Back home, I went straight to my pond and I gasped for air: the cascade had vanished! The flooding water evidently decided not to roll over my high ledge, but to go in another direction, inside the left bank, inches away from the platform I had built, on a track that probably already existed inside the ground. That would explain why for 2 years I had not seen water where my pond was now. It was a terrible blow to my pride, and hours later I tried to find the seepage, while my wife screamed at me to stop working and go to bed. Actually being sick and pampered was not as bad as I would have thought. The good points can be summarized as: the pond wish was now a reality, and being spoiled felt great. Still, I began to wonder if all those pills, dieting, exercising, regular sleep, vitamins, and various deprivations in the name of health were going to help me live three seconds longer.
This then came to mind: two older spouses die in a car accident and arrive in front of Saint Peter for an interview. Because they lived an exemplary life, they are invited into heaven, where they receive the best house they ever saw, the most expensive car, and a daily spa treatment, all free of charge. Seeing a huge buffet with thousands of assorted foods and drinks, the husband asks which food is organic and good for his heart, cholesterol and liver problems, as his wife always prepared healthy meals for him. Saint Peter assures the man that no such maladies are in heaven and one can eat and drink everything he pleases. To which the husband turns to wife and yells: “Because of you, I did not come here 10 years ago!” As for me, under pressure from my wife, I lay comfortably in bed, that is, until I recalled that the bed is the most dangerous place to be: 90% of people die in it.
Armed with this perilous statistic, I took my many pills and had a good night’s sleep. The next day, while my wife was out running errands, I returned to the pond with a rake and shovel cleaned the pond of the thick layer of mud and dead leaves. My work turned the water a dirty-yellow. The scared fish scrambled with astonishing speed into their shelter, which I also had to drain of accumulated mud and debris. My feet probably looked like Gulliver was invading their territory. With their entire world in unexpected chaos, the fish could not possibly envision the benefits of their calamity. However, I knew better. Removal of mud, rotten leaves and branches would make room for more water and vital oxygen for my fish. Otherwise, they might enjoy the comfort of an undisturbed pond for a while, but they would face extinction from lack of oxygen.
Cleaning the pond made me think about us humans when facing similar natural disasters, when we lose houses and suffer enormous damages. Or when we lose a job, and our life seems to be over. What is so bad in the moment is in fact the painful process of mud removal from our life. Suddenly, to be alive is the most important thing, and this helps us to better value what we have. It looks like once in a while a disaster is necessary to humble ourselves and evaluate what is important in our existence. Maybe my heart trouble was necessary to convince me that I am old and vulnerable.
Indeed, often in life we face disasters that are perceived as undeserved punishments, but in fact they are divine accidents. The loss of a loved one teaches us to value our love for others. Losing a good job feels like a death sentence, but there is always a better job and a better opportunity awaiting us. A bad experience can turn into a good one. A story pops into my mind about a shipwrecked survivor who ended up on a deserted island. After much work he succeeded in building a thatch hut, where he could rest and be protected. Hunger and thirst forced him to look for food until finally he collapsed of exhaustion in his way back to his hut. Thinking he had reached the bottom of his futile existence, he saw that his hut had caught fire. He felt God had punished him too much, and he passed out. When we awoke, he was on a luxury cruise ship, being royally treated by medics. “How did you find me?” he asked. “We saw smoke, came to check it out and found the hut on fire, and then found you!” was the answer.
Each time I started to feel low and tired, I stopped working and sat on the bench beside the pond surrounded by the heavenly bird calls and songs, and thick shade with cooler air. I looked at the marvel I had created with such sacrifice. All that hard work had rewarded me: meditating by the pond brought my high blood pressure back to normal. I watched and listened to the two water cascades and entered another world, totally different from that which I knew. This world was stress free and my thoughts were reduced to minimal turmoil. I thought about my existence in general and the role I played in having happy fish swimming in a patch of forest behind my house.
Sitting on my bench and watching the smooth flow of the pond water, but unable to see my fish horsing around, I realized that I needed something to look at besides the trees and bushes around me. A yellow leaf slowly floating in the pond reminded me that as a child, I had made little sailboats that I launched on an overflowing trench by a dirt road. Other third and fourth graders like me picked up the habit, and after each rain we raced our boats, while improving our skill at building them.
A small boat would be perfect for my pond! I went to the garage to look for a piece of wood, and then realized I just didn’t feel like making the boat myself. I decided to look for one, got in the car, and started my search. In a half dozen stores, I found beautiful models, but only for display on a shelf, not for sailing in the water. In one store I watched a little boy holding a toy ship, and struck up a conversation wit him. The boy was only five years-old and very smart for his age. He left with his mother, leaving the ship behind, while I thought that I have four children, all over the age of thirty, and none of them married; I sadly wondered how many more years there would be before I could hold the hand of my grandchild. Leaving the store, I watched the little boy refuse help to climb in the car. I had the dismal thought that when the boy got to my age, I would have been dead for at least half a century.
How merciless time is! That is, unless I refer to my philosophical conception of Effectology, in which I state that time does not exist in the universe; it was created by us humans on Earth to mark important accidents in our life. Two of them, birth and death, are obvious, but time is also necessary to mark the passing days and nights, anticipate seasons and landmark important events, most of all, unanticipated accidents that change the course of our lives. We invented days, weeks, months and years to keep track of time and history. Regardless of our watches and electronic time keepers, time does not exist; it is not reversible matter to be molded over and over by cosmic accidents with their random effects to form galaxies and solar systems. Time is immaterial, not interchangeable, and most of all, it is the undying infinite. In my opinion, the closest definition of eternal God may be Father Time.
Gravity is also measured by humans in their own terms, but it is always different since it represents the playful energies that attract the flowing universal matters in different ways. For gravity to exist it needs a mass of different intensity put together in different ways, since mass is not infinite. Mass is only a small part of matter, including dark matter that, like Time, has no limits. It does not depend of anything; it existed before our world and it will be the same even after the end of universe we know. However, excepting time, all other mentioned entities are relative in the universe, depending on the point from which we measure them. Our Earth rotation time around the Sun and our gravity are unique. One thing is for sure, from the first second we come into this world, time will claim its toll, sucking our life into its infinity until we die and become part of it.
Back to the little five year-old boy. He will soon discover that time is going to demand certain things from him, as at certain age levels there are duties to be accomplished: finish school, get a job, find a mate, have a family, raise a five year-old boy, and so on. In the meantime, I will have done all that, and I’ll be dead. However, I thought, for now I am still alive with my skin and strengths not equal to forty years ago, but regardless, I could dig my fish pond. I thought again about my pond and wondered what the five year-old boy might achieve in his lifetime. He might have an island in space beyond the Moon, and be as thrilled as I am with my little fish pond! As I looked at the boy vanishing in the car, the main and most troublesome question was, “Do I want to be a five-year-old boy, instead my old age?” I thought not: with the fish pond I had my ultimate happiness! At some point, possibly in the near future, such personal accomplishments and possessions might be prohibited by government environmental laws, and the grown up five year-old boy might never know the pleasure I now had. I felt so lucky to be able to look for a floating tall ship to crown my laborious achievement that the next generation might only read about.
Having given up on finding the sailboat I was looking for, I turned the task over to my wife, who searched the internet. Before long she had found it: a hand-made yellow 15-inch boat with red and blue sails, for $75, tax and shipping excluded. The floating toy, guaranteed not to tip over in the water, came three days later, and after I waxed it to ensure that it was waterproof, I mounted the mast and two sails. I took the boat to the pond and set it on the water. It floated perfectly, and a little breeze made the sails billow, giving the boat a little incline that sent it across the pond straight into the cascade. It stopped there, maybe two feet from the stream water babbling into the pond from the ledge I had built.
Suddenly, I witnessed two natural forces coming against each other: the wind that forced the sail to move the boat forward, and the running water that pushed the boat back. Both forces had the same power and canceled each other. So my “tall ship” stayed in place. Slowly, it turned around until its side faced the cascade, casting a long colorful reflection on the water. The beauty of this scene had me catch my breath, and then I smiled as I saw a few fish that seemed curious about what had come into their territory. Their leader was of course the one to circle the boat and get closer to it a few times, signaling to the rest that it was safe to do the same. One after another, the gang followed his daring example.
Thus I added a new element to admire in my pond. With the fish, boat, the cascade’s sweet noises, the soft green landscape, and the sun glittering on the water through the trees’ leaves, I have the most peaceful spot I could ever have imagined. I remembered the many times I had been on lake shores and experienced a smiliar serenity, only to be shaken by the noises of speed boats and water scooters, racing to nowhere while polluting the water and air, and disrupting peace of mind. Progress can often be a damaging addition in our modern life, and even fish cannot avoid it. When I lived in Manhattan, I realized that so many infernal street noises formed a kind of sinister symphony that was missed the moment it stopped.
My drifting thoughts returned to my colorful sailboat with its unpredictable moves, now followed by many fish which seemed to believe the blue-red-yellow boat acted like a scarecrow for the pond area. Before the boat was on the water, birds would come and walk around the pond, drinking water and taking a bath in it; but when the sail boat was there, slowing drifting around, they quickly flew over the pond. I caught myself wishing the pond were a little deeper, so I could also have a remote control submarine...Nevertheless, I was so happy just watching the little boat glide from one end of my pond to the other, and I felt like a child again, with daydreams about sailing to distant places of incredible beauty. For my dream’s sake, I blocked out that now those beautiful lands are dealing with civil wars and other man-made disasters they never witnessed before. Huge American cargo ships carry millions of tons of food to ruined lands with starving people dying without seeing the help that inevitably seems to be delivered to the wrong authorities. No doubt, there is an ugly and dangerous world out there, but not for me, sitting by the pond and mesmerized by the beauty I had created with my own hands. I find there are three things I can admire endlessly: water, fire, and a beginner trying to parallel park; but of all these, clearly the water that fills my fish pond is number one.
I did not stop there with my fish pond creation, though. I next bought a large standing porch swing that would accommodate four people.I assembled it on the cement patio facing the pond, in the midst of my grapevine arbor. Often I prefer to sit on the swing, away from mosquitoes and other bugs, and admire my fish pond while I swing back and forth. I find myself wondering if Emperor Hadrian was happiest in his palatial villa at Tivoli, where he also built an artificial lake. A couple years ago, I saw the palace and its vast grounds, incluinding the grand library building and the tunnel that servants used so they could do their jobs without being seen walking on the dream-like property. Almost two thousand years later, God was generous to let me live here and enjoy my minuscule Shangri-La. Like anything else, it took a lot of hardship to be happy, but it’s worth it.
Without heart palpitations and heavy coughing, and having stopped drinking water in excess, I felt that my ordeal was over. Wanting to know more about a-fib, I began to read all kind of related articles on the internet. Soon, I arrived at a shocking revelation: my massive intake of water could have killed me! I read that a big study authorized by the European Union found that no one needs eight glasses of water a day, nor does anyone have to be “attached” to a full bottle of water, given that our organism does not need such an unnecessary punishment. It does not do any good, and to the contrary, too much water depletes the body of vital salts and minerals while exhausting the kidneys. Excess of water simply poisons our organs and affects the electrolytic balance of the heart, resulting in chaotic pulsations of the blood. The irregular heartbeats help all kinds of fluids enter the lungs, inducing reflex coughing to eliminate water from respiratory tissues. In another words, it seems that the more water I drank, the more I was drowning myself, while my confused heart could not send the necessary blood to feed the body and brain with much needed oxygen.
Things with my pond were too good to last for too long. There was a three week drought, with not one single drop of rain, and each day I saw how the water level went lower and lower, while my fish scrambled from one deep spot to another to survive. Seeking vital oxygen in a few water puddles that continued to reduce in size and depth, they seemed to look at me and ask what was I doing to them. Vainly I fed them and carefully shoveled new little channels of communication between muddy spots, but the water kept receding to alarmingly low levels. I looked at the cloudless sky and watched the latest weather updates on the TV that each day promised a”torrential shower” for the next day. But there was no end to the dry weather. I got more and more aggravated with the Ph.D. weathermen who repeatedly warned of “extreme swings” from “slight chances of rain” to the “severe activity” of “massive storm with tons of rain.” I grew to distrust the entire cacophony of shifting predictions and had no patience with hearing about how the storms off the coasts of Africa might affect the weather in Chicago, which might affect the rain above my pond.
Every night I awakened a few times to go out and vainly look for rain clouds, even as severe thunderstorm warnings were broadcast on my TV and the warning alarm sounded telling people to go to safe areas in their houses. But, no matter how often I scanned the skies, there was nothing happening anywhere near my pond! I went back to the TV and saw on each channel the weather announcers with flashy ties and rolled-up sleeves pointing to large sophisticated satellite maps indicating how close the flooding rain was to my area, which was under “p.d.s.”. I found out later this stood for “particularly dangerous situation.” Nothing happened—not a drop of rain, but there was no explanation of how the supposed “resurgence” affected my little corner of the woods. I wondered who pays the people who warn that scattered showers will become an alarming tornado, when in actuality not one single leaf gets wet or moves. But at the time, I was mostly aggravated to be so anxiously awaiting much needed nourishing rain for my fish, hearing it was coming for sure, and having not a drop to alleviate the dryness.
Amazingly enough, no raccoon or other animal found the pond with the fish practically on display and easy to scoop up in so little water. Each morning I expected to see them gone, and I’d look for an animal’s footprints in the surrounding mud. There was none of that.
The water continued to disappear. In desperation, I decided that to save my fish from dying, it was time to use my “last resort” temporary solution: the porch faucet water could save my fish from dying of asphyxiation. I knew that simple solution came with a huge risk—the chlorine in that water could kill my fish faster than the drought. I looked at the poor colorful little things that were swimming on their sides to skim oxygen from the muddy water, and I stared at the cloudless blue, hot sky. That was enough to firm my decision. I attached two hoses together and connected them to the water outlet. Then I dragged the loose end of the hose as far upstream as I could get—a good 100 feet from where the fish were. I hoped this would give the tap water an opportunity to be filtered by the mud, small pebbles, debris and other “purifying” obstacles.
With my heart beating hard, I turned the water on, and I went to the pond, waiting for its first impact on the fish gasping for oxygen. As if feeling my inner turmoil, the fish came in an almost arranged formation, like lined-up submarines in the puddle in front of me. I sat down on the bricked retaining terrace (that a friend of mine built while visiting me with his wife) and stared back at them, trying not to anticipate a disaster. Some forty larger fish, all motionless, were probably praying like me for the good water to come, I said to myself. Even though the hose was capable of deliver a good amount of water each second, it took a long while for it to trickle through everything that formed the dry stream bed, but finally a little jet of clear water cascaded into the pond. I stood up and breathless, looked to see the immediate effect of the fresh water as the flow increased and began to cover the first dry area.
To my great relief, the mighty fish leader headed in that direction, and without any hesitation entered the clean jet of water with a strong tail moves. One by one the rest followed, to enjoy the new supply of water and oxygen. Drunk with happiness, I walked to my bench and relaxed, watching for the next hour how the new water took over the entire pond bed. Many smaller fish appeared from the mud and began swimming in full force. Apparently, the chlorine was sufficiently filtered and my fish were saved. After so many days of feeling down, I finally felt like a winner and breathed with ease again. I had taken a calculated risk and saved my fish! I experienced one of those rare moments when I liked myself.
I left the pond in good spirits and with high hopes of my fish surviving, as they now swam in every direction to hunt for oxygen brought by the new water. That was a very encouraging sign of recovery, while the water level was visibly increasing each minute. I went into the cool house and turned on the TV, hearing again about “weather shifts” with intense winds of over 70 miles per hour. “Serious danger” from “torrential rain” was warned by the weather shamans. Actually, in all fairness to those hard working meteorologists, there was bad weather in parts of Louisville, just not in mine! Totally exhausted and layered with sweat, I took a well-deserved shower. While enjoying the water splashing my body, I thought about how great my fish must feel and I began to whistle. Looking at the showerhead, I smiled and shook my head. It had just occurred to me that I didn’t have to try to position my body in relation to the water coming from above. The way the contractor had set it was too close to the wall for me, and I had never moved it. With a firm twist, I adjusted the round showerhead to spray the water where I stood. It’s amazing how we sometimes unthinkingly just accept things done randomly by another, when we can simply make a change that suits us perfectly!
An hour later I picked up some fish food and returned to the pond which was almost half full of water. The fish were having the time of their lives. Aware that too much new water might bring a harmful quantity of chlorine, I turned the hose off and enjoyed looking at my revived fish. A few more hours of oxygen starvation would surely have killed them. I tossed some food to various area of the pond, and one by one they competed to snap up the floating pellets. This was a reassuring sign that all was well in my pond. On the bench again, I followed “punches” in the water, as each fish dove for a food ball. Each attack produced round waves, which intersected other similar ripples, making the kind of dance that rain drops do. Back in my house, I watched “Weather that Changed the World,” a series of episodes showing how rain and snow changed the odds on the battlefields and how natural disasters changed the course of history, things I had described in my Effectology. The show was also about man versus the forces of nature, a very dramatic series presented on the Weather Channel.
As the severe weather warning system kept buzzing from my TV screen with written information about the direction of strong rain and strong winds that obviously did not concern me, I could not help remembering the day when the Twin Towers tumbled down on 9/11. For years, the same emergency signal was broadcast daily by the radio and TV stations, reminding the population that in case of a disaster, listen to the instructions that would follow the annoying signal. Well, on the day when two planes took the towers down, no emergency signal came out of radios and TV sets. No instructions were issued to the panicky citizens who were left in distress. For years, probably thousands of government employees specialized in how to respond in extreme situations, took handsome paychecks and happily retired from their important jobs to watch over the public who paid their salaries. Yet on 9/11, not one single beep traveled via radio or TV alert. In my situation with the fish pond, it was the contrary situation: the TV kept scaring me with the approach of tornadoes and advised me to look for a shelter in the basement, while outside there was calm, torrid weather and not a cloud in the sky.
Two days later, during the night, I jumped out of bed and ran out to see the heavy lightning that soon brought hot and cold winds and finally, the much expected rain. Relieved, I went back to sleep and woke up to find my pond overflowing with yellow water. Everything was back to normal in a few minutes of blessed rain. So far, nothing seemed to go easy with my pond. Watching a neighbor walking his dogs one day, I realized that I do more physical activity with my pond than any other kind of pet owner. In fact, I created for myself the need for perpetual mobile activity since perishable water and live fish must be kept in running condition by countless adjustments and non-stop repairs and fixings. All done by hard backbreaking work with a lot of sweat. For me, though, this beats jerking a leash and bending to scoop dog poop into a plastic bag.
When I first began to dig the pond, I had no idea how hard the work would be or what it would entail. Like anything else to be done, you have to walk the walk and cover the distance. This may produce amazing results totally different from what was expected. As for the heart, indeed it pumps blood in the entire body, some 2,000 gallons (7,570 liters) each day, but its role is much more complex. There is no organ more abused than the heart during one’s life. That abuse is also emotional, as the heart was believed to be the soul by the ancient philosophers. We think with our head, but feel with our heart. In my case, the heart was abused by the waste of physical and emotional energy, and I almost collapsed under the heavy load of work. It was like burning a stick from both ends. It was a terrible way to treat a body that is the ultimate friend one has in life. On the other hand, doing too little or being bored in order to avoid efforts makes the days feel longer, and life shorter.
The ultimate moral of my story is very basic: after a certain age, do what you are comfortable doing. Never overdo anything, and do not blindly follow any health ads, including drinking water non-stop or eating only vegetables and fruits. Drink, eat and sleep as much as you feel like and never try to be a weekend warrior or be too eager to prove a point. Remember that the life of any fashion, in clothes, music, diet, exercise and the like, lasts only a few years, after which it is replaced by another fashion that contradicts the previous one. Regardless of what beauty or health magazines promote, my idea of staying strong and young is to rest as much as I need and feel no guilt for not running a marathon. My problem was to grant myself too little rest while working beyond my endurance.
When pushing seventy, most of life and accomplishments are behind, not ahead of you. Whatever you wish to achieve out of frustration or revenge is more likely to take you down. Do what feels good with logical limitations. Most importantly, do not indulge in excesses, and just like spending money, stay within a comfortable zone. You may live a long life, and any reserves, physical as well as financial, will be needed sooner or later. Stay healthy by feeling happy with what you have. Leave ambitious projects for your children or younger ones. Let them struggle like you did: hardship builds character and humility, the two main qualities in life.
As for me, I have to leave any modesty aside and proudly declare that I did something I always wanted to do: I carved a fish pond out of a small meandering stream in a small clearing of a forest patch, where now I can go meditate and remind myself not to repeat the same effort again. For some reason we humans enjoy giving valuable advice that we repeat over and over to our children and to others about how to live well. Yet, it is the child in us who never fears anything and needs a challenge which many times appears a foolish and costly idea. As for the old-age mind, it still begs for bravery and reaffirmation!
If anyone else close to 70 years-old happens to hand-dig a fish pond, I would love to compare your story with mine. I may still learn something. In fact we can learn a lot from anyone. The art in life is to listen well and apply it wisely, the earlier, the better! Life is over too quickly to accomplish what you planned. I just heard a joke: there’s no problem with young years passing so fast, but so does old age. In fact, life is the hyphen between the date of birth and the date of death ciseled on the tombstone. Sometimes the headstone contains some valuable information about the deceased, such as “Now do you believe I was sick?” In conclusion, I must add that whatever happens in life, regardless of how horrible, it beats death.
I often go to my shaded fish pond,,walk around it and once in a while I throw food pellets to my little aquatic guys who slowly travel toward me, following their undisputed leader. They eye me and circle the food and when I least expect it, they dive upwards and snatch the pellet with a splash in the water. The ripple effect sends waves all over the pond. This is the highlight of my serene experience. I sit on the bench I look at the pond and follow the colorful boat as it stops at the dolphin statue in front of the shelter, while the two cascades serenade me. Then my eyes move up along the tiny stream beyond the waterfall in the dense and dark thicket, and I feel that I am immersed in a world of total happiness. It took me 57 years of waiting and a few weeks of sacrifice to realize my dream of having a fish pond.
I think I must be one of the few people who created his own serentipity and enjoy it. What almost killed me turned out to make my life so beautiful and meaningful. This is my Nirvana—a fish pond in a forest oasis where the songs of birds compete with the burbling of two small waterfalls. It is worth everything I went through, and hopefully my enjoyment will last many more years.
January-May 2013
Florida - Kentucky