Even God rested after working six days, and I believe that is the problem with our world: the Creator did not finish his work. Instead, He left humans to handle the loose ends and basically interfere with all that so far was good and happy. But what was good for God was good for me, so in spite of my urge go back into my muddy hole, I decided to take a day off. And drink water, a lot of water, to make up for the years I hardly touched it. After a long rest, I made the bed because, in my opinion, if the bed is not made, the day cannot begin. If the bed is made and tightly arranged, the entire room looks cleaner: the bed commands respect. I remembered “torturing” my children to make their beds in the morning before doing anything else. Based on the same Pavlovian reflex, they washed their hands and faces as part of the package. In any army, the first thing a soldier learns is to make the bed so tight that a flipped coin will bounce off it. Making the bed, learning how to walk in formation and how to salute, are three important things that contribute to making a strong army: it is called collective discipline. It’s the same with the children, whom, I may add, must learn to tie shoe laces (now shoes have Velcro), not to step on them, walk straight with the mouth closed, and eat only at the table.
So I ate my soup while watching on TV Food Network a show named Chopped with four chefs cooking with odd ingredients and judged by a jury of three experts, who tested their food. What bothered me the most was not the fumbling of the cooks, but the way the judges handled the knife and the fork and the way they ate. Obviously, they had no table manners. It is amazing that we spend so many years in school to accomplish our education, yet, if you look around, especially in public places, children and mature people show incredible flaws in their behavior. Let’s take the most important and pleasant place we can go to relax, the restaurant. In a cheap or expensive place, clients and staff act like they are in their own living or family room: they speak loudly, shouting across the dining area, loudly laughing and screaming in surprise with animal-like sounds. They balance on the rear two chair legs, sit with one leg bent underneath, rest on one elbow, punctuating their conversation by pointing with a knife and fork full of food waved in the air. When cutting a steak they hold the knife and fork with a baseball grip, and catapult the bite in the mouth with fork facing the table. They talk with the mouth full but open, and carry on with absolutely no consideration for others, encircling them with screaming children running around, “shooting” at each other with shreds of bread. As a general remark, the louder people laugh and talk, the more stupid they are. The more they repeat “Oh, my God!,” the bigger the warning to avoid their company.
Fortunately, like anything in the capitalistic system, money creates different worlds. The more expensive a neighborhood, hotel or restaurant, the more civilized and well mannered the people who attend those places tend to be. And indeed, when I dined at Morton’s Steakhouse, I felt that my elevated needs were met, at least until a family of five was led by the well dressed and properly groomed host to the table next to me. In the blink of an eye, the luxurious establishment was transformed into a fast food restaurant by the three college-age sons who were dressed in beach outfits, baseball caps turned around, and flip flops, with sweat dripping from their arm pits’ bushy hair. The parents were well dressed, but obviously had never explained to their children the role of clothes in an upscale establishment. I asked the waiter if the restaurant had a dress code, and she said that business was slow, so anyone with money was welcome. Suddenly, the expensive steak did not taste so good anymore…I could not help thinking of my Episcopal church in Connecticut, when the 9:00 o’clock Sunday service was attended by parishioners who just came from the golf or tennis courts. I distinctly remember waiting for the ladies with firm legs hardly covered by white miniskirts to kneel for communion.
In Western Europe there is general contempt for young American tourists, who can easily be spotted by their casual clothes, always too large, ripped, wrinkled and dusty, stepping on the pants bottom, usually sitting on the steps of churches, museums, official buildings, park grass and on the floors in malls, train stations and airports. They talk loudly only in their language, and while dragging their luggage, never missing side-swiping the garbage cans. To their credit, everything they wear and do looks so cool and natural that millions copy their style, including the boxed-in Chinese. There must be something very appealing about being an American. One thing is that an American always smiles when approached, and shows respect while imposing confidence. Unlike other tourists, they are good tippers and unconditionally wait in any line with unexpected patience. One unchanged best thing about Americans: they export the best music for each young generation. My friend from Germany hated everything about America until he came to visit and went back in blue jeans, wearing an I love NY t-shirt and a Yankee baseball cap.
Before I divert from my point about children, society and public places, not only in America but all over the world, any school system should teach students basic manners, how to eat properly and function in public, even how to ballroom dance, in order to prepare them for a civilized life.
Day Seven
I rested, physically speaking, and my worries returned to my pond as I began to look in the internet for a place to buy my fish. With a glass of water next to me, I made numerous phone calls and kept on drinking water. Once again, I faced the American capitalistic system in which nothing happens until someone sells or buys something. There is a simple equation between offer and demand, even when it comes to buying a few small fish. To me, this was another adventurous project, and the more I called, the more I learned about overpopulating the pond. Many experts advised me to buy hybrid farm fish like bluegills and minnows which do not multiply and endure the winter better. When they heard that my pond was barely two feet deep, they were skeptical about any of my fish surviving the winter, since five feet is the norm. I decided my best bet was to find a fish farm in Kentucky and go there. I drank another glass of water to be on the safe side of hydration.
My wife returned from her trip, and after predictable amazement and worries about my messy project, she seemed to accept the idea of having a fish pond. For obvious reasons, I did not say one word about my near-death experience. Moreover, being a trooper, she gladly accepted the chore of finding a place that sells fish. One farmer gave her a telephone number of an older fellow with a truck and a fish tank that stops from place to place and sells all kind of fish. This is Lou who has a fish farm; he does not answer the phone but has his email address on his answering machine. She emailed him, and he replied with his schedule of when and where I can buy any fish in any quantity from him as soon as my pond is ready to shelter fish.
I continued searching on the internet for information about building a pond supplied by natural running water. A mini cascade was recommended for generating more oxygen for the fish. I realized why I had been finding my pond dull and unappealing: it did not have a cascade to produce bubbling and singing water. The only logical place to build one was where the brook trickled into the pond at the narrowest point, so the water would topple most efficiently into it. There I saw a thick root that crossed from one bank to the other, above the water surface. There could not be a better spot and I decided to add height to the waterbed by building a small platform in front of the root. This would allow the water to accumulate, like in a bottleneck, which would force it to jump over the platform and plunge some ten inches below into my pond. My new project was a shot in the arm for renewing my enthusiasm to continue working.
Carrying a thermos filled with cold water, I went to the pile of cement blocks and for the first time I felt like an architect, or something close to that. As I sipped water, even though I wasn’t thirsty, and looked for just the right shaped stones, I thought about different values concerning the mental role of working. No doubt, hard and dirty work builds character, and the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong popped into my mind. When disputing the killing of millions for a political cause, Stalin and Hitler, who also wanted to re-educate their prisoners in forced labor camps, seem to hold the record. Yet Mao, nicknamed the Red Emperor, put both dictators to shame with his mass executions. In 1966 Mao decided to eliminate his political adversaries not by murdering them, but by exiling them to the countryside and forcing them to work among the farmers. Restless urban youths with anti-Communist ideas were forced to work the fields instead of uprising in big cities. In fact, they worked so hard that they experienced a change of heart and soon became Red Guards waving Mao’s Red Book. It sure beat the slave work in swamps and mines.
Spreading terror among intellectuals with different political views paid off greatly for Communists. Reactionary scholars were not burned alive, but were sent to work on farms. Mao’s Cultural Revolution through back-breaking discipline ended ten years later, but his legacy remained: hard and dedicated work ethics were passed to modern Chinese who today are building an economic and military super-power. As for Mao, he is now regarded as the Founding Father of the nation, and his countless pharaoh-like statues became shrines. I bet no bumper sticker with Question Authority! exists in his country. Chinese laborers may also be famous for their Great Wall of 4,000 miles built some five centuries ago. But piling stones on top of stones, even if crossed rivers and mountains, is to me the product of an unlimited slave work, and not too much spectacular glory should be attached to it.
I believe the ultimate glory in labor was to connect the Atlantic Ocean from New York to the Great Lakes near Canada by digging a water way of some 400 miles going up the hill 600 feet with workers who were free to leave anytime. Some ten similar water highways were built in America for purely commercial reasons. This included the extraordinary digging of the Intercostal Canal of 3,000 miles, crossing rivers, lakes and hills, winding north. One hundred years later it still connects Florida with the Great Lakes. It provided a safe waterway to move boats up and down the coast, parallel with the hazardous Atlantic Ocean. Another 3,000 miles of water highway comes down from Lake Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico. I bet that only a handful of people know about these monumental achievements of American know-how. To me they are unmatched examples of dedication, strong will and exemplary character. I can vouch for this laudatory conclusion because I was just about to die digging a 30 feet long and two feet deep pond with a few inches wide catwalk around it.
In spite of my intention to do nothing that day, I could not resist the temptation to carry the selected stones with the wheelbarrow to the pond. Since I was still exhausted, it took me a long time because of many rest stops when I kept drinking water to compensate for massive sweating. I lined up stones for the cascade and wondered how many artists or great builders interrupted their work to take a rest and for how long. For sure one was not Michelangelo who for years painted the ceilings of great buildings lying on his back and unable to see when he stood up again. I wonder how much water he drank and where he went to the bathroom, which was not near his painted ceiling. Probably most other great men never lived to finish their projects; certainly death is the ultimate stopper of all intentions. While resting and drinking water surrounded by the big mess of dry branches and bushes I never removed, I looked at my ugly pond that now had a stone barrier at its lower end. Soon, new stones would form the cascade at the other end. Two strong men could have finished the entire job in a few hours, I realized. I estimated that after many days I was just past the halfway mark of my work. Perhaps I did not want the work to be finished because doing it made me feel important.
In order to celebrate, and also take a break from pond work, I took my wife to see the movie Midnight in Paris, which I enjoyed on so many levels. First, I had just finished writing a book (entitled The Gentleman Boxer) about an American prizefighter who sought fame and fortune in 1920s, my favorite era. It is about Joe Grimm, a bantam who was not even a near contender, yet a most talented boxer with thundering fists and a granite jaw who scored 24 KO victories in a row, a remarkable accomplishment that made him a local hero. He smashed each opponent without using any dirty tricks and the public adored Joe. Seconded by his older brother Mike who basically ruined his chances to become a title challenger, Joe had to quit boxing in order to take care of his immigrant family who needed both boys home. At age 24 and at the peak of his career, Joe became a butcher in his own grocery shop bought with his ring money. The same qualities that made him a winner in ring made him a winner in life. A prosperous businessman and dedicated father and husband, Joe lived to be 96 years old with no marked face or regrets, leaving an equally respected legacy in the ring and out of it. Like my Joe, there were thousands of boxers that made the sport the king of all competitions, put America on the map of international champions, and entertained millions. I dedicated this book to all the Joes whose names cannot be found in history books, who have been real heroes for many generations.
The Roaring Twenties have always fascinated me. Each time I see photos or movie pictures of the era, I admire the cars, the fashion, the Art Deco posters and the good taste that may never be duplicated. Each time I visit Paris I am transported to another world, regardless of the police sirens, dogs’ excrement all over, and the horrible glass pyramid in front of the Louvre. The hustle of the French going home with their baguettes under the armpit fascinates me. I take long and appreciative look at their buildings of baroque and rococo styles, those built under Napoleon I and III. I admire the balconies with floral irons and equally majestic gates, along with statues on impressive buildings, which are, to me, the definition of “class” and “culture.” The time freeze frames of Midnight in Paris brought the impressionist painters to living reality, and never mind that Gauguin and Hemingway never shared the same physical time, their dual existence in the movie make a lot of sense to me when it comes to the Decadent Era in Paris. Certain beautiful things cannot be subject to correct views. I wish I were there, wearing knickers, spectator two-tone shoes and a straw boater hat...but on the other hand, I would have died a long time ago. Regardless of my petty calculation, how interesting it is to realize how fashion, just like any empire, is born, reaches fame and then fades away…only to make another comeback…like everything else.
Back to my own reality, I looked at my pond surrounded by so much debris left from clearing the “jungle” and digging, and another idea came to me: to shape the banks in a kind of terrace. It would look good and also keep the dirt, now in small piles, from falling back into the pond. My pond should be pleasing to the eyes. Otherwise it would look like a beautiful house without proper landscaping. When builders cannot sell their houses, they should look for at the landscaping as a possible reason. They put any amount of money into monumental columns, vaulted ceilings, expensive floors and moldings, lavish marble bathrooms and granite kitchens, and entertainment centers in basements, yet the idea of landscaping is foreign to them. The problem is that before entering the house to see all those marvels of craftsmanship, the buyer stops the car and looks at the entire setting. If he has to walk in mud, he experiences a doubtful feeling about the entire property. It’s just like a beautiful person dressed in rags versus the latest fashion, or water offered in paper cup versus a crystal glass.
When I described my pond landscaping intention to my wife, she agreed and suggested planting hosta, which grows well in shade and is perennial. With still much of day left, we hopped in the car and went to a nursery where the happy colors and shapes of the plants do so much for me. Their perfume reminds me of a pleasant childhood experience or someone I liked in the past who carried the same smell. It is sad that lovely annual plants will die at the first touch of frost, versus perennials, which last for years, but never excel in color or perfume. No wonder young people full of genius, like W. A. Mozart, Vincent van Gogh, poet Alexander Pushkin, actress Jean Harlow and film maker Jean Vigo, bloomed early and died prematurely.
I lined up the hosta plants, equally spacing them on top of the dirt built on the left bank close to the dense vegetation of the forest. The entire picture was spectacularly improved, but I decided to wait for rain before doing the planting. Already tired, I took some pictures and returned to the house to doctor my mosquito bites with vinegar and watch the local weather on TV that showed there was no rain in sight. I drank more water, even though I was a little tired of this new unpleasant hobby. I wondered why so many people love it and swear by its incredible benefits, from hydration to losing weight, improving skin condition, increasingee stamina and memory, keeping kidneys in top shape, and many other things. Amazing how ignorant I was for so many years. No doubt I almost died while working in the water and hosing my body all the time without even tasting the water…
I took a shower to get rid of sweat and dirt. While drying myself vigorously with a long green towel, I realized why people feel good after washing. It is not only because of the curative qualities of soap and water, but because while washing and drying, we move our arms and body in all directions. By stretching our muscles in each possible way, we stimulate the blood to rush in all the cells of our body. Feeling so good is not just because we are clean, but because we treated ourselves with relaxing exercises and massage for our tired muscles. After I ate, I lay in bed with a bottle of water next to me, and watched a cowboy movie in which the bad and good guys chased one another over and over on their fast horses. Only then did it strike me why most American movies today include many car chase scenes: it is an iconic tradition to be kept alive for the modern spectators. It is a legacy, all right.
Day Eight
Back to work early in the morning, I promised myself that at the first sign of feeling faint I would walk away from the job. But this did not happen, probably because I drank a lot of water. To the contrary, I have rarely enjoyed something so fully as building my little cascade. Actually, there was not too much to be done, and the challenge was to put a few stones in a precise place in order to create an obstacle that would raise the trickling water above the rest of the pond. It was a real treat for me to show myself how creative I could be. I prolonged the work, just like reading a good book that I wished not to end. In the meantime, using the advantage of dry weather that reduced the brook to a wet spot, I mustered all my abilities to provide my cascade with a platform featuring a large stone with an outside curved edge. It looked great and I could not wait to see the water flowing over the ledge with a bubbling sound. What the fish pond needed next was rain.
Not wanting to waste time, and being eager to apply my experience to the other end of the pond, I began to arrange the blocks of cement to build a much larger and more important dam. I placed and replaced the heavy stones until they fit well. I noticed that my working gloves had begun to shred because the sharp stone edges kept scratching them. The anti-shred glove label clearly did not apply to this situation. Now, this was macho in my book, not the tattoos I see on the arms and chest of the men who want to look intimidating. Somehow, the more out of balance a person is, the more tattoos he or she has gotten—or so it seems to me. It is amazing how many youngsters have the most grotesque pictures inked on their skins in plain view. I wonder how they will explain it to their grandchildren…My macho was not to win a match in a caged ring, but to shred the unshredable and build a dam that did not leak. I felt like a winner!
Thinking about dams…A few years back I went to Las Vegas and visited the Hoover Dam, another supreme example of American ingenuity. I walked on top of it and looked down almost 750 feet to see the real level of the river. More masonry was necessary for this dam than for the great pyramid of Giza and enough cement was poured to build a highway from Las Vegas to New York City. It would take another one hundred years for the compact cement to entirely dry. The dam was built during the Depression in five years by 5,000 workers (20,000 unemployed applied for a job) who created Lake Mead, 115 miles long, with enough water power to supply electricity to a city of 750,000 inhabitants. The entire giant construction cost some one hundred lives and only $49 million to finish. Those were the days when a dollar was strong and could buy a lot. Now there are private mansions that cost more. So far, creating my pond had cost me nothing except the $30 dollars I had spent for the heavy crowbar. Yet, it almost cost my life.
Mobilized by the impressive statistics of Hoover Dam, I decided to wrap up my work on the pond. I went into the shallow water to block the only water exit I still had in the middle of the dam. I simply placed two large stones on top of each other, sealing the only breach in the wall. That kind of an abrupt end felt like ripping off a bandaid quickly to lessen the pain. Unexpectedly, I was completing the last leg of the work. Mosquitoes swarmed, but I ignored them..Unceremoniously, I stepped back and admired my work. Drinking water, I declared myself happy. I now had a better understanding of Genesis…
However, the pond refused to meet my aesthetic expectations. The coming water did not cascade over the platform into the pond as I expected. As water always flows to the lowest point to exit, it dripped between the rocks I had assembled as a cascade ledge and ran flat on the water bed. As for the dam, the blocks of cement I placed one on top of the other left too many cracks between to hold the water inside the pond. The entire thing was like a barrel full of holes that lets the water run out freely. I believed that in time the debris carried by the stream would stick between the stones and self-seal all the cracks. Under no circumstances did I want to use mortar to cement the dam and cascade. I had read mortar would be bad for fish, and I wanted a natural look. What I needed was a good rain to carry the sealing parts into my stone walls. I took some pictures and went back into the air conditioned house to doctor my mosquito bites by rubbing vinegar here and there as usual. Then I lay in bed and watched the weather forecast on TV. It provided ample explanation about air movements, cold fronts and warm fronts influenced by the Gulf Stream. Before falling asleep, I remembered that of all the scientists in the world it was Benjamin Franklin who discovered the Gulf Stream in his first voyage across the Atlantic. For thousands of years, ship captains and geographers ignored one of the most powerful phenomena in the world that was noticed by witty continental Ben.
Two hours later, rumbling thunder awakened me, and I jumped out of bed. It was dark outside with heavy rain and big wind that bent the trees around the pond. All over my deck flower vases had toppled and were rolling against each other. The TV was still on, and the overconfident forecasters with rolled up sleeves explained why the rest of the day would be sunny with no precipitation overnight. Amazing how some people make a living! A simple look outside the window would explain the entire local weather, but the local TV studio and meteorologist are probably inside a windowless building. Certainly, none of them were observant like Ben Franklin who also invented the lightning rod.
At 5:30 in the afternoon, when the storm was reduced to drizzle, I returned to the pond holding an umbrella, only to witness a horror scene: all my stones had been carried away by the muddy and furious torrent of water, scattering them along the overflowing banks. Incredilby, the six hosta pots stayed on the crest of the dirt pile while fifty-pound cement blocks were washed away. The secret is always in the real state formula of location, location and location. The little ribbon of water had turned in no time into an unstoppable flood that carried stones, roots, broken branches and chunks of dirt, all hitting the banks I had carefully “shaved.” Apparently I had done a good job because the pond edges remained smooth and held together. It was amazing to see how in a matter of hours a timid brook turned into a rapid, inflicting strong punches against my heavy pieces of concrete that had scrambled away. Water obviously had to travel to the lowest point in nature or in any body. And thus, my large intake of water kept me awake all night with trips to the bathroom. I needed to find out how healthy it was to trade sleep for hydration…
So my dippy little stream had become a tumultuous torrent of muddy water that crashed against my stone work. At least the flood was not close to my house, safely built on higher ground, with its foundation crisscrossed with drainage pipes that saw outside light. All houses that “settle” with the walls cracking, windows changing angles, and the roof sliding have a foundation that sank unevenly in the wet ground. When the house is in mud, it is worse than building it in sand. Soon, the basement walls will leak and the cement floor will crack to make room for water to exit. Sooner or later, accumulated water will burst through any cement obstacle, causing a nightmare for the unhappy house owner. Having neglected to build drainage costing around $100 means having to pay thousands of dollars to correct the water problem.
On a global scale, I believe there is much more water than we know about. On a visit to the Rocky Mountains, it was clear to me that high altitude waterfalls came not from the below streams and rivers, but from inside the peaks, thousands of feet above sea level. Hidden glaciers are inside those mountains, forcing melted water to go upwards and then to gush into springs. In fact I read that under the salty oceans are sweet water seas with more volume than all known waters documented so far in books. I believe that long time ago meteorites of ice penetrated the soft surface of earth and created their own oceans, sealed by volcanic eruptions, etc. There was no way that our thin atmosphere created the oceans, but the contrary is the case. Another shower of massive meteorites brought salt into the oceans, and others brought life on Earth, including humans. I am sure a Master Creator arranged all these events of Genesis. But according to my Effectology philosophy, many things went wrong during the ages, challenging scientists to throw darts in the dark. Some of them came up with doctored theories to accommodate what we see and know, with a probable cause that cannot be either verified or totally believable.
Darwin’s theory may have merits, but it begins only after everything was in place and humans roamed the planet. The apes may look like us and vice versa, but none of them evolved in the last few million years. New animals appeared because of inter-breeding, and many inferior species were born; the first humans also multiplied in the same way creating many sub-races, like apes. Therefore, a phenomenon of devolution, not of evolution took place. Maybe some extra terrestrial beings experimented to produce superior breeds of humans, but messed up so badly that chimpanzee and gorilla appeared instead. Unsuccessful in their biological experiments, they gave up and left our planet in disgust. Certainly, we humans do not come from the unicellular amoeba that stayed the same for the last 750 million years.
As for fish, they appeared some 500 million years ago and obviously were destined to live in the water, all some 28,000 spices of them. I know that the cartilaginous shark stayed the same for 200 million years and is probably the only creature to regenerate teeth and not to suffer from cancer. A superior predator on top of the food chain, sharks give birth to babies, just like dolphins who are equipped with lungs. Science says evolution explains that fish crawled out the water and became mammals with legs instead of fins. In time, they stood up and led to the human evolution. I wonder how the pre-elephant looked in the water. And try to explain the eternal and unchanged horseshoe crab through the Darwinian theory. On the other hand, water must be in our origins, since unborn babies rest in the amniotic fluid. No wonder we need water all the time to prevent dehydration. After all, we are 75 percent water.
As for birds, all 10,000 species have no jaws or teeth so they can fly light; they are the smaller and light version of feathered dinosaurs that flew away from the cataclysm that killed their heavier relatives. During some five extinctions in Earth’s history, some 90 percent of plants and animals vanished forever. Actually, this favored early humans who faced fewer predators. Science is good in measuring things, showing and explaining proof in fancy terms. But every few years, the theories that seemed written in stone are replaced with new ones. Basically, excepting mathematics, everything we learned in school has no lasting value. I wish I could get a refund for all algebra, calculus and trigonometry I learned but never used, never mind history, geography and political science, all proven wrong. Now there is the Big Bang theory that explains that an infinite nothingness exploded in a fraction of a second and our universe appeared.By the way, has any scientist or scholar explained why the larger a bird is, the uglier it sounds?
In the evening I went to the internet and studied what science said about building a dam. Obviously, my retaining wall lacked buttresses and could not withstand the impact of the powerful torrent. Basically my pond had to respect the principle that the same amount of water that entered it must immediately leave over or around the dam. In this way, no collision of opposite forces would take place. As for the cascade, I would have to redo the platform set upstream. All in all, I decided to go and buy a strong liner to cover the inside of dam. I’d be building a dam easy to take apart or to fix. I needed more cement blocks, even bigger and heavier, so I could place them in a “V” shape behind the dam wall, with the sharp angle down the stream to anchor the entire new structure. Besides my “U” channel in the middle of the dam, I needed to dig large trenches left and right of the dam, level with the pond edges to exit the extra volume of water rejected by the dam. I liked my new plan and I would have been able to sleep well that night, if not for trips to bathroom.
Thinking about bathrooms, which is a kind of taboo subject to talk about, I may say that is not only a vital facility, but also a status for a civilization level. Advanced societies in the past were famous for their culture, arts, industry, military contests, but also for their bathrooms. When I visited majestic Roman ruins of Ephesus in Smyrna, I was impressed not only by the great amphitheater and library, but also by the public bathrooms, well chiseled in stone with running water in front of the latrine hauls with excellent drainage. No doubt Caracalla bathrooms were the product of similar facilities, present throughout the Roman Empire. Napoleon is well known for his glorious military campaigns, but to me, his real historical signature is the sewer system that still serves modern Paris, and the installation of bathrooms in the Versailles palace. Until him, the Parisians threw their chamber pots out the windows in the street. Today we admire British gardens with their intricate maze, without realizing that once entire hidden corners were used by the palatial residents to go to the bathrooms in privacy.
It seems to me that any civilized society begins with lack of lice and beggars, and with decent public restrooms. As a tourist in many countries, I would easily judge the level of popular culture by the state of the restrooms and their graphite inscription on the walls. Here, the bathrooms at any fast food restaurant or gas station are usually spotlessly clean; to me, this is an indication of of American civilized society. A clean environment reflects the commitment of people advanced enough to value cleanliness in every aspect of their lives. It is one of the reasons why the American Empire is still prosperous and strong. Look at the Germans: after all their defeats and incredible losses in people and materials, they are still a model nation, largely because they are clean and orderly.
Day Nine
Because the level of water was too high for me to work in the pond, I took my time and went to buy the liner. It came only in black, but looked sturdy and up to the task. In the same store I saw a large net, also black, that could cover part of the pond where the fish would be gathering at night for shelter; it would also protect them from predatory birds and animals. The salesperson told me that even raccoons back up when they step on a sinking net. So I bought it, spending some $60 in total. Walking alongside the fish tanks in the store, I noticed that each one had a kind of shelter where the fish could hide, or they could play around it. This reminded me that in many internet sites and emails I’d received about ponds there was mention about providing housing for fish where they can take refuge in case of attacks from outside. That could mean building a cave out of stones, sinking hollow logs, or providing vegetation with large roots—but I had something different in mind.
Back home, I found a large, heavy cast-iron fireplace log rack. It had a platform made of parallel bars on four sturdy legs and a frame of similar bars above the platform, and could be covered to provide a sheltering roof. In this way my fish would be able to hide in levels, protected from the top, bottom and two sides. For a roof I chose pieces of wood cut from a 4 x 4 that I tied together with a plastic rope that wrapped around the entire frame. I assembled this on the bank and placed the “fish house” above the deepest hole in the pond. For aesthetic and security reasons, I decided to put a heavy stone on top of the roof, to keep the rack in place. After finishing that, I stepped back and immediately decided to put the net above the shelter as another protective layer. I found some thick wires that used to fortify the cement pieces and placed the longer ones in an “X” above the fish house, anchored on both opposite banks. The entire operation took me a few hours during pounding heat and continuous mosquito attacks. But I declared myself very pleased with my ingenuity.
I took a long rest in the shade under the deck, drinking lots of cold water, washing my soiled body with the hose, and checking my irregular pulse. Looking at my newly created devise which resembled a camouflage net above cannons during the war, I envisioned our civilization vanished one hundred thousand years from now, archeologists of the next civilization finding my fish shelter and the net. I wondered what they might think it was. Also I wondered what the ruins of our highways and factories would symbolize for another civilization which would not have the need for such constructions. Today huge lines of sophisticated design are on the plateau south of Lima, and assumed to be the air strips for out of space visitors. Dated around 1 AD, those stone patterns could have a functionality or meaning that we modern people cannot imagine. I have a problem with the ancient coins that are found and used as a proof that certain populations lived on the same site. If anything circulates and ends up far from its original location, it is a coin, due to its unpredictable exchange. The same principle applies to the graves of warriors, who usually died on battlefields far from their native homes.
Having some practical wisdom from my previous building experiences, I collected all the cement blocks and began to build another dam. I was surprised at how easy it was to build the retaining wall reinforced by the “V” shaped buttress with heavy stones attached behind it. The last touch was the black vinyl liner that covered and doubled the resistance of blocks against the water. I covered the interior wall with vinyl, pushed it inside the “U” shaped dam, and extended its cover over the banks above the water bed. A few cement blocks forced the liner to mold and stay in place. In minutes, the water level reached the “U” exit left in the middle and for the first time I heard the bubbling water falling on the other side of the dam. It was a sound I had waited almost three years to hear. Actually, for most of my life…
However, the same sound was not coming from the real cascade which now showed no water. So I built an even better ledge and unloaded many shovels full of clay behind the platform which made the water level rise as I finished working. Soon, I was delighted to see and hear how my waterfall dropped some ten inches into the pond. The impact created bubbles full of oxygen that floated away for many feet, past the “fish house,” reinforcing my belief that I had a viable pond. I sat down on the piece of dirty board and listened to the combined sounds from the two waterfalls which took me to another dimension of reality. No parent can forget the sound of the newborn baby; the new car owner revels in the sound of the engine; the bowler celebrates the sound of a strike. But for me there is nothing more delightful than the sound of a waterfall between shade trees. Essentially I had created an “illogical” site that now fit so beautifully in my forested property.
I took more pictures. Mesmerized, I thought to myself that I had duplicated in miniature the Rocky Mountains and Yellowstone lakes with their majestic waterfalls. My heart was pounding now with joy, totally oblivious to the unbearable heat, humidity and mosquitoes. It was one of those rare moments in life when anything bad or wrong that happened in the past suddenly vanished in the euphoria of an “awe” moment. It is why we live for moments like these, when happiness seems to have no limit and everything looks divine. This is what it means to be blessed and rewarded for hard work, and, I may add, for a lot of suffering. There have been a handful of times in my life that I’ve felt like I did then. The saga was over—or so I thought at the time. What a good feeling it was to hear the irregular congratulatory bubbling! Just like my exhausted heart.
Triumphant and with a robust feeling of entitlement, I went into the house to drink some cold seltzer water and cool off in the air conditioning. After a while, I stepped out on the upper deck and took a long and proud look at the pond. I couldn’t hear the bewitching waterfalls, and the pond looked small and rather unfinished. I realized this was because the white cement blocks of the dam, covered halfway with black liner, were in such unpleasant contrast to the greenish-yellowish water of the pond, making everything look dirty, improvised, and overall unappealing. Something needed to be done to correct it. I had another “eureka” moment.
What my pond needed next was what many mini-ponds in the world have—an arched wooden bridge. It would span the ugly dam and add a graceful image to the entire area. I looked at the painting of Monet’s Pond of Water Lilies and realized what the entire scene would be without the graceful arched bridge that crowns the entire view. Never mind that Monet became rich winning the French lottery and could afford to hire gardeners to continually improve his garden and pond. In my case, there was no doubt that the pond screamed for a bridge, but not one that was extravagantly placed in the middle of the water, as in Monet’s. What I needed was something big enough for the pond not to end abruptly with a pile of ugly cement blocks. I took a long shower, and for the rest of the day I did nothing but drive around to every lumber and garden store, looking for a bridge.
Driving is a natural time to discover and analyze situations otherwise undetected in a regular schedule. In fact, where else a man can see a perfect strange woman applying mascara while keeping an eye on the traffic and another in the rear view mirror? Actually one eye is mostly close to allow the brush to apply a color around it. How about the most intimate and sexiest part when the woman contours her lips with a lipstick and sucks her lips to design natural lines? Meanwhile her cellular phone rings and the little gadget is squeezed between her ear and shoulder for a lengthy and animated conversation. The mascara application continues and the car zooms ahead. Men of course speak on the phone as well, showing their biceps firmly holding the phone with the elbow high. Most likely they shout angry words as they avoid a near miss collision. I bet the portable phone killed more people than all the guns and wild animals in America.
Happily, men do not apply mascara or comb their hair with large movements of the hand and head. But they do something equally noticeable: they pick their nose by pushing the index finger deep in the nostrils to look for hardened drips that will be rolled into perfect balls and discharged with a finger snap. The best time to attend to this kind of grooming is when the car is stopped at a red light. It is a time of auto brotherhood, when other drivers are dealing with their barking dogs and crying children. This is also when it’s easy to observe the breadth of social and economic differences in one’s surroundings by simply looking at cars and identifying those drivers who have absolutely no sense of civility, as they blow their horns, paying absolutely no attention to the reason traffic has stopped. It seems to me that most of the noisemakers tend to come from communities with many ethnicities, like Los Angeles, New York, and pretty much any New Jersey city. I’d bet that the non-honking drivers live in safe bedroom communities or come from Kentucky and other gentle states. My thoughts keep me company in my fruitless search, until I give up and return home without a bridge and go to where the entire world is for sale—the internet.