4/25/2020

i am in a fever to cycle through my routines in ever higher and dizzying heights. progress. spiraling progress...

unfortunately, one of the plants, perhaps the oldest, the one remnant from my first generation of aquaponics plants, is suffering from what i believe to be a scale insect infestation. i have tried to prune the dead branches, and clean off the scale insects, which look like white powdery dots. i have sprayed the plant with neem oil... but it seems as though as the day progresses, the more the plant degenerates. even the healthy branches are now seeming to droop. it's getting to the point where i suspect that there are deeper problems with the plant. i noticed, as i clipped one of the older stalks, that there was some kind of white worm thing hanging out in the woody hollow of the stalk. maybe that's the culprit?

this again highlights the vulnerability of planting anything outside. while nothing replaces actual sunlight, putting plants outside makes them extremely vulnerable to attack by a multitude of invisible pests. i remember earlier this year when some sort of moth attacked my zucchini plant. the zucchini plant had been the model of healthiness, producing large yellow blossoms, and at least 4 zucchinis. and then, overnight, it died. when i looked closely at the stalks of the plant, i noticed the telltale holes, which resembled the spaced holes of a flute... it angered me, it filled me with despair. but what can you do?

i suppose i could try to construct some sort of greenhouse. or screen the plants off. but i'm not sure what the tradeoff would be. i mean, would i reduce access of MYSELF to the plants? and would i be cutting down the amount of available sunlight that the plants accessed? not sure... all i can say is, it seems as though attacking pests is usually too little too late. by the time you notice there's a problem, the plant is already irretrievably lost.

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not sure...

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what is it that i want? and what dreams fuel the actions i take? and are those dreams consistent, morally, with my present self? and are those dreams rational? should they be? at times, it seems that the motivations for things don't necessarily jive with our present structured self. i know all of these are constructs: present, structured, self. but we need this convenient fiction to survive. and, again, we invent these illusions, these notions of progress, these goals and objectives, in order to pretend movement. because movement is important. (why?)

one thing i haven't been doing much of is meditating. it's hard to clear that space and time amidst this quarantine. there is no silence, or privacy. and people demand attention. (as they should) but i'm not sure if meditation will actually lead to something productive. more often than not, it is the acid bath that dissolves all of my fictitious efforts. or rather, it makes of my efforts a fiction that i cannot believe in or adhere to... which leads me into this soup of waste. which i hate. i idealize life as being one that is productive. one that does not hesitate. one that moves when it should, and stays still when it should. i don't know how else to put it...

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reach. stretch. do not regress... (but maybe all aging is a regression, a folding in, alas).