#3 The sound of silence …

My heart skips a beat when my phone rings, and I realize I couldn’t have been more engrossed in translating The Ukraine War & the Eurasian World Order, the latest book by Glenn Diesen. Under some notes on my desk, I find my phone, a Spanish number lighting up on the screen, and the thing keeps ringing as I tap and tap a green button on the screen. Anger assails me, and … bugger! I should know by now that when there’s a phone number lighting up on the screen, I’m getting a regular call, not a WhatsApp call, and … I swipe the green button upward—instead of tapping it—hold the phone to my ear, politely say, “Hola,” and hear a voice at the other end ask, “Eres Fernando Rodriguez are you Fernando Rodriguez?”

“Con quién estoy hablando who am I talking to?”

“Eres Fernando Rodriguez?”

“Con quién ...” “Soy Isabella Ortiz Romero,” the caller interrupts, “bufete de abogados Fortuna y Ortiz. Eres Fernando Rodriguez?”

“Un abogado a lawyer,” I reply, still friendly. “Qué bien great! But unfortunately, I can’t help you.”

“Caballero, it’s not a difficult question I’m asking!”

I tap the red button on the screen, swipe some back and forth, tap a blue button under which it reads niet storen, Dutch for do not disturb—I’m Dutch—put the phone aside, and feel the anger that assailed me ebb away as Moos the German shepherd crawls under my desk and bites my forearm.

Moos usually senses when my mood derails, and she rarely fails to get it back on track. I slide under my desk, and we roll around on the floor. But Moos is no longer a young dog. Not too long ago, I had to end our wrestling matches. Now, it’s Moos who throws in the towel after a few minutes. Our noses pressed together, we lie on the floor, and with a wave of despair, I realize how much effort writing, translating, and studying cost me. My non-stop wandering thoughts make it impossible to concentrate on anything that isn’t a physical challenge, and I can’t sit still for more than a few minutes. Yet, I hate myself when I make mistakes in what I write or translate, or when I miss something while studying, which often makes me wonder whether I’ve chosen the right vocations. Then, when occasionally I’m fully engrossed in work or study and my phone rings, anger is usually the consequence, but eh… my bad.

Early February 2024. This morning, it rained harder than in previous weeks in Catalonia, where Heidi—also Dutch—and I live in a small village. So instead of taking her bike, Heidi took the car to the farm where she’s busy with horses every now and then. Whenever Heidi takes the car, I worry. She knows that—though she never says so—and before she left this morning, she turned off do not disturb on my phone. After she’d called to let me know she’d arrived at the farm, I forgot to turn do not disturb back on.

Back at my desk, I translate a paragraph before getting up once more to put the kettle on in the kitchen. I cuddle Moos, pour boiling water on the coffee I scooped in the filter on the rim of our Stanley thermos, and as the water seeps through, I empty the washing machine on the patio behind our house and drape wet laundry over our gym equipment in the living room. Back at my desk again, mug of coffee in hand, I promise myself not to look up from the two versions of Diesen’s book on my screens until ten o’clock.

Good book, I tell myself for the umpteenth time since I started translating it, and I chuckle inwardly as I realize that good, in relation to a book, is no longer a relative term. A book is good if its author is a good girl or boy, and I fear Professor Diesen is a bad boy because he paints a well-documented picture of the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine that differs from the one painted by the mainstream media. And anyone who paints pictures that differ from those the mainstream media paint—whatever the subject—is considered a bad girl or boy these days, which is understandable. Mainstream media journalists—no matter how high their mortgage, no matter how dubious the actions of the owners of the media they work for—would never harm the truth because … well, why, actually? Ah, I know! Because we learn at school that mainstream media journalists are loyal to the truth. Cornerstone of democracy, and … 09:13. No control over my wandering thoughts. I get up for a few chins on the horizontal bar in the living room, and … laundry over that horizontal bar. Push-ups then …

Back at my desk once again and after what feels like three minutes, I discover that I’ve been engrossed in my translation for three quarters of an hour. Good book! I hear no rain on the patio tiles and tell Moos, who looks up as I get up, that we’re going for a walk.

Avoiding puddles, Moos and I stroll along a dirt path, and I try to recall something General Patton once said. If everyone is thinking alike, no one is thinking, something like that. Slowly, ever so slowly, people are waking up from the psychosis they’ve lived in since their parents first pushed them over the threshold of a nursery school, but meanwhile, the train toward totalitarian globalism thunders from station to station. Presidents and ministers come, push new laws though parliaments, sign treaties, and go. A new monetary system, which robs people of all freedom, is taking shape, and the West trembles before the angry Putin, before whom the West must only tremble when it provokes him. In September, the United Nations intends to declare a planetary emergency, and, also in September, vaccination passports will be introduced in five European countries, initiated by the European Vaccination Beyond Covid-19 Project—by what? The WHO is seeking support for NATO deployment during the next pandemic—and is weighing whether mpox might serve as its justification—while study after study shows yesterday’s Covid measures to be the greatest crimes against humanity ever committed. Crimes—growing ever clearer through FOIA requests filed by independent journalists—in which governments knowingly participated. Mainstream media journalists can’t comment on those crimes, for they’re clumsy with timetables, always arriving late at the stations where the train to totalitarian globalism stops, and ... screaming! My heart doesn’t skip a beat. From under my eyelids, I saw this bit of street theater coming.

Every other day, strolling here with Moos—usually with Heidi by my side—a woman cycles toward us or pulls up from behind on an electric bike. Next to Moos, she gets off, grabs her phone, films us, I presume, and screams something about Moos’s missing leash. As we always do, I stroll on, while Moos bites my hand, sensing the woman may not derail my mood but might still be throwing a switch.

As the screaming behind us dies down, the sun breaks through the clouds. The surroundings suddenly look different, and I understand why Heidi and I were charmed by those surroundings when we arrived here about ten months ago. I enjoyed stealing apples from the orchards around our village, but the pleasure of eating apples faded when I learned that the apples here—and those at the greengrocer's, I’m quite sure—are sprayed every five days. A dab of poison on an apple every five days! Poison that is manufactured, packaged, transported, spread, and ultimately ends up in the air, in the earth, and in our bodies.

According to the United Nations, the world population will have grown to about ten billion by 2050. Because mainstream media journalists unconditionally accept what the United Nations says as truth, I regard what it says with some skepticism, but I can’t deny the world population is growing. Often, I meet people telling me the Earth can easily house more people, clothe them, and provide them with apples. I eh… I don't think so. And thus, I can’t help but understand the people who got that train toward totalitarian globalism on track.

Africa is the largest contributor to the growth of the world population, and only a few Africans received that dab of poison meant to keep their supposed fear of Covid at bay. Covid passed Africa by—a truth to which mainstream media journalists are not very loyal—but still, two months ago, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, inaugurated an EU-funded BioNTech factory in Rwanda, guaranteeing the annual production of some fifty million mRNA vaccines. According to the EU’s website, those vaccines will keep the people of Africa safe from almost everything that could possibly make them sick. Team Europe Initiative—team what?—is racing to complete another factory in Senegal. Once that factory is up and running, vaccine equity will be a reality, and as I wait for Moos—who’s not in any hurry at her age—I think of the American Naomi Wolf, whom I recently interviewed.

What a woman! According to the more than 2,000 doctors and scientists she works with, the research data released by Pfizer—under court order—show that Pfizer took quite an interest in the effect its mRNA vaccines have on the reproductive organs of the rats that starred in the research. After Heidi edited the interview and posted it on YouTube, it disappeared from the platform within minutes. YouTube informed us that our ability to generate income from the platform has been blocked until we complete a re-education course YouTube offers to bad girls and boys, and eh… man, I go to lengths today to derail my mood. But I know how to put a stop to that.

Back home, Moos lets herself fall onto her dog bed. I move the still-wet laundry hanging over our gym equipment in the living room to a drying rack on the patio, tell Moos I’ll be out for a bit, grab my bike, and ride into the sunlight. Avoiding puddles, I race along dirt paths to the city of Figueres, to a gym that offers harsher workouts than I get at home, and as I reproach myself for getting too worked up about what’s going on in the world, General Patton stirs in my mind and says, “Better to fight for something than to live for nothing.”

It’s busy in Figueres. I chain my bike to a tree in front of the gym, and … Monday! The gym busier than usual. Towels and water bottles litter machines and benches. Young people, headphones on, hunched over their phones, sit on yet other machines and benches. The music is loud—a lot of boom boom over metallic, half-singing, half-talking voices—and my thoughts wander to Schopenhauer, the philosopher, who regarded music as the language of emotions and was firm that noise disconnects people from their reflective nature. Mumbling “Hak” to a youngster who takes the towel I picked up from a machine out of my hand, I realize that just a pinch of Schopenhauer’s erudition in each of us would be enough to shunt out mainstream media journalists and switch the train toward totalitarian globalism onto a stop block ...

The language spoken in the gym is Berber, of which I know only a few words. No problem. I’m in a gym to work out, not to talk, and chuckling inwardly once more, I think of my first and last tribal conflict in this gym, a conflict bound to come about when I tapped a youngster—sitting on a bench, hunched over his phone—on the shoulder and motioned for him to let me do my thing on that bench. In the blink of an eye, five or six youngsters gathered menacingly around me, and I realized how uncomplicated tribal conflicts are compared to Western conflicts. None of the youngsters around me could know how powerful my tribe is, so ignoring them, I went on doing my thing on the bench the youngster I’d tapped on the shoulder had vacated—to appear more menacing standing than sitting. As I’d anticipated, my new friends dispersed. Western conflicts are more complicated. Westerners provoke and provoke, and when someone’s had enough of the provoking, filming phones come out, and the provocateurs shout, “Police, police!” or, in case the provocateurs are politicians, they shout, “War, war!”

Since that conflict, youngsters make machines and benches available to me. I mumble “Shokran” whenever that happens, and … boom boom over a pleasant voice, no longer over a metallic, half-singing, half-talking one! The Sound of Silence, though not by Simon & Garfunkel. The hair on my arms suddenly stands on end, and tears burn in my eyes. In restless dreams, I walked alone … seven … eight … nine repetitions. I get up from the machine on which I’m doing my thing and wrestle with Schopenhauer’s language of emotions until The Sound of Silence morphs back into the familiar boom boom over metallic, half-singing, half-talking voices. I lower myself onto the machine I just got up from for another set, yet again chuckling inwardly. Anger, difficulty concentrating, unreasonable worries, and mood swings! A psychologist would cut me to shreds, and I realize how lucky I am to have grown up in times when psychologists didn’t have the power to Ritalinize the fun out of my life. Had they, it would surely have gotten me halfway into one of the cattle cars behind the first-, second-, and third-class compartments of that train toward totalitarian globalism.

Twenty-five minutes after I walked in—mumbling “Beslama” to those who look up from a phone when I pass—I leave the gym feeling dizzy from my workout, the chances small my mood will derail again any moment soon. I unchain my bike and ride out of Figueres. In a straight line through puddles, I race home along dirt paths, and I don't notice myself somersaulting when I hit a hole or stone in a puddle. I land on my backside next to my front wheel in the very puddle that hid the hole or stone I just hit. As if in slow motion, I see my bike topple over, and … man, I feel happy.

The sun dries me and warms me pleasantly as I lie stretched out in the grass next to the puddle I fell into, eyes closed, breathing over my midriff, my thoughts momentarily not wandering to truths like the sacrifice of Ukrainian, Russian, Palestinian, and Israeli youngsters to the West’s current aversion to erudition—call it an aversion to absorbing truths offered by bad girls and boys—by which the West disconnects itself from its reflective nature.

Not for the world would I want to be disconnected from my reflective nature, but neither should it dominate my thoughts as it did this morning. But as luck has it, nothing regulates my reflective nature better than workouts, wild bike rides, and sunlight. No psychologist would ever advise that, which is understandable. Such advice and maintaining a mortgage don’t relate well to each other, and … and the vision …

                                               that was planted in my brain,

                                                               still remains,

                                                                               within the sound of silence.

Life is beautiful for as long as we don’t disconnect from our reflective nature. Once we do, we inevitably end up in a cattle car. Schopenhauer, stretched out beside me in the grass, hands behind his head, fingers intertwined, says, “People take the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world,” and as I try to come up with a wiseass remark, Patton, stretched out on my other side, arms crossed over his chest, growls, “I told you this morning, son: if everyone is thinking alike, no one is thinking.”

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