Sunday, September 18th 2022. Week 37

I usually start off with links at the beginning of the week. I usually do this when I can’t sleep very well or I wake up too early and I look around the news to see what’s interesting. I’ve got links, plenty of them, but for now I just want to say that I can’t sleep at all today. Maybe I was too inert for my day off. Maybe I made myself too comfortable. I don’t know. But when it came time to go to sleep, I had no necessity to pass out. I tried for a while and then I just quit. It’s not like I have anything to do, I’m just not sleeping.

Today is going to be an interesting day. It’s a big day with the ex partner because we are going to try and put some trees in the ground. I thought for a moment there last week that we could have everything set up by the time my ex partner got here but Ghenna is just not that reliable. Last week had one brilliant day and then everything else was bits and pieces and asking for more money. He really had me going. I was not happy about having to take that hook out of my mouth. It would have been really nice if his bullshit enthusiasm would have been real enough to get something done.

Probably in the moment, he did feel it. Probably showing himself to be strong and healthy and capable and getting words of praise and way more money than usual to do jobs made him feel wonderful. I’m sure he meant the things he said when he said it.

I should have seen it coming when the work stopped but he decided to sit on the bench to talk. It was the first time that we talked without working. I was hanging around with him during everything and helping out as much as I had strength and ability to do. But this was one moment. This was the moment where he talked about his military career. This is the moment when he quit working and went back to talking. This was the moment that he was telling an alcoholic story for the purposes of getting some more money. I should have given him a five instead of supporting him for the rest of the job. I should have remembered that you just can’t reason with alcoholics.

He mentioned something about coming out and helping us work today. Maybe my ex partner can convince him to do specific jobs. Among the things that still need to get done are specific places for the trees. I have three places in my garden where I want to plant trees. We also have some berry bushes that need places.

Unfortunately, proceeding all of this will have to be general fertilization. There is a minimum amount of fertilizer that’s needed to cover our 150 m of garden space. I don’t know anything about this topsoil. Talking to my ex partner is not really business-like. She never fully explains any situations or speaks in a way that lets you know what’s going on. When she presented me with the idea, I said do it but then immediately after that it turned into a series of problems. Maybe it was raining, maybe it was something else. I never heard another word about it.

Logistically however, I’m anticipating a really large load. I don’t know exactly what 10 tons of topsoil will look like but I’m sure it’s an entire truck. The problem will be getting the horse cart around it. For this reason most of all, I wanted Ghenna to be finished bringing all of the hay and the fertilizer so we could drop it where we are going to use it. I have two staging areas that can be accessed by horse cart. But if there is a big pile of dirt there, the horse card is not getting through.

Maybe I’m overstating this and maybe it’s not that big of a deal. There are other obstacles I would rather not have Ghenna run over trying to get out on the field. But still, there is that alcoholic sugar up and sugar down. The man is ruled by emotions and his emotions are spurred on by his metabolistic need for more alcohol. No matter how emotional he wants to be with people and no matter how much love he thinks he might get or deserves or wants, all of this is intimately connected to alcohol. All the rest of us are just along for the ride.

I want to be fair here. I was not particularly moved by any of the conversation. I think we got along well and I tried to be okay socially while we were out there on the field. But the genuine currency of the moment was work. The guy was putting out an enormous amount of energy and it looked for a moment as if this was going to be a very successful organization. That was a mistake. It wasn’t that I believed his bullshit. It wasn’t even that I cared about him particularly as a person. I just believed what my eyes were telling me and that work was going to get done. Even two or three dependable hours a day would be enough to get this whole thing finished if that was what he was capable of.

Now there are plenty of nuances for me to keep in my mind. I have a problem that if I need materials to be delivered, it doesn’t matter whether he has the bloody card or he doesn’t. If he leaves for whatever reason after delivering something, he will stop off to start drinking and we won’t see him again. If he does bother to come back, it will be very late and he will be dangerously lost. The only way to get me work done is at the beginning of the day. Unfortunately, the number one thing I needed from all of this was the wrong materials to do my planting for next year. I was not hiring the man to be the star of the show. I wanted my straw and fertilizer.

For a captain of the guard, the man is a logistical nightmare. Let’s say former captain of the guard. Let’s say I’m not planning on any more salutes.

I wouldn’t say that I’m worried about all of this. That’s not the reason for my not sleeping. I just really physically shut down for the whole day. My Friday night dinner was potatoes and veggies with hummus. I was too lazy to make the bread and the meal itself was absolutely fantastic. The next morning I woke up and used the rest of the hummus to make some spaghetti. It was phenomenal and filling and delicious and it hit me just perfectly. My body was in a state of complete perfection and I ended up not eating anything else for the rest of the day. Probably right there was the big mistake. By not bothering to at least have a small dinner, even just a plate of porridge at the end of the day, I was too wired to sleep.

The problem is but I’m just not hungry. I’ve been generally eating one meal a day for the last while and it seems to be enough for me. It’s not like I’m putting out violent amounts of electricity. My body doesn’t need any more calories than I’m feeding it. But if I don’t make something at the right time, even if this is mid-afternoon, I’ll never be able to get back to sleep again. I need that evening meal even if all it does is tell my body but I’m done with the day.

I remember watching some videos made by raw vegans. These are non meat or dairy users who do not cook their food. There are some prepared blender dishes and smoothies in there. There is “cooking”, even if all this means is blender predigestion to make something creamy or something like that. Things get chopped. But the filmmaker talked about her mother liking the wrong vegan diet during the day but that she required some cooked food in the evening. To her, this was the compromise to start the day with only fresh food but to go ahead and give yourself something warm in the belly at the end. I’m not following this diet specifically but this seems to be a comfortable idea if I really have to think about it.

I know how I fell into this one meal a day habit. I started getting busy in the morning and simply started moving without having eaten any breakfast. Making breakfast, especially a cooked breakfast gives you that “I’m finished” feeling and basically puts me on the couch for a while. But if the movement starts straight off in the morning and I don’t have time to cook, unusually pretty good until mid-afternoon. If I have a 4:00 meal or something like that, I’m actually pretty good all the way through the evening.

There are quite a few people out there talking about intermittent fasting and eating with a 16, 18 or 20 hour fasting regimen every day. They have lots of ways they call this but the basic principle is that you give your body time to digest. What’s going on with me is simply that when I cook food, my body wants to take the time to digest it. I get smooth and lazy and I don’t feel like being revved up with energy. That’s just the way things are. If I’ve got a lot of things to do, I can’t be making myself a big meal. That’s just common sense, right?

I’m not saying I’m working with any level of discipline. I eat what I want and when I want. I’m just saying that this is a strange habit that I’ve fallen into but it has pitfalls. Even if I’m not hungry going into the evening, if I haven’t eaten anything all day, I’m probably not going to get to sleep unless I’m bloody well physically tired. That absolutely doesn’t go on my days off. Hence the problem and hence me doing this work at 2:00 in the morning.

Basically, it’s just a big Tangled mess of bullshit. I suppose in some ways I miss the urgency of American working. I am against the economic slavery that created the American work ethic. Chalk it up to Christian abuse as much as anything or even worse, Nazi influence. I’m not in favor of fascism and I don’t even really believe we need this kind of industry. We’d be better off only doing the work we need and not doing production scheduled based upon earning money. We would have all the jobs sharing we need to get it done and when there’s nothing to do, we could just let the factory go cold.

But still, this would be a collective thing. It would not be management sitting on top waiting to get people to do their work for them so they could exploit their people to the maximum they can arrange. I’m just saying I miss the efficiency sometimes. I miss having people around me who can just do their job and don’t sit around bringing unnecessary drama into everything. I’m also a little tired of having my ex partner make decisions without talking to me. Her failure to speak to me is probably the reason she is my ex partner. I do not want her torturing me anymore. I do not want her working by her own choice for my benefit. I don’t like presents and I don’t like surprises.

But like they say, you get what you pay for. 

My brain is fully functional and well-stimulated. I am thinking of going into the kitchen and making some porridge and veggies. I’ll eat this warm food, hopefully it will put me into sleeping mode and all set my alarm for some reasonable morning hour. I never know when people are going to start showing up. That’s even probably the worst part of it. The ex partner might be coming up very early because we have a big work day. Ghenna couldn’t keep a schedule if you put a gun to his head. I think that’s probably the most annoying thing of all of this. I do not like being moved and I don’t like people dictating policy on my life at all.

So, I guess I’ll get to that and if it’s effective, I’ll start posting these really interesting links about the war. The ukrainians are on a definite up and though there is a lot of clickbait and propaganda noise talking about the fall of the Russian empire, the truth is it’s not a route, there’s a long way to go and really, it can get a lot uglier before it ever gets better. Terrorism doesn’t just go home. You can’t sit down at a table with terrorists. These are words to live by. You just can’t be reasonable with alcoholics or terrorists and you are especially screwed when dealing with alcoholic terrorists.

Like me for example.

***

Zielinsky on war crimes.

So it appears that the pure mindless brutality with which Russia seems to do everything it does leaves quite a bit of scorched Earth behind. Their habit of destroying electrical stations on their way out of town does not imply gracious losers. They seem absolutely given to being as brutal as possible.

The real problem is you don’t get any bonuses or balloons for accurately identifying their tactics as fascist. It seems strange that for all of the rhetoric and propaganda and words that fly around in the world these days from conservative groups and governments trying to push their agendas, we never seem to come to an understanding that they are pushing fascism. Everything about what they do screams authoritarianism and the demand for compliance. This is all we get and for some reason, despite all of the talk of freedom and how free we are and what the Free World is like and how it’s them and not us, nobody seems to recognize that we live in a fascist state and it’s becoming worse every day. This is both exactly here and everywhere else.

Tactical nukes

I thought I wanted to print both of these just for the sake of saying that it’s not beyond possibility. There is a bottom line to this that seems as absurd as all war does to me. Perhaps this inability to comprehend fascism as our basic currency of communal life also comes along with the idea that we can justify all actions during war as strategic exercises. It is simply a matter of understanding the basic geometry and architecture of what you’re doing that counts. We understand that we are destroying land and people and everything that lives on the land but that’s not the point. The point is the technical aspects and logistics. That’s the important thing to remember.

Is this possible? I’d say it’s probable. Right now, Russia is simply practicing what they’ve been doing over the last 10 years, which is putting their garbage on other people’s land. When I was writing for the Norwegian newspaper, translating their articles from independent journalists, one of the first stories was a scandal where Moscow was sending their garbage to Western Russia to be buried in the landfill. The potential for ecological catastrophe was about 100%. This is whether or not a factor in the blunt brutalness of all Russian projects. Everything is destined for failure and eventually they destroy catastrophically all the waterways connected to the region. But then again, they have smelting plants up there that are already ruining the atmosphere and giving everybody cancer. Even the exit strategy was lies and instead of compensating the people they killed and harmed irreparably, they found a way to give themselves the money.

This is how I view this entire Ukraine operation. And if on making a hasty exit from a region lost due to incompetence and how stupid the original Enterprise was to begin with means blowing up infrastructure so that people remaining there get to suffer even more, why would it be so unreasonable to just drop some nukes and say “fuck you, we don’t care anyway”?

Because they don’t care. They don’t care about any of their outlying sources of income and exploitation. I know this like knowledge from living here. The country I live in has sided with the Russians unfortunately. I know what it’s like living with people who believe that they are in the right for becoming fascists and practicing brutality. This is exactly the story with my chicken neighbors. This is exactly the story in this village I live in. This is exactly the story everywhere in the state. I can’t even look at stories from town anymore without seeing pure fascism at work. It’s not just cringe-worthy, it’s cringe to death. This is not make believe, this is murderers practicing their craft. This is what it’s like when the mafia runs the world.

Putin wants the war ended and the counter offencive.

The ukrainians are moving forward and pretty much all of the map reader bloggers out there are showing a smooth and constant movement forward. More armaments are coming to the ukrainians, the Russians don’t seem to have anything new. Everything they have is being coordinated from partisans inside the lines and is being fed in advance to advancing troops with advanced weapons, discipline and pure righteous indignation and hate.

These drunken assholes practice war crimes because they think this is what they are supposed to do. This is what leadership tells them to do. This is what it’s like having diseased minds in charge and making policy. This is fascism. This is Mafia fascism.

There is talk that they are making deals with prisoners. I hate to make this as clear as possible but this is an inefficient move. Russia will no longer have to pay for these people by keeping them in their shit prisons. Let them go off and die or make messes and either way the state doesn’t need to worry about them anymore. It’s more garbage though, isn’t it? The outdated tanks and weapons that get left behind on retreat is all garbage, isn’t it? Prisoners sent over to raise havoc or be killed or spread disease or whatever these crafty criminals come with is all just more garbage, isn’t it? It seems that this is all Moscow ever does. They make garbage and then they give their garbage to someone else to deal with.

The world is a very long way from understanding anything. The world is a million miles away from any kind of democratic choice making or personal responsibility. The world is simply partying and making use of bread and circuses and all available narcotics that make people feel better. The world is a bunch of selfish idiots living from paycheck to paycheck and high to high. We are either kissing asses to get ahead or making ourselves numb to forget about how miserable our lives are. Until of course we are asked in which case we answer that life is beautiful and we are much better than we used to be.

You can’t explain to people how miserable the system is and the situation is universally. People are listening to the bullshit that comes through their cheap mobile phones and internet providers. People are trying to adhere to some machine that dictates that having lots of money means happiness and beauty and perpetual youth. People are dying to have a few more toys so they can tell their friends all about them. People are living desperate lives void of emotion and human contact and all the time trying to preserve some sense of hope for the future that they know is absolutely pointless.

If there is anything from all of this it is that with the turn of the tide in the war for Ukraine, the war to put as much garbage into Ukraine as possible, some local people are starting to get the fears in their relationship to me. Suddenly, if the Russians lose, they will be on the wrong side of History and all of the fascism they have been practicing so pridefully and patriotically will turn into war crimes suddenly. Everything they were led to believe they were entitled to be and everything they believed they were allowed to do all becomes so many crimes committed.

I’ll tell you, this is the bitch about being Jewish. We not only have reading and writing and memories to share and allow to be a part of our consciousness, we get to see it repeated again generation after generation after generation. They never learn. They never allow themselves to learn. This is the curse of the gentile. This is the curse of the Nazi. This is the curse of the planet Earth. They never learn but what they are doing doesn’t work, is not sustainable and does nothing but cause pain and misery and destruction. They never learn to stop making garbage. They just never learn.

***

It’s 9:15 and I got a call from my ex partner that she is on the way. Her ETA is about 10:00 a.m. .

That late night porridge meal did the trick. I don’t remember feeling particularly sleepy but when I got back to the warm room, I simply crawled into bed and suddenly the lights went out until I was awakened by my alarm. In my belly, it was a bit of a similar feeling to waking up and still being drunk. My body was in deep digestive mode and had no interest in movement whatsoever. I made an alarm for another hour but about 30 minutes later, everything cleared.

I don’t think I have the leg today to be very helpful. This is an unfortunate turn of events but whatever positives I put into the end of the week last week, I have not found that point of comfort again. My leg is pretty brutal right now and I don’t think I’m even going to have that hour of usage. I’ll do the best I can to be a part of things but I think I’m on crutches today.

Of course there is a compromise. We don’t have any choice but to work compromised. Eventually, we are going to get this topsoil sometime this week and with any luck, we will be able to spread fertilizer before the topsoil goes down and then the straw afterwards to mulch everything up ahead of winter. By springtime, there really won’t be anything to do but move the remaining straw to the side and plant whatever we are going to put in the ground in the ground.

Technically, 52° North is a short growing season. Global warming is real and raising the temperature makes it seem as though we have an earlier last frost and a later first Frost but that’s not really what’s going on. It’s not that we simply move to a new climate zone. We lose our water. That’s what happens. We lose our water and we lose our natural cycles and all of the living things that adapted to living here over the course of many many years or even centuries suddenly find life too distressing to live. The same is true for people but we have propaganda to teach us how resilient we are and how non-natural we are. We are not worried about this as long as we can squeeze a little more money out of the animal farm.

I spent another block of money for this topsoil and a few supplies coming up with my ex partner. It’s not a lot of food but it’s something, a bunch of noodles really and then we will use our 10/50° day to see if we can put everything in the ground in a healthy manner. When the rest of the materials finally come, we’ll just work around what we’ve planted.

I don’t want to over paint this picture. It’s not really going to be all that exciting. We dig a few holes and we fill the holes with some fertilizer and some planting soil. Planting is not such a big deal, not for trees or for berry bushes. You just want to pick a good spot that you believe you can live with and that the plants might enjoy and then it’s just a few minutes.

Last year, I thought it important to do the work of putting my trees in the ground myself. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the fertilizer to help them out. I didn’t have anything I needed and perhaps this made a big deal. The trees did not automatically thrive this year. A part of the plan for this fall is also to go back and put some fertilizer around last year’s trees and mulch them. They are alive, not beautifully so but again, I live with fascists and it was just too much for them to show up with some materials when asked for it. The politics were just too deep and the alcoholic emotions too severe for them to handle it.

So this fall is where we try and make up for it. The thing is that it doesn’t all need to happen today. I want today to be a good day. I want to be able to help as much as I can today. Having my ex partner around and willing to get dirty today means that we might get some good work done. I just want to make sure that I am available to be annoying and to make sure that everything gets done right.

Of course, we don’t have the straw, do we? We don’t have this basic material that was supposed to be there last week, do we? I have some planting soil and I do have some fertilizer and I have the ability to put these two things together. But we are not going to finish the job today, not for even one single plant because we just don’t have the materials yet.

Why not? Russian supply chain. Alcoholic Russian supply chain. Alcoholic Russian system run by alcoholic Russians. There’s no such thing as actually getting a job done. It’s just a matter of creating enough emotion and begging for love along with a few rubles to keep each other happy. And if the world suffers or if every last movement ends up being part of a miserable compromise, well, what did you expect?

“Go back to America!”

This is the answer to the question about where my straw is. This is the answer to the question of why my neighbors can’t do something about their fucking cars. This is the answer to the question of why I can’t get the medical profession in Minsk to allow me some peace or medical care. This is the answer to the question of why people don’t do their jobs. This is the answer to the question of why the Russians are killing the ukrainians and ukrainians are killing the Russians. This is the answer to the question of global warming. This is the answer to all the questions in all the world.

No matter what you say and no matter who you are and no matter how right you are, whoever you are is inadequate and you should just shut your mouth and let the world die in peace. 

You don’t understand our people.

Yes I do. Yes, I really, really do. You’re the people who are ruining the world and destroying it for future generations. You’re idiots. Sorry to tell you now that you understand how beautiful you are in your Instagram posts. You are idiots and you don’t care who dies from your incompetency and greed and narcissistic behavior. Am I missing something?

Right. It’s good to be in a good mood for tree planting. Mood is really important. We want to have the vibe be good as we drop these plants into the ground. Time to put on my best compromised smile and be prepared for a day of silence and grim stoicism. I think there is a difference between masochism and stoicism but sometimes, the lines get blurred.

Okay? Enough words? Let’s get moving. It’s going to be a cold wet day. Let’s put some things in the ground.

***

Well, I don’t know what to tell you about today’s situation. Let the first words be that my ex partner is the hero today. Above and beyond the call of duty, she is carrying on where no one else is even lifting a finger anymore. All positives to her and let this day be a reminder of her character and it never be forgotten what she did on this day. All gifts in the future must remember this day and let there be many gifts in the future.

To start with, it is crazy cold and rainy today. Whatever the weather forecast said it was supposed to be, the amount of water in the air made it worse and it was drizzling and rainy all day.

I got up to open the gates and start putting things at the ready and the first thing I noticed was that I didn’t have any legs to walk on. My left leg was on fire, I’m sure it’s some kind of infection being a part of this but I could not put weight on it. Whatever happened yesterday and possibly it means that I got sick yesterday, today I just didn’t have it.

Before 10:00 I called Ghenna on the phone. He specifically said that he would show up on Sunday morning to help out. It would be a part of his gag to do so and frankly, he’s already been paid for this work. It was a brief conversation and he agreed that he was on his way.

So, with the working command planned, I jumped in to do my part for the logistics. I talked to my ex partner about where trees should be and why. We counted how many pieces we had to work with and found we even had one more than we thought. Because of the number, we decided to go ahead and build up the lower gardens with an offset checkerboard of 434. There would be four trees to the left and to the right and three down the middle. This would allow adequate room to grow for everything. With the field marked, the only thing left to do was to gather all of our materials and put them where they need to be for the work. Mise en place.

The planting scheme calls for digging the holes, using fertilizer mixed with the planting soil that we have, available water and some steak. We needed to bring water down to one of our 60 l and barrels and then we’ll transfer that to a 20 L barrel for easier transport to each tree. My ex partner made the decision that all of these trees should be staked to give them a better chance to grow for the first year or two. She brought along an old piece of tablecloth to cut up to make the correct sort of ties we need.

Then we started working and the choice was whether to start digging holes or bring everything out. I kept looking towards the street wondering where our man was. He told me that he was bringing more fertilizer. He told me he was on the way. Nothing.

So this is what I call the hero call. This is where you’re looking at a pretty crappy job and there’s just no one else to do it. In my mind, the job of doing the brute work of digging the holes was for Ghenna. In my mind, I thought this job was supposed to be done earlier in the week. My ex partner is not the tallest person in the world. She is pretty healthy for a sit-at-a+desk worker. She lives for you Sundays. But cold, rain and all she decided that it was time to get digging. There was no one else to carry the ball so she picked it up and ran.

At about this point, I noticed that I really needed to go to the bathroom and that I was shivering. Some kind of fever was all over me and standing out in the rain even with two sweaters and a top coat and a hoodie was not allowing me any warmth. I may hate when my ex partner mothers/smothers me, but she was the first one to tell me to go inside and get warm.

I sat on the couch in the inside kitchen and turned on my industrial heater. This is costing a fortune because this thing uses electricity like nobody’s business. I should probably light a fire, but it was actually too much to get off this couch.

Now it’s all the way out at 2:00. I can’t see all of the trees exactly from the distance, but I can see the sticks that I cut for bean poles standing like soldiers. We finally have enough fertilizer and planting soil to do the job and it seems that she is getting pretty close to the last of it. Bravo. Just bravo.

A little while ago, I called Ghenna and he said some shit to me about something that I don’t believe. My ex partner took the trouble to tell me that I was a fool for paying him in advance. All I can say to her is that she wasn’t there. If she had seen him on the first day and everything that got done, she might have believed in it too. Looking back now, I don’t see how this guy’s status is ever going to rise again. All I have is a bunch of junk lying around on my field. Not a single job he contracted for is close to finished and he never even showed up today to bring the last part of fertilizer. Just nothing.

All I can say is there is no other way to work with the guy than to pay him as a day laborer. I know that I probably sound like an innocent homeowner and that people who have had similar situations have seen this same business come and go. Perhaps mine is unique because there is nothing possible I can do to stop people of this village from thinking of me as a mark one way or the other. No words will ever change that and no actions will have any consequence either. But seriously, the woman is a hero today and she deserves all of the praise. There is no going back on this. But absolutely knowing the situation and that it was her only day to come up here and help, Ghenna choosing this day to fuck everybody won’t be forgotten anytime soon.

He’ll be back. As long as he thinks I’m good for a bottle, he’ll be back. But I’m going to get him. I’m going to get my money’s worth out of his drunk fuck. I’m going to get what’s mine if it takes all winter and all next year. I’m going to get on top of this ledger one way or another and when we hit the balance point, he’s never going to see another day of trust as long as I live.

All of this rough talk and bravado aside, it’s happening. I can’t even walk today and I seem to be sick as a dog but it’s happening. The plan is being fulfilled. The vision from the first days that I came here is coming to fruition. It’s all happening.

I think I’m going to go make some soup now but before I go, can I get one more round of applause for beautiful women having to make do because the alcoholics of the world can’t show up to work on time. Let’s give praise where praise is due for those who keep things going and sometimes go deep into the hero’s world to get things done. Well done baby. Today you’re a hero. I’m not forgetting today. This day will not be forgotten.

***