Friday, September 16th 2022

The afterglow of the lightning attack is continuing on. Here is another map reader, this guy more on the optimistic side, talking about the future or the lack of future for the Russians in Ukraine. Whether it is true that Russian officials are selling their houses in real estate in Crimea or not, it would seem to indicate serious panic in the ranks. Personally, I believe it as true. It fits the modus operandi. All bullies are cowards. You can live with these words as truth. Once you take the wind out of the sails, you find people who really don’t want to be out on the ocean anymore.

As for the Kremlin, I really do not believe in any sort of democratic rule in Russia. I really don’t believe anyone has the power to stop the machine. But what is true for people on the ground who are now looking for viable exits to save their own skin, you have to believe that this is also true at the top of the pyramid. You probably can’t stop Putin from hanging around until his death. But you would certainly be looking at a guy who will be nothing but a shell of his former self. In a land where image is everything, it’s starting to look like Mr Putin has a very bad face.

My only great hope is that this is also a reasonable domino fall for all fascism around the globe. 300 million to promote fascism in conservative governments of other countries is really a drop in the bucket. It’s an awful lot of money for one person but if we are talking about the actual number of conservative governments brutalizing their people and pushing force as the way of doing business, it’s a joke. But again, if it becomes a part of the wind that blows the House of cards down, we can only hope that good things will follow.

Perhaps one question for the oracle. I understand that I’m just dreaming of a better future but maybe it’s worth asking.

If Russia falls, will Europe go sustainable?

There is no singular blurb to put here. My brief observation of this search is that the top sites listed as having an opinion here are all economically oriented. I don’t see anybody approaching this from an ecological point of view. Of course, ecology rarely takes the top position in thoughts of attention to what I consider the most important issues of humanity. Literally 99% of media that has the power of gaining people’s attention universally leads towards economy. Whether this is posed towards college graduates or the simple grunts who are never going to get anything from local governments except under the table access to drugs, it is doubtful for the foreseeable future that we start wising up.

Briefly stated, people are not going to give up their money. No matter what, people are not going to start wising up. People are not going to give up what pleasures they have or what they feel are their elevated social positions meaning, their right to make as much garbage as they make. Narcissism is not going away anytime soon.

In the end, all of this noise is going to be bread and circuses. The war, win or lose, will come down to yet another exercise and economics, a big boost to the armament’s business, a giant boost to the oil business and new opportunities for corporate profit siphoning. We are never going to have the sun rise over in genuinely clean Ukraine. We are never going to have a fresh start where socially conscious and aware people have the opportunity to work with and heal the land from the atrocities practiced upon it. Nobody is going to any kind of a beautiful new future. It’s just going to be more plastic delivered by trucks that will end up in the landfill.

***

It’s really, really early on Friday morning. I’m just not sleeping very well these days. Too much on my mind and too much pain in my legs. I would say as a general push that I am definitely on the healing road. I’m definitely making progress from the depths of wherever I ended up. 

If I turn my attention to my own health and ask about what happened, the answer to the question is pure pressure. Not being able to get medical services, trying to deal with the pressure of keeping my field going in the middle of a miserable drought and mixing all of this in with whatever social pressures lead to mistakes in diet. I just ended up trying to be Superman instead of taking it easy on myself. And when the attack came, I’m talking about the problems with my leg, they came fast and hard. Suddenly I was in crisis again.

Perhaps I am best under pressure. Perhaps whatever stupidity in me makes me want to rise to the call during difficult moments needs to be exercised. Perhaps I’m no good at daily management and require a little excitement in order to feel useful. I won’t doubt any of these psychological problems or simply lack of discipline for handling the mundanities. But whatever it was, I was just a little too free with my diet, I was a little too free with myself going for comfort food to handle the stress and misery of this year and the result was a combination of physical injury and blood sugar problems. You can’t lie about it. It’s what happened.

The thing is that the causes of the stress are not going away. The people around me are not going to change who they are. They are not going to stop being brutal alcoholics. They are not going to acquire any sense of common thinking. Nobody is going to embrace practicality or thinking through problems anytime soon. And as for myself trying to be at least an adequate leader for my own situation, it’s never going to change that I will never have a good team. This is one of the greatest failures of my entire life. I always end up going it alone because I never am able to put together a team that simply functions.

As for reasons about this, there is no simple answer. Number one is not my lack of money. I know this like knowledge that it doesn’t matter how much money you throw at a project, you’re going to be throwing money at the same people with the same mentality and the same history. This 50/50 line of thought that people always have one foot in the game while keeping the other one aimed towards the exit is not going to change. What’s going on with the Russians in Ukraine is exactly an example of this. The directives from the Kremlin are to aim directly in the most brutal fascist direction and to cause the most harm. Meanwhile, it’s incredibly difficult to believe in this monstrous ideology and in the end, most people just want to know they’re going to live through the year.

A second problem with the money being most important is that it is impossible ever to have enough. If you enable someone and give them some sense of economic power, all that’s going to happen is that they are going to raise their level of addiction and fall to their level of incompetence as a result of it. These alcoholics disappearing for parties because some money crossed their hands is only one example. Anytime people think they have the opportunity to go crazy, they will throw their sanity under the bus. People live for parties and not for keeping things going. People live for the promise of release of pain and not keeping things going on even keel. We are not built for sustainability, we are built for pressure and release.

Or at least, this is the bread and circuses system under which we live and have always lived. We don’t take care of business. We deal with our obligations and dream of getting shit faced.

I eat when I’m upset and when I’m bored. I try to eat for pleasure and I try to make a nice meal for myself. One of the things that has happened with my current whole foods, local as possible diet is that I tend to eat things that genuinely fill me up. When I eat something, I feel very sated. I don’t eat foods that lead to hysterical addictions. I’m not eating bread laced with sugar bought from the factories. I’m not eating factory snacks. I’m not eating desserts. I’m not drinking addictive beverages.

However, there is a problem here. If you take these foods out of your diet, you are effectively changing your lifestyle in a serious way. It may be a good idea to consciously take yourself off the sugar cycle, sugar up and sugar down and sugar up and sugar down, but if you have built your entire life on dealing with pressure and release and a sadomasochistic relationship to life, you don’t really have anywhere to go once you’re off the merry-go-round. You can know that you’re doing something good for yourself, you can feel as though you are on the right track for a better life but what exactly are you supposed to do with yourself? What are you supposed to do in this new place that doesn’t have the inherent excitement you have come to expect?

This is my basic problem. I don’t really have very much pressure during the course of my average days. I understand what’s going on and why I feel this way. I understand exactly what it’s like to have gone through that existential window to this new place. I have already consciously experienced the boredom and tediousness of life and have been okay with it. I already understand what it’s like to wake up without anything particularly interesting to do. Frankly, I’m okay with it. I am absolutely okay without anything hysterical coming into my life.

Basically what I did is acknowledge that I was having a health episode similar to last year. I understood that my two choices were to either jump ship and head to the hospital or deal with it myself. My choice was to deal with it myself simply because I didn’t want to jump ship. This ship is where I chose to be and getting off of this to go to the rather horrific situation that is medical Care in this country, or any country really, was not an option I chose for my life.

This was not a hysterical choice and it was not a suicidal choice. It was simply a logical choice because I’ve had enough experience with these problems to understand exactly what was going on and what was needed. And what was needed was to quit using food as an escape for the miseries and pressures of life and to start using it to keep my body healthy.

All I did was quit making compromises based on laziness. The occasional bread from the store stopped. A jar of tomato sauce just for that flavor stopped. When I started noticing but a lot of the problem was being caused by bloating and water retention, I simply put the salt in the closet. If this changed the flavor profile, I lived with it and allowed my taste buds to experience whatever the taste of the food was and again, simply lived without the excitement.

I’m not sure that this is going to last. During the winter, without the availability of fresh fruit, I’m going to be reliant on saved food and the amount of salt in my diet is going to come up again. It doesn’t have to happen this way and I can find ways to keep the sodium down and keep the added sugar out but a lack of fresh food is a lack of fresh food and either I spend tons of money on the supermarket chains pretending that it’s still summer and harvest season or I made good choices and keep additives to a reasonable minimum.

I am pleased with the results of my choices. There was a time a little while ago where I really could not get up at all. And now yesterday, even though it wasn’t for a very long time, I had enough leg to go out and work a bit on my field. It felt good being out there and I enjoyed the work. It was construction and not maintenance. I said this before, I’m a better Garden builder than a garden doctor. I am hopeful that the future will allow me at least some measure of enjoyment for the minutiae of paying attention to my plants. I’m hoping I get better at it. But for yesterday, it felt good to be raking and spreading. It felt good to get physical and do the prep work necessary.

I don’t really have any guarantees of any full recovery. In fact, the only guarantee is I will never have a complete recovery. I’m not going to become a young man again and I really can’t imagine even having a pain-free existence where I don’t mind mixing it up. But perhaps I can find enough physical competence to be competent at what I have here. Perhaps I will be able to retain enough strength and mobility to enjoy this thing that I’m building and be able to do the simple maintenance so that the plants growing here on my land can thrive.

I mean, it’s all maintenance. Maintaining the balance of an artificial ecosystem at least long enough for that ecosystem to become self-sustaining is a trick. Fighting global warming is an unfortunate trick of this. It used to be easier when there was fertility in the land and enough rain that things could grow. It is an unfortunate additional misery of life to have to fight the mistakes of others. But I don’t mind because I don’t really have any other choice. I don’t have any easy escapes. Ironically, I couldn’t run away if I tried. This is what it is and unless something unbelievable happens to show me some kind of a deal that allows for another situation, I’m going to enjoy what I have. No 50/50 here. Here is where I make my stand.

Anyway, this is enough babbling in the middle of the night. I don’t know if I have any help today. Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.

I have to wash some clothes today and I have to fill up the water tanks and clean up the kitchen. I need to make some food for a really nice Friday night meal and I have three more garden boxes to close up and fertilize. This will at least be the start of buttoning up the mid gardens. The lower gardens are going to need a lot more material. But all this is coming in It’s Time. With or without help, I’m going to do the best I can to see that next year will be better than this one. 

This opportunity to upgrade the quality of my garden only appeared now for the first time in a couple of years. It is an unreliable supply chain manned by unreliable people and a physically limited person sitting in the captain’s chair. I’m not looking at this pleasurably as any kind of hero work. I’m just building for a future where springtimes are explosively beautiful and Summers are full of sweet berries and fresh fruit and succulent vegetables and tasty greens. I’m just building for a future with some natural abundance to enjoy along with the pleasure of being a part of it.

I don’t know, I think this is a beautiful thing to be a part of. The fact that I have absolutely nobody standing with me to share the view means nothing. Of course it would be nice but unfortunately, like a lot of things, I did not have this as a viable option. Better not to worry about things that are out of your control and take care of things that are.

Not Instagram worthy? Exactly. Not even close. But who cares? Fuck Instagram. I live in the real world.

***

It’s 9:15 on a rather beautiful sunny morning. The wash is finished and the water buckets have been filled. For the most part, the kitchen has been cleaned except for the floor. I have managed to completely muddy up the floor with all of the water work. My best plan is to let it dry and then sweep it later in the day.

I called Ghenna and was told that he had been called to the next town for 2 days in a row. I don’t believe this story. I called Ria about this and she said that occasionally she also gets tagged with money in the wind. He’s not a dependable character.

Nevertheless, today he managed to pick up the phone and said he’d be by to continue. I guarantee you that no matter what he says, there won’t be any additions to the coffers until I see but most if not all of the contracted for work is finished. I haven’t heard anything about the topsoil in a day or two and so not panicking or doing anything about that was a good idea. I’ve actually been thinking whether or not this topsoil is overkill or not. But then again, if we’re talking about perennials, this business of fertilizing and mulching is going to be work that needs to get done every year. As we are going to continue being in drought, watering is going to go on. But it might just be that this is a One-Shot deal for land rejuvenation. And again, the cost was very reasonable and within the budget and if I have some help running the wheelbarrow a couple of hundred times, maybe it’ll all be worth it.

Spending time usefully out on the field yesterday, I couldn’t help notice how many nitpicky jobs need to be done. Garden borders always need to be fixed. This is labor. What is going to be a canal running along the right side of the mid and lower gardens needs to be cleaned out for the most part. I can wait for spring to do this for sure but it definitely needs to get dug a little bit. And then there is the matter of planting. I have room for a lot more trees than we have right now. There are opportunities for all kinds of trees. I’m not obligated for everything to have food in it and perhaps decorative and shade bearing trees might be nice.

Specifically, there is a place on the border of my property just inside the gate where I would love to plant something big. I’m not really worried about influencing the fence so much. There’s enough room there and if it really became problematic, I’m going to need to rebuild that fence anyway within a couple of years. But I would love something really big right there. Big and shady.

On the other hand, there is a line exactly there that does not get too burdened by the house. There’s a place there that if we did actually bring some fertility out there and make sure that it got enough water it might be a fine place for two or three trees. I would love something that acted as a property divider.

At my old house out in the country from 15 years ago, I had a series of a particular sort of plum tree that grew very fast and very tall. The plums themselves were generally tasty but it seems like we didn’t even care if we harvested all of them. The trees had made themselves into a forest within a few years and it acted as a beautiful windbreak and privacy screen separating the two properties. I don’t remember what kind of tree that was but I would really like to find out and plant four or five or six of them exactly right there along that line from the road to where the cherry plums start.

As of the moment, the property is divided by a rickety old fence that is nicely overgrown with ivy. I’m very happy with the ivy but not with the whole of the fence. There’s a place where someone can and has simply thrown a leg over to go from their property to mine. I don’t really feel this is the most secure place in the world and if someone really, really wanted to break in, there’s nothing really to stop them. But a little deterrent is nice and a little definition that says you keep your grandmother over there and she doesn’t belong over here.

One irony about this and I guess I’m guilty of a little egotism here. Ghenna also likes to talk a good game. I guess being a good talker is the mark of an alcoholic. I don’t know what that makes me. He told me one day that the grandmother happened to be my age. I think he got that wrong. The daughter might be getting on 40 with a 7 year old daughter. Maybe she is 35 and this issue makes sense. But every time I saw them, I thought the flirting was being done by the daughter. When Ghenna opened his mouth, it sort of changed the picture for me. Was the grandmother hoping I would take an interest in her?

I’m a little too old to be doing business with my dick. I didn’t do business with my dick when I had a dick to do business with but still, this is not the point. The woman is egregious. I’m not saying this in a delightful sort of way that as the play progresses we find out some serious interest comes around. All I wanted was to find out how much they wanted for the property. All I wanted was a bigger chunk of land to play with. I understand I can’t do the walking necessary on the one I have but still, it was an opportunity to get away from the chicken people and the stench they make. And at the time, they had a lovely orchard.

No, that grandmother is working in much the same way as Ghenna and Lena and all of the other local dramaholics. Everybody is either obsequiously licking each other’s ass or insulting each other with as much brutality as possible. Sugar up and sugar down. It’s an alcoholic circle no matter what you think and no matter what I do or say, they are never getting out of high school. They cannot believe that anything has changed and refused to notice that once you take the economic parity out of communism, you get empty rhetoric. If we are really not in it for the money, and I vote Yes for this, we are in it for the money. This doesn’t necessarily mean we cut each other’s throats although this is what people do. It just means that all of this noise like we are all friends goes out the window when one of us can’t pay their bills and the weight falls to those who might be able to.

Or in my case, makes me an unwanted celebrity. The noise of this celebrity is something I desperately wish to live without. Generally, noise is something I wish to live without.

I got through my work today but my legs are already rather sore. I haven’t eaten anything yet but I’m thinking of grabbing a few apples from under the bed and taking it easy for a while. If Ghenna shows up today, I will get up and start crutching around with him. If I don’t stand there and watch him work, he won’t work.

You know, that is another annoying habit from here. My daughter’s mother used to anger me to know and with this exact same need. If I had some work that was supposed to be bringing money for the family and I handed it to her to do because of her expertise, the woman could not stop making drama out of every possible thing that came to her. She couldn’t just take the job and do it and take a thank you. She needed to be watched, it needed to be exciting, she needed to be praised and Jesus Christ it was more effort to ask her to help than to just do it myself.

Back then, it had a lot to do with translating documents for people searching for their relatives. We would work with the archives and get documents that were handwritten in old Russian and at the time, I didn’t have a prayer of making my way through them. In this case, it has to do with pushing that wheelbarrow around and running a shovel or a pitchfork for a while. Ghenna makes a good horse. I don’t want to overwork the old guy but he’s got more body than me right now and I appreciate it when he comes around. I appreciate it more when he comes around sober and I really appreciate it when he does the job he says he’s going to do. But I need the help so I’ll be tip-topping along on my crutches and saying smart and timely things to keep the work going.

That’s enough deep thinking for now. I’m going to go find some apples and take a break. My leg hurts.

***

All right, I think I’ve had enough. For what it is worth, I called Ghenna and he came over with the horse delivering one more load of fertilizer. He seemed to want to do more but I was really more interested in acquiring materials. For some reason he could not go back and get more and even the hay was not available to him. He wanted to do some work but I thought the logistics would be better if we just got our material first. Eventually he agreed to take quite a bit of garbage that’s been lying around since I owned the place that I have not had the chance to deal with. Once again, he was a bright moment in the day.

On the way out, he made some comment about coming back in a while to do some work. I thought it was okay if you wanted to do so but then he asked me for six rubles. I don’t know that I truly experienced physical pain but I made my face seem like I was and then I answered him in English. I said no.

He looked at me as if this answer was a strange thing. He only wanted six rubles. It was necessary for his life. I took another deep breath, acted like I was considering this seriously and then said no. I think I even said no three or four times. He truly didn’t understand my speaking.

I explained to him that I had already given him a substantial sum of money. I had paid in advance for many tasks that still had not even been started. Frankly, the amount of money was way more than I would have ever paid him in a month except for these deals. He really needed these six rubles. I really hoped he would accept no for an answer but he wouldn’t so I couldn’t help myself but asking what had happened to all the money I had given him. He mumbled something about making various purchases and such. It had rained already today so I thought it was ironic when I mentioned that he perhaps should save some money for a rainy day. I really didn’t know why he was asking me but he forced me to say even more words about the other people who had come here and leaving my gate open all day and him not speaking to me about the situation yesterday and eventually, he decided that I was right.

Or maybe he just decided that I was not going to change my mind. It’s a stupid game. It’s a game I don’t like. I don’t like to be hit up for money and I prefer these moments where we both respected each other and we agreed that this was a professional company.

Ghenna is an alcoholic. He cannot help himself from drinking and most probably, he cannot physically tolerate life if he doesn’t drink. I completely understand this feeling. I know what it feels like to have your body fight you. I completely understand why he gets so powerful to do physical labor. He has to do something to satisfy the craziness in his body. It’s a very humble profession being a day laborer but I don’t think he has a choice.

I don’t know this for a fact because I haven’t asked the question directly but my guess is he drank himself out of the military. It’s hard to be very serious about the Russian army. I don’t mean to be insulting to people who carry guns but my guess is his drinking became enough of a problem that they basically asked him to leave. Perhaps it was politics and money. I’m taking my wild guess at this that he’s drunk himself out of everything he’s ever had. Again, I’m not pointing fingers. I’m just saying what I see.
A little while later when he had not shown up, I called him and told him that I had had enough for the week and that if we were going to carry on and do something, we should do it on Sunday. Of course, if he could get more fertilizer and the straw that I need and that I’ve already paid for, this would be great. We have topsoil coming and it would be best if we had all the fertilizer on the ground and all of the beds raked and we did first. Perhaps the topsoil is overkill but we are definitely going to make games on fertility this year.

I went out to the field and took a head cabbage. It had some problems that I hacked off with a knife out on the field. We are not without bugs and I knew that there was a bad spot when I saw this cabbage. It wasn’t a bad head of cabbage and it looks clean and tasty enough. I’m going to put it in the pot and cook it with some potatoes and vegetables from my own field. I did make that hummus I was thinking about. I didn’t make bread. I don’t feel like I need it very much.

One thought has come into my mind this week. If my leg really has healed enough, it might be time for me at least to go get on my bike. I’ve been noticing lately that the lack of cardio is starting to drive me crazy. I’d love to point fingers at the men’s medical establishment for this little game that they have put me through. It seems that they do not care how unhealthy I become because of my inability to move around normally. I guess they don’t particularly feel any physical pain based on their efforts. They are pretty good criminals in that respect. You’d think you would get more from doctors and nurses.

I don’t know how much pain it’s going to cost but I think it’s about time for me to start kicking it around for at least an hour a day. I need to clear the pipes, I need to rev up my heart a little bit. Gardening can be heavy work sometimes and handling the tools takes a certain amount of physical strength. It actually takes a lot of strength to do this honestly no matter what you’re doing. But the different body positions necessary to do the gardening are problematic for me right now. I seem to have lost a lot of strength leaving my leg alone. Not being able to walk will drive you crazy.

So this will go on the list for next week. It’s okay if we have some rain. The water will help compact the sand and as long as I can get out of town and out to the highway, I’ll be free to pedal for a while. I don’t know if the military is still blocking the ferry across the river. There are plenty of places to ride to.

When I got out of the hospital, one of the greatest things that I found was that I could ride a bike. I could ride a bike. I did not enjoy riding it. I haven’t enjoyed riding since I got out of the hospital. There are probably some reasons for this but it’s just another something that I’ve lost along the way.

I feel like I should say something philosophical. I feel I should try to find some great truth and use all of my powers of wordsmithery to put together an idea that would last in someone’s ears. But I don’t think I can. I don’t think I have anything to say that I haven’t said before.

Maybe I can say that I still believe that I’m right. I do not see any hope for humanity whatsoever with the current direction that the world is going. I have been grinding on this disease that is destroying the world all year. I have been observing how the cancer makes everything complex and does everything it can to push its host back into its miserable normality. The world is simply too confusing because they like it this way. It makes everybody feel stupid and therefore they are easily controlled. They keep the animals in depression and addiction. They are more docile eventually this way.

The leadership however is too greedy and too corrupt. Our leadership does not create teams that do good things for humanity. They keep us isolated and crazy and make us all good consumers. We are supposed to believe in our quality of life that stems from our ability to buy things. Our character is not judged by how well we treat our communities, we are only judged by how much money we spend and how well we do narcissism.

I am pretty sick. I have fallen out of shape trying to take it easy for my leg. I have lost my ability to enjoy anything. I cannot open my eyes and see anything beautiful or clean. All I can see are the mistakes and the stupidity and the corruption and the cruelty. I am guilty of bringing this on myself. I knew this would happen when I started writing. It was a choice I made to stick with it. All I’m saying is we really can be better than this.