Why Am I Doing This?

 

 

 There is one word that definitely does not describe my new life here on the farm, and that word is "convenient." Things are very inconvenient here.

I am 26 miles from the nearest Taco Bell, about 10 miles from the nearest dinky grocery store, and 83 miles from the office of my doctor in Dallas. The nearest fast food is the Dairy Queen in Cooper, about 10 miles away. However, unlike most fast food in Dallas, their food is good, abundant and cheap.

In order to get my mail I have to hike a football field's length through waist-high weeds. I bought snakebite leggings because I once saw a 5 foot long snake here at close range, not quite as big around as my wrist. I didn't identify the type. When I get larger Amazon deliveries, which surprisingly I can get here, I have to truck a wheelbarrow over the overgrown path to the mailbox in order to convey it back to the house.

I poop on a custom-made toilet frame, under which lies a bucket with a lid. When the bucket fills up, I take it out to the compost pile, dump it out, rinse out the bucket and let it dry in the sun. When it is time for it to go inside again, I put grasses or hay in the bottom and it is ready to go again. No plumbers needed. ;)

When I need to do the dishes, or take a bath, this involves hauling buckets of water in from the only faucet out front and heating the water on the stove. Baths can take me 4 hours sometimes. Because my sinks are as small as those used in RV's, I have a big metal washtub to soak the dishes in. Dishes however are way easier than LAUNDRY. I do laundry in a big igloo icebox, scraping the clothes against an old-fashioned washboard, squeezing them out, rinsing them out with a hose attached to the one faucet out front, and I hang them on a clothesline slung between two trees. Out there with the wasps and the beautiful butterflies and the giant spiders and the dragonflies the size of small birds.

If you want a convenient life, I can say emphatically THIS IS NOT IT.

If you want a free life however, this is it. I am very free. My life is remarkably free of bullshit.

There are several interconnected reasons why I am here. The most basic, practical and direct reason is, I do not get along well with people. I am not well adjusted to society, which I am arrogantly inclined to think of as more society's fault than mine. If you want to do well in the cities, you need money and lots of it. This means that either you need to charm and persuade people to give you work because you are such a likeable person, and/or you need to have skills that are in constant demand. And the funny thing about skills in demand are, people tend to catch on that certain skills pay better and so they try to gain those skills too. Also, skills in demand have a talent for suddenly not being much in demand at all. So you can find yourself moving from being a technical brahmin to a nobody with remarkable ease. Urban life is inherently unstable. Since I am the inverse of charming and view persuasiveness as virtually a sin, and don't have skills so remarkable as to make people overlook my prickly exterior, I am sitting on my savings and growing vegetables and living spartan. Not to mention the fact that once an employer gets a good look at my politics and theology, they are going to welcome me into their corporate family about like they would welcome contagious leprosy.

There is another interconnected set of reasons relating to the malignant influences of urban life. Cities have been considered wicked since biblical times. I believe they are, in general terms, bad for morals, bad for human life, bad for raising children, and bad for the planet.

Back when I used to bike to visit my mother in the nursing home, I would always pass by a certain liquor store. In front of the liquor store there was a certain patch of grass between the parking lot and the highway; a very sad patch of grass. It was not unkempt, if only that were the case it would have been less sad. It was mown regularly, and between the sun beating off the parking lot and the heat radiating off the highway it was very sad and lackluster. It was living in the worst of both worlds: nobody would take care of it (in the holistic sense, doing what was good for it) and neither would they leave it alone to take care of itself. It was a small thing, but to me it radiated the same meaninglessness and alienation as the rest of urban life did. There was no love, no care for it. Not even Nature was allowed to care for it.

I know it was a small thing, a patch of ground. But to me it was The City in a capsule. Hatred of meaning, hatred of life itself, all in a patch of scorched earth. Hostile to Nature, hostile to G-d Himself.

I am sure I have spoken elsewhere about how bad industrialized agriculture is for the planet, so I will just drop that in under the category of being bad for the planet. Here on my land, either I am taking care of an area or Nature is being left alone to take care of it. And as a result, life is extremely abundant. More so, than any place I have ever seen. It is the opposite of that sad listless patch of grass.

Bad for human life? There are so many dimensions of this, but just for starters, instability is bad for human life. Nothing is keeping you from losing your job or even everyone or mass numbers of people from losing their jobs. Humans are replaceable by machines in many cases, and more so each day. And then without work you starve, or almost as bad, you make the run of soup kitchens and homeless shelters while experiencing the worst that urban life has to offer. A real and hopeless hell. That ain't good. That is very very bad.

One of my favorite parables about the instability of human economics is that during the Great Depression, apples still grew on trees, chickens still clucked on the grass and laid eggs, and wheat still grew in the fields. The Earth may have taken a knock in the Dust Bowl, but on the whole the country was still able to feed us. It was the human system that failed. And it can fail again, at any time.

Even the good parts of urban life can be bad. Comfort, convenience, is bad for human development. Everyone likes a little comfort and convenience sometimes, but when it becomes a way of life it creates human beings who are unable to stand up to or stand up FOR anything. Molluscs who have no principles greater than their pillows. Humans must be many things, but one of the things they must be capable of being, is warriors. In physical, intellectual or spiritual struggle, strength develops through DIScomfort, and to be a warrior either literally or against the things we must struggle against in this life, is uncomfortable. Wrestling with the natural world makes us strong. Comfort makes us weak.

Bad for children? Well, only if gangs, drugs, alcohol, fast food, diabetes, public nudity, alienation, porn and nihilism are bad for them. Regular exposure to nature on the other hand promotes good qualities. Independence, wonder, curiosity, confidence.

Bad for morals? It seems that the more humans are separated from nature and natural life, the more deviant they become, inventing new degenerate ways of life all the time and holding them up as paragons of progression. In nature, life and energy are the currencies and every living thing seeks to expand its life and increase its energy. In the city, money is the currency and experiences are the things to be desired. Even if the experiences, like drug use, are destructive to oneself, others, or the planet.

Another reason I am here: I believe that evil has consequences. In the Bible this is usually described as G-d's wrath, such as fell on Sodom and Gomorrah, or fell on the Kingdom of Israel and later on the Kingdom of Judah. But whether you consider it G-d's wrath or natural law, I think we are long overdue for a "reset," and not the kind the World Economic Forum has in mind. Economic or civil or natural or political catastrophe. I think that is far overdue, that Covid is barely a down-payment on it, and if it happens in my lifetime, the last place I would want to ever be is in a city.

And so here I am, a hermit in the country. If I am not quite John the Baptist eating grasshoppers, I am not that far off either. ;) It is not convenient or comfortable, but it is good.