While I continued to struggle, using the crowbar to make more room for my pond, a noble thought came to me: this brutal and dirty work was not so different from that of a sculptor. He too would keep pounding the chisel with a mallet, breaking a block of stone in order to eliminate what was extra, in order to shape a statue. Somehow, I was not too far from being an artist, since I was going to create something special with my own hands: another form of landscape. In fact it would be more than that: I would bring new life to a little corner of a forest where so far not one fish had ever lived.
What kept me going was the image of my pond, held for so many years, with its crystal water and the reflections of the quick fish hit by sun rays. At that point I was thinking like a guy who wanted a motorcycle so much that he would do anything to get it. It is amazing what a beautiful picture can do for one’s morale. It is amazing how imagination rules our lives! I asked myself, Are there any fish out there guessing that soon they will end up going from a lake or river into my pond between two trees in full view of my deck? There is no fantasy much better than that, and it pumped the will to go on right back into my veins. Shovel after shovel, and minute after minute, I put all my energy into digging. I felt like a young medical student who was passing the last tests to become a doctor, hoping one day he might save a life. It’s somewhat similar, I thought, since unaware fish from far away would soon end up in my care.
But that noble thought about little swimming souls quickly transformed into an unexpected worry when I realized that not only did I know nothing about building a fish pond, I didn’t know what kind of fish to put in it, nor did I know if I would be breaking any laws that might regulate such a hobby! Before I became a liability to myself, I decided to do some research. Relieved that I had an excuse to stop working just as clouds of mosquitoes begin to practice their aerial attacks on me, I quickly cleaned my tools and ran inside the air conditioned house. I felt like I had a revelation—I would regain my sense of reality by learning how to have a professionally executed fish pond. In fact I totally fit the description of a researcher: a person who does not know what he is doing, but knows why.
After taking a blessed hot shower, I entered the vast world of the internet. It was pleasantly cool in my den and with satisfaction I saw my widows fogging, a sign that I had escaped the 100 F+ outside temperature. As I grabbed a pad of paper and a pen, I laughed thinking about the mosquitoes looking around for me. I scored a victory by not fighting them! Then, peacefully, I typed my Google query: how to build a fish pond?
I was surprised to find hundreds of sites willing to explain how to build an artificial pond in a yard, using pre-fabricated pieces of any size, shape or color, along with all kind of liners, electric pumps to regenerate oxygen and water flow, filters and other gadgets, test kits, chemical solutions to verify or improve the water and food quality and provide toys for fish, plastic and natural plants to decorate the pond. In brief, every site tried to sell a kind of life support for koi and other tropical fish they recommended. The closest I found to my small fish pond was a two acre pond which was 15 feet deep and had problems with overgrown vegetation that turned the water surface green, evidently not good for the fish. The recommendation was to call a specialized company that would rectify the problem. Most of these experts were out of my state of Kentucky.
Hours later, tired, I turned my attention to state and federal regulations, which were confusing and complicated. Numerous universities had departments conducting studies to correct the flows of fish industries, and numerous rules were directed to preserve the wild life, especially wetlands. The more I read, the more I remembered that when the West Nile virus was discovered in Connecticut where I used to live, specialized trucks with poisonous solutions pumped deadly clouds around each wetland, even as homeowners were not allowed to build a garage too close to a small patch of a dry swamp still protected by state laws. The reason for refusal: to allow the area to become a marsh again—even though that meant it would turn into a breeding ground for the same mosquitoes they were determined to kill!
Regardless of mighty and blind bureaucracy, I understood that no one should interfere with the wilderness of rivers or other waters. No dam should be built on any such river that changes its flowing direction, and so on. Of course fishing regulations and license laws are abundant in each state. What I kept in mind and wrote on my pad is that in Kentucky each pond or lake must be supplied with native fish. I like that kind of patriotism.
During many phone calls to find out my duties as a fish pond owner, I remembered the modern version of building Noah’s Ark. As the story goes, God, exasperated by so many rotten people and their evil actions, told Noah to build a new ark and select the best specimens to survive the coming flood of life extinction. Merciful God looked at aged and shaking Noah and gave him six months to build the ark. Six months later before unleashing the global flood, God saw Noah crying, with no ark was in sight. “What happened? Why didn’t you obey my wish?” thundered God. Dropping on his knees, Noah began to confess:
“My mighty God, since the first biblical flood, things have changed a lot here on Earth, especially about building something so big and useful. First I needed a construction permit and I had to fight with the bureaucrats who asked me for blueprints. They wanted to see how the electric work and fire safety was to be done, which of course I could not do because I did not have a valid construction license. Suddenly I became the laughing stock of the entire office, because no one believed that my ark would be on land, waiting for the flooding seas to come to my property. Because of that belief, at the first approval meeting I had to face a mob of nervous neighbors. They were concerned about the size and the height of my ark and its negative impact on local real estate. Everyone wanted to see a detailed plan showing the likely effects of the coming flood and how the ark would take care of things. The real stumbling block came from OSHA with its endless rules and regulations which did not apply to my project. More rules and regulations came from different work organizations, who, afraid of slave labor, did not allow my children to help me, and asked me to disclose the ratio of minorities I was hiring. It was impossible for me to procuring enough wood from the nearby forest: I could not cut a single tree because native owls had nested and their eggs had to be saved. My argument that in fact I am the only one who can save the owl, as well as the nearly extinct wolf, fell on deaf ears. On top of that, I was accused of cruelty against wild animals that could not be confined in the ark’s small space. On top of all of this, there was the cost of Worker’s Compensation Insurance. And then the IRS confiscated all my possessions and savings, accusing me of intending to leave the country illegally! Now that I am homeless and penniless, it’s likely to take me at least ten years to build the ark. Please, God, understand…”
Ashamed of his failure, Noah cried louder. Suddenly, the angry clouds were pushed away by a shining sun, and angels blowing their trumpets flew around the kneeling old man. Noah looked in the direction of God and asked with a hopeful voice: “My loving God, does this mean you do not want to destroy the world with another flood?” From the skies a laughing voice thundered back: “There’s no need for me to do anything, my son, since your government is already ahead of me!”
It occurred to me that we can learn some lessons from Noah’s experience. One is, always save the old ark, and if you need to build a new one, do it in the winter in the wilderness when nobody sees you. Most of all, do not brag about it, and don’t wait for city hall to tell you what to do, because it’s all the local high school drop-outs who now govern your life.
Little by little, my notepad filled with intimidating names of institutions and organizations, along with their phone numbers. Most had an answering machine instead of a receptionist on the phone, which immediately ruined my trust in them. Others had nothing to tell me with regard to a 100 square foot pond to be built in the midst of a small forest. I was surprised that in the majority of cases only women answered the telephone, and with the same words, that Mr. So and So was in a meeting, out of the office, on vacation, was looking to buy a house or it was lunchtime. I wondered how much those men who were never in their office were paid. Finally, I came upon a key official who actually knew all the laws in Kentucky. She listened to my description of my noble intent and asked if I intended to sell my fish for profit. When she heard “no,” she assured me that no permit was required for my little pond. Relieved, I stop calling. Yet, I still need more information, and my next step was a pet shop.
In the afternoon, I visited a pet store and realized what a complex business it is. To keep so many animals, reptiles and birds in cages, to feed and clean after them requires precise management and highly specialized workers. But all of those complicated thoughts slipped away when I stood before the fish tanks lined up according to size and content. That section of the store was a world unto itself. It was magic to see fish of shapes and colors I did not know existed, brought from far away seas and exotic places, looking at me and moving around freely. Each tank was spectacularly decorated with plants and toys of colors to make the fish feel at home, mysteriously lit to create a specific mood. Looking around, I realized that an entire industry is based on love for pets, including scary looking snakes. How many people are out there to adopt each pet in a pet shop display?
I probably sounded like I was the strangest person who ever walked in a pet shop when I ask the cashier what kind of Kentucky fish they had for my pond. I was told that none of the fish in the store were suitable because the state prohibits native fish from being sold in pet shops. When I explained that I was creating a pond, I got a blank look, since nothing in the store would be right for me. However, all salespeople seemed to be high school seniors hired for the summer, not exactly experts I could trust. But from the back office came an older woman, and I instinctively felt she would be the person to talk to. Indeed, she was able to help me with valuable information. She believed that bluegills were the fish for my pond, and she gave me a flier with an ad for a fish farm. I could not resist temptation and bought two bags of fish food, but not the diet version. It was simply amazing to see the huge selection of food for pets! There must be a lot of people depending on their pets’ unconditional love…
Back home, relieved that I was not breaking any state laws and having learned that bluegills were the fish for my pond, I looked again at my worksite in the woods with a critical eye. With quick judgment I was not aware I possessed, I decided to draw straight lines that would connect the four corners of my future pond. In this way I could dig on each side and enlarge the pond borders to the marks I pre-established. Any excavated dirt would have to be deposited beyond those lines. For the first time I had a firm and clear plan for going forward with my work. I realized that it was going to take me more days than I had anticipated to finish the messy project that probably could have been done by a machine in an hour. But there was a principle involved: I had to do this myself! So I took more pictures of myself working.
Day Four
I decided to start working before 6:00 a.m. when the sun was just beginning to come up. I hoped to avoid drenching perspiration and mosquito bites, but after a few minutes of digging, I realized that the entire forested area around me was wrapped in dense fog. Also, the humidity was high and as a result, my perspiration was even more abundant than usual. What I had originally experienced was only a false sense of cooling off. After an hour of intense work, I discovered the difference between digging in wet versus dry soil. It was easier to sink my shovel into the wet portion soaked by the stream water, but the chunk of dirt was twice as heavy as the same amount of dry dirt. I could load more dry dirt onto my shovel, but to get it, I had to push much harder with my heel and my arms. In the final analysis, the same amount of work and effort was going to be needed, with no allowance for shortcuts.
While using all my strength to make good progress before taking a break, I thought about how smart King George III was when he allowed settlers in the American colonies to acquire in one year as much farmland as they could free from the forest, using stones as a wall identifying the property. All of New England became divided by neat stone walls that marked parcels of new land owned by a hardworking family. Cutting trees, taking out their roots, and removing stones from the ground was the ultimate test for newcomers who wanted to prosper. It took a lot of digging by an entire family to change a primeval forest into a land for a log cabin and crops. The ordeal honed the determination to succeed. Some one third of the American population traces their roots to those brave settlers. Other settlers took advantage of the native Indians and offered them alcohol, beads, mirrors and other trinkets in exchange for land. But the Indians had no concept of individually owned land and asked how much the settlers wanted. The buyers showed the distance between the river and the hill. The Indians asked how much they wanted vertically, measured from the ground up and under it. Now was the settlers turn to shrug their shoulders. None of them knew or could guess at that time that location, mining and air rights would make countless people rich.
In that spirit of innocence I thought of the example of Manhattan island being sold by Indians to Dutch settlers for $24 in cloth, buttons, beads and bottles of alcohol in 1626. To me, the real deals were the Louisiana Purchase, practically half of the United States territory offered by Napoleon for $15 million, and the purchase of immense Alaska for $7.2 million in 1867. The biggest land claim by the American government was in September 1893, after the Indians were expelled from their vast flat territories in Oklahoma. A cannon salve signaled to some 100,000 settlers that they had exactly one day to stake out the size of their property as fast as the horse could cover it. It turned out that those riding bicycles had the optimum mobility when it came to reaching the best parcels along rivers. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them, or their children, dug their own fish ponds, working just like me to change what would otherwise have remained a forest.
These days children go to school to dig into manuals and pass exams in order to prove themselves worthy of a good job and big salary. It is a hard work done in air conditioned classrooms and libraries, but young people are not sweating any longer. For that, they do sports. I am reminded of having seen the football team of one high school from a posh city in Connecticut as it came out of the locker room fully equipped for the Sunday game. One by one the kids boarded a yellow school bus. The boys looked fit and tough, with the determination to win written on their faces, painted in camouflage colors. When the bus was full, it drove nearly 50 yards and stopped at the entrance to the stadium. Once again, one by one the tough boys jumped this time out of the bus and ran to the green field divided by white lines. In retrospect, I was thinking how those strong lads could have worked so well in the New England forests to build a property of their own, instead becoming today’s Al Bundys.
This brought to mind my own childhood in a medieval Carpathian village when I had to carry buckets of water from the village well to my house. I was only in the third grade and the buckets were too heavy to carry for a quarter mile without spilling the precious water. But I did it, crying because of not being stronger, forced to make many stops to regain my breath and open my little hands that had turned blue from the round handle of the metallic bucket. With the same determination I pulled and pushed a handsaw, and then split logs with a heavy ax that I could hardly lift above my head. All the village boys did that type of helpful family work, so it was not an option, especially because only my mother raised me and I wanted to show that I was the man in the family.
All of a sudden I got so tired thinking about my childhood that I had to stop shoveling and take my pulse, which was very weak and fast. So I went under the deck, picked up the hose and washed my head, face and my arms. After drinking water, I sat on the deck stairs in the shadows, looking at my work. It still did not look like a pond, but the narrow hole was almost 20 feet long, maybe 2 feet wide and full of dirty yellow water that trickled into my foot prints. Not much progress had been made to justify my body ache and intense fatigue. I realized I needed to pace myself better, and I came up with a simple solution: work 30 minutes and rest 10 minutes. After all, I was not in a hurry to finish anything: I was retired and I could do anything I wanted. Happy with my conclusion and feeling rested, I returned to work.
Digging by hand in the mud is hard and not fun. It is part of blue collar labor and the more I dug, the more I admired those who do it for a living. It is true that these days excavators and numerous other machines or mechanized tools replace brute man-power. Yet digging by hand cannot be avoided or eliminated from our modern way of life. When landscapers worked on my property, I noticed that most of their work was digging, just as hard as I was doing. The workers were dressed in blue overalls with sturdy yellow boots and they looked strong and confident. Most of all, they were very efficient, a quality I obviously lacked. I was interested and almost entertained to see how they moved trees and bushes into the precise holes they dug, how they placed small boulders to create “islands” in the middle of flat grass, and how they, the messy and smoking laborers, changed a boring front yard into a delightful English garden. At the end, I tipped them $100 each and each one crushed my hand, shaking it.
I took another break, washed myself and thought about how wrong people are who associate the term blue collar with a person who is not too bright or not educated and incapable of behaving fashionably. Yet, those people who work with their hands to make a living are incredibly smart and talented, creating all the luxury that surrounds us. I have in my den a large black and white picture of 12 construction workers on a lunch break, sitting on a steel beam which is up in the air. None of them have hard hats or safety harnesses. A few read newspapers, some light cigarettes, and all are relaxed, talking to each other, never mind that their working shoes are dangling freely some 200 feet above Manhattan buildings. The last worker in line is looking straight at the camera, holding an alcohol bottle in his hand. Presumably the bottle is empty because it traveled from the other end for each worker to take a sip.
To me, those were real men doing real work, and I have to admit, each time I feel down or lazy, a simple look at that picture makes me go back to my work. The other day when I was waiting for my car to be fixed, I watched the mechanic, dressed in blue overalls, doing his messy work. I could not help admiring his agility and knowledge about fixing the brakes and making sure the car was safe to drive. In other words, my life was in his dirty hands. No different from a doctor. After all, when we go to the best and most expensive restaurant, we eat food cooked in the kitchen by blue collar workers, and when we build a custom-made mansion the blue collar workers make our artistic dreams become a reality.
Come to think of it, all the great cathedrals from the past were made by hardworking masons, who built giant Gothic structures of incredible artistic and spiritual beauty, one stone at the time. Today computer experts try to recreate their blueprints and stumble, because most of giants never had a blueprint. It was the esthetic of workers and their foreman’s vision that created architectural wonders laced in stone. It produced the masonry cast, the only real independent people in the Middle Ages, because they were in great demand and they could impose their will on kings and other leaders. Today’s Freemasonry owes its roots to those stone cutters and brick layers. One thing is for sure: “dirty” work advanced civilization, and blue collar people seem to have less fear about losing their jobs or being run down by any recession. There is always more demand for a roof repairman than the entire board of directors who plan another financial scam.
Encouraged by these reflections, I returned to work with the attitude of a real doer. It was past eleven o’clock and the merciless sun rays were strong and hot enough to penetrate the tree canopy and fry me. It amazed me how the distant and incandescent Sun, one hundred times larger than our Lilliputian Earth, never failed to find me. For billions of years our planet circled the same hot sun that provided life to Earth. A few thousand miles closer or more distant from us, and our supreme stellar benefactor would destroy the very same life we know. And there I was, negotiating with myself about whether to wear a hat or not in order to protect myself from it. Actually I felt good because the mosquitoes hated the direct sunlight. And what an ideal arrangement I had, to take a sunbath half naked and get tanned while at the same time working so industriously. It does not get more manly than that!, I thought.
As I dug, I felt my crocs filling with yellow mud and small sharp stones that also penetrated my gloves. But my concern was focused on my awareness that nothing lasts forever and that, if in time the Sun shines less, our planet will enter an irreversible Ice Age that will terminate life. I was feeling a little worried until I remembered the story of two idiots talking about this same gloomy subject. One, full of importance, said “Even the mighty sun will die in 5.8 billion year!” The other, his eyes bulging, asked, “In how many years?” The first confidently answered, “In 5.8 billion years.” To which the other uttered in big relief, “Thank God! I understood 5.8 million years! You almost scared me.”
Personally, I am convinced like most of people that everything in the world has a beginning, a pinnacle of existence and an end, more or less dramatic or abrupt. Years ago I came up with a philosophical concept I called Effectology, trying to demonstrate that all that is happening in this world is because of unforeseen accidents, whose effects, good and bad, have a beginning, a rise, and an unavoidable end. And so it goes that our Earth was born because a galactic explosion put our planet in a trajectory along with the other planets and moons around our only star, the Sun. So far our world has lasted a few billion years, but accordingly to the Mayan calendar, it was supposed to end on 21 December 2012. The reasoning was that the Sun itself would travel to the center of our Milky Way galaxy where it would be destroyed; so calculated the Mayan prophets—probably the same ones who did not predict that Spaniards would exterminate them in the next few years. So much for their prophetic accuracy… In the meantime, solar power can supply all the energy we need to live well. With all these colossal concerns to worry about, I felt great to be able to master my own insignificant universe in my forest corner. Who knows—the next civilization might study the ruins of my pond, and a legion of Ph.Ds might argue about how fish were present above a calcareous massive ledge.
The more I dug into the muddy mess, the more I was convinced that I did not know what I was doing. It looked like I might master the skill only after I finished the project, like I had done so many times before. In a word, I consider myself to be an amateur at this work, versus a professional, who gets paid to do something he knows how to do well. Actually, the word to describe me is dilettante, someone who believes he can do the work but is uncertain how. The more digging I did and the more I reflected, the less I wished to continue working.
Yet, perhaps most inventions and businesses were done not by professionals, but by dilettantes. A few monumental examples came to mind. Samuel Morse strove to be a painter but invented the electrical telegraph and Robert Fulton, another artist, built the first steamboat. Grammar school dropout Cornelius Vanderbilt built a transportation empire; the Wright brothers fixed bicycles and then became the first to fly; and college dropout Bill Gates founded Microsoft and changed the world of communication. Then there was the bankrupt merchant named Christopher Columbus who had no idea how to navigate a sailing ship and discovered America.
Being a dilettante was looking like a pretty good thing! After all, who investigated electricity, discovered the lightning rod, bifocal glasses and the odometer? He was a printer, postmaster, library founder, a successful businessman, an elite politician, the American ambassador to France, and the man who saved the American Revolution—Benjamin Franklin, who had no formal education. A German grocer, Heinrich Schliemann, discovered Homer’s fortress of Troy after 20 years of work and immense ridicule by the academic world. Yet, that dilettante who quit school at the age of 14 spoke and wrote in at least 12 languages and became independently wealthy, allowing him to finance his archeological hobby. What all these great people had in common was their courage and determination to continue their dream and mission even though they had no clue how to complete it. Nothing hampers a project faster than the fear of failing, while regardless of setbacks, these visionary people pushed forward, laying new rules for the academic, but impotent, intellectual elite. Therefore, I have high esteem for a dilettante, as long he does not operate on my heart or fly my plane.
With the temperature climbing over 95 degrees, I realized I was tired, hungry, full of sweat and savagely bitten by countless mosquitoes. I decided to wash my tools, take some pictures of my pathetic work and retire in the heaven of the air conditioner. I cannot imagine what my Romanian grandmother did without it in midsummer. After a good shower and the same minestrone soup, a tonic nap followed. I returned to work in the afternoon before the next mosquito invasion. The working gloves looked and felt horrible, and I realized how stupid it was to ignore such an inconvenient detail that bothered me so much.
Looking at all the greenery around me, I felt blessed by such a friendly and lovely environment that would shelter my pond. At the same time, I realized that my shallow breathing was the main culprit behind my rather premature tiredness, which I had never experienced before. I began to exhale and inhale deeper, to provide more oxygen for my demanding muscular effort, happily providing CO2 as a feeder for all the plants and trees near the pond.
Shovel after shovelwork was interrupted only to pick up the crowbar to remove stubborn stumps and stones or to cut vines. I measured my progress by the four feet wide portion now covered with water. Because of it, my crocs sank in mud which hurt my feet if I did not wash them periodically. Needing to do that, I took a ten minute break, and at the same time, kill the mosquitoes that were too heavy with my blood to fly away in time. Somehow, just like Prince Dracula who impaled any criminal on the spot, I could kill a bloodsucker at the moment it finished its dining, without a shred of remorse. Today’s criminals bargain with judges for shorter sentences. Because gangs and labor battalions were outlawed as cruel punishment, criminals sent to jail use their time to watch TV, pump iron and learn from others how to do a better job after being paroled. With America having the world record of almost 2 million inmates in jails, it certainly looks like granting parole is to make room for new criminals. Just a thought I had…regarding non-productive people who work out in gyms to overpower their victims…
As much as I admired the root system that provided life for vegetation around my work site, I had to eliminate some to make room for my pond. However, I left untouched two major underground branches that would look good in the middle of the water and also might bring some food and provide oxygen to my fish. Concerned with recovering my energy, I rested, sitting on a piece of wood, elbows on my knees. Holding my head in my palms, I looked at the large muddy ditch I created, now timidly crossed by a thread of yellow water. Suddenly I was thunderstruck by my lack of anticipation regarding a dam to keep the water inside the pond. I would need stones or some other kind of heavy material to build that kind of barrier.
The idea was so pressing that I decided to quit working and investigate my options. Before leaving I took a picture of my work and of myself covered with mud. Surprisingly the photo shows a happy face, even though it is covered with dirty spots from scratching mosquito bites with filthy gloves. What can I say, I was a man with a mission!.
Day Five
With a vague idea about building a small dam, I went to the largest construction and landscaping stores to look for the right material for it. I found all kinds of natural and manmade stones, bricks and cement products of many patterns and in sizes that ranged from small to very large, all encased in plastic and neatly stacked in piles. I saw many white collar men browsing in the aisles, studying materials and machines that they would probably never touch again, but fantasizing about doing important projects, just like me. They were the same weekend warriors who train for marathons, men in their late 30s, getting fat and bold, who cannot wait to change from a business suit and tie into overalls and amaze their envious neighbors with tough work, like digging a foundation or rebuilding a porch. Obviously that will never happen, because their wives foresee the awaiting disaster and will call a professional to finish the messy work. I could see how the Neanderthalian instinct for hard labor lives in modern office men, who also once dreamed of being a boxing or weightlifting champion, even though they skipped each gym class.
As I browsed through each aisle, I better understood why in 200 years America achieved so much industrial success and had such high standards at all levels. To me, America is the world leader because even a humble pebble is sold inside an appealing bag, and a ton of red bricks look like a gift wrapped in clear plastic. The smallest screw and nut are sold inside a little pouch, all for a good commercial reason: plastic prevents dust and rust from accumulating, keeps the object looking new forever, and conveys trust to the buyer, who leaves with a sparkling product regardless of when or how it was made.
Looking around, I notice the eighteen-wheel trailers supplying the stores, another reason why the American economy has made such spectacular progress: trucks bring goods from the factory straight to the consumer, practically door to door. This eliminates train services and other intermediary transportation with extra loading and unloading time, and the expense that would be added to the cost. Along with refrigeration that keeps anything fresh for a long time, and convenient highways that provide fast transportation, the entire commercial infrastructure has all the elements for success. Yet, I could not find anything to use to build my five foot wide and two foot high dam. Everything on display was too decorative to withstand the water torrents and keep my fish inside the pond. A salesman listened to my dilemma and recommended that I use large boulders for my aquatic barrage, suggesting I look for these in the yellow pages.
I returned home and went back to work even though my common sense told me not to. It was another torrid day. Meanwhile, I still had those gloves. I admit, I had a thing about the uncomfortable gloves that really hurt my hands, but continued to wear them. To me, it was like staying on a job that one hates, or being in a marriage that does not work, yet the suffering person, like me, is not willing to quit. The reason is simple and experienced by everyone: walking away is easy, but then what? Go into the unknown and end up much worse? To take a risk in any decision is a major thing in life. Granted, there are people who take a blind risk without a second thought and plunge into the unknown. Then, too, a calculated risk is not really a genuine risk, but rather a decision. In my case, to immigrate 38 years ago to America without money, not knowing the language or anyone here, was a genuine risk. Most of today’s immigrants come here welcomed by friends or family members. Often, the guest room is prepared and a relative has cooked the favorite food of the newcomer. In that case, the calculated risk means no risk at all. Setting these thoughts aside, I realized I had to decide whether to throw away the gloves or keep them.
I opted.for keeping them because of my strong ownership instinct and sentimental approach to the problem. I was admittedly attached to the dirty, crusty, smelly and wet gloves with the “it will not shred” label. In a way, they kept me alert so I didn’t hurt myself in other ways, since during any lengthy and messy job, an accident can be expected. Very often in life we need a “necessary evil” to appreciate what we have that is good. The more I handled the shovel, the pickax and the crowbar, the more I enjoyed the protection of my wet and dirty gloves. I was grateful for them when I picked up stones and pulled roots that would have cut my hands. It was a different story with my boxers that became soaked and stuck to my skin; these I had no problem changing.
I kept digging, but did not find stones large enough or with the proper shape that I needed for my vision of a dam structure. Since it was getting hotter, I took a break to wash my crocs and hose down. Resting in the shade of the deck, my eyes focused on the grapevines lacing around the posts, with clusters of grapes gleaming in the sun. I was so happy looking at them! I remembered how in April I pruned the leafless branches, cutting them back to a few buds on each cane and renewal spur, leaving each grapevine amputated and sadly standing. A month later, young branches shot out all over from each bud, and a month after that, the entire deck perimeter was walled by leaves and grapes. What an incredible example of how life triumphs and regenerates so powerfully and fruitfully in spite the fact that the plants’ roots were basically nested in the edges of the cement patio between the deck posts. Sadly, we do not have the grapevine DNA and besides nails and hair, nothing in our body can be disposed of with the expectation of its being rejuvenated. We grow, but only old and tired. And often, much larger…
A little depressed, I focused on Lot 64 next to mine, owned by my contractor and still vacant and covered with tall weeds. In the center of it was a pile of large chunks of cement blocks enforced with rods, baking under the hot sun. In fact, the entire pile came from my property, since my contractor dumped it there after he redid my back cement patio that had been wrongly pitched. There, in plain sight and for no cost was exactly what I needed! Equally important, it was close enough for me to haul it. I walk around the pile and immediately spotted a few large blocks I could use.
There are glorious moments like this in life, when one feels blessed and eyes turn thankfully to the sky to reconnect with the universe. Despair and hopelessness turn into rejoicing, and reward replaces all negative feelings. I might be exaggerating my emotions a bit, but what joy and relief I felt because the heavy cement blocks, that were considered useless garbage fit the bill of my grand scheme. In my euphoria, I totally forgot to take my break and began to pull out more roughly shaped cement pieces of some 50 pounds. The more I selected, the more I envisioned my dam being made like a jigsaw puzzle, using yesterday’s junk, now turned into precious material. But I had to stop when I realized the skin of my sore bare hands was ready to burst open with blood. The much blamed gloves looked better and felt precious to me as I ran back to pond to get them. What instant gratification when I put them on—my poor hands were protected!
Before I knew it, I was pushing my wheelbarrow out of the garage. In a very happy frame of mind I loaded a few blocks and lift the long handles, ready to wheel the load to the pond. But my heavy-duty vehicle refused to move. A brief inspection revealed that the tire had sunk into a hole in the ground, and it was impossible to push it out. Rushing to do too much and too quickly was not a good thing! I had to unload the wheelbarrow, move the tire onto a flat surface, and after a few trial-and-error trips, figured out what worked best. A heavier load was better piled above the wheel, preferably three blocks of cement, then two lighter ones next to the heavier ones, and a larger one on top of them, to ensure good balance; the wheel needed to be steered away from any holes or bumps, and the handles pushed and pulled according to the dents in the terrain. I learned to gain good speed and momentum before going up the hill, and hold the handles back so I wasn’t dragged by the wheelbarrow when going downhill. It was no different from life, when one must pace oneself to move smoothly on the bumpy road of destiny.
I decided to unload the cement pieces near the stream at the narrowest section of my digging, where the banks were strongly supported by stones and roots. It was an ideal spot as water was now accumulating there, whereas days before, the stream was running into an underground hole. So the pond was already coming together in front of the drainage hole that had been taking the stream underground for some 100 feet beyond my property line. Because of my work, one thing was now for sure: instead of looking from my deck at a dry spot, now I could see a small pool of water. Feeling good but very tired, I decided to alternate digging with stone transportation, doing each for a half hour. Each time I swapped off between the two projects, I took my gloves and crocs off to rinse them and also allowed myself a ten minute rest break. Above me, the sun could not be brighter or hotter. Fortunately, I thought, this is perfect weather for my grapes! As for me, though, the air burned my skin as I pushed the loaded wheelbarrow downhill and unloaded uphill. Thankfully it was not the other way around!
Before long I realized that I could not maintain this level of work for more than five or six hours a day. I remembered my youth years when I worked in construction from sunrise to sunset in the summer, with only a half-hour lunch break. I dug foundations, mixed cement with lime and sand, carried heavy buckets full with mortar or a stack of bricks up onto scaffoldings, and had energy left to party at night. Those years were long gone, and now I needed to rest each half hour to regain my breath and my strength. I tried to convince myself that I was weak because of the torrid summer, not because I was old and out of shape. A lie of convenience?! But after all, what was my rush to finish a project that only I knew about ?
Otherwise, I was holding up pretty well, considering that for years before retirement I had four part time jobs, putting in more than 100 hour a week. On weekends alone I used to work four shifts, adding up to 32 hours. I ate once a day, mostly at midnight and woke up at 4:45 each morning. It was a time when everyone starated walking with a bottle of pure water, drinking from it at each few steps. It became a recognizable ritual of proving good health among billions of water worshipers. I hardly drank any water and never had snacks. Any vegetables I ate were in soup I made and ate every day for a week. I never took vitamins. Some might consider this as abusing a body, but who decided that eating three meals a day along with six servings of vegetables, plus drinking 8 glasses of water is a good or a necessary thing for everyone?
After all, who decided that sleeping at least 8 hours is a must? Is it the scientist who looks like a Halloween scary character? Or the doctor who looks sicker than his patients? From what I know, the astronomers who hardly slept at night lived long years, like Galileo who was 78 when he died (an advanced age for that time), and Thomas Edison who took only naps on his lab tables and lived and worked until his 84th year. I almost laughed the other day hearing from a Tibetan guru who knew the secrets of a long and peaceful life and died at age 58. Most probably a long life depends on genetic inheritance, which determines many fatal illnesses, if you go bald, and when we die of “natural causes.” Medicine has reached incredible advances and doctors almost play God, yet cures come down not to their limitless recommendations and possible treatments, but to the patient’s constitution and endurance.
I agree that stress makes one nervous and lack of regular sleep causes fatigue; many studies have concluded that an unruly life is a source of deadly cancer. As for recommendations for working out, I believe it is the wrong routine since more oxygen intake means more rust for the body. I also agree, lack of control over our emotions and wrong food may damage our entire organism. But again to me, one’s health is fundamentally genetics, predetermined tens of thousands of years before my birth. I doubt very much that our cave ancestors ate three meals a day, took vitamins and slept 8 straight hours each night. They had to defend their families from predators, survive attacks of other tribesmen, all done during sleepless nights. They moved almost each day from place to place, and all these activities loaded their DNA.
Simply put, we inherit the fears and joy of our Stone Age ancestors, and wake up in the middle of the night because of scary dreams like falling from trees or being chased by a bear. It may be hard to admit, but the Neanderthal is live and well in us. Our distant cave relatives lived only 30 years on average because they died hunting or of a tooth infection; but their digestive systems and nervous systems were superbly adapted to survive hunger and crises. In my opinion, we modern humans keep dieting instead of eating less or at random, and unnecessarily built our endurance with medication that does more harm than good. We need psychiatrists to heal our negative emotions, when digging a pond would achieve the same result. In my case, I do not over-indulge my body with any scientific or medical advice. Just like a spoiled child, a spoiled body creates only troubles. What’s important is that I am in great health, my head is full of dark hair, so, why fix something that works well? One must understand that many of my college buddies with healthy routines are already dead. And yet I could dig in the stony ground and push a heavily loaded wheelbarrow.
Having selected the cement blocks I wanted, loading them into the wheelbarrow and then pushing it to and from the pond while stumbling over unseen obstacles, I was wondering how pilots take off and land giant air busses, an obviously remarkable feat of skill and knowledge. It’s no wonder that at least two must pilot planes bigger than a ship. In the meantime, I credit the wheelbarrow, or at least its principle, as the best moving object in history. Probably it was the advanced relative of a four handle litter, which could now be managed by one person. Attaching a wheel between two vacant handles resulted in a fully efficient transport vehicle. Using the wheel to carry an object is almost forty times easier than pushing or pulling the same heavy weight. I think only the zipper invented in last century can rival the importance of the wheel. But whoever invented the wheel must receive the ultimate credit, since everything we see today uses wheels. Including the wheel of fortune. What nobody seems to think about is the source of the bitumen layeredd on top of concrete roads and highways that are probably long enough to cross our entire solar system. Huge holes must be left under the Earth surface in order to extract such useful material that comes from refined oil. I wonder if it might be possible that our entire civilization could collapse inside of those holes.
Bent over the large pile of cement blocks, I performed the gruesome labor of picking up and loading heavy pieces into my wheelbarrow. The backbreaking job made me think of how the Germans cleaned up their bombed cities, brick by brick, and rebuilt them in their original shape and form, only better. Actually those hard workers were mostly women, since their men had died in battles or ended up in POW camps. Today, the Germans are blamed for nearly everything wrong in the world, while they peacefully triumph, manufacturing the best machines, being the only nation with no debt, and the richest in Europe. They must have inherited some disciplined-industrious genomes along with good engineering minds. It is politically incorrect to praise the Germans, but their incredible achievements seem to be the ultimate reality. As for me, what I was most enjoying was solitude, a perfect peace with myself, a state of mind so much wanted by poets, thinkers and artists of any kind. I owed that to my work on the fishing pond. There is something about being in the middle of the wilderness, doing something great. Admittedly, my house was only one hundred feet away!
During a rest break, I contemplated the mud hole that I had dutifully created, including a pile of white stones at one end. I still had to dig a third more to give it a shape, and I believed it was important to work on the edges, to identify the final border. I was glad I had thought to throw the shoveled dirt as far as I could to the left and right, because this meant I could step around the banks and the unloaded dirt did not fall back in the water. Drawing on my engineering instincts, I began to shave the pond edge in a 45 degree angle, almost a “V” shape. The spade cut in the moist dirt like a knife in butter, and no crumbs mess up my edges. I keep trimming around until I had arrived at the starting point.
After a while I stepped back to consider my progress, and saw that my pond was shaped like a peanut with two heads connected by a large neck. The length was now some 30 feet, with a maximum width of almost 10 feet, and the depth was less than two feet. Certainly, it was not deep enough for the fish, and I would have to dig more in the stream bed. The good news was that I did not have to go beyond the existing border. I’d made real, significant progress. I washed my tools and for the first time I decided to really wash my gloves, using soap. They had so many layers of dirt and clay that I had to scrape them first, and then tried to wash the slippery clay off them. I filled the wheelbarrow with water and rubbed the gloves against each other, inside-out, wringing out filthy water until the gloves felt squeaky clean. Then I rolled them around the wheelbarrow handles to dry in the sun. That marked a memorable moment, as I believed the job was half completed. I took more pictures.
That night I watched a drama on TV with blood and explosions and characters torturing each other endlessly. I realized that most horror or savage movies are made not by tough guys or men at arms, but, as the credit list reveals, by puny men and nerds who never threw a punch in anger or stared death in the face. It is absolutely amazing that creators, writers, producer and directors, once all dressed in expensive suits, suddenly appear on the filming plateau in tattered jeans and opened shirts with rolled sleeves, ready to transmit their convoluted Gothic ideas to millions of viewers willing to pay for them.
Ironically, individuals who still live with their parents or are called by their mothers ten times a day suddenly prove to be monsters in disguise, in charge of missions to destroy or save our dear Earth. Hordes of youngsters fill the theater to be blown off their seats. I wish schools would include Wonder Years, Andy Griffith and Threes Company, with their strong familial stories and values, as compulsory curriculums to educate the young generation.