Translated by Kirill Bobrovsky. Published in English for the first time
- Let me visit my mother! I'll stay there some time and be back soon, really!
- It's rather peaceful for you to stay with mom. No one will disturb you. However, you will become estranged and forget about relationship. No!
- I'll heal myself ... Maybe, better feelings will come ..
- In Shakhty?
- Lena Yakovleva invites me to the parents' farm - to see the real nature!
I lost contact with him for almost a whole summer. It was possible to eat raspberries (with a taste of sour milk), apricots, honey, rabbit. We wanted to buy another goat but my temperature suddenly climbed a little high and I refused from meat. "You shouldn't behave in such a way" - I often said to my wayward body: "I will eat only what is listed in the book of healing remedies, and you will simply have no opportunities to get sick! "
In such a way honey with chicory roots and burdock began to be consumed, linden tea, and occasional fish were also brought to the ration. My half-destroyed teeth hopelessly turned yellow as a result of two weeks of such nutrition. The body temperature was still rather high. A trip to the land of shepherds with Lena was expected as a panacea. We moved to her parents' house, which was the only one left - surrounded by real nature itself. In my thoughts I would like to touch the present, listen to myself and understand, finally - the real way of my life. Lena told that her grandmother found some mushrooms growing in the steppe and that she had personally eaten chacon, grass roots and berries in her childhood ... We consumed everything medical on the first day after getting from Veshenskaya to the farm - everything we managed to find: blackberries, currants from plantations, buckthorn ... The whole evening was subsequently spent on running into a "small wooden house".
- Where shall we move today? - asked Lena (she could not look at the buckthorn and I couldn't imagine any currants).
- We will gather some blackberries and will eat them with honey (honey, of course, was consumed not using spoons, rather applying bowls).
- Parents want to slaughter a goat or a turkey, asking what is better for you.
Preference was given to the goat ... A country life was hard with all my weak powers. I didn't want to be a burden and heroically volunteered to go and gather some blackberry unaccompanied by Lena while she went to the kitchen. There were very few berries, we had barely collected a glass for two of us after "hunting" twice a day.
That's why there was much time to think.
I went to the ravine and deliberated a lot. Nature conceived me as a woman, and I was partly glad to "get rid" of my man. It was easier personally. Of course, if I hadn’t got married, I would have survived for some time not changing anything in the ordinary way of life. Mom would have made juices and food for me and my being would have been given to journalism and theatre. No, it was impossible to imagine! Loneliness came, I sought for him. Remember how I had prayed for unthinkable happiness — for not to die in that autumn, just to stay with him. Had it been possible to imagine staying with someone else? Having run away from Sasha, I went against nature, run away from my destination point! Everything was wrong! I was striving for him, the path was rocky and long, would he wait for me?
The walk took quite a long time and I finally saw the ravine. It seemed possible to collect blackberries. I went and wandered, but could not find anything. Looked around once again. Visited the other one - found just a few berries. Maybe cows or goats had eaten them… The thought to move the dress up occurred on my way back - just to sunbathe, at worst. The roar of an engine was heard in the distance, I barely managed to pull the dress down - it was a motorcycle. Lena's father and Fedya - her brother, drove it.
- She was furious, sent us in order to look you. She thought that you had lost you way in the wood.
Lena met me with tears.
- What are you doing?
- And you - so much time! I thought you had felt bad and had fallen ill there!
Lena did not forget how they had called an ambulance to the hostel. I had cried the whole evening on that day because of a trifling quarrel with Sasha, and my convulsions had begun, I was frightened by Sasha and Lena, whom he had called. It had been a different way then! I had been able to get rid of a headache, soften the cough and calm the organism down, breathing according to Buteyko. I hadn’t allowed myself to wind up my nerves before the exam in order to remember the whole amount of information in 2-3 days. The main thing had been the following: how would I remember so much and how would I complete everything: I need just to calm down...
Fedya was patiently catching a small fish, which he didn't get subsequently. However, he tasted some goat meat. I was forced to refuse from imperial claims due to swollen gums. Most likely, such meat was not the root cause, it simply revealed the impossibility of chewing tight.
Was it scurvy or vitamin C deficiency? I could have imagined such diagnosis when I had eaten porridge with meat, peas and roots previously, but what was the situation at that very moment? My organism consumed some meat for the first time in a month, and I ate berries, honey, and occasionally - fish for the rest of it ... A conclusion would occur at home by opening some reference books: vitamin C was not absorbed in an alkaline environment, the need for it increased with a lack of full-fledged proteins. Of course! Once I had already guessed that scurvy had not arisen from a lack of vegetables in cases of polar travellers, rather appearing from absence of real raw meat! The expedition of Komsomolskaya Pravda had already thought it out in its northern travel and took the order of feeding applied by indigenous people - everything turned out to be fine and success!
The nature of Thomas the Unbeliever would force me to experiment once again and to make sure that the guesswork was correct. I would write my own book by the autumn, having arrived to Oryol. The book's name is "Food diary: attempt to rhythmization". The strong desire to join the natural rhythm and live in harmony with it encouraged me to stick to the natural plant food for 2 days and to record my feelings every day. I considered honey and mushrooms to be products of "customization" and they were put at the diet base. I'll give some excerpts here. (Information from the diary).
October 23-24. Ate some bird cherries and got very cold.
October 26. Bird cherries gain, hawthorn, a lot of pleasant mushrooms - everything was consumed easily.
October 27. Getting less cold
October 28. A lot of honey - thirst, cranberry removed it.
October 30. Wanted hot pepper = birch catkins - complementing them with the following:
- some mushrooms which are sweet;
- another ones which tasted like macaroni;
- bird cherries which were like an ordinary cherry;
- acorns which were very sour.
November 1-2. Lots of mushrooms, honey and barberries. Lower abdominal pain
November 3. Got hoarse. Body temperature - 36.2. Hawthorn - numb fingers.
November 5. Mushrooms, hawthorn, honey - the taste of curd.
November 7. Ate some roots (burdock, dandelion), temperature has risen up to 37 C, scurvy, reddish nose.
November 8. The deficiency disease was facilitated by arrow wood and mountain ash.
The twenty-day rejection of meat and fish did not wake the voice of nature in me and the stomach, accustomed to dictates of the reason, required anything and was just whistling quietly: "I want to eat, I want to eat much" "What shall I eat?" It became clear that the temperature rose not only from consumption of animal food (although honey and mushrooms were not exactly vegetable food, strictly speaking). Probably, roots enhanced the processes of substances burning in the body and a counterweight to roots of growing plants could be represented by fruits - those ones which grew on trees. However, would fruits be natural in the Oryol climate?
It was the last conversation with Lena in her homeland. We were walking on the plucked grass, and I asked her why it was so difficult to feed themselves in that land and who had devastated its fertility: people or cattle? Lena explained to me that it had been the steppe. The nature was stingy in itself and it didn't bring so much generosity as the forest. Now I know: you can find a wild apple tree and a pear tree in the forest besides mushrooms and berries. I persistently looked for wild apples - how did they taste? Someone said that they were green, another ones claimed that red "Chinese" variety represented real wilderness. I was visiting village inhabitants and wandering around trees. It was possible to find something and get oneself concerned with things taking place in the world: apples with dimensions of a bean, a match head, their sour - acidic, sometimes they turned to be sweet, yellow, pink...
I met owners of two different apple trees of the "Chinese" variety not far from the bus stop in Luzhki (Oryol city district). The old man had once worked in a pilot farm and had taken a sapling from the number of defective ones. A huge apple tree had grown and brought small apples, which acquired a wondrous taste after freezing. The owner ate them himself and fed his rabbits. He allowed me to collect as many as I could since a great amount of them had fallen from branches (frozen fruits were not appreciated by him for some reason). Owners of another apple tree were young spouses. Their fruits were denser and resembled vanilla curd after freezing. They also allowed me to pick up apples remaining on branches and on the ground from their big harvest for the whole winter. I tried to explain the extraordinary value of such live treasure but the old man died, other people bought his estate and spouses apparently decided to plant a wilding after a year or two. The familiar crown were not seen when their house was passed by.
... I was late for the bus: I was looking for wild apples in the collective farm winter garden, where no one had checked or protected them. Red and brown apples were more impressive, however - not as delightful as in Luzhki. On the other hand, there weren't any owners and my soul didn’t ache from the bureaucratic behaviour. The cold weather complemented my courage and I stopped a truck. Upon learning about my travels, the driver asked if it had been frightful.
- Why should it? - I became interested too.
He did not respond immediately.
- Well, wild boars often come to look for apples. Locals are apprehensive about them ...
I got out and handed some money at the entrance to the city.
“We don’t take money,” grinned the man.
- What do you need? - I was amazed.
“Kind,” he smiled again ...
The biggest personal treasure in the world was represented by apples in my bag at that moment. I could not suspect anything else under the word "kind". I laid out two handfuls of apples and said goodbye. Since then, I began to fear those wild boars in the collective farm garden and went there less often, completely ceasing this habit when the warm season came.
An internecine war broke out in the morning of a frosty day. It arose between the desire to stay warm, read or knit and conviction of being mandatory to go through so much, to freeze and to learn something new on the way to recovery. The temperature in our room was about 20 degrees with the weak heating. There was also minus fifteen outside. The inconsistency with nature amounted to 35 degrees. Every minute of stay in heated premises represented a step from the nature and from natural self-regulation. I wanted more liquid, fruits and vegetables because of the heat. The wolf appetite was awakened and unambiguously hinted at the meat after some exercises in the frosty weather. The swollen throat and haunting feeling of cold suggested that the cold winter dictated information to the body through walls and windows more than a warming hug. It was interesting even if I tried to concede and ate apples and nuts just sitting in warm premises.
Meat was a real personal enjoyment during that winter - for the first time. I cut long thin slices from the whole goat bulk frozen on the balcony and consumed them. They were unusually tasty and I wanted this 12-pound bulk to never end. However, it was necessary to stomp kilometers again in 2 weeks, visiting surrounding villages and looking for goats.
Their owners often decided to take impressive sums and said that goats were very good: fat and fed by bread. They didn't know thoughts which their words caused in me.
- It would be better to feed them with the grass and foliage...
- We did exactly so! - they reassured me - The willow was eaten, the whole summer with the grass.
I put up: where could I get the real meat at that moment! Sometimes, I noticed a figure in the distance: it was dressed in a white robe and skied - and thought that there had been people who knew and ate hare and other game despite all these red books and various bans. I wanted at least a little bit. Just out of curiosity - how does the real one taste? Wanted to feel, touch - to travel to another dimension, another world ...
Not everything is dependent on a man, however, the self-help capabilities are limitless. Convincing myself that the matter was not in hares, I solved a long-standing problem once more: seasonality of the food. I took up the research of ancients about seasons and health, having grasped its idea at the Vera's seminar: it was impossible to make a discovery without tracing historical roots of my interest. The consonance of received information with my problems was very striking in contrast to the latest publications in periodicals on the topic of nutrition. Mostly facts and figures were taken from contemporary sources - not thoughts.
I wanted to share them with everyone and even wrote a letter to the magazine "Chemistry and Life", hoping that they would publish it. Here it is:
A series of articles on the diet provided by the candidate of medical sciences M. M. Gurvich caused me to be perplexed. It was especially difficult to argue with such authors as Gurvich, since they reflected to only generally accepted errors. However, I tried.
A modern investigator quotes the ancients. For what? It is clear that everything new arises from the old, continues to evolve or turns the obsolete ideas over, building a correct theory. Why did Gurvich quote Hippocrates, why did he interpret information from the dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron (“Diet is a food regime established for healthy and sick according to the age, physique, profession, climate, seasons, etc”) ? The researcher does not intend to destroy or develop provided definitions, as already forgot about them in the next paragraph. Moreover, the author of the article "Dietetics for all" (and subsequent: "Diet and heart", "Diet and weight") gives pieces of advice directly opposite to those accepted principles of therapeutic nutrition, principles which were discovered by the ancients. (They are covered in the "Book of Antiquity and Renaissance: Seasons and Health"). I would also like to bring a quote from the Hippocrates' research and prove its depth in comparison with the lightweight advice of M.M. Gurvich.
"It is necessary to arrange a way of life in accordance with the age, season, habit, country, terrain, physique so as to resist the upcoming heat and cold, because only in this way the best health state can be achieved".
Considering this judgement and definition provided in the dictionary, similar parameters and principles of a scientific approach to the nutrition procedure can be distinguished:
Hippocrates:
Age; Season; Habit; Country, terrain; Body type
Brockhaus, Efron
Age; Body type; Profession; Climate; Season
Man is a product of nature and is subject to its eternal cycles (birth - maturing - procreation - death). Human beings depend on cosmic changes as well as on climatic conditions in a place of residence, including changes of seasons. The secondary factors generated by human activity - professional affiliation, physique (today's people have significantly “grown up” compared to their ancient ancestors) and other parameters - are called neoplasms in correlation with stated conditions.
How do rules proposed by M.M. Gurvich (ration variety, adherence to a diet, etc.) agree with canonical principles?
The magazine "Chemistry and Life" was distributed throughout the Soviet Union, it can be read by residents of Evenkia, Kazakh, Siberian and southerners. People living in different climatic zones, receiving a certain dose of solar radiation per year, consuming water of a certain composition, medicinal wild-growing herbs, berries, accustomed to a certain type of food, were developing their organisms over the centuries (in which way can we replace slices of raw meat and fish for the Evenka?). Now they should follow the advice of M. Gurvich, diversifying the customary diet immediately. Northerners who want to improve their health condition should immediately rectify the situation using unknown vegetables and fruits, drinking kefir before sleeping and expecting miracles from such a "curative" intervention of M. Gurvich in their lives.
Avicenna and Hippocrates wrote about the connection and influence of the change of seasons on people's health, “After all, stomachs and diseases are changed together with seasons” (Hippocrates). Such conditions as the increase in solar activity, taking place in spring, as well as its decrease in fall, radically change the metabolism in a human body. Everyone knows from the own experience: a person eats more plant food in summer in comparison with winter. If we call for help and science, the following will turn out: the need for vitamins contained mainly in animal products is significantly reduced in summer. Thus, vitamin D is taken from the subcutaneous fat layer (ergosterol) under the influence of sunlight; the need for carotene - provitamin A contained in plant foods (the active sun eliminates carotene from a human body as well as from plants) is also increased instead of vitamin A. There is also a certain obstacle actual here: vitamin B12 protects our body from radiation, it is not found in plant foods. Though, shall we eat meat in summer? Not only and not so much: mushrooms also contain B12 and are able to heal a person (especially living in the middle Earth belt and to the north).
The organism is rebuilt to a winter wave in autumn and the weakening sun controls its restructuring. Despite abundance of fruits and all plant products, our life is becoming more and more burdensome: the lack of vitamin B also becomes actual. The need for this element is increased in case of complementing with two conditions: cold season and abundance of carbohydrate products. Consequently, vegetable food is processed worse and worse, pyruvic acid is accumulated in the body, diabetic phenomena are also "collected" and disappear only with transition to the meat ration. I’ll make a note that no diseases are easily cured in modern life because of the extreme artificiality of our food, its averagedness, universality, especially when people in cities all over the world consume the same products in same hours, according to M.M.Gurvich. Averaged food is the result of humanity development, perhaps, it is sad, but definitely not the ideal for health, as the author of the article presents it to us.
A separate conversation is deserved by the age principle. I am convinced that rules proposed by M. M. Gurvich are not suitable for any adult person, as well as for any child, because a growing organism is subordinated to a fundamentally different program in comparison with those algorithms in accordance with which it grows up and continues participation in other processes. Milk, which absorbs all substances necessary for the growth and development of an organism, requires tremendous enzymatic and secretory work, which is also almost continuous. It is a serious activity required by a growing body. Let's imagine: a child has become an adult, secondary sexual characteristics have been formed, the body has been rebuilt from the “program” of growth to another one - procreation, the rhythm of life has changed, tastes have also been substituted (another note: tastes do not change in present life, rather - they become distorted because of the same artificiality), for example, because of the strong food contamination with salt, sugar and other unnatural additives. Therefore, a person, suffering from "hidden" fasting in the childhood chronically, continues to consume milk when becoming an adult and still has a craving for sweets).
In my opinion, it is worth thinking about primary conditions affecting life keeping processes, adhering to the materialistic point of view on the world. Further they are also required in order to really support existence and not to invent "empty" rules which has not saved a single life of any person.
Recommendations given for all and in all life situations are not suitable for anyone in reality. If we speak about general laws of nutrition, universal for people of the Earth, then it is necessary to say that they are more likely to be found at the junction of many sciences.
The department’s editor responded, that in his opinion my point of view was somewhat similar to that expressed in the magazine and sent the letter to M.M. Gurvich. The irony with which I conveyed this story to my mother remained misunderstood completely. Mom saw only a factor of stress as its basis - a kind of risk to my poor health. She had also dramatically changed the attitude towards my writings on the gastronomic theme. My native settlement Shakhty became a hotbed of revolutionary views on food thanks to N. Semenova, enthusiast from Rostov. I was brought to the matter by Galya Evetskaya, whose mother had been a pharmacist and had worked with mine once. My mother was afraid to admit, what I owed to Galya, even 10 years later, because Galya was socially condemned due to her lifestyle and unreasonable spending on food. Mom often recalled urine therapy and frowned (as well as other doctors of the city) hearing the name of Semenova. She could observe how uninspired Semenova’s life had been and was afraid of something similar happening for me. The lack of medical education was the reason for everything - “cut your coat according to your cloth”. In short, mom asked me not to write about food.
Who was the author of words that spring was the most beautiful time of year? I did not feel any joy. Probably, I behaved in a wrong way; it was rather easy to prescribe something like "winter food in winter, summer food in summer". What about spring-autumn? The book of antiquity treated them in the same way: they were transitional seasons. Avicenna: "Know that doctors' seasons are not the same as astronomers'". The bottom line is that two main seasons - winter (cold) and summer (heat), as well as two transitional periods have an unequal length in different countries. There are places where it is almost always winter and there are those where it is almost always warm. Probably, their residents have no problems with the choice of food. In case of our locations, spring and autumn are also very different from each other, like winter and summer, their difference is obvious: abundance of autumn gifts and barely appearing spring greens. All animals eat grass in spring, I follow their example, but I feel even worse: back pain, heaviness in the head appear together with other problems. Considering the experience of several past years, I know: I will feel better only with appearance of the first strawberries. Staying unable to reach "dawn", I usually buy berries brought from the south and the state of health becomes better. However, it seems that spring is sometimes piling on others. Masha got ill before graduation in school. She played the role of Lipochka in my graduation work and I was affected doubly. Masha lived in Donetsk, but she loved Oryol very much. Her mother’s birthplace was here and she had been taking her daughters to the distant village every summer for more than thirty years. Subsequently she began to bring her grandchildren there. Nadezhda Ivanovna was already in the village with her grandchildren at the beginning of June and Masha dreamed of going to see them before the next exam. It was my cherished desire to visit the Oryol outback and I offered her to go there together. Our travel was the whole adventure, crowned with acquaintance with the Rogovskiy forest. According to the custom, having greeted the trees, we began to pick strawberries. The boys wanted some new experiences and the company went further, calling us. Masha stayed with me, we gathered some berries in silence - She did not even hurry me. Her responsibility was more than the hostess’s concern for the guest. It was akin to Lena’s feelings. Masha put all collected strawberries in a secluded place in a small kitchen where we lived and when Slavik - the youngest one - stretched his hand to take some, she said that they were kept for Aunt Lena and he could eat something else. I stood nearby and felt strangely... I felt like Volodya Chernenkiy when he tried to implement my recommendations many years later. Volodya had an unbearable feeling, which was affecting him much more, for he was a man and a father. He was used to being aware of himself as a person who gives everything to those he loved. That’s why all valuable and tasty means were not taken away for the whole endlessly long year, exactly as I had asked to do...
Masha brought mushrooms - they were completely white - and sadly said that she would very much like to eat them with everyone but didn't have an opportunity to do it. It turned out that she had been very ill in the past year or two: it had been a real poisoning which had occurred after eating of pickled mushrooms. Listen, - I said: firstly, you ate mushrooms in winter, not in the right season, secondly - the body should have been prepared and cleaned in order to consume them. Today you will not taste any dairy products, you will consume an oak leaf at the beginning and subsequently - will get some mushrooms - and everything will be OK! Masha took a chance, she really took a chance for she was still weak after that heart attack. (Everything went well, she admitted that she still did the same even five years later: an oak leaf and mushrooms). I noticed Masha's attention to the interrelation of trees and mushrooms when we wandered together in the oak fores, where many white ceps had grown. They stay together naturally, but people take only mushrooms, forgetting the foliage. The same fact is true about acorns – in the past poor people ate them since no bread was available, for example in Leskov times. Who can consume an acorn now? It tastes like a pill - and we can chew it grimacing and drinking something after. Masha listened to my speeches and revealed some secrets to me - to my blind city eyes.
- What is it? - I stopped near a lush tree-bush.
- A hazel, - answered Masha.
- So, are there nuts on it?
“Of course!”, - Masha laughed: “locals sack them in autumn”.
She did not suspect how shocked I was. Here it was - the most natural food, grew even in Oryol forests! Where had my eyes been before? Unlike mushrooms, nuts are suitable for winter too - this food is dense, it includes protein, fat. Later, I learned from one book that different nuts were the first bread of a person, like acorns, however, I thought that this position had been held by mushrooms!
The idea of natural life was tested in Rogovka. I once opposed it to the buying and selling relationships. I didn’t want to purchase any mulberry, rather looking for trees with no owners: managed to collect some and tried to provide myself with mushrooms and berries - the problem was solved not in the ordinary way. I was going to wilderness believing that the matter was related to devastation of near-urban locations, and there it was... was everything mine? People lived here unlike the Vyazovskoe case, but they rarely went into the forest, there was no competition for a small river where fish had been caught with no more than a palm. Villagers were usually engaged in their gardens in addition to the collective farm work, they were just mowing grass for cattle and watching sheep and cows. Time for collection of mushrooms or berries was given only to children and to us guests-holidaymakers.
Masha asked me to make a haircut for a neighbour on one of the rare non-rainy days - it was a friend of her summer village childhood and I was delighted that at least some useful skills were available in non-urban life. In such a way I got down to business. Masha was talking about my "client". It turned out that he was a very brave man, a hunter, went alone to search for boars in winter.
“I wish you had such a husband”, - Masha joked looking at me: “he would feed you!”
I had somehow calculated my potential winter diet actual by that time: a small goat herd should have been considerable: I would have got 10 heads, also complemented by a whole flock of geese and some rabbits. Even a husband-hunter could not solve such a huge problem in a real way. However, it is sometimes funny to take yourself by the chin and ask: "What if?" I dreamed about a village house, another man and my new life instead of our room. There was a vision: a deep pit and I was there, full of hopelessness. Why on Earth? Once me and Lena were building a dream-idea related to the intellectual life closer to nature. It was important to preserve dynamics of spiritual development without removal of our bodies from those earthly nourishing juices. The centre of reason could be anywhere - I declared this fact in the heat of the moment. Actually, all mine and Lena's powers gained in Vyazovskoe were spent to prey some food (berries, roots) and thoughts were not taken away from earthly concerns. Lena admitted that she hadn't had enough time to gather right products in rapid city life with all this newspaper work and endless business trips. She did it when she met me a few months later. I reassured her that I hadn't really figured the matter out, I often barely dragged my feet, spent a lot of time to check the influence of one matter or another on myself, including that resulting from hundreds of products, finally - this whole thing was my life, and I didn't know if Lena needed experiments or results?
It became obvious after my tours into nature: I couldn't afford a solitary life in the middle of nowhere. How did I pick up the idea of recovering on my own, was it possible to imagine such a thought to be generated outside a strong aggregate mind? Once somebody gave me a samizdat book of Bragg and Walker, my mother had been told about articles in one magazine, Amosov's research was found in the library, Mikulin's one- in the book store and someone provided Dilman's works... I had gained momentum for data searching due to my inclusion into the information space and even managed to save my life and become a mother. I was totally agree with the statement: information is the material strength! Shivering appears in the process of reading works of G.R.Gromov: "In case of the observer from far space the phenomenon which we call the “information explosion” would look like a flash of radio waves in the meter range, belonging to the “star”, approaching the Sun in terms of its brightness and staying in place of the planet Earth, which is cold for billions of years” Oddly enough that city life with all its alienity to nature, which is comparable to a cancer tumour - city life which kills everything with its gases, cancerogenes, hypodynamia - simultaneously generates an intellectual light being able to save more than just the Earth ...
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