The guerrilla fighters
This is an entry from my journal. I comment on how I do not try to control people’s impression of me.
Yesterday morning two labourers came to work at the neighbouring vineyard. Their task was to prune the grapevines. I had to bring the puppies indoors because they are still too eager to defend their territory. The older dogs know when to fight and when to keep a watchful eye. But the puppies lack experience. They need more time to learn when they need to show ferocity and when to hold back. Usually the latter is enough of a deterrent. I am training them little by little and am confident that they will become competent guard dogs. The key is patience: I cannot force things to happen.
At noon the labourers took a lunch break. I went to greet them. My goal was to have a chat in order to learn more about what it takes to manage a vineyard. The labourers are foreigners. They could barely communicate in Greek. English was not much of an improvement either. They told me that their employer was nearby, a couple hundred metres further up the valley. I thanked them for the hint and went to meet this person. He is a local. His name starts with “A”, so for the purposes of this article I will call him “Mr. A”.
Mr. A is in his mid-sixties. I wanted to ask him about the best time to plant new grapevines. My previous attempts have been unsuccessful. He said that the droughts have been harsh and that I should try again this year. Even in March is a good time. What matters is that there is enough humidity and/or rainfall for the first couple of years. If necessary, I should water them a little bit. The grapevines do not need to be watered further once they grow enough. It is only necessary to prune them, which I already know how to do properly.
He then asked me if I am the “guy with the dogs”, to which I answered affirmatively. There are plenty of people in my area who have a dog at home, but I am one of the few, if not the only one, who consistently walks around with dogs. Plus, I have four of them now and they are medium-to-large animals. People will often ask me how do I handle four dogs when even one is already a challenge, regardless of size. I explain that it is not magic. If you put in the time to train them properly and remain consistent in your verbal and non-verbal communication with them, then you get the desired results. Being able to physically handle four dogs is important, of course, though good manners make everything easier.
Mr. A went on to tell me his story. He did most of the talking. “I am a guerrilla like you”, he said “I built my own house beyond the built-up areas, installed solar panels there, and now need to have dogs to guard the place while I am away”. I thought likening us to guerrilla fighters was a figure of speech that did not carry any weight, but he continued down that line of thought: “we fight to the bitter end”, he added. I was maintaining eye contact while listening. What I saw was indeed a fighter, but also a man with deep regrets who was trying to set in motion what he kept postponing for a lifetime. I felt that he was trying to muster the courage to wish something into being rather than merely describe his condition.
I offered to help him with anything he needs for his homestead. As for his impression of me, I made no comment. I let people speak their mind. I do not try to correct them, nor do I wish to elicit favourable opinions. If somebody says something about me, I take it as-is. I am curious to understand their point of view, though I do not question the merits of their position. The reason is that one’s impression of me may be inaccurate from my perspective but is not wrong from theirs. What they have developed up until that point is a function of what they are aware of and the circumstances of their being. Their opinion, to the extent that they are honest about it, is a true reflection of a certain state of affairs. Whether that aligns with the facts of my life, let alone how I perceive of them, is a matter of correspondence between data sets and attendant judgement calls.
Concretely, I was reluctant to commit to the notion that I am a guerrilla fighter. I do not think of myself as fighting against anyone. To my mind, I am but an ordinary villager. I live peacefully in a rural area, doing much of what people used to do for millennia. My life is quiet here. When I am not working on the computer, I spend time with my dogs and/or do manual labour for my house/land. I tend to all my projects with care and, generally, mind my business without interfering in the affairs of others.
I know that my lifestyle is nothing special because this is how my parents grew up. Their parents were peasants as well and so on for all previous generations that we have records of. Same for their relatives and neighbours. It is not until the second half of the 20th century when everyone started treating rural life as démodé.
I live here because it appeals to me. I am not interested in starting a mimetic trend. I think those quickly get overtaken by shallow gimmicks, like with the so-called “trad” wives who bake bread in their cute pink ovens while wearing a ton of makeup and the finest clothes. My relatives, say my grandmother, was an actually traditional matriarch who would have had some stern words for this show… But I digress. My point is that I just do my thing, as I am not fishing for Internet points.
How I became suspicious of the urban life I had is due to serendipity. One day I stumbled across a 4-hour-long music video that emulated natural sounds to induce a state of “deep focus and relaxation”. You hear the water flowing, the wind blowing, the birds chirping, and are supposed to be empowered to act or, simply, to fall asleep easily. To me, this presented an intellectual challenge: if the natural rhythms have a benign effect on me, and if the baseline of what I experience daily is to my detriment, then why do I not reverse the dynamic? Instead of escaping from stress to find moments of tranquillity, I can operate in a calm environment and engage in high-intensity activities on demand.
Those videos can never address the underlying problems. They effectively wanted me to experience an aspect of the world through a proxy. Instead of going out there to get a feel for how it is, I was invited to sit in front of the computer for several more hours, indulging in my sense of comfort. What would I be doing in the meantime, if not to aimlessly consume more “content”? That seemed unhelpful to me. It took me a while to understand what had to be done, but I already knew what the right direction was for me. I had to change my ways, to scrutinise those activities that I had not put any thought into, and to become someone I would be happy with. Since then I decided to partake in the world without intermediaries and to live a life of initiative.
Videos of natural sounds can never capture the complete experience because there is no sense of danger or discomfort. If I am in the middle of some unfamiliar forest after the sun sets, then my alertness is at its maximum. Something primal awakens, which makes me a wolf among wolves. In those moments, I am not my usual self because I viscerally understand that the world is not necessarily kind to me. The cosmos has no favourites. The world at-large does not revolve around me. It does not care if I live or die, if I am happy or miserable. In this world I find pleasure and grief. What prevails is an equilibrium. I then feel in every fibre of my being how I have to struggle for whatever it is I want to change. To try to the best of my abilities for as long as those last, because the universe will not conspire in my favour.
Mr. A is implicitly spot on about a certain behavioural trait: the inclination to put ideas into action. This I do have and am much more decisive than I used to be. It is inherently risky to make decisions with far-reaching implications. There is a chance that you are wrong and there is no way to get compensated for the lost vitality or the years that went by. But how can we ever know if we do not put thoughts to the test? I collect as much information as I can to inform my judgement. When the answer is not clear and I am pressed to make a decision, I let my gut feeling be the tie-breaker.
Ikaros (Icarus) took his flight too close to the sun. In a sense, his was an act of hubris, of trying to escape from the confines imposed on the human condition by the gods. His death was the price he had to pay for such insolence. Though I think of Ikaros as a hero who dared to push against the boundaries in order to discover where the terminus is. Some people have this trait of not listening to words of caution. They only submit to the authority of facts and reason. Everything else is an opinion whose relevance remains to be determined. Conventional wisdom fails to amuse them. They heed the song of the siren, which lures them to the high seas where adventure, treasure, and death, stand side-by-side.
Mr. A praised my integrity. I do not know what made his say that. I barely talked, anyway. All I did was to seek advice about grapes and to then pay attention to his instructions. What I said about myself was limited to my name: “Protesilaos”. Perhaps he meant to thank me for what I had communicated through my deeds and body language: a fight is possible and its outcome is not a given. Those who give up lose before they start. In this regard, Mr. A may be on to something with his metaphor. Though I still choose to believe that my uneventful life in these mountains is not an open conflict with some rapacious establishment, but a mere appreciation of the basics.