on composting poop

A few weeks ago, the poorly-installed plumbing in this modest little home sprung another leak. Not the first but the third dripping section of pipe so far this year, the holes appeared inches from a major and intricate intersection of copper tubing a few feet past the hot water heater. Having already performed two other repair jobs and feeling more than up to the task, I took it upon myself to cut out the entire intersection and replace it with plastic tubing and push-on compression fittings. Naturally, my local home-improvement stores did not have in stock the parts I required, and I am still waiting for the correct parts to be shipped to me from the Internet retailer that sent me the wrong parts two weeks ago and has since been dragging its feet correcting his error. (Seriously, how hard is it to tell a 3/8” compression fitting from a 1/2” one?)

Living without faucet-borne water has forced me to make a number of changes in my life: I now import drinking water in from the outside at a cost considerably greater than that of pumping it up from the well; I now wash my dishes using rain-water collected in a 25-gallon cistern with the same water I use for clothes-washing (which I have been doing by hand in a collection of specially-designed buckets since the beginning of summer, anyway); and, most drastically, I have begun to defecate outside and to compost my feces rather than filling my toilet's reservoir with water from the stream twice or thrice a day (I have begun also to collect my urine instead of just pissing off of the balcony, spreading it over the growing mounds of leaves so as to speed their transformation back into dirt). I have not shit outside regularly for some years now, but beyond my feet getting wet walking through the frigid dew and having to assemble a nest of leaves upon which to catch my soft-serve excrement and with which to carry it over to the nearest composting sites, I find it nearly as enjoyable and not much less convenient than dropping deuces on the porcelain throne.

What, you may be wondering, are some of the benefits of shitting outside and composting one's turds? For one, as I am squatting and hugging my knees I can watch all the little critters as they move about in the grass, which trumps staring at a tile floor or re-reading old copies of Popular Science magazine, any day. A second benefit is the return of all of the unprocessed nutrients and trace elements contained in my shit to Nature's own growth cycle (I will be applying the compost to my gardens, come springtime). A third benefit is that I do not have to haul thirty-pound buckets of muddy water up from the stream multiple times a day, drag those buckets across the living-room carpet, or clean up the spills I make at the toilet's base when trying to pour their contents into a gap a few inches wide that sits four feet up off of the floor. Will I continue this practice once the proper fittings arrive and I can turn my jet-pump back on? I might. Will I choose to believe John Seymour's Guide to Self-Sufficiency, which urges the reader to compost his solid wastes rather than pumping them into subterranean holding tanks filled with bacteria, or will I revert to the old and tired ways and deprive the land of that which it needs, coaxing from it a lessened harvest? Handling feces is not the most pleasant of tasks, but when using a proper nest of fallen leaves or freshly-cut grasses and basking in the knowledge of just how good it is for making things grow, I may, someday, think it OK.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

on the United Slaves of America

Do you often drive to malls and to other places of direction-less shopping, only to buy something you don't really need? Do you buy the newest gadgets just as they are released, spending your hard-earned money without a second thought? Do you while speaking in polite company wax suddenly poetic about television shows, explaining their plot-lines instead of making conversation, speaking emphatically about people whom you do not know personally and who do not actually exist? If you have answered Yes to any of these questions, you are more than likely self-enslaved to conspicuous consumerism, to driving around in your car wasting gasoline without a clue as to your purpose, to accruing superfluous debt, and to staring at the compelling and intricately woven tales that emerge regularly from a flickering plastic box (which you likely bought at high price and labored diligently to mount upon your living-room wall).

Can you imagine living now, today, without electricity? Can you imagine living in a world in which electricity were in sporadic or limited supply? Can you imagine not being able to purchase, at any time of day or night, as much cheap gasoline as you to wish buy at any one of thousands of separate, well-lit retail locations? Do you consider resource-conservation, composting, and recycling to be a waste of time? Have you become so addicted to your pocket computer that your mind has lost its ability to reason, to recall important information, to think for itself, or to keep itself occupied past the setting of the sun? If you see a reflection of yourself in any of these scalding but poorly-worded questions, you are a slave to Big Oil, a slave to your own automobile, a slave to electricity, a slave to your electrical devices, a slave to the white men who own the electrical companies, a slave to the coal that makes the steam that runs the electrical plants, a slave to the railways that transport the coal, and a slave to the whims and fancies of the fat-cat fuckers on Wall Street who trade in and control the price of coal futures (and who, by fiat, trade in and control you and your ability to Pursue your Happiness).

If you are a self-respecting, happiness-loving patriotic American, you would do well to fight self-enslavement to any external thing, person, device, physical condition, and state-of-mind. The patriot is self-sufficient in order to preserve his country's limited natural and national resources and to make sure his (self-imposed) need does not affect his country's ability to provide for the common defence. The patriot does not rest her hopes and dreams on external conditions such as bandwidth speeds or back-to-school-sales – rather, she maintains a pure and loving heart into which and from which all the Blessings of Liberty flow; she keeps her heart in its nebulous state and denies herself all but the basic necessities; she is a tough and hardened operator who minds not cold, heat, nor personal privation – she focuses rather on providing for the general Welfare, on establishing Justice, and on forming a more perfect Union in her own life and, by extension, in the life of her vast and beautiful nation.

A mere one hundred and fifty years ago, we Americans went to war amongst ourselves to battle the evils of slavery (among other reasons), yet now, in 2012, we pay good money to enslave ourselves willingly to TV shows, digital gadgets, internal home lighting, pillow-top mattresses, rich and fatty foods, automobiles, shopping malls, and gyms. One of my ancestor died fighting the evils of slavery, shot by a sniper's bullet during the battle of Vicksburg; by remaining vigilant to the ever-grasping, ever-enticing tendrils of our ridiculous modern society and of their power to destroy my virtue, I shall make sure his sacrifice was not made in vain.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

p.s. the author would like to point that he is no less a slave in these matters than most other Americans living today