Tuesday, October 25th 2022
It’s 5:00 a.m. which I guess is as good a time as any to get started. I’ve actually been up for a while. I guess if you go to sleep really early, you wake up really early. They used to call this farmers’ hours but I think now it would mostly be called a bad social life. I don’t mind my social life but this is what people would call it.
I was thinking of a piece of wisdom I got from the president of the Republic of Belarus. This was a comment he made while visiting with Putin in Sochi. This was at least the public face to face meeting to let people know that Russia had Belarus on its side. I don’t really want to say that it was where Belarus announced that it had Russia’s back. The romantic in me hopes eternally that lucasingka was at least divided in this decision as he is in most of his decisions. He blessed us and screams and cajole’s people to do their job. He is not against using violence on his people and enjoys his power however he can get it. But at the end of the day, he is compromise personified. He is a dick but he understands that his bread gets buttered from a lot of different directions.
During the meeting though he offered advice to put in about what to do with men who did not want to be cannon fodder for this military operation against Ukraine. He quoted numbers. What’s a few thousand men give or take? And his advice was simply to let them go. The Russian word he used was пусть. It means empty or let it empty. Let It go.
Perhaps 10 years ago when I was trying to put together an English language School using my method, I had one particular teacher who was a bit flirty. She was an attractive lady, single and I think she was playing her best cards to get what she could out of her life. I didn’t mind at the time. Why should i? It’s not corruption if she’s qualified for the job. And it’s not like I had so many people fighting for these positions.
I remember this lady because we had a very similar conversation about how to deal with students. The difference between my program and whatever other large and commercial language schools was that we were not designed for the comfort of our clients. Our job was to get results. This did not necessarily mean that we should be abusive. It meant that we needed to be strong on the point that they were going to do homework. We, the teachers, we’re not responsible for the learning. The learning is the responsibility of the student. It was our job to facilitate but there was no need for us to be babysitters or to placate or stroke the ego of people simply because they gave us money. We wanted serious people and we wanted serious results.
The question on the table is what to do when a student simply refuses or even becomes antagonistic. There are people who feel that when you tell them the absolute truth that they are wasting their money by not doing their homework, they feel it is part of some kind of plot, some cleverness or even a black male. What are you supposed to do with people who are only comfortable with their own narcissism? What do you do with people who are only interested in the dream but not in the work to make that dream a reality?
My answer was to let it go. Let them go. My answer was to say that if it was going to be a war, we don’t need it and we don’t need them. Just let them go. If they don’t want to work, we don’t need their business. We are not in business only to make money. We are in business to create better language skills for serious people. We are in business to help with self-actualization. If someone can’t understand that this is not something we can give them like a package or a gift, just let them go. It’s not our fight. It’s not a fight generally.
When Lucashenko said that Putin shouldn’t waste too much time and effort on people who did not want to fight, I thought that was perhaps the wisest thing any leader ever said. Sure, we could argue that it was all for the cameras and he was much more interested in putting up a false image of himself as being a benevolent sort of leader. He likes to hold the illusion of his popularity. He is who he is and we are what we are because of it. Still, he would like to be seen as a strong but benevolent hand at the end of the day. He likes that image better.
But if it wasn’t just false propaganda and empty words, пустое слово, perhaps it was the genuine wisdom of a person who truly does care about people.
If we take this from a purely Democratic point of view, the government says that you should immediately stop your life without any time for preparation and go to some particular place, change clothes, pick up a weapon and then head off to where people are shooting at each other and lobbing grenades and rockets and mortars at each other. Go to the place where they are driving tanks and shooting down helicopters and airplanes and help out. From a purely Democratic point of view, it seems that this is a perfect place for a genuine vote.
“Listen, I don’t care about your life. It’s my life and the life of this country that is important. I have ideological differences perhaps or perhaps I really like my lifestyle and so do the most important people I have in my inner circle and we want to make sure that we have enough money for cocaine and hookers forever and ever. We demand more power and because you are a subject of this country and subject to the laws of this country that by the way we make, you must quit your life unilaterally right now and become a soldier and perhaps die. And you’re going to have to kill people who were basically our friends up until a few months ago. Now we hate them and you should go kill them, rape the women, slaughter civilians and children and basically rain holy hell on someone who generally speaks the same language as us.”
They are never going to say this. They are going to say something about Nazis being down there and fear of NATO and personal security for the lifestyles that are so wonderful for the Russian people. It’s the Russian people who are important here. We are together and they are not and they want to come and kill our people and rape our women and slaughter our civilians and children.
Okay, whatever the lead up to it is, there are two ways to look at the interaction when the state finally stops speaking and turns over the conversation to the guy they are talking to. There comes a time when the government has to stop talking and let the people they are talking to make a decision. Whether or not the government agrees that people have a right to make a decision, in fact they do. They absolutely have the right to make a decision. And the government should absolutely understand that this right must exist in order for there to be any hope of happiness living within the borders of that country. The government might think that they have the right to tell people what to do, to dictate policy unilaterally without discussion, taxation without representation, but in fact it’s impossible.
No matter how much you brainwash them and beat them down, it’s always going to be a personal decision about what to do. You can’t stop this. And the genuine point is, you are not going to get full commitment from people unless they have the right to make this decision for themselves.
The concept of freedom of will is all over Jewish literature. I’m talking about the Torah and talmud. The point of the Jewish religion as I understand it is that the priests and the leadership of the faith believe they are right and wish for people to believe but there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop people from having their own thoughts. This is exactly what freedom is. The right to make one’s own decisions. Often I heard it said that the face was like water beating against a rock. The water was liquid and the rock hard, over time, the water would wear down the Rock and eventually it would win. This was said to me about my desire to remain a friend but not a member.
Still, it had to be my choice. Sure, they could just put a gun to my head. Sign this or die. Either your brains or your signature will be on that contract. But that does not mean that the person wanted to do this. There is coercion. This entire episode, everything we are looking at in this war is a massive act of coercion on the part of the Russians. They are blackmailers. They are using strong arm tactics. They are trading pain in their quest to get Ukraine to submit to their will. But what they are not getting and what they will never get is Ukraine’s agreement. They might agree to stand out at one of these bullshit parades or show up to a bullshit election with that gun firmly pressed up against their head but they are not there by choice. They are being coerced and therefore the results are false.
Actually, the mathematics of what are being argued publicly as sham referendums are in fact false results. There is a war going on. The cities and The villages are being bombed by artillery on both sides. This was not a genuine vote. This was a coerced vote and the people making the vote had a gun literally to the heads of every single person coming in. This was not done in a peaceful moment. They didn’t stop the war for a couple of weeks and ask people to think about it really hard. Nobody offered to be friendly and accept the results of the vote, they just said come in here on the day we say and make a vote about who you like. And either your brains or your signature are going to be on the contract.
Rachel Maddow had something to say about this. I know I reference her a lot but I can’t help that what she says simply makes sense to me. Here is a 5-minute clip of her speaking exactly about anti-semitism in the US government and what is most obviously a move towards nazism/fascism from the Republican side. They are not interested in the results of any votes. They want to take power by force and they believe that this is correct. They are also great friends of Moscow obviously.
If you ask me, the reason why I am speaking from the perspective I am, it is because I recognize that anti-semitism is in fact the unifying trait of almost all fascists. The point of this antagonism is and is only the concept of freedom of choice. Being against the morality of Jewish thought and being against an idealism that says that we are free but must retain our sense of morality In order to genuinely enjoy our freedom exists only because freedom of thought denies unilateral power to fascist leaders. Fascist leaders are not politicians. They do not ask their people what they need, they tell their people what to do and do not like being questioned.
Well, I have a question. Is Putin sober? Is he in his right mind? He is an old man, his time on this planet is coming to an end and the days of his youth are over. Additionally, the world that he grew up in and formed him and gave him his professional life has changed. Is he in fact the correct person to be making decisions right now? I think these are very good questions and I think they are worth being asked and discussed. This is not my way of simply being antagonistic to power. This is my way of looking for the best possible leadership for the country with the largest land mass on the planet. There are 180 million people living there. As far as I can see, a few thousand of them are genuinely enjoying life and perhaps a couple of million people in Petersburg or Moscow have enough wealth to feel above the noise. But the vast, vast, vast majority of that 180 million need to gather mushrooms like my neighbor in order to get a few extra pennies in their pocket and a little bit more food to eat for the winter.
So here is Mr. Lukashenko in Sochi with a gun to his head being coerced to make some kind of a statement of fealty and allegiance. He is being asked to bend the knee in game of thrones terminology. But at the same time, he does have an opportunity to speak. He also has access to the media. He also gets to say something.
I’ve mentioned this a lot as well but I had a local millionaire come to me to help with his English many years ago. I guess we became friends. It was an interesting relationship. Actually, I don’t think he likes me at all now but I’ve told that story many times as well. The real point is though that the very last time we attempted to get together, I really wouldn’t talk to him about anything but ecology. Our argument was always that he was the one paying my fee and therefore he had the right to dictate policy on our class and our hours. I never came off the fact that I was agreeing to help him with his English but that I needed to agree on our hours and I was not going to be at his beck and call. I didn’t work for him, I was working with him.
The ecology in the lessons was because his business at the time was trying to open a lead acid battery factory in the regional center and was having a lot of problems with protesters. The fumes from the factory are an ecological disaster and extremely harmful to people and the reason we are not friends anymore was because I participated in an activity because his factory had caused Great illness and near Insanity to a friend of mine. Again, I’ve told this story many times. But given the opportunity to meet with him, well, you might as well take the time to do the right thing, right? It isn’t often that you get a chance to talk with someone who can actually make things happen. You are kind of morally obligated to get the good words in there, aren’t you?
So what are we supposed to do with people who say no? Lukashenka said to simply Let it go. If they don’t want to fight, we don’t need them. A volunteer army is what is being suggested. A volunteer army of Patriots who sign up because they believe in something. Of course, you would have to have a country without enormous economic need. You would need to have a country where people are happy and satisfied with their lives but then would come to the decision all by themselves that such a country needed to be defended. That would be a genuinely volunteer army.
This has a nuance as well though. The math doesn’t really work. If the actual lifestyle of the people within the country was such that they were truly happy with their lives. They got along well with their neighbors, they understood that they would have medical help when they needed it, nobody was hungry or forced into servitude. There would be no unnecessary coercion and people would be happy in their days. But could you actually achieve such a situation while at the same time being afraid of your neighbors? I don’t think so. You couldn’t actually have a genuinely peaceful life if you were afraid of unknown people coming over the hill to steal from you.
Yes, this is exactly the problem with the argument. It’s a paradox. This military killer exists and only exists in a fascist world. The existence of the military or paramilitary police exist and only exist because of the fear and hatred built by a coercive government.
Anyway, the beauty of “Let them go” is that it would be replicative of the children of Israel being released from slavery. Really? You don’t want to go to war? Well, that’s kind of a strange answer but I respect you and your decisions. If you think you have something better to do then to go murder ukrainians or lose a leg or an eye or your testicles or your life, I guess I respect your decision. If you really don’t want to fight this war, who am I to tell you what to do? Okay, never mind. Thanks for the conversation. Have fun.
Exactly. No, they are not going to turn your electricity off in the middle of the winter. No, they are not going to deny you gas to heat your home. No, they are not going to blackball you from relationships or participation when you try to make your living. No, they are not going to arrest you and torture you or your family. No, they’re not going to send you to Siberia or suddenly make you simply disappear. No, you are genuinely free to go. You are a free person. There is no coercion. Thank you for your vote.
I’m going to let Mr Zelinski close this thought. I am taking some shit these days for my anti-war stance and the fact that I am so enamored with the president of Ukraine. Not a perfect guy. Not perfect policy. But you have to respect the amount of work the guy does and how much work he has done. This kind of energy is uncommon, you must admit. He is managing a rather ridiculous project while taking quite a bit of heat from a global superpower. You have to like that. You have to like how he just will not back down.
I mean, he’s Jewish. I don’t like him because he’s Jewish. But I really like that this guy is Jewish. And if you don’t like noticing this, please explain to me how this war is not anti-semitism.
***
It’s about 12:00 on a rainy day. I am sitting in my kitchen drinking some tea and wondering about the complexities of life. Either I am going crazy or the world is already crazy and its lunatic gravity is just pulling me to the center. I am told I should accept this insanity and find it endearing. I think this is bullshit because I think sanity is a better goal of life than assimilation to lunacy.
Lena has come and gone. She has managed to fix her telephone. She called me today to tell me that her telephone was working and to ask me if I needed any help. At first my answer was no. I am happily self-sufficient at the moment. But then I thought about it and called her back. I actually could use a few things from the store and really, I know she needs money.
She showed up about 30 minutes later and we had a long conversation about life. It had cost her all of her pension money to pay for this. That in and of itself was not the big problem. I don’t think the woman thinks that far ahead about not having money. The genuine problem lies in the fact that she truly is too blind to see her telephones screen or she just wishes people to constantly help her. It’s hard to know the truth.
There are days when she finds her way here without a single problem and then there are days like today when she claims she cannot even find my gate. Who could possibly know the truth?
I sent her off for some flour, soda, vinegar and toilet paper. It took a while for this list to get firmly in her head. It was the soda that didn’t want to stick. Most of the time was spent trying to show her how to use her telephone. I was a teacher for 20 years. I have no problem using a soft voice and explaining things carefully. But what can you do when someone absolutely claims that they cannot see the screen enough to read even a single word?
I tried to show her a simple way to use the phone. She has an Android system and at the bottom there are three buttons. The center button returns you to the home screen. In the lower left corner of the home screen is the telephone app. I found my number in her contacts list and added my own name in Russian language. All she needs to do is to open up her telephone and she can call me.
This exercise was 15 minutes. Explain this to me sometime. Literally, she claimed to have not enough visual perception to read my name in Russian. She also claimed to be unable to figure out the tapping gesture. If this is actually her level of blindness, what in the hell possessed her to buy a telephone?
So I don’t know. Truthfully, I think she just needs the attention and a few dollars. Today, she kept saying sweet words to me and kissing my ear. She loves kissing my ear. It’s the equivalent of Ghenna’s fist bump. It’s getting hard for me to take. At one point she broke into tears over something. God help us all with whatever is going through the woman’s mind.
Actually, what I believe to be the truth is that better Russians are absolutely afraid of doing anything in the rain. You can’t get anyone to do any work in the rain and obviously, mildly crazy people with bad eyes go completely blind and emotionally insane on rainy days. Perhaps a team of scientists might help.
But that’s not the story. When she came, I had just made a pot of tea and I offered her a glass but she turned me down. I said okay but it’s very cold in here and the tea helps but she refused. She was more interested in getting this telephone thing figured out and getting money into my hand so she could go to the store. Fine. But then right after she left, I got a call from my neighbor Tanya. It seems Elena showed up at her house horribly cold and wet and asking for some soup. According to her story, I kept her there in the cold and now she was close to death. Tanya said that she would help Lana with her task of going to the store and that the both of them would show up at my house in a short period of time perhaps to drink some tea.
This is not today I plan for myself. I’ve already been outside. I got some water and made some breakfast this morning. I made pasta though I don’t know why I did. It was tasty but it actually tired me out and sent me back to bed for a while. To be honest, I could see going back to bed and making a fire and just reading as being a pretty good way to handle a day like this. My current situation seems to be calling for insane women and their drunken witchcraft to be surrounding me. Do you think I brought this on myself?
Anyway, it’s nice when they like you. My dad told me to be nice to the ladies. I learned quite a few things from my father and in my own way, I’m living a very similar life to the one he lived after my mother passed. He lived on a much higher economic level than I do but the effect was the same and his relationship to the world was extremely similar. It’s nice to know that I come by these things naturally. But one of the few bits of advice that he gave me that stuck with me was simply that. Be nice to the ladies. I think probably he was right.
I do not believe I am a misogynist. I do not believe that I have hatred for women. I do not claim to be an expert in female language but sometimes I believe I understand how to speak correctly to receive something resembling reasonable repartee. I do not claim to believe that there is a functional relationship there. I believe there is the appearance of something there and quite a few places along the road that seem to bring up an endless series of emotions. It seems to me that the entire population of women in the world is somehow exactly as blind as Lena on occasion. So blind that they cannot even see the name on the telephone to make a call.
Anyway, I’m just sitting here in the kitchen. I don’t think that pasta breakfast was very good for me. I think I should have made bread instead. Maybe I’ll make some bread today. Bread usually does the trick. Maybe a little bit of olive oil, ground pepper, a tiny bit of salt and some vinegar as a dip for fresh bread. Maybe I crush in a few chili peppers and one or two cloves of garlic. Serve that with fresh bread and hot tea and you’re going a great distance towards making everything in the world better.
***
It’s 20 after 2:00 and I seem to be spending my day in the kitchen. It’s very wet outside but the rain has stopped. The thought is in my mind to take my bicycle over to the store. I need some toilet paper and some matches to light the stove.
I’ve been thinking about baseball lately. Philadelphia won an extremely exciting contest against San Diego to advance to the World series. The game winning Homer, not quite a walk-off but executed in the bottom of the eighth, was by the one and only Bryce Harper. Harper is a baseball savant. He has been on an absolute rocket ship towards professional baseball since he was in his early teens. He has massive power, knows the game intricately and with the only failing point that he gets injured from time to time, he is one of the best players in baseball. No one is arguing this.
But Harper’s status as a ball player has a negative side to it. He receives much more attention from the media than other players. In fact, he receives so much attention that he is absolutely tired of it. It’s hard when you are the best. It’s even harder when you are the best and make 30 million dollars a year. He carries the weight of the world and all eyes are on him.
He also has one other attribute in that people think he’s a jerk. I don’t think anybody’s going to argue this. He is a sociopath like all people who are great at what they do. When you are attempting to raise your personal art form to an extreme, one of the reasons this happens is antisocial behavior. Either anti-social or you’re just not really good at hanging around and talking and doing nothing. We could also temper this by saying “hanging around and pleasuring themselves”. I’m sorry if these words don’t quite mean the same as what you might be thinking but if you’re talking about people who are very good socially it is because they tend to sit around and pleasure themselves. You know what I mean. You hang out and make witty conversation over cocktails or meet with friends to get fucked up and enjoy the day. Whatever your pleasure.
I should add in here but I am a fan of Barry Bonds. I respect his talent to play baseball and indeed, Barry Bonds is and will always be one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived. People have decided to never speak of him without considering him a cheater. He took some chemicals which perhaps enhanced his ability to recover, he was able to work out more and became an absolute monster. He is now hated for having become a chemically assisted monster and for being a jerk. He was another sociopath who wasn’t good at pleasing the writers and his teammates. He wasn’t good at hanging around and doing nothing.
The thought that came into my mind though about Harper is that he is a devout Mormon and does not drink alcohol. He seems to be a happy family man. He now has two children. His intensity for the game of baseball does not seem to have diminished very much. When you listen to him talk, he immediately deflects all attention from himself. He will talk about his teammates accurately, mentioning their names and even opposing players who played exceptionally. He will say as many positive things about the fans that support him as he can. He makes intelligent choices of what words to use and he is absolutely succinct in his seriousness that he is in It for the Love of the game and it is a team sport. He does nothing himself. The men around him are all that is important. Basically, he does his job of answering questions exactly how he does his job of playing baseball. He is a professional and he won’t make any mistakes.
But right now I cannot get the thought out of my head that he doesn’t drink is probably the most important part of how people perceive him. People are expecting him to act normally which is to say to be a good alcoholic or a good functional alcoholic. But he doesn’t drink so he just doesn’t do the things he is expected to do. Other alcoholics simply don’t get this.
I don’t drink. I don’t use alcohol at all. It is absolutely no problem for me to say no to a glass of wine or beer. I am absolutely not crying inside by doing this. I have alleviated myself of the burden of this particular addiction and I don’t remember a single day going by where I do not believe I’ve made the right choice.
In fact, let me make this clear. I don’t need a drink. I don’t need the situations in which I would be obliged to drink. I don’t like the company of drunks. I don’t want the taste of alcohol in my life and I do not wish to be drunk. I also do not need alcohol to take the edge off, to make dinner go better or to enhance the enjoyment of any situation. I don’t drink because I don’t like it and because I don’t want it in my life. And again, this is absolutely zero problem for me. I have refused to cultivate the addiction.
I also understand how drinking is legal and is seen by most everybody in the popular world we live in as an essential component of adulthood. I understand that this would be seen as a normal human action. If we tried to vote for sobriety again, we would simply be paying the mafia money. Only the criminals would have access to this and you would be obliged to hang out with criminals to get what you want. Nobody wants this. People want the right to get drunk whenever they damn well feel like it.
But I was watching the interview with Harper after he received his most valuable player award for hitting that home run and for basically being a universe bending hitter for the entire series. It wasn’t just this one hit, he’s single-handedly wrecked all his competition throughout the playoffs and shined more brightly than anyone ever shines at anything. But listening to him talk, and keeping in mind the fact that he just doesn’t drink, what I saw was how little he needed this interview. He didn’t need to have his ego stroked and he did not need to be publicly addressed as a hero. He was there because he was obligated because of his position and reputation and the award to meet with the press and be reasonable with them. But all I could see is that he was staring at a room full of drunks with whom he would probably rather not be. And I completely understand what it probably looks like to him.
Here’s the video and maybe you can see what I’m looking at. Or maybe you just think he’s a jerk.
Me? I don’t care who he is as a person outside of baseball. I learned one of the greatest lessons of my life managing a ball team one time. I learned that there are basically only a few types of people in the world. I assign a point rating. I give one point to people who are really cool to hang out with. Good, friendly people are a delight. No one’s arguing. I also assign one point to people who are remarkably talented at what they do. I am in awe of great workers and I am appreciative of people who just do their job well. Other than this, there is nothing else to judge.
I find that 80% of everybody you meet in your life has one point. They are either very good people or they are talented. Most of the time, people are friendly and have learned their social lessons and just want to get along. Again, you have to be a bit of a sociopath to really develop your talent. There are some exceptions in which you meet really friendly people who are also monsters in their idioms. God bless them and cherish these people if you are lucky enough to have a two in your life. Keep as many of them as you can find.
The converse is also true however and when you run into a zero, the best thing is to exclude them from your life. You are not going anywhere quickly with a pocket full of zeros. You will never win with them and all you will ever get is more problems that you just don’t need.
The trick of this philosophy is simply to appreciate that friendly people are good for being friendly and they are probably not going to handle the big problems for you. As for the talent, you are obligated to use your own ability to tolerate the idiosyncrasies of genius. Frankly, these are the guys that win the ball games for you well at the same time tiring you out remorselessly. I’m just saying that it’s not our job to judge a genius on their ability to be a functional alcoholic. Their job is to be great and I say пусть, let them do what they do and you be the kinder person and pick up the slack.
This is not the only reason why I love Barry Bonds and why I like Bryce Harper so much. I don’t require any effort to tolerate their shortcomings. I really don’t care about their character off the baseball diamond or their personalities in conversation. If I was in some kind of a situation where I found myself being social with them, I would agree that they are most probably the elephant in the room and I would do my best to go with it and be pleasant. If for some reason they took an interest in me, very, very doubtful, but I would just do what I do and tell the truth every time. Like me or don’t like me, I’m exactly the same type of sociopath and I do what I do to the best of my ability whether you like me or not. I’m not saying I’m a genius, I’m just saying I don’t tolerate fools well either.
The reason I am talking about this is what happened a little bit earlier today. I mentioned that for some reason known only to herself, Lena took a detour from her trip to the store to complain about the cold to Tanya. Let me take that back. Lena knew exactly what she was doing. She had hatched a bit of cleverness to preserve her territory and her resources. She did not want to lose whatever the hell she thought her job was to Tanya. Or to say this more simply, she was jealous.
Apparently today her blindness was so extreme that she could not take one more step in her job for me to go to the store and come back. Today she absolutely needed Tanya’s help for this. I got a call from the store from Tanya asking me if it made a difference what kind of flour I needed. I told her the truth that I just didn’t care. If they didn’t have whole grain, it was all bullshit.
A few minutes later, it occurred to me that I needed a package of matches. I have a very simple gas stove and it requires a match to light. I am down to one of my last packages of matches. I eat a lot and I light the stove every day. Unfortunately, they had already left the store and were on their way to see me. Wonderful. I was told to put up some hot water for tea.
Well, it seems that the money I gave to Lena for making the trip to the store for me got spent on a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread. The bread was supposedly for Tanya but truthfully, it went along with the wine. Apparently there was no need for tea. The three of us were going to party together and we were going to do this normally.
I told them clearly and in a friendly way that I don’t drink. Both of them already knew this and theoretically Lena was on the wagon. She has been making a point of telling me that she does not drink. She also has made a point of telling me that Tanya does drink. In fact, Lena loves gossiping about all the dirty little secrets of Tanya’s life. Actually, Lana loves spreading the dirty little secrets of everybody’s life, even mine. She has told me how she gossips about me. She loves pointing out her own usefulness because I am so helpless. I have asked her if perhaps she couldn’t just say that I was a decent fellow. I don’t really need people hearing what Lena believes are my dirty little secrets. I have enough problem with people around here and I’m already cursed by gossip from my chicken neighbors. Fucking Russians just love propaganda.
There was no argument. My not drinking simply meant more wine for them. They started looking around for a glass to drink from. They only needed one. This was a street affair. People were supposed to get drunk as quickly as possible. Tanya went first and immediately metamorphosed into an incredibly evil looking creature. I have seen her drunk many times but I’ve never seen her do the act of drinking the really shitty wine that they sell at the store. Her face hardened and twisted and you could see the hardness in her heart. It seems that she suddenly became more evil than she normally allows herself to appear when she’s with me. Or perhaps this was the show and she just wanted me to know the truth.
Then she handed an entire water glass of wine to Lena and told her that it was her turn. Lena didn’t argue and drank the entire glass, also immediately transforming into an incredibly sloppy mess. I suddenly required more fist bumps in the form of kisses. She suddenly couldn’t keep her hands off me. All the time bursting into tears at some emotional issue and begging me to understand how needed I was and how glorious I was.
I tolerated this for maybe about 10 minutes. I refused to let Tanya smoke in my house. Lena immediately pointed out that she never smokes and this makes her better than Tanya. I thanked her for her assessment. I finally had to put a stop to Lena’s attempts to kiss me because truly, it was making me sick.
I finally recognized a loophole. They had remembered to buy wine but they had forgotten to bring me toilet paper. I had given Lena enough money for the bread stuff and toilet paper. They had bought wine and bread instead with the leftover money and now she wanted more money. I told her that the important thing was to finish her job and she got the point that it was time to get up and get out
Today, Lena was too frail and blind to do her job. She required Tanya to hold her arm for the entire trip because she was just to blind and too frail to do anything. All of that floor cleaning and shopping and clothes washing that she’s been doing for me for the last 2 years have been an illusion. The truth is she is absolutely in need of constant attention or there is no chance of her surviving.
I accepted the fact that they were not coming back and that I would not be getting my toilet paper. The two of them went through the bottle of wine pretty quickly and there was no possibility of my giving them any more money. I walked out to the front gate and closed the lock and came back inside to make myself some black bread toast and tea. I don’t normally eat store-bought bread. It brings mice and it has sugar in it. But what the hell, a party is a party.
What am I going to do about this? I don’t need to do anything about this. I’ve been doing a good job of keeping my house clean. I have other means of getting groceries whenever I want. As far as washing clothes, I have a pretty good system and it only takes about 15 minutes to rinse things out. I suppose if I ever found a genuine job that I didn’t want to do I could call Lena. I can’t call either of them today though. Their phones no longer work. But I assume if I ever really needed something, they would know that there was a paycheck waiting for them. I seem to pay enough for a bottle of wine. They would show up.
When I was a young man, I was a pretty good ball player. I could really hit. I was never Bryce Harper. Bryce Harper is one in a million. He is one in 20 million or even 100 million. He is the once in a generation ball player that we wait for and give tons of money and adulation to. He has a magnificent swing, he hits with every muscle in his body and he is absolutely a champion. Perhaps he’s a jerk but I think this is just propaganda and gossip from a bunch of drunks who don’t actually do anything ever anywhere in their life that is equal to what Bryce Harper can do hitting a baseball. I always prefer the straight information to the opinion. I just want to watch the game and I’ll reserve the commentary for myself.
If I were to meet Harper, if it was such a situation where it was absolutely a moment between the two of us, perhaps I would tell him that I understand that there is nothing more horrible than looking at your drunken friends with sober eyes. I would not say this in the hope of ingratiating myself to him. I would just say this by way of saying that I understood and that I really admire the way he plays the game of baseball.
***
I have two more links. Maybe this is just my personal algorithm but it certainly seems that I’m not the only one who recognizes things for exactly what they are.
The first is just a clip of the ceremony of Putin meeting with Xi Jinping of China.
The second is another man on the street interview from Moscow in which people are asked if they recognized Putin’s billion dollar residence and perhaps could understand where such a thing is possible on a $100,000 a year salary.
This by the way has always been the traditional Russian way of identifying corruption. When you see how someone lives, if it is well beyond their obvious means, you pretty much know they are stealing the money.
It’s not always true. People here believe I’m made of money and yet I live where I live. Americans don’t see things exactly this way. They just tell me I was stupid and that I got what I paid for by buying the place.
Here is the video mentioned in the 1420 interview about how the economics of Moscow works. Maybe it’s worth the watch.
***
Okay, today was another one of those days that had some seriously good stuff and seriously bad stuff but overall can only be remembered as weird. This business with Tanya and Lena left a very bad taste in my mouth. I cannot stand these things and watching these two idiots set up to get drunk in my kitchen was not appreciated. I don’t think that door is going to be open for quite some time. I understand that they were just doing what it is they do but it’s not me. That is not what my home is for and it was regretful.
You can point your finger at me and say I am to blame for everything. That’s what people usually do. And I understand we are talking about addiction and that addiction is something that people spend their lifetimes dealing with in one way or another. I understand that it is me who is out of the ordinary and no one else in this life would object anymore. I am just not going to accept this as a part of my life. I don’t want that at all.
Going to the completely opposite spectrum, I had a nice conversation with my daughter Anya this afternoon. It was a bit emotional but she seems to be getting along at the University. She is talking about international law. She looks gorgeous and I hope she can keep it together. It was a good conversation and hopefully we will find our relationship going forward. People grow up, you know and things change. We will see how things go.
As for tomorrow, I am not taking the trip up to Minsk. I feel bad perhaps because I mentioned taking the trip with my ex partner. Maybe I am a terrible guy for backing off. But without legitimate confirmation from the medical establishment and without really having enough time to hang out with my daughter, it’s not worth the pain and effort. I am pretty mobile these days but I’m not that mobile. It’s not a sure thing to gamble on.
About current events, well, things are pretty miserable and tense. There’s a lot of talking going on. Europe is grinding into some decisions regarding Putin but in the end, it will be like trying to convict Trump of something. You can just keep making news about how someone will hold them accountable for their crimes but it just doesn’t work that way for rich people or dictators. People who live without checks and balances do so because there are no checks or balances for them. Unfortunately, we are a million miles away from a rational society. I would say it’s an easy fact that I will never see the promised Land. Maybe in my children’s lifetime we will have some legitimate movement towards sustainability and peace.
During the conversation with my daughter, we talked a little bit about writing music. I came up with an idea for teaching music that’s similar to the idea behind practical English. The difference between my method and the usual way people learn things is that it was predominantly meant to be active rather than passive. People didn’t learn the language by reading and listening but rather by creating logic. My thought was that perhaps someone can genuinely learn to play an instrument without bothering with pre-written music.. Of course there is a vocabulary to be learned and it’s good to know some songs. But maybe it’s possible to learn to play strictly from what you can create for yourself.
There was one really cool moment in this thought. I ran and grabbed my guitar and cold fingers included, I came up with a little song that worked amazingly well. I just laid one finger over three strings and played three chromatic notes off of each one. I knew eventually what the notes were and what key I was playing in so I could improvise a quick Harmony. All I did was play some notes and then found them in my voice. I allowed the notes I was playing to dictate a melody and then simply put some words in there.
When I continued the song with some chords behind it, my daughter cried. It turned out to be a beautiful thought and the music made it sentimental. It was just a nice musical moment and there was enough reality in it to draw out something deep in her. It was meaningful.
I don’t know if such moments can be recreated but maybe it would be a pretty cool class to teach. Completely non-traditional. You don’t have to know what you’re doing. You just play. I think the creativity alone would be worth the effort and every song would be perfect.
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