Tuesday, September 13th 2022
With the cold weather coming, Russia has taken to attacking the energy infrastructure. These are in fact acts of terrorism. It’s about coercion, strong arm tactics and dominance. It is the MO. It is how the Russians do business and it is how all Russian supporters do business. It is how those who have adopted this way of dealing with each other here have been acting since the Russian started expanding in 2014. It is the way they do business.
In America, we see the exact same thing from the conservative Republicans. They don’t particularly care about ethics and they don’t particularly care who gets hurt, they just like applying pressure as long as it keeps the flow of money going towards themselves.
I don’t really think it’s a matter of symbolism. I think it’s a lot simpler than this. It’s not that we need to support Ukraine for the idea that we like this or don’t like this, I think it’s more of adopting a lifestyle that steers away from harm causing enterprises.
Understanding that the power of Russia comes from money they get through sale of their natural resources. Right now they are playing with gas and electricity but really, it’s the oil business that fuels this more than anything. We have to get it straight in our head that we need to minimize our needs to move around. We have to minimize our lifestyles so as to preserve resources. We have to remove ourselves from the coercive elements of the world. Basically, we have to stop feeding the machine.
This terrorism that is happening right before our eyes and Ukraine is not symbolic but it isn’t a lot different from the pressure put on all of us to keep running around and driving all over the place and flying all over the place trying to stay ahead of some economic curve. We have to choose more sustainable ways of life and ways of doing things that simply do not allow the oil business and the conservatives this kind of power. We simply cannot allow them to manipulate us. I’m using the pronoun we and us because I’m talking about the entire human species. We have to rid ourselves of this poison. We have to find a better way of life.
***
It’s really early. Here in September at 52° north latitude, where only a short time ago you could say that the Dawn was already beginning to show itself, now it will be dark for much longer. You can really tell the difference in the light. The yellows and oranges leave the spectrum and everything seems to be blue and gray all the time. Even in the middle of the day, there is a sense of dimness. You really recognize it when the light fades here.
There are lots of different types of energy that you can feel. When I used to live in town, I noticed the difference from when the students would come into town in September and would leave in the summer. There is a State University in Pinsk. It was noticeable that when the students left, there was a lot less electricity. I’m not talking about the kind of electricity that runs your lights, I’m talking about an electricity to life. You feel a little more alive, the town seemed a bit more vibrant. There was more human activity basically. This was not pure economic activity as what is considered most important these days. It was just the physical act of people studying and participating. You could feel it.
Because of this movement, the Summers always felt slow and lazy. There was simply less electricity in the air. People would take it easy in the summer and this was the flow of life.
Now the place is filthy. This used to be a beautiful thing to my eyes about the place. I liked having this ebb and flow. Now the town has miserable air quality and it is always filthy and poisonous there. The cars never stop running along the main arteries, it’s too loud and too noisy and the air is always miserable and it never stops. The summer is no longer a lazy time because the same Auto traffic dominates everything. The river no longer is a clean place to rest. The water quality is awful, algae blooms are showing the runoff from agricultural misuse. The fish have gone away and now when I see people even walking along the main traffic roads, they seem to be survivors of some ongoing nuclear Holocaust or something. They seem doomed to illness and misery and poverty of course.
Here in the village, it is the opposite. We don’t really have any children here. There is no reason for children to live here. For the most part, The villages used to have their own life but now you would think it would be a place for people to retire to. This is for the most part true but we have our commuters who bring the pollution with them. I don’t really pay any attention to my chicken neighbors anymore but there they are like clockwork stealing the clean Air and poisoning everything when they run those stupid cars. They break the piece and throw pollution in the air. I’m sure they believe themselves to be good people. I’m sure all criminals believe themselves to be right in some way.
The air also gets bad here because of people who choose to burn charcoal briquettes instead of wood. There’s a difference between wood smoke and charcoal smoke. Wood smoke has a sweetness to it. It doesn’t particularly bother you so much. The charcoal though has an acrid stench, a poisonous sharpness to it and it tends to make me cough. I noticed this when my ex partner was up here and we were outside organizing our new plants and trees. I was only standing outside for about 15 minutes and suddenly developed a cough. This is directly related to the chicken people. It is so unfortunate to have to live in such close proximity to such miserable things.
In my own world, we are getting into the tens outside. I guess this relates to the 40s Fahrenheit. On a basic level, it really doesn’t take too much energy to stay warm. It’s not yet becoming completely uncomfortable to go into the office so I still get to work in there. I did my English lesson in the office yesterday. It’s a pleasant place to sit and work. There’s a lot more light in there and it has a much more open feeling. In the winter though it gets very cold there. I find it almost impossible to sit in there for very long. As good a place as it is in the summer is as miserable as it is in the winter.
The warm room is smaller and more compact. It’s built around its fireplace and stove. This room could be made more efficient and even warmer with a little bit of work and effort but it’s not horrible the way it is. We get used to it. And really, I have my own problems in life and I don’t really need so much space to move around. I am pretty comfortable in here. I have access to everything I need and can stay pretty warm and comfortable.
I am in a little bit of pain this morning. I definitely overdid it yesterday. I don’t think I hurt myself but I definitely spent more time walking around then I have. That cane was adequate support but there was a lot of activity here and having one free hand let me do a lot as well. This morning my leg is really sore. I gave it a good solid beating yesterday. Not injury, just soreness.
I’m looking at a similar day today. There’s going to be more activity today and even this week. We are getting ready for winter and there’s going to be quite a bit of work that needs to be done here through the end of September and the beginning of October. It looks like the garden is going to get the attention it needs ahead of next year. Hopefully next year I have less problems and less pain and can maybe even enjoy the warm weather when it comes.
Again though, this is a much different world than it was 15 or 20 years ago. It is a much different world than it was before the Russians decided they were strong enough to start bullying everybody again. This is a much different place than it was before we decided we needed so many cars. This is a much different place than it was when we were all just squeaking by on the most modest of economics but trying to do it gently and kindly. There is no gentleness anymore, there is no kindness anymore and now the place stinks and is rotten from all the poisons that we put into the air, land and water.
That’s the problem really. I seem to be making a small investment in Hope. I seem to be doing things to invest in the future, that there might be something beautiful in the future to look forward to. But at the same time I don’t see that we have a beautiful future because all the things that are actually beautiful about life are being chased away in pursuit of money. And we are doing it as early and insensitively and blindly as possible. We are doing it as loudly as possible. We’re doing it with as much pollution and disregard for the ecological needs of the land and water as possible. We are too brutal and the world is absolutely sick and suffering because of us.
And it’s not like you can talk to them. You can’t reason with alcoholics or conservatives. You can’t ask them the point of all of the narcissism, the selfishness and the self-indulgence. You can’t ask them to be moderate. You can’t talk to them at all.
They get violent, you know. They get abusive and violent when you bother them. They get violent when you push against their stupidity and brutality.
Perhaps someday we will come to our senses and rid the world of the disease of the brutal people.
Personally, I don’t believe we will. Most pragmatic Russian thinkers do not believe we will. Nobody believes that the Russians will come to their senses or that there will be any peaceful end to the war. I mean, look at what they’re doing now. They’re being driven out because they have no way to hold their position. But in their exit, they have no other thought in their head except to cause as much damage as possible to civilian infrastructure. They just never stop causing harm, do they? In every minute of every day and in every moment of interaction with them, they never, ever stop causing harm.
It’s too early to get going. I’m not going to be needed for anything serious for quite some time. Maybe I’ll just go back to sleep for a while. I’m not hurting anybody by sleeping.
***
Kherson is going to fall back into the hands of the ukrainians.
***
It seems my friend in California just can’t stop being a climate denier. It gets irritating sometimes. I mentioned to him that it’s getting cold out here and he said that the temperatures were over 100 Fahrenheit where he lives in Northern California. I said my usual business about people needing to get out of their cars and be more conservative with their gasoline resources and he answered that high temperatures are normal for this time of year.
I hate when people talk like this.
So I did a quick Google search and found a couple of interesting links.
How is climate change affecting the Bay Area?
Bay Area public health is threatened by a number of climate-related changes, including more extreme heat events, increased air pollution from ozone formation and wildfires, longer and more frequent droughts, and flooding from sea level rise and high-intensity rain events.
What does climate change mean for California?
Heat waves are becoming more common, snow is melting earlier in spring—and in southern California, less rain is falling as well. In the coming decades, the changing climate is likely to further decrease the supply of water, increase the risk of wildfires, and threaten coastal development and ecosystems.
And this from https://www.smcsustainability.org/climate-change/
Climate change is here, and it poses many risks to the built and natural environment in San Mateo County. Rising temperatures and heatwaves, wildfires, extreme storms, sea level rise and coastal erosion are some of the challenges we face. Both the Climate Action Plan and the Adaptation Collaborative help us reduce our emissions, prepare for the effects of climate change, and coordinate decision-making and knowledge sharing within the County.
Not that I believe this is going to have any effect. You can’t be reasonable with conservatives or alcoholics or any other drug addict type people. But then just as I was finished doing my due diligence to back up my statements, I got this notice from www.weatherandradar.com, one of my weather apps:
Wildfires producing elevated air quality
Big western wildfires, driven by a major year’s long drought and a hot and dry summer, are producing unhealthy air across the West. The government’s National Interagency Fire Center is reporting 93 large fires burning across the western U.S., with two large ones developing this weekend. Year-to-date, wildfires have burned more than 1.1 million more acres than at the same time last year. Each fire produces a shroud of smoke that is picked up by local and upper-level winds, spreading the dangerous smoke far away. On Saturday, smoke from the Mosquito fire burning in California’s Sierra Nevada west of Lake Tahoe spread across Reno, Nev., about 100 miles away.
The thing is, I just get a little tired of saying the same things over and over again without any effect. It’s not a matter of mysticism and it’s absolutely not anything about Superior intelligence or secret, under the table knowledge. I personally think it’s just common sense and a willingness to look and say what you see.
When Ghenna came by for his second shift, absolutely as expected he was already a little bit in the bag. As we were heading over to where he was going to paint the steel we would use to trellis the graves, something in the conversation LED towards drinking and I mentioned that he was already drinking. He turned and smiled at me and tried to deny it. I’m not violent about this point and I do not take anything away from him or give him anything specifically because of his personal habits. One time, I asked him to quit a job early because he was falling over drunk while working with a rather dangerous gardening instrument and I didn’t want him to get hurt or destroy anything on my property. I didn’t punish him and I paid him for coming over, I just sent him off for safety’s sake.
Yesterday when this conversation happened he looked at me as if to challenge my own senses. This is pretty typical of drug addicts and conservatives. Of course I couldn’t possibly see what I saw. But the answer is actually pretty clear. I personally don’t drink, I eat a vegan diet and therefore I am as sober and sober as sober can get. I also have a functioning memory, a sense of smell and enough personal knowledge of life in the world to know what I’m looking at. There is no deep mystical Sherlock Holmes going on here. What is is and usually you can see it simply by being willing to have a critical look at something, a quick and reasonable examination, and then you know. I’m sorry, it’s nothing more than that.
So I pay a lot of attention to climate change and therefore I have a knowledge base accumulated personally because of all of this work. Anything you practice at, you get better. The more you do something, the more knowledge of that thing you have. This is true for my new Young English student, and this is true for paying attention to the environment.
Like I say, I really wish I understood how to talk to people so that they might understand my point of view. I wish I understood how to talk to the State of Florida and their judicial system. I wish I knew how to talk to the men’s medical establishment. I wish I knew how to talk to my polluting chicken neighbors. And I wish I knew how to talk to my conservative California friend. I wish I knew how to pass on practical information in the hope that I might get some help. I’m not really asking for anyone to kiss my ass for any reason whatsoever. This is not about personal dominance or narcissism on my part. I just think that perhaps people like to have grandchildren and stuff like this and perhaps we would all like a little more hope that there might be a world to live in for the human species. And in my case, for all the living things inhabiting the planet Earth. Currently, this doesn’t seem bloody fucking likely for too much longer.
I don’t know, let’s ask the oracle:
How do you speak to the stupidest generation in the history of history?
Like I said, I’m not the only person who thinks like this or notices these things. We just don’t seem to be strong enough to push back enough to be effective. I don’t know, we seem to have all the money and resources and interest in fighting wars. I wish we had the ability to wage war on our own stupidity.
***
It’s 3:00 in the afternoon and today has been a tornado of activity. It’s hard for me to find the exact words to explain this. There was something in the air today that I felt when I started moving. I had a lot of ambition. I just wanted to do things. It seems like wherever I was, I would look and see something that needed to be done and then instead of blowing it off, I just started doing it.
It started with this tray of beans and peas and broad beans that we harvested. Everything was sitting on the table drying out but nobody had touched anything in about a week. For some reason, and again I would have just blown this off normally, I just sat down and started doing the work. It wasn’t that hard. Farm production work is not that big of a deal. And when I was done, I even separated some coriander seeds and found myself able to throw away all the residue exactly where it’s supposed to go.
On my way back, I noticed the first box I built. I guess you could call this the salad box. This is where we planted most of the fragile lettuce and spinach and this sort of thing. We stopped planting it a while ago and it was just sitting there growing weeds. I decided that I had enough leg to do something about it.
I grabbed this two-pronged cultivator and started fluffing up the ground a little bit. The point was to get at some of the grass that had grown through. This two-pronged cultivator is excellent for ripping out grass. The tongs go deeply into the land and the way they are shaped, the grass just gets pulled to the surface and is easier to get out of there. It’s one of my favorite instruments.
Two things happened as a result of this work. The first was that my leg was on fire by the time I was done with it and the second was that Ghenna was at my door with a pile of wood he had transported on his bicycle.
This project is becoming kind of complex. I have a bench out in front of my house and I have a roof over my well that gives protection from leaves and also serves as a place for the rope to be pulled up on a gear. The house is old and the posts have gone bad and started to keel over. My guess is it’s been sitting there for 10 years and it’s on its last legs. Ghenna has been pitching me to rebuild the bench and the house. He pitches it or has tried to pitch it as a matter of aesthetics. The bench actually still works although it leans to one side and the backrest is already broken pretty Badly. It is a functioning place to put your ass if you’re tired but it looks very old.
With the ability to get hay and fertilizer in whatever amount we need without problems for the first time since I’ve been here, it’s hard for me to say no. It’s generally hard for me to say no right now.
Ghenna said that he had until about 4:00 to help out. What he wanted to do was build that bench. What I wanted to do was to transport some fertilizer to this box I had just cleaned up and he jumped on it like he had nothing better to do in the world.
Let me tell you something about captain Ghenna, when that guy has the ambition, he is a go-getter.
We had a long conversation about how to button up these boxes to be ready for the springtime. Basically what I was thinking of was what he was thinking of. His best idea was to put sawdust on top of the fertilizer and then cover everything with hay. I still have a bunch of bags of that topsoil we bought and he agreed that that would work pretty well too. We can still get sawdust if we need it. Honestly, I would rather use the sawdust as a toilet composter.
Anyway, the potato box was completely empty and he thought it was a good idea to get in there with the cultivator and he cleaned out all the potato residue and pulled up all the grass out of there as well. Then he brought another card of manure, spread it around and we covered that with more planting soil. I’ll tell you, those are the two prettiest boxes right now.
I also want to say that the lasagna that I set up in the springtime for the soil in these boxes looked really good. When I was running the cultivator through there, you could see that there was some richness in the soil. I remember the day I saw my first worm in there. I was so happy. The trick is to have living soil. This is the trick to no dig, that and mulch, and I am into it. Next year, I think we’re going to be much better than this one.
At exactly that moment, the ex partner called up and said that she had gotten a line on 10 tons of topsoil. The cost of this was also not very much at all and the quality seems very good. This is another thing I wanted to do last year. The ground we have was not very well cared for. It’s mostly sand anyway because of the proximity to the bog. But years of whatever they did out here have left the place very lifeless. Yeah, we needed more water, that was true, but there really wasn’t very good fertility in the mid and lower gardens. I was bringing in wheelbarrows from the forest but ran out of legs before I could finish.
It is still possible to gather leaves from the forest in abundance. Where the land inspector marked me out, I don’t even need to go very deeply into the forest. I seem to have everything I need even on my own little property. I’m just saying that really good organic material is available here. After this year, with all good hopes for the future for some better health and mobility, I am good to go till the end of days for this Garden. We are finally giving this place the upgrade I wanted on the first days I came here.
But we were not done. The ambition was in the air. Would you mind if we started working on the grape plants? Not at all, let’s do it! Another wheelbarrow of fertilizer, another bag of planting soil and we measured out exactly two and a half meters from the house. The line needs to be straight because we’re putting four plants on one fence and four plants on another. We dug three new holes, filled them with water, fertilizer and soil and sank three more beautifully healthy great plants and said prayers that they should live, be healthy, make lots of children and block my view of my neighbors completely. Amen.
After that, we kind of hit the wall. The ambition was still there but conversation became more interesting than all this physical labor. That was when I knew that we had pretty much done a good job.
This was when the difficulty happened. This is always exactly the same. I have never effectively learned how to have this conversation quickly. This is the place that requires the most words.
He asked me how much I would pay him for the work and I asked him how much he wanted. This is the same conversation every time. Nobody wants to say money. He doesn’t want to give me an estimate and I don’t want to feel like I’m giving gifts. Eventually, I was the first one to break and I mentioned a ridiculous amount of money that would never be true. Not low, hi. He immediately countered with an amount for his help that was probably correct but in the moment seemed ridiculously low. I immediately broke out the calculator. We needed to do this in a business like fashion.
On the table was today’s help, the work and the materials for the new bench and the work and the materials to put a new roof and roller system over my well. In addition to this, he had a neighbor with mystical potatoes and he said he had a bag for me if I wanted them. Let me tell you, according to the story, this man never uses chemicals. He just knocks the bugs off with a broom and then gathers them up by hand and carries them away. He doesn’t like using poisons and he doesn’t like using anything that’s not natural. He is a potato artist.
Of course we had to do the money thing about the potatoes. I made the mistake of saying how much money I gave to Lena for my neighbors potatoes and Ghenna’s eyes popped out of his head. Was I crazy? Nobody would pay so much money for a bag of potatoes. I said that maybe it was Lana’s cut that made it so expensive. She needed to get paid for the work. Ghenna smiled at me with great wisdom. Women would get you every time.
Not to digress too far here but from what I have heard from local gossip, Lena has been spending time with Vanya lately. Sometimes the universe just works perfectly. It has been a hell of a party.
Anyway, I counted up the price he gave me for today’s help, the bench and the well and a more reasonable price for the potatoes and then rounded up a little bit and sent it off through the air. 2 minutes later his phone dinged and he looked at the amount I had sent and some warmth came over him. I think it was the right number. It was a little high but not so high as to insult anybody. I think the most important thing was that I was trusting him. This is a lot of money to hand someone like this and there are people in this town who would shake their heads at me for doing such a foolish thing.
I don’t know what to tell you. It’s complicated but I trust him. we may get some weirdness especially if he starts drinking and there is a good chance that he won’t come back today. That was the last big argument we had. He assured me as sure as the sun comes up in the morning that he would be back at 5:00 to do this bench. He is sure of that and he absolutely promised it would happen. All the while that he was doing this and knowing that I had just handed him a definitely decent amount of money for our current economy and situation, I kept telling him that tomorrow was as good as today or even better. If he had reached the end of his ambition and was ready for some Day-O, come Mr tally-man, tally me banana, I am the last one in line to say boo. If this guy’s got the bank to crush a couple of bottles and disappear into whatever depression or loveliness he knows, I’m happy to sponsor this part of the party. The guy saved my ass today. The guy did work that made me happy that it got done and that I could not do myself. I’m not going to say word one.
Anyway, we don’t know. As of yet, we just don’t know. If this is the end of the day, I’m okay. If this carries on till tomorrow, this is okay too.
In fact, I really did try to tell him that it would be just fine if he wanted to get this stuff done tomorrow. We were all talking shit at that moment and my best claim was to tell him the Bible story of Jesus telling the leper that he would do the work on Wednesday.
“Please, Jesus, I have no nose and only one ear. Please heal me!”
“I will heal you, my friend but let’s do this tomorrow. Today is Tuesday and I am all healed out. Tomorrow is Wednesday, an equally holy day if not more holy. Let’s get to your nose here then and you will be happy in the light of the Lord”.
It got a laugh but we still don’t know what the story is.
All I do know is that my growing area is getting a massive upgrade. We’re getting some good fertilizer in there, we definitely are going to have enough new topsoil to dress it all and we are going to have enough straw to blanket everything throughout the winter and act as the very best mulch. After that, we’re going to have enough leaves, compost and organic material to keep these beds fed and healthy.
Of course, nobody’s going to stop driving their cars. They’re not going to stop fighting the war. They’re not going to do a damn thing about global warming or stopping this damned slave economy. Nobody’s going to do anything about the alcohol problem or the narcotics problem or the fact that nobody has any money or a life worth living anymore. Nobody’s going to stop destroying the morale of the troops and just as nobody’s going to stop destroying the morale of people who live under these God damned conservative bullshit clown governments. It’s not going to stop and the rain is not going to come back and all of this bullshit that I’m doing is pure clown work.
But today felt good. Today felt really good. Today, there was ambition in the air. Today, some good things got done.
***
It’s 7:30 and it’s finally time to close up shop here. I’ve had my dinner. Pea soup. Maybe you could call it split pea soup but truthfully, I didn’t cook it long enough for the peas to turn completely into start. I like the creaminess of this but I don’t really have patience. I guess you could call this a new soup. If there was anything interesting in it, it was that almost every single part of it came from my field. I ground some fresh coriander in with black pepper and added it. The coriander was mine too.
Ghenna managed to return a little earlier than he said. He had a sack of potatoes on his bicycle. These were the magic potatoes he talked about. When he opened the sack and I took a look, I was a bit taken aback. They were absolutely beautiful. They were Giant, clean of cuts and so full of life that it seemed a different kind of vegetable than I have been growing or have seen at the market. It’s hard to avoid sarcasm sometimes when people talk things up. It’s another thing when suddenly you are actually looking at greatness. I gave it its own place in The Root cellar so it’s not to mix with the other stuff. Seriously, these potatoes are no joke.
Ghenna agreed that there shouldn’t be any more work. His body had tightened up after this afternoon’s labor. He’s not a young man, about a decade older than me. I understand exactly what it feels like to rev up the machine and then calm down again. This is exactly the problem with my legs. It’s not that I can’t go out in the morning and get things done. I’m not unlimited but I have a little work in me. But there comes a point where the pain outweighs your desire to do things. All you want to do is stop and when the push of things doesn’t let you and you go even beyond those limits, there’s no turning back. There’s no possible way to go back into anything.
It’s a new relationship though. I paid for almost anything he could mention and it seemed strange not to settle up at the end of the day. He wasn’t arguing about this, it was just a habit. He needed something at the end of the day.
We sat and looked for something to talk about. He’s into the project now and he knows all of the nuances that we are working on. He has basically gotten carte blanche to make this thing work and the logistics are with the both of us. I haven’t actually agreed to the deal about the 10 tons of topsoil but we needed to think about this because that topsoil is going to get dumped in such a place that will be in the way if we’re bringing horse carts of hay and fertilizer.
It was strange moving into this particular range of conversation. Usually when we do things, it really is just a matter of day labor and to get some money. This is the habit and this is our currency. But today the discussion was exactly how much material we needed. It’s 150 m if we count all of the garden boxes. We’re going to need enough fertilizer and enough topsoil and enough hay to do what we want to do. The understanding has moved from dropping a cart load of shit to delivering sufficient quantity to cover the meterage. Like I said, the discussion became serious.
And then he asked me to listen. He wanted to tell me something but he had a hard time remembering or thinking of what he wanted to say. I thought for a minute it was this day labor thing and maybe it was but suddenly he decided to say what he wanted to say. To him it was very important to say this.
He didn’t leave the army, he was dismissed 18 months early for a 20-year pension. I don’t know if there were any incidents for this or whether the army was just playing him cheap. It’s hard to know what the real story is. The problem came with the fact that he wasn’t actually due to get any pension until the 20 years were up. For 18 months, he just had to make do.
He got called to the pension office and was told to go to Brest. At rest, they couldn’t quite get things squared away so he was obligated to travel again to Minsk. All of this to him was bullshit. But then in Minsk they hooked him up. He was given his pension and some back pay for the wait. It was not a small amount of money. Suddenly everything changed. He said that he was stopped for some reason in town only one time. He didn’t say what he was stopped for. I’m going to say something about alcohol but do not hold me to it that this was the truth. I’m just saying this because all things considered, I want to be fair to the story. But when he actually was in the station, he told the arresting officer to call his people in Minsk to find out who he was. The story has a lot of Russian swearing in it so we understand each other and the policeman wasn’t interested in doing anything until the language changed and he was spoken to in a way he would understand. After the phone call, the officer came back and stood at full salute and told an underling to quickly let the man leave. It had been a mistake and apologies were asked for.
His actual rank would be stated as captain of the guard or captain of the battalion. In Russian it is Капитан Гвардии. This would be the main person who delivers the orders to the personnel. I tried saluting and calling him appropriately by rank but it didn’t carry too much water. One thing did though. When he was telling the story, he put the detail in there of his ochistva. This is something like a Russian middle name but when people speak to each other with respect, this is the way we refer to each other. When Ghenna speaks of Ria, he refers to her by her ochistva.
I’m usually free from these social restraints. People do not expect me to speak respectfully to them. It’s part of being an outsider. When I do speak to people and I attempt to be respectful, it’s usually not appreciated. My language skills are good enough to understand how to speak to someone in a singular address (ты) or the more formal plural (вы). But it doesn’t really work. People don’t usually allow me into this line of ranks.
I told him my ochistva. I explained that my legal name is what it is but if I had been born here, my legitimate name would be Adam Levovich. It’s a really interesting name to have. People don’t give the name Lev lightly. It probably has something to do with Tolstoy but it’s not very common. Just as a side light with some irony to it, that skanky bureaucrat in Minsk who held back my paperwork to torture me so that she might get some money for me has the same father’s name, Levovna. It just goes to show that you can’t really attribute too much to this name business. One would argue lineage easily after such experiences.
I think he just wanted some closure for a good day. I think he wanted something. It’s usually a couple of rubles and then he’s free to go spend that. I get everything and I am not raising anyone or lowering them or staring at anybody on levels. I’ve had enough of this levels bullshit and the obsequious flattery that comes from underlings and the unreserved harassment of those who feel they have the power to do so. The world is a crock of shit from this ladder climbing. People might not feel comfortable anymore calling me anything but my first name we’re dealing with me outside of their own personal versions of respect but I still think they’re missing the point.
The only thing that I added to this conversation that made a difference was not when I referred to him by his military rank but simply the first time I called him by his name. The moment I said the words Ghenady Iosephavich, his entire nervous system popped. It was as if something new had happened and the curtain had been moved aside. I guess he had found what he was looking for. I think we fist bumped about 15 times.
Yeah, there was some ambition in the air this morning. I felt it almost immediately. It’s hard to understand where these things come from. Maybe it’s seasonal or maybe it’s weather. Maybe it’s something in all of us that just kind of clicks and turns on and demands that we follow the lead. We all know how to do our job really. We don’t quit and we don’t complain. You can see everything you want about Russian culture but physically, it is part of things that you know how to do a job to the end.
Of course, staring at the Russian army running away and allowing land to be captured is not an illustration of the heart and soul of the culture. At some point, probably before they made everybody beg for money, there was some genuine respect for character and getting a job done. The toast, Do dna, all the way to the bottom, is a metaphor not only for drinking the glass but for how you’re supposed to live your life. It’s a shame for the Russians to lose as much face as they are losing right now. I’m not reminding them in the hope that they bounce back. I’m just saying that this was an ill-advised move, it was unnecessary to do this to the ukrainians and to have the Russians look exactly as they do right now is, as people say here, not beautiful. It’s pizdets. They have nakhuyal everything.
I understand the need for the moment. I understand the need for the connection. I know where this came from and I know why it exists there. I am not a fan of the Russian empire. Not by a long shot. But I am a fan of some of the remaining culture from the time of the Union. I’m not blind to all of this drunken talk. I’m not foolish or making more of this than it needs to be. I’m just saying that some of the philosophy makes a great deal of sense if you’re someone who is an ecologist or one who believes that we would better serve humanity and the planet by working together instead of in competition. I’m not swimming and emotion right now, I’m just saying I get it. Today was a day of great ambition and I believe everybody involved comported themselves beautifully. Molodets vsyem. Well done.
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