interesting people. We all have our histories and our architectural interest. We all have our cuisine and our style of dress based upon available materials and weather patterns. We have so much to learn from each other and so much we can share. But yet, we can never stop distrusting each other and we can never stop demanding that everybody be stuck in economic slavery. We never stop bullying each other.

I can reimagine my friend’s argument as a Kung Fu action movie. Instead of saying a few sentences to each other over our move every day, we can see that each of us is making some sort of attempt to physically harm the other. Someone attacks or at least believes they are being attacked and after the thrust, there is a parry or a block or a dodge. In this case, it’s not so much a movement as a weapon. No matter what the aggressive movement is, even if it was not aggressive and simply an idea of being tossed in the air for mutual admiration, the weapon of choice is the duality.

“How many people am I thinking with and how responsible am I for my thoughts?”

If my friend agrees that I am right in my ecological arguments, what is he supposed to do about it? Literally any movement on his part goes against his comfort. To change his economic life by not driving his car would cause him great discomfort akin to drug withdrawal. Changing his economic world by focusing on ecology first would probably send him into ruin. Or even if it doesn’t go that far, it would cause him amazing discomfort. Even if he agreed to talk to people, even if it was a matter of going on the social networks and saying that Adam is talking about ecology or even forgetting about me and just talking about ecology would cause a change in his public status and immediately that change would cause him discomfort.

Ecology = Discomfort

The oldest argument in the world for young people is about why not to become an artist. There is no money in it. Art may be inspirational but it is not practical. The great practical argument of my teenage years came from someone else’s family. They were musicians but the father was very clear in telling their children to have a practical trade to fall back on should the music not work out. My family just screamed and hit me.

I’m thinking now that this argument is even more true when discussing ecology as a part of the plan. If you have a child who has great interest in ecology, what would any right thinking parent have to say about that? What would be the only question a parent would ask when encountering such a thought? 

“Yeah, but how will you make money in that?”

Isn’t this the truth of the entire world? How do you make money with ecology? The answer is exactly that you can’t because economy seemingly, by its absolute nature of resource requirement and manipulation, is anti ecology. Literally, the buying and selling of mass products, the absolute core idea of commerce, is ecologically unsound. There is no way to compete in an ongoing Marathon that is making money in this world without agreeing to go completely antagonistic to nature.

I absolutely believe in this statement. And in fact, I not only believe that our exit from childhood into the misery of adulthood is an exit from nature into ecological assassination.

Let’s make a checklist. What exactly do you need to do in order to get a job?

1. Cut your hair
2. Get in shape
3. Buy new clothes
4. Get a car
5. Get a degree
6. Get a credit card
7. Find an apartment
8. Learn to be an alcoholic
9. Learn to get along with strangers
10. Agree to multiple partners for sex
11. Become calculating
12. Dabble with death

In other words, you make one compromise after another, after another, after another until you have lost more territory than the American Indian. You go so far away from your nature that it is almost impossible to have a unique individual thought. You become as divided as India, China, Ireland, Africa, the North American continent or Ireland. Sorry for naming all of the places that were fucked up by the British empire but at least we can understand the mentality and the driving force behind the oil business and global warming.

The result is a plurality. Are you yourself or do you fit the mold? Are you with us, in that popular group, or are you with them in that hated group?

Of course you have to give up your individuality. You have to give up your individual thinking. You have to be popular. You have to be political. You have to make compromises. You have to join and every time you join you have to give up a piece of yourself. It helps if you have a lot of money. If you have a lot of money, the piece of yourself that you give up can usually be converted into cash that doesn’t hurt. It is much more difficult when you are in poverty because you only have blood to give up.

Yeah, I can’t talk to people about ecology because it causes discomfort. When they become uncomfortable, they attack me back or defend themselves with weapons. The weapon of choice is sending me into the plurality. I can’t do what I’m doing because I’m not popular enough. They won’t help me because they do not want to go into the popularity machine either.

Why did Elvis die at 42? Popularity. He enjoyed all of the pluses too much. He gave away too much of his body for popularity.

I don’t know how many avenues I can go down today and I think perhaps I’ve made my point. It’s a game of isolation. When you yourself step out of the norm, you become a point of attention. Even though you may be found by individuals, it is the groupthink that drives people’s opinion. The only thing people will not do is become that individual. In fact, that is the biggest paradox of all. Even if it’s never presented as a join me or die scenario, even publicly asking people for agreement to anything other than a massive group or a corporation that has all the money in the world means asking people to become an individual.

This is the failure of this writing project. I thought I had it figured out. I really thought I had it right. I didn’t.

I did not want Fame for myself. I did not want popularity or celebrity for myself. I did not want attention paid to me or to be responsible for people or their actions. I was not looking for any massive political demonstrations to acquire more people or to have my voice be heard uniquely. I wasn’t even particularly looking to get rich.

I just wanted to put some common sense into people’s individual thinking. I just wanted people to think for themselves with just the slightest nod to the fact that we cannot destroy our environment because it is our birthright. I just wanted people to be slightly ecological in all of their thinking and truthfully, to make practical realistic and earthbound decisions for their lives and for what they consume. I just wanted some Mass sanity for a change.

It can’t be done. We are facing a machine that replicates itself so much towards an ideology of compromise and insanity, it is impossible to find an individual.

In a way though, this does make quite a bit of sense of my literature. I’m talking about literature that I myself have put together. It has been the quest for individuals. It is my love and respect for individuals. It is the reason why all the people I admire in the world are individuals and why I am so happy to be separated from group thinkers.

Ladies and gentlemen, the answer to the question is actually pretty simple.

Groupthink = death

The wildly, wildly popular argument would seem to say otherwise. It would seem that going with the flow brings you all kinds of riches and tasty lunches at quaint cafes, cocktails with friends, delightfully fashionable clothing and rides on airplanes to exotic European vacation destinations. It would seem that the opposite occasionally gets you good drugs and good jobs and allows you to hobnob with celebrities and beautiful friends. 

But in fact, and thinking environmentally and ecologically first, we don’t have the resources to do this for everybody so we can’t do it at all.

***

There is no irony whatsoever in the fact that I got trolled for writing the above essay and the specific language from the troll was that people can’t understand me. People by the way is plural. The troll did not say I. The troll did not take responsibility, he just told me how I compared to groupthink. Thank you for translating them for me. Please show me your documents telling me your official capacity for the job.

***

Okay, it’s 7:30 on Tuesday morning. I’m going to go out and walk around a bit and I think I’m going to give some water to my boxes. I am not going to do a full watering. I don’t have enough water and we are not going to see any more water for another 7 days but I’m going to make a cursory effort to give my plants a well needed drink. It’s just salvaging food and keeping things from dropping dead. The temperature is not ridiculously hot but it’s too dry.

As for any other plans for today, I don’t have much. In fact, if I could have someone else do my watering for me and to be able to stay off my feet I would choose that option. My leg is healing but it is not an overnight process. Nature can only wound in a moment, it takes time and discipline to heal.

This is probably another lesson we can pass on to that minuscule minority who might feel that our climate and habitat is worth working for and that personal sacrifice is at the core allowing the human race to exist and to coexist with nature in a much, much more peaceful manner. There are no fast solutions. There are no corporate decisions that create anything. The only thing we can do is to take it easy, rest and stop causing damage. This is the only answer for the planet Earth. We have to leave it alone and allow it to work itself out.

Maybe that’s the funny irony in this. We have convinced ourselves so completely that we are not natural beings that the only compromise we never seem to be able to make is the one that allows us to go along with nature. We will go along with anything antagonistic to Nature but we can’t just agree to let the world, the planet Earth I mean, take us as it will.

Sadly, this probably means more disease or less medical Care. Sadly, it probably means shorter lifespans. Sadly, it probably means less exotic trappings and less global travel. Sadly, it means learning to get along with our neighbors.

But actually, you can probably just take pride in being a good person. We can probably congratulate ourselves for being better people. Not for being successful in the economy but for being successful Earthlings. Maybe if people got some love for being kind for a change, we would think differently.

Yeah, maybe it’s time to quit paying homage to the fascists generally. Maybe it’s time to just let them go.

I can’t seem to get out of this philosophical mood. I guess it’s understandable. Too much time in the hospital and not enough relative things to think about. I am just moving to a different pace and style and the transition is pretty weird. Oh well. I guess I’ll just enjoy the ride down.

Anyway, a little gentle plant watering and then I will put my legs up and take it easy for the rest of the day.

Sure hope the war doesn’t come here. I mean, global warming has fucked up the planet and I can see the end coming. But people have a way of finding ways to cause pain. They don’t like it when other people are not in pain. I have a feeling they are going to find a way to cause me more pain. It is the only thing they have ever done. People I mean. I have never known a moment in my life where people do not look for ways to punish people who just would rather not be punished anymore.

***

9:38 a.m. and I seem to be done with my chores for the day. It occurred to me in the middle of it that this is a mistake that I have been making…

Let’s start again. It’s now 10:00 and in the time it took me to put together the above paragraph, including one grammatical mistake, Ghenna was called and arrived. You have to respect a guy who loves day labor as much as he does. I’ll get to that story in a second.

So this morning I went out to do the watering. It was a decision I made last night while texting with my ex partner. We were discussing that we were probably looking at the end of the road. It was time to gather what we had and to think about closing up the boxes as much as possible for the year. We just can’t fight the drought anymore and neither of us believes that what is still in there might achieve much greater status by waiting. This is not a hysterical decision, it’s just about making use of what we have and saying that we got what we got. Not happy or sad, just reaping what we sowed.

As I was out watering though a thought came into my mind that I have been making a grave mistake by waiting until evening. True, if you water in the evening, there is less sunlight to burn the water off. Unfortunately, people say that the best times for watering are either in the evening or in the morning and yesterday I read an article that said simply we should give our plants water when they want to drink. It occurred to me that that time is probably more true in the morning.

The reason for this is dew. Almost all the plans look pretty good in the morning and this is because of mist and dew that comes in the morning.

What is dew? 

Dew is water in the form of droplets that appears on thin, exposed objects in the morning or evening due to condensation. As the exposed surface cools by radiating its heat, atmospheric moisture condenses at a rate greater than that at which it can evaporate, resulting in the formation of water droplets. 

I think everybody knew that without looking it up but sometimes putting things in language is helpful. Or in other words, this is when the plants are ready to take a drink.

Then a great hypocritical thought came into my mind that hurt enough to make me want to put it down in writing.

I have been watering in the evening simply for the fact of putting off the work because I didn’t want to do it. My first thought in the morning usually has something to do with getting breakfast. Getting breakfast leads to me wanting to make myself comfortable. I usually find a bunch of things such as planning that needs to get done in the morning. My usual life is to be very lazy in the morning. 

This is exactly the location of the hypocrisy.

When I had regular students over the last few years I made an incredibly unpopular decision to have lessons only in the morning. Why? There were so many good reasons it was ridiculous. People have clear minds, people have fresh energy, people can include this in their daily chores to get done so as not to worry about them and the work that we do in the morning is the work that stays with us. Conversely, waiting until you are tired at the end of the day to attempt to do an academic process is ridiculous. People do not want to do more work at the end of the day and the stress from doing something when you are already tired leads to failure.

Every word of that is true but nevertheless, it is not what people do. People do exactly what I have been doing and try to minimize the amount of pain they take in in the morning hoping that sliding stealthily into their day will lead to better results. That’s all bullshit. It doesn’t work.

I watered today simply because I told my ex partner that I would. I have a horrible habit of keeping my promises. Once I say something, because I attempt to speak the truth whenever possible, it becomes a law and I do everything in my power not to break it.

Therefore, this morning instead of waking up and playing with the windows, I went out and got my pump and threw it into a barrel. Along the way, I opened up the windows and did all of my other ”good morning/open the house” chores but I included the watering.

It was not without problems. I had a hard time with water pressure. I have had problems with leaking and water pressure all summer but for some reason, this morning I had the energy to deal with it. I took a moment off and got some Teflon tape and wrapped every threaded surface on my shower head and the pressure came up and about 90% of the leaking stopped.

I also noticed that it was easier doing this job because I was not in pain. I’ve had the entire night for my leg to rest and I haven’t had a chance to injure it or make things horrible so I was able to move around quite freely. In fact, I noticed I was less frustrated, more attentive and more willing to put energy into the job simply because I was doing it in the morning.

At the end, I also got a present that I hadn’t thought of before. I do not have to water this evening. Sure, we are fighting a drought and in some perfect world, I just make up for the damage done to our environment by using more water. But that’s not the answer to the question. So in place of this…

Sorry, in the time it took me to get to this place in the writing, Ghenna finished what he was doing and we had a nice conversation about future work, all of which he seems very happy to have. Anyway…

In place of having to do a job at a time when I don’t want to work anymore, at a time but I’m already in pain from a day’s abuse, at a time when I am already angry from everything the world has done to me and at a time where I just really want to take it easy, I have been forcing myself to head out to work. I have also been forcing my plants to drink when they are not ready to.

I think we can all go with what Ghenna said: you can’t make a river flow uphill.

Okay, so when I sat down to do this little bit of writing, I put a call in to Ghenna and explained to him about the WASP situation and asked him to bring by a bottle of diclofos. He said something about being here in 30 minutes but he was here a lot faster than that. It took him one paragraph to arrive by bicycle. I doubt Batman ever moved that quickly.

I showed him what was going on under my eaves and he agreed that simply spraying an entire can of insecticide under the eaves would probably go a long way to stopping this nesting process. The conversation for this didn’t take very long and then I mentioned to him that I had a second job to do.

At the end of my morning watering, I actually had more energy left over so I went to the barn and took out a pair of pitchforks and went to work turning my compost pile. Almost the minute I started I realized I didn’t want to do it and that’s when I decided to come inside, right about my genius Revelation about watering in the morning and give Ghenna a call. He went to work immediately, he basically gets paid every time he shows up here, and whatever the period of time was to make whatever writing I did was how long it took him to crank over the pile. I guess they recommend daily turning but I could probably get away with it once a week.

Just a few minutes ago we met in front of the house and talked about the remainder of the work. I gave him five rubles as a thank you for turning over the compost pile. In reality it was no more than 10 minutes. Not that I am a cheap boss but just speaking in terms of reality. I don’t have much money and thank God and the marketplace, neither does he. And I added some money to pay for the insecticide which is available at the local store.

Before he left, we talked about the remainder of the jobs that I genuinely need to get done that are over my head and he seemed okay with all of them. The first was to bring some steel to trellis the grapes. This job would also include moving one garden box that I put down last year that was a mistake and also removing that fire pit or at least the cement blocks around it. I haven’t used it even one time this year and I think I would rather have a pathway that goes out along the tree line more than I want a fire pit. If I genuinely want one of those, I will place it a little further away from the street somewhere.

After this, there was even one more thought. I have some fencing that is no longer necessary. It was originally placed on the property to be a barrier to chickens and other animals that lived on the back side of the property. My woodshed was originally built to be a barn to house either pigs or a horse or both. Possibly even a cow at some point. Ghenna agreed that at one time, there were a lot of animals here.

There won’t be any animals here anytime in the future so those barriers are not really that necessary anymore. Perhaps there’s some sense of security to them but truthfully, if somebody really wanted to get in, there’s nothing to stop them. But if we take down these barriers and manage to get decent enough pylons, either steal or would that will last a while, there is a very, very good place in back of the barn where we could put the compost pile next year. In addition to that, I can also bring in fertilizer and give it its own place. By doing that, I will have access to two materials that I very much need and I don’t have to broadcast either of them. I can just take what I need when I need it and use it strategically and specifically where it’s necessary.

All of this talk made my friend very happy. His happiness was infectious. If this is the situation and I have a dependable outlet to get some stuff done, this adds a lot of optimism to the world as a whole.

Is this exploitation? It is. There is no doubt that it is. But one thing that might be an argument to the other side is that the guy seems happy to have this situation. He doesn’t really want anything more than to have a good day. He doesn’t really want the responsibility of having more. He just wants to do his job, have access to what he needs to make the end of the day worthwhile. In a perfect world, we would not make such people. In our imperfect world, I’m not complaining right now. I’m not complaining one bit.

Yes, it’s worth a shot of covid. I only talked to him for 10 minutes and I can already feel the numbness on my tongue. Thank God I have fresh chilies.

Only one more point before I close up this portion of today’s thinking. Lena came by yesterday to bring a small amount of groceries. I gave her some money to go shopping the night before when she came by and about 10:30 or 11:00 she came over and spent about 20 minutes with me. 

She told me about her mother who is staying with her at the moment. She told me about her life and how happy she is to have her mom around. She doesn’t really like living alone in her house. She was dressed rather nicely. She was also dressed rather nicely the day before. I told her about somebody stopping to tell my ex partner that she had been to the graveyard to visit her dead husband. She seemed pleased that the news had traveled to me. She was very pleased to have a scandal made for her benefit.

Then she told me that I was different this year. Last year, she said that I seemed stronger. I am definitely less than I was last year and this is noticeable to her. I guess I thought of a few things that I had last year that I don’t have this year and we talked about some of the differences. Then she asked me if I noticed anything different about her. 

I took a good look at her face and thought about it for a minute but didn’t have a chance to say anything. She told me that she has not had a drink in a month and a half. She told me that she’s quite proud of herself and likes her life a little better without it. I took a look at her eyes and her skin. I took a brief sniff of the air and thought about it a bit and it’s true, you could see the difference. She said that she is enjoying sobriety. She is finding more relevance in caring about what she does than she did when running away. She also told me that she is tired and disgusted of the local alcoholic men. And then she smiled. She was enjoying my attention.

All of these things that I’m talking about seem to be leading to a general change in this village. I am beginning to feel that I am a positive influence.

***

Just a quick update. Ghenna has just finished spraying under the eaves. When he started working, he asked me to close my window and the front door and to go inside. It was an unsafe situation.

Once inside, I noticed that he was not wearing gloves or a mask and offered him both. He refused. He’s a tough guy.

We will know by tomorrow if we have had an effect on this small group of wasps. They will return in the evening and will know whether it is the end of their nesting or not.

During the spraying, Ghenna started coughing and I again offered him a mask and some gloves and he again told me it was not necessary. He sprayed the entire can in there and we will see if this shit does what it’s supposed to do or not.

Afterwards, we again talked about potential jobs to do. My well needs to have new posts put in. This particular well has a simple crank but the crank is covered by a small metal roof and supported by two posts. The posts have become rotten over the last 10 years and need to be replaced. I have put any amount of material under one of them to keep it propped up but these are not permanent fixes. He also wants to fix the bench in front of my house so that it will not be an embarrassment. The embarrassment argument didn’t move me but probably that doesn’t need to be done immediately. It still supports the weight of my ass and I’d rather not play with it just now.

But there is a lot of work to be done here and he seems very happy to be the guy to do them. We fist bumped several times.

He did tell me something that I didn’t know before. Or maybe I knew it but I just didn’t know it exactly like he said it. He told me that the previous owner was seen as a bit of a witch. Interesting designation. She was just another woman whose husband died. Women live longer than men here by a long shot. You can take the last 3 million or so words as rational why. But Ghenna was not among the local day workers that she regularly made use of.

Anyway, he is gone and has not stopped coughing since he started the job. The last words I said to him were that the next time, he should have a mask and he sort of agreed. I think I overpaid him but not because of the coughing. I think I just overpaid him because he is starting to give me a sense of optimism.

***

Here is a great video from Geoff Lawton. 

Geoff Lawton is a British-born Australian permaculture consultant, designer, teacher and speaker. Since 1995 he has specialised in permaculture education, design, implementation, system establishment, administration and community development. – wiki

In this video, he takes us for a brief tour of a 2000 year old sustainable food for us in Morocco. If you’re not familiar with the term food Forest or even sustainability, you haven’t been reading this blog for very long. Lawton is someone I have spent some time listening to because he always has something good to say about sustainability and the principles of permaculture. Again and again, I am not the only one who thinks this way. If there is something really poignant about this video it is that we are shown even at the beginning that there is a problem threatening this 2000 year old Garden and by the end of it, the clarity is almost painful.

Speaking of the middle east, Earthling Ed has a talk with a muslim student about the concepts of halal against the ideas of veganism. Halal is similar to Kosher in that both represent the idea of cleanliness and even perhaps kindness in a way. The problem in my opinion is that both Hebrew and Muslin ideals seem to conflict hypocritically with any thought of kindness, both to animals and eventually to people. 

Don’t believe me, listen for yourself.

Finally, I have one more video with Dr Neil Barnard talking about the relative benefits of what is known as the Mediterranean diet versus straight veganism. The question is about longevity and cancer resistance. I guess it might also be about whether or not olive oil is healthy for us. The question is simply whether the science actually agrees or not.

I’m not looking to make any fights here. I’m just looking for people to be smarter and more gentle. I’m just asking people to be good to themselves in such a way that they are actually being good to the world as a whole. Truthfully, we have a ton of work to do. We in this case meaning sentient human beings existing on the planet Earth. We have a lot of work to do to clean up the messes of our drug addict ancestors. My feeling is we really shouldn’t waste too much more time getting down to business.

***

8:00 is a good time to put the finishing touches on what I consider to be a pretty successful day. Amazingly, it was not successful because I myself did anything particularly wonderful. It was successful because everything that needed to get done got done but also got done in a very comfortable way for everybody. Ghenna’s contribution was much accepted, seemingly on both sides. For myself, I did my watering and it seems as though the plants actually liked it. I cannot say with great authority that watering in the morning had that much difference because it was very cloudy today. But it did seem like a very good lesson heading into next year. You live and you learn and hopefully, you never stop learning.

I also want to say that my leg feels really good. I just gave myself a medical exam and it seems that I am definitely healing. This is experience and previous study all coming together along with actually getting some help from the village. I am able to take it easy on myself which means that I am actually capable of doing what I have to do without killing myself. I’m not obligated to do every physical task here which gives me a lot of time to just hang out with my feet up. That’s what’s needed and I am very grateful to be allowed to do so.

Taking it easy also gives me a lot of chances to do some planning. Ghenna it’s not completely believing in some of my ideas about putting in more trees. I am thinking of drawing from zone 8 just to anticipate how bad global warming is going to get. He listened to my reasoning and did not really believe I could successfully grow persimmon trees but I think it can happen. Perhaps not exactly the variety that is so popular here at the market around New Year’s but I think we will have the kind of weather where they could grow. Even avocados or pomegranates are not out of the question. This all goes against local knowledge but who cares?

Do I believe in this? Absolutely not. Based on my current practical knowledge of agriculture, I’m a million miles behind. But I am willing to learn and I’m not afraid of studying. I also have as much time as the World wishes to give me to get into this. I’m sure there are some roadblocks along the way and of course if you’re talking about growing trees, we’re talking about 5 or 7 years in the future before anything ever comes back regardless of what I do. But it seems I have help when I need it and it seems I have access to normal fertilizer next year. Both positive.

I have heard from locals that it’s a very bad idea to make too much of good fortune. Local knowledge again dictates that something bad will happen the moment you start thinking things are going to get better. In fact, if you want to piss off a local or to send them spiraling into depression, all you have to do is do something agreeable for them or to at least say words saying that you believe they are genuinely good. The moment you do that, the responsibility becomes too great and they will immediately dive down the hole back to where they came from. I’ve learned this over many years of living here and I also saw this first hand from my friends who have been helping out.

I am an optimist by Nature. I have to be. I have to believe that good things are possible because the depression that I go into when I allow myself to agree with how bad things are is almost too much to bear. This is not saying that I am in favor of non-reality or that I hide from the truth. I just prefer to leave a few grains of sweet optimism amidst the shit. Another way to say this is how the locals say it or used to. I’m American therefore I am optimistic.

Perhaps this is exactly the problem. Locals are not allowed optimism. Vocals are not allowed individuality or freedom of speech. All of that gets beaten out of locals who are told to go along with the power and never to draw attention to themselves. This has been put into their DNA endlessly over the centuries. My family might have been away for only a hundred years but it was enough to put that grain of possibility in me. And maybe it’s true. Maybe American propaganda mixed with that ridiculous economic level that goes along with it works.

Perhaps the answer is somewhere in between. It’s going to take a long long time for any of these plans to go into motion. There is a Long Winter still ahead and we are not even really finished with the summer. There is a lot to do. But today was a good day. Today I had some help. Today I felt very good and today I had some good healing. I am just going to go to sleep with this feeling. It’s enough for now.