Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer
I began my adult journey on the left hand side of things; libertine lifestyle following the military (submission to something greater than self, but for the wrong reasons) which led to a life solely focused on the self and pleasure. I understood this, at the time, to mean that I was fulfilling the true spirit of independence and freedom. What I discovered, over time, was that I was a slave to my passions, needy of the approval of the crowd, locked into a path that narrowed the further I ascended the heights. In short it provided the exact opposite outcome from what I expected; alienation, loneliness, and a profound disconnect from myself the more time I spent alone.
It took me another decade and a half to get back to stable ground once I reversed course, and even then something was missing. I sensed, as a married man with a growing family, that I now had a purpose greater than myself, based on what was good and moral. This led me to both discipline of self in service to something of true value that would outlive me, destiny is the appropriate word in this case, but still I was not settled because there was a missing part.
What I thought I would get from religion, or belonging to a church, was somewhat hollow because I did not recognize that the church itself had abandoned its purpose in the service of modernity. It no longer existed to find a bridge to God, but to signal virtue socially. I sensed it, but didn’t understand that you could find connection to the divine absent an intermediary setting, like a church life.
It was Nature that was missing.
Once we made our move away from the American Dream and towards the fulfillment of our true purpose did I get an inkling of why we exist at all. It took another decade to really understand how the divorce from our connection to the earth and a life in harmony with the seasons and the lives of other species kept us from communion with our Creator. The immersion in work, not for the sake of economics but in service to the dynamics of life and death and an understanding of our place and purpose was the missing piece- for me. As the trappings of the various narratives fell away I realized just how false they were, how obviously shallow and meaningless and yet how alluring and enticing because they hit on all the drives and hungers that exist for another purpose.
I wonder now if this alignment of ideologies and advances was deliberate or an aberrant synchronicity. Industrialism arose at precisely the same time as Marxism, was one the by product of another, or was it an historic hole in one on a par four? The sexual revolution, was it a result of the advent of birth control, or the natural end product of the alienation and isolation of the post modern world? Were the technics we developed- vaccines, the IUD, modern media, automobiles, air travel the result of a society removed from their connection to the land, or the drivers behind it?
It is hard to see exactly where we lost the script and why we gave up such tried and true institutions and traditions like marriage and self-sufficiency in a trade for atomized lives of self-indulgence and electronic distractions. The very concept of happiness is no longer understood to mean contentment with one’s lot, but the feeling you get when you find a way to escape it.
Humans are a strange species in that we do not seem to be able to exist without considering why we exist. No other living thing seems to share that component, content to simply be in the moment. The advantage they share- exempting house cats and fluffy dogs- is that they exist in the natural world absent the distractions of the manifest creation of mankind.
The further we get from that- and we still have such a long way to go we may never get there, tied as we are to the world of modernity even here on the farm- the closer I feel to the Creator and His intentions for me. I wish I had not wasted so many years on this convoluted journey, but am deeply grateful that I have been given the opportunity to take it at all.
I really enjoyed what your piece did for me, setting me on a course of thought for the day that will take me the rest of my life to fully understand. So many threads in this tapestry of life to follow, and all such vibrant colors.
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This is what I was attempting to post, thanks! Then I read the comments about how this is faked edited two different turtle incidents 🙁 . Now I don’t believe sharks have ever been to the moon.
Wonderful piece.
I thought of you yesterday. We had the biggest Memorial day party that we have ever hosted, about 50 people. It took all weekend and part of the prior week to prepare. I was actually a bit upset with my husband to invite so many people. In general, I don’t like being a host to such a large crowd, being an introvert at heart and much preferring a weekend spent on a family hike and topped off with a book on the couch. I think I also worry too much, in general. I worry if the food will be good enough, if everybody gets along etc. I should just realize that it is not my job to make or break people’s attitudes. We provide the venue and do our best, and then people are free to enjoy themselves or be miserable, and I should stop being such a control freak. But as they all showed up and we had a good time, enjoyed great food and each other’s company, it was actually a lot of fun to contribute to a memorable day for everyone. And I told my husband afterwards what I tell him all the time, that we just make a really good team.
I don’t think I have ever been so EXHAUSTED, when I finally hit the bed way past midnight, but with a profound sense of accomplishment and gratitude.
What a great story. You’re right, you don’t need to provide anything more than a place and something to eat and people will make the rest of the event what it is. We love having the 4th no matter the cost or the time involved because all I ever hear are nice things and all we ever wind up with are more friends.
There is a purpose for us, it’s up to us to find it.
Everyone was masked and doing proper social distancing, right?
Signed The Fauch
To those wanting to get back to nature I will recommend this:
Just arrived home from a 2 week road trip to Kentucky.
Stopped at truck stops, dad used to be a trucker.
Madness and collapse is what I saw. US Army hijinks at 3AM. Truckers not taking showers, trucks parked where cars used to park, no room. Screams, moans, beeping constantly, yelling and driver rage.
Employee said it was like this all the time now. Dangerous to collect trash from bins.
Nobs and Hollers in Kentucky, un-vaxxed know what is going on, watching people suddenly die.
Music, poetry, country food and good people.
Bit off topic but didn’t know where to post this.
I have cameras all around my place; I just happened to check the one at the back of the house that points towards the chicken coop and at 6:50 this morning four deer walked in front of the camera no more than 30 feet away which of course happens all the time but in this case one of them was an albino deer. I did a quick search and apparently all white albino deer are quite rare as in one in 30,000.
Comment from one article:
“ There are some cultures that believe seeing an albino deer is a sign of something. In Native American belief systems, an albino deer is a significant sign of prophecy.
They believed it was a sign from the spirit realm of a great change to come to their world. Anyone that saw a white deer should expect a massive change in their life, and soon.”
Interesting.
God so loves you that it gave a sign just for you. It’s called the waking dream. The color white has to do with the spiritual side of us. So, it’s a spiritual gift. I was going to say many blessings to you. But you already have them.
There was for a time anyhow on the Vineyard where me mum used to live a white deer and a black deer,there was a unspoken deal that no one hunted either,were seen for years but at this point am sure old age got em.
Still,perhaps their genes have made it into the poll and they will be back!
Hope it’s not an “Oh shit!” massive change.
HSF. You have a wonderful gift of self introspection. I have also found nature to be a wonderful teacher, and I go out everyday to enjoy it no matter the weather.
I wish I had not wasted so many years on this convoluted journey, but am deeply grateful that I have been given the opportunity to take it at all.
For purposes of posterity, I am embedding a hyperlink here to my response from the other thread.
Your Creators name is Jesus. Do you know what He did for you; His intentions for your life? There’s an easy way to find out! It’s not anything we can dream up on our own. Doing such is paying tribute to the god of our imagination; and that fellow is Gods enemy.
Nature never fails to amaze. Shark brings turtle to boat to have humans remove the rope around neck.
There is a god.
hmm link shows up in edit, but not on post… oh well it was still cool.
Been seeing a lot of interesting animal behaviour vids lately. Probably just the technology time frame (making such cases more available) or is something changing?
church itself had abandoned its purpose in the service of modernity.
Seems to me, those who listen to the advice God gave about cultivating the earth and having in subjection the animals, have always sort of been in ‘paradise’.
The further away one is from a direct give and take life with the earth, the further out on a Babylon the Great tree branch one is.
[All the while ignorant of the dependance and risk.]
All Babylon needs to do is stop the music.
[Cut off the branch?]
And instant catastrophe.
Billions, are way out on those branches.
When the music stops, a good chunk of them will be in serious trouble because they have no direct relationship with the earth.
________
Babylon the Great questions:
Is it a world empire prevening mankind from directly cultivating the earth?
A system that has “outlawed” (regulated from existence) The Garden of Eden?
_______
Thank you for your articles and comments Hardscrabble!
Very Catalytic!
Growing up in a suburb of Dallas, I was an urbane kid. No one was a farmer in my family for the past three (now going on four) generations. Grandparents on both sides were poor and mostly uneducated (school-wise). My parents both ended up doing the same career, court reporting, so they did very well; they were married 58 years; they were able to afford things for us, and themselves, that they wished they had growing up, like dentistry and more than one car and fancy clothes. We were raised in an affluent White town; I went to school there from 2nd grade all the way through high school; we all knew each other; we were all happy. My older brother and I never knew what it was like to have nothing and struggle, which is a testament to my parents.
Though both my brother and I ended up doing exactly that, struggling, some by fate and some choice, in our adult lives, we really never were completely broke, because we had one thing so many others did not: a loving home where we were always welcome, with people who cared about us there. Without family, you truly do have nothing (which is why the modern destruction of families has devastated the inner cities, like Dallas, now).
This point was driven home to me as I ruminated on Life on my 54th birthday recently, as I have no wife or kids. Thoughts of having either of these have become more regret than sadness. I would have preferred to have had a family of my own, but again, through circumstances that never happened.
I used to feel bitterness about the way Life treated me, and towards the military who took advantage of my youth and inexperience, and who ultimately kept me from being able to settle down and get married and such, but now I am just ambivalent. Life happens the way it happens regardless of how I feel about it.
I would not have ever had these kinds of introspective thoughts, however, had I not connected with that which I had missed my entire life previously: the “real” world.
City living is all about kinetics, about motion and energy and, consequently, plenty of distractions to keep you on your toes in one way or other. The lights, the sounds, the smells, the people — the almost-people — the constant pressure from people being unnaturally bound together; nobody has time to think, only react and keep on moving; it is the antithesis of the “country” life.
As I soul-searched in my 30’s, one of the jobs I took was working on a hog farm, just for the experience. This turned out to be a decision which literally changed my life.
Dressed in waders, slopping pigs, power-washing out their shitty pens, my days were not pretty for a few months. I definitely thought about quitting many times; but there was something about the work, something I felt twinges of at first, but the longer I kept at it I understood what those twinges were: Peace. Satisfaction. Actual happiness! I actually loved watching the sun rise, and felt accomplishment at day’s end, something I surely never had done.
Well that was unexpected. What was I doing enjoying the simple country life? Did I not miss the city and all its accoutrements? And just what the fresh hell happened to that awful smell that surrounded the farm, why did I not smell that anymore?
The longer I stayed on that job, the more I learned about myself and the world around me. It’s funny, I learned more shoveling pig shit than I ever did in school. The daily routine, and raising animals from the time they were born until they were shipped away, and the friendships I made there allowed me to join the Circle of Life. I felt like a part of the Earth, and I know it is a part of me, and that we need each other to complete ourselves. We are not supposed to be alone; no one wants to be alone. Yet I was utterly alone until I was able to understand we never are if we stay close to the Earth; we come from it, and it has a spirit and a voice.
This is what I never would have learned living in the city. The brashness of it all is so overwhelming, everything moving on strict schedules and deadlines for projects which usually end up going nowhere, and everybody pissed off and not knowing exactly why. There is no time for anything. A general pall hangs over cities, which you can only see once you leave. Cities are going to end up destroying everyone staying in them in some major ways (it already has).
So yes, base human life taught me that which I need to know — and made the needlessly complex urban lifestyle seem silly, which was the exact opposite of my youthful views. Working with the Earth is like rejoining a family you never knew you had. It is truly a God-given gift, when you feel a part of a bigger whole.
And I never feel alone anymore.
My kids always ask me how much longer I have to live. I think they crave the information that it is a loooong time. I always tell them that humans, if they are lucky, live about 100 years. It is just an easy number to calculate the countdown.
By that measure I have 49 years left. And you have 46. Maybe. Of course it could be just 49 seconds…
My point is, you never know where and when human companionship strikes. Who knows, maybe you’ll get married some time soon?
In any case, it is probably healthy to be at peace with oneself. So congratulations!
You’ve got a 120 year expiration date when you get here, but that is under ideal circumstances. Every sin is like leaving the milk out of the refrigerator all day. Leave it out long enough and that expiration date is no longer valid, right?
Same thing.
They probably don’t realize it, but what they’re really asking you is how good of a person you were before they were born.
Caring for pigs is what brought the Prodigal Son back to his father.
“Submission.”
Fine by me.
Except when, as is all too often the case, Rod Sirling submits for approval, whether I approve or not, that I shall too also submit to whatever it is the submissionaries have deemed necessary, proper, general welfarizing, traditional, etc.
Or else.
Like Spooner, for just one facet of the its-all-the-same-diamond-bit-drilling-your-teeth (“Is it safe?”), I did not sign the so-called “constitution.”
And even if one of those pirate signatories patrilineal precursed me (not … & yet, the curse that has been handed down is all too real) it still wouldn’t constitute a lien. “No Authority.”
Might does not make right. But it gives those predisposed to submission (to higher up…& dominance over lower down) a reason to get up in the morning.
Which, even tho subs are dominant numerically, is never enough & so might also is compelled to seek out & impose, if/to whatever extent it can, its false prerogatives upon those not so predisposed.
“Something greater.”
Well, nature is the greater container. And if I could have seen it clearer at the time, I’d have never left the woods.* Trying to get back.
But embrace & accept & dance with the partner that leads ~ nature … not man or men claiming to represent it … let alone claiming to represent me ~ all sound more accurate, & so better, than “submit.”
Surfing isn’t submission; it is blending. So-called “flow” on a motocross track is an “oceanic” feeling of “oneness.” A feeling. Emotion – just as important as the physicality of motion … or reason.
This has pricked my ears before. Even as you refer to “a life solely focused on the self & pleasure,” the stand-up stuff ~ “needy of the approval of the crowd” ~ sings the opposite song: no self.
Performing for audiences is a fascinating cache-trove map of the boundaries between self/no-self.
The general proposition is The Bard’s bit about “all the world’s a stage.”
You apparently pursued that more overtly, & willingly, for a time.
I was forced to perform, in childhood & youth.
Impressions were made & recorded, by the both of us.
The “authority” of audience. The “authority” forcing submission to audience. The falseness, of every fractal bit, of it.
The performance “biz” is full of self-less people (no “I” there) who believe audiences are anchors to something greater. “We are the Borg. Performance is crucial.”
The Borg is false prophet medication for some earlier inflicted, unresolved, pain/jury.
The Borg is also the ant colony. Social insects so-called are not pro-social at all. It is a caste/d performance. And all hell breaking loose among those ant/i-social creatures is a feature, not a bug.
Mate writes about the “tension” between authenticity & attachment. I put quotes around tension because ‘might makes right.’ A kid’s authenticity has to punch way above weight & attachment will almost always prevail. If the kid even ever got a glimpse of himself, the Borg will erase the memory in most.
Caveat as always: if that’s how it turns out then that’s how the material that was there fated it to turn out. Or “destiny.” Nature is way out in front of nurture.
That “tension” & that typical capitulation has always been the case. Cycles & technology & ideology are baggage carts & cabooses lugged along behind this Trojan/iron/horse. Cue Jethro Tull.
“electronic distractions”
“why”
Thousand stories in the naked city & the swaddled woods. Mostly narrative-need fulfilling.
So … “the principles” that are perennial & immutable *do* travel back in time just fine (no matter who takes exception, or how). And so does “what winning looks like.”
Casting, or recasting, fascism, or nazism, as “reactionary” & so on the side of reversion back to more wholesome tradition/s is crap.
Because it excuses all kinds of trespass & depredation against whoever the designated “other” happens to be.
Steal the euro-jews, other undesirables, stuff, incl their lives; the jap-americans stuff/lives; the American indigenes stuff/lives … whoever, whenever, wherever, all the way back …
… So the trains run on time.
Whose trains?
The might-makes-right-rr’s “gravy” trains.
There’s nothing back there. Not if it must be taken of a piece. The “good old days” are mostly trumped up narrative, too.
What’s the bias, the fallacy, that remembers only “the good stuff” & conveniently forgets all the rest?
Doesn’t matter what it’s called, in words. The action calls it. And that action has much to do with why plagiarizing the past failures, over & over, is so popular. And why that train continues to barrel along, right on time.
The fractal ship of state Pequot crew, to a man, was wrong. And that story is permanent-loop history. And is what “winning” looks like.
The colony is the collapse disorder.
Small is beautiful.
The pain/jured will, however, continue to consolidate. And recreate pain/jury. Perversity. And malevolence.
*Ain’t heaven or utopia. Among other challenges, cue the Deliverance scene. You know the one. Those “people” are out there, in the woods, too. City-dwellers may overestimate the probability of running into Zed the sodomist, but the possibility is part of what informs their fears & loathings.
Nice, HSF.
Nature is a must have in my life, non-negotiable. Also, church is not for me – the community would be nice, but it comes with a price I’m not willing to pay. Would much rather be sitting on top of a mountain. I don’t need a man-made building with fake people to feel close to God.
Great quote, Abby.