Thursday, October 27th 2022
4:00 a.m. is not a good time to be awake. 4:00 a.m. when it’s not even going to be daylight for another 4 hours is absolutely the wrong time to be awake.
I think the problem is that I just ate too much yesterday. Bullshit stress and a moment of alcoholic drama mixed with change of season boredom or simply sudden void has me mixed up. I have too many things on my mind that cannot be fixed easily. Or I just ate too much. Food is a drug. It’s what you have to do in between meals that is supposed to make life interesting.
I had a thought a bit earlier about how this current generation of human beings seems to be using up all of the resources of the planet simply for itself. It’s not just trying to uncover all of the oil now, it’s the system demanding that people be completely active 8 hours a day seems to be dredging up every last thing we possibly can for today’s profit. I’m just wondering what future generations are going to have to keep themselves occupied. They could figure out what to do with all the garbage this generation is making. Most of how we occupy our time is in making money. We have to justify this all day everyday effort from all of the people on the planet. Maybe that is our gift to the Future. We are like Russia and we just will hand down our garbage happily so that other people can deal with our problems and stupidity.
I think what I’d really like to do is simply do some writing. I think what I need is a writing project. There is this thing that I am doing right now, literally right now, but it is somehow unsatisfying. Perhaps I’m just tired of the repetitious nature of this. I’m also tired of the fact that I feel like I’ve worn my subject to death but yet there seems to be no possibility of having what I feel to be common sense made use of. It’s just a giant block of words saying the same things over and over again.
The point is that life is boring unless you are involved in something interesting. It’s this business of being interesting to yourself, being interested or feeling interested that is important. You have to have velocity. You have to have a point. If you don’t, the redundancy will send you into depression. If you ask me the genuine truth of why Russia needs this war it is simply that Putin became too rich from the corruption he gained from selling off Russia’s resources and he is simply too old for physical thrills. You can’t give him any more cocaine or any more women or any more exotic pets. He’s already been Mike Tyson for many years. And now with his body starting to fade and health problems starting to take over his consciousness, what can the poor guy do for a thrill?
On the other side of the world, we have Joe Biden. 50 years of working for the system and you can’t blame him for wanting to sit in the pilot’s chair at least once. The problem is that he is in his eighties. I agree that it’s nice that he’s obligated to put up a face every day. It’s nice to have something to do in the morning and people to listen to you. And I’m sure he is, like all Democrats, trying to do something to push the American economic system in some direction that has a potential for fairness or at least the illusion of fairness. At least he’s got that.
I would take a wild guess that even Lukashenko is getting sick of it. There was a time when he was the definite bad guy. Nobody was paying attention to Russia and they got to do all of their parasitic behavior under the radar. Sure, there were locals writing about it trying to be checks and balances, I participated in that, but the attention was on the big guy with the mustache. He was the last dictator of Europe. He was the wrestling bad guy. It turns out that he wasn’t and he was literally Luca brazzi to Putin the whole time. But at least he had his moment in the Sun. Now what has he got to do?
Okay, I saw the news where he got to put on fatigues and go and visit the army. He always goes out and yells at some State industry or yells at the people who are not keeping the cows clean enough. He fires a few people and screams and sits in the middle of a room having people dutifully sit at attention and listen to the words he says, nodding occasionally in agreement. I mean, if you want to talk about boredom, look at the faces of the people forced to be in starched suits listening to the president scream at them yet again.
Around the turn of the millennia I found myself in New York. I had ridden a bicycle across the United States as a bit of an adventure and it was. I found a youth hostel who liked me for some reason and I ended up working there but I didn’t really like the job very much. I was out on my bicycle one day looking for some kind of employment when I ran into a bike messenger. Forgetting about the job search, I raced him down the upper East side just to see if I had the ridin skills to play with the New York City bike messenger in traffic.
We ended up in a bike shop and he suggested that I get a job as a messenger. It was like a light going off in my head. Why the hell was I looking for stupid jobs that I would never really like. Why couldn’t I find a job doing the thing I really loved? Seriously, somebody would pay me to ride my bike? That’s insane!
But it wasn’t. It was the most fun I ever had at a job. Okay, riding my bike in automobile traffic all day with shit on my lungs. It is an absolutely stupid job health-wise. I mean yes, you become such a machine from riding a bike all the time. You become hard like a soldier who is in constant combat gets hard.
The thing is though that after a while, the thrill goes away. This is really worth thinking about because it is a job where you could die every single day that you show up for work. Of course, you learn the ebb and flow of the city. You learn to handle the track you’re riding on. Even the bumps and nuances and metal grading and road dividers and the moving cars that you run into simply smooth out and you start feeling like you’re on a velodrome track just going around and around. When I was riding, I was also running a business, supplying parts to people through a catalog and doing mechanical fixes. I was also buying and selling bikes. I was engaged 20 hours a day.
It still got boring. Well, September 11th didn’t help. That screwed up the city and the economy of New York and absolutely broke the back of the bike business. Now it wasn’t just a matter of doing the job, now we had to contend with security. Everything slowed down and became bureaucratic. The money went down as well because there just wasn’t much to do. Inevitably though, we all knew that the computers were going to kill our job like it killed all the other jobs. The physical labor necessary to move documents from one place to another becomes redundant if you can simply send a file with a click of a button. Literally, how many jobs have disappeared due to mechanization or computerization? How many ways of making a living have disappeared?
I got a call from Tanya last night. She was in town of course. She would never have called me if she was here. She wanted to get flirty with me. I suppose it was nice. For her it was nice. For me it is not really that pleasant. For her, it’s a thrill. She gets to play with my attention and she gets to work her ex-husband’s jealousy. She gets all of this masculine energy flowing towards herself and other than the quest of feeding her other addictions, her life is extremely interesting at this moment. Well, it was until I put the kibosh on it after about 8 minutes.
She was enjoying teasing me. She was enjoying the pretend intimacy. She had me for a moment with the flirtiness. Unfortunately, there’s a difference between running into a moment of something interesting in life and realizing you’re just getting worked again for resources. There are people who enjoy experiencing moments and there are those who are simply in it for the money. Pretty much everybody sacrifices their physical wants and desires for the money. Almost everyone I know in the world has sacrificed moments of life for the money.
She was really getting into it and at a glance, one might have enjoyed this. Intimacy is nice. A little love is nice. But then I pointed out to her that she has managed to ruin every single moment we have had. She finds a reason to run. She is not allowed to have these moments. The world beats her to death whenever she feels nice or comfortable. She is only allowed to numb herself. She can only have drugs she can buy. She is not allowed genuine happiness. It’s the culture she comes from.
My daughter’s mother was like this. She let herself believe for a while until she got scared. Fear runs everybody here. Everybody is frightened to death all the time. She told me one time that the key to life was to never allow yourself to be too happy. The moment you feel good, the moment that you are happy, something terrible is going to happen. The pain will always come and the pain hurts the most when you allow yourself to be too soft. It’s the culture she comes from.
This explains every single person I have written about this year. They all live in perpetual fear of the pain. The pain always comes. The only thing you can do is stand there tense, straight as A rod and with a soldier’s resolve never to let your guard down. You must always be prepared for the pain and the pain will always get you when you are stupid enough to be happy.
I was the person doling out the pain last night. I simply said that every single moment she has promised, she has found a way to ruin. If she wanted to spend time with me, she should have just spent time with me. I don’t have any problems. I’m not working for anyone else. I’m on my own time schedule. You can just ask me if I’m busy or not. Pretty much the only clock that I am abiding to is the natural clock of the seasons passing. I am interested in growing my own food. I’m obligated to put my stuff in the ground at such a time that it will grow properly with the seasons. I’m also unfortunately obligated to take extreme measures to bring in my plants because of climate change and global warming and the perpetual drought it has brought to the region. I’m looking at the end of the world and trying to raise plants so you know, I’m obligated in this way. But if she wants to see me, she knows where I live. It’s not like I go anywhere. I’m not offering any contracts or guarantees. I’m just saying I’ll listen to the proposition.
Please don’t get me wrong. No, this is not the great relationship for me but my point is that it doesn’t have to be. I’m not exploiting anybody, I’m just living here and this is one of the things that happens. I don’t need epic and I don’t need to barter away a lifetime. It’s just a moment that feels good because a woman is paying attention to me and I’m not gay. I’m not too old that I can’t feel a bit of attention and love coming my way. It’s nice. It feels good. But it doesn’t need to be anything more than a moment amongst the series of moments that happens when you’re lucky enough not to be dead.
The woman is a mess and comes along with all the baggage in the world. She is also a horrible drunk and is addicted to pretty much anything she can get her hands on. I understand this and I have understood this since I met her. I get the point.
Unfortunately, I live in the Republic of Belarus in The villages. The Republic of Belarus only invests in the city centers because only the city centers have the potential to pay them money. They do not invest in life. They do not invest in the lives of their people. The government does not invest its efforts in seeing that people are happy and well fed and healthy. They do not invest in the kind of quiet sustainable human life that people yearn for. They do not allow for natural love to exist between people. They do not allow the quiet comfort they used to sell during the old days like it was the greatest lesson in the history of the world. It probably was but they sold that for a bag of silver and some beads.
What is left is wreckage. Human garbage. Biological waste products. Pointlessness. Endless grubbing for pennies.
Me? I just want some fresh air. I’m self-contained. I worked really hard for a long time and I saved my money because I don’t drink and I don’t smoke and I don’t do drugs and I don’t party. I don’t Gamble. I just don’t play. I have health problems with my legs. I’m diabetic. I am just a simple guy trying to get along the best I can on what physicality I have left. I’m just trying to be alive for as long as I can because this is the only life I have to live. I just want to be in the clean Air and eat clean food and live a clean, quiet life. That’s all. This is the only reason I’m here.
And no matter what I might say about anybody who lives here in this town and about their personal habits and failings, they are people who live in this town. Perhaps last year, I had some wonderful ideas of community employment that might raise the quality of life for people living here but nobody really wants to listen to my ideas. They just want to fight with me or harm me or tell me how much they hate me because of what I am. They are too nervous to listen to me and they are not allowed because I am not them. New ideas are illegal. Doing anything to stop the misery of the system that put them here is illegal. Stepping out of line gets you beaten.
If it is an interesting nuance, one of the things that Drew Tanya to me other than the money was that I don’t beat her or at least I didn’t before last night. Her relationship to her husband is as brutal as you can possibly imagine from a pair of impoverished alcoholics. She’s obligated to do everything she does because if she doesn’t support the family nobody will. She gets to be the hero and she gets to take care of someone who is a zero. A violent zero. A violent alcoholic drug abusing zero.
You’ve heard this story before? At least you know why I like her. She’s got heart. It’s an alcoholic heart. A drug addicted heart. She rides the merry-go-round hard. She is a Belarusian woman. She’s the same as my daughter’s mother and almost everyone else who lives here. It’s all desperation all the time and has been this way for two and a half decades. Almost three. Probably three.
But she was working me on the phone. She wanted some attention. She wanted to know the energy was going to keep flowing her way. She wanted to know that the door was open and that she could play another game. She just wanted to know if she was still wanted. I was a shit. I’m always a shit. I pointed out that that game that she and Lena played on me was a little too much. I don’t drink and I don’t really appreciate stupid drunken parties in my house. I don’t like it and I don’t take pleasure in it and I don’t feel good in it and I really don’t want to be around it. I thought I had made that point completely clear over many months and I keep my Gates locked specifically to keep this away from my world. She knew that and she agreed that she did. She agreed that it was too much and had gone too far. She was trying to keep the moment alive. She was trying to keep that flirt going. She just wanted to know if she was still attractive. She still wanted to know if I had something for her.
But now the door was open. I didn’t have to say anything. I’m notorious for talking when most people would rather I just be silent and take it. In fact, if we consider this thing that I’m writing right now, it is the quintessence of my assholishness. I just never stopped talking when people would rather I didn’t. She would have been much happier if I would have just continued to let her work me. All anybody wants is the right to work me in peace. They are just parasites doing their job. Please be a good host and allow your blood to be sucked quietly. It is the way of our world and the way of our people that we agree to masochistically allow our blood to be sucked in a peaceful and calm manner. This is the lesson they’ve been trying to teach me from the beginning and I get it but fuck you. Seriously, fuck you.
I told her that she had spoiled every single moment we’ve had. I’ve put words on it and explained it to her. Forgive me but I have retained some love of life. I feel things when they come to me. I understand where I live and I understand who I am with and I understand more about this fucking place than anyone should ever have bothered to learn. But I still like to retain some thought that I’m alive and I’m not hurting anybody and I have no obligations to say no. If she wants to spend time with me, I’m available providing it’s reasonably nice for myself. If you have some fair trade, I’m open to it. I’m not a rich man. I’m not your meal ticket. I’m not your husband or your brother or your father for your Rich uncle or your benefactor or your sponsor. I’m your fucking neighbor and I’m sober.
She didn’t like that I said this. She took it and agreed that it was probably true. She agreed that I have a memory and that I noticed things and that I was in fact already out of the romance of it all. She had me for a moment when it seemed like we had a moment but then she insisted on bringing her drama into it every time. It couldn’t possibly just be a moment. It had to be worked for every dime she could get out of it. The woman has her addictions. Those addictions come first. Her addictions are things that can be bought. Her addictions have nothing to do with life.
“You’re a drug addict.”
I said it. I said it right to her face. You can’t reason with drug addicts or alcoholics or conservatives. You can’t discuss things with fascists or the residue of fascism. You can’t barter with slaves. You can’t share life with someone who has no life. You can’t speak honestly with liars. You can’t meet with parasites.
In the universe, the laws of physics always apply. The universe is held together by gravity and all the bodies floating in the universe interact with each other in these ways. Two objects speeding along through space, perhaps the result of one big bang or perhaps just being because of an infinite number of big Banks, run past each other and perhaps because of an absolutely chance variation of possibilities end up orbiting each other. A binary star system, a planet with a moon, two planets of equal size simply rotating in space held together by gravitational attraction. It just happens because the universe is infinite.
But then some other incident happened, a giant solar flare from a nearby Sun changes everything and suddenly the orbits of these planets change and the gravity lessons and they get torn apart, each hurtling off into space in different directions.
People here are tight as a drum. You put a tiny pin prick in the casing and suddenly you have a gas jet sending someone spiraling away. I guess I said the magic words. It was like winning the bonus on a pinball machine. Suddenly all the bells and whistles were going off at the same time. Tanya couldn’t win this game. I feel bad about it. I know I was supposed to be a good host. I was supposed to be a polite shark and show kindness and compassion to my remora. I know I was supposed to be a good Christian and allow myself to be fed off of. I was supposed to be the same person I was to that cat and just simply provide a bowl of food and a couch to crash on. I was supposed to be someone who made the hunt easier or to allow the hunt to stop altogether. I get it.
I actually was trying to be a friend. I actually was trying to be a couch she could crash on. I actually did have a pot of tea or a bowl of food. I actually did have an ear and some polite conversation. I actually was available. I just wasn’t a bank and an unlimited line of credit or drinking buddy to get wrecked with. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t like to get crazy. I also don’t like the smell that comes along with drinking and smoking. I don’t like the brutality and the stupidity. I don’t like swimming in shit.
She started speaking gibberish. Her mind was trying to make sense. It was only one sentence. It was what I thought or was that I knew the truth or just that she realized that she couldn’t win the game. There were a few fractured sentences, a few statements of indignity. There were some noises that I had insulted her or that she was insulted or that uninsult like this could not be tolerated and then she hung up the phone and waited for me to call her back. I didn’t call her back.
She’ll be by again sometime. We kind of live in the same town. She has a 14-year-old girl and perhaps she wants me to teach her English. She also asked me if I would teach her English. She was looking for something for us to do together. Or maybe she’ll just come by with some mushrooms.
Lena will also come by. We all make compromises when we are addicted. When we are in need, we all give up our dignity. Some people don’t. Some people never give up their dignity. Some people would rather die than give up their dignity. Some people, and I guess they are a lot like me, never get involved in addictive behavior simply because our dignity is worth more to us than a momentary thrill. I’m not completely convinced my motivation is the same. I just like feeling healthy. I am interested in natural beauty. Or maybe I just like being healthy.
Like I said, it’s boring. It’s really hard finding something relevant to do because they’ve taken all the jobs away. I suppose there was a time when a community really needed to work together and to function as a community. I suppose there was a time when everybody realized that we live in a neighborhood and that we all need to pull our weight. In Good, well functioning societies, everybody knows that they have to pull their weight and do what they can to help out. Everybody feels the pain when one of our own falls.
We don’t do this anymore. Now it’s every man or woman for themselves. Now all we want is to feel good somehow. We just want enough money to get by. We need so many things. There are so many things we simply can’t live without. We are in so much need all the time. There’s not a day that we wake up where the first thing we need to do is satisfy something that can never be satisfied, scratching an itch that will never stop itching and feeding a hunger that never goes away. It’s all we do. All of us are exactly the same. And this is the world we made for ourselves.
***
It’s coming up on 8:00 and it’s cold. It’s cold and cloudy. I made a slight change in the electrical setup of the warm room last night and never bothered to light a fire. I’ve been comfortable enough. This is a good sign. Six degrees Celsius is not zero. Zero is when the fun starts. Freezing is when things get real. I’ve had people tell me that you have to heat the whole house or you have problems. I don’t. This is the only room I bother to warm up. It’s more efficient and economically sound to do this. It conserves resources and it’s good enough. But the real challenge comes at zero.
Or when the electricity fails. This seems to be a favorite game of our bloodlusting governments. With winter coming and the extermination of Nazis or satanists or Jews or whoever they think they’re trying to kill in there Mass psychosis, they like to use every means necessary to kill people. When they’re antiquated guns are not enough, they buy drones from Iraq or just attack civilian infrastructure. Lots of resources are just being wasted on this party.
That’s the real problem with parties around here. You have to spend money in order for people to appreciate them. I understand there was a time where you just went out in nature or went swimming. It wasn’t about spending a ton of money. But then things horribly changed.
I guess I’ve had enough of this whining. I don’t need to talk about this anymore. On a practical level though, I’m going to have to spend some money. I was told that this wonderful food service that we just managed to discover is no longer going to service this region. They opened it up, I think they specifically opened it up for me, I’ve made absolutely no complaints and I’ve been happy to do business with them but they’ve decided not to do this anymore. I only have a few days left before it all goes away.
This doesn’t mean I starve to death. If yesterday was a good indication, I will have the opportunity to get on a bike for at least another month. If I can get out to the main road I can ride over to our own food store which, though not first class, has enough basic supplies. I also have plenty of potatoes in The Root cellar and enough apples to get me through New Year’s.
I am thinking of making a bulk buy though. There are certain things that I would rather not run out of. These are absolute basics like lentils, tomato paste, peanuts and brown rice. I can’t get these at the store and if they will bring it to me for a fair price, it’s worth the investment to make sure that I have enough to last through the winter. You can’t have a vegan diet without beans. You can’t be a vegan without nuts and decent grains. You’ve got to have a few basic things to make sure that your body functions. My local store never understands this and I don’t even think there’s a way to communicate with them. I’ve tried but apparently they don’t even have a choice as to what comes there. Those decisions are made at a distance.
This by the way is not an insult to the local store. This is also true at the supermarkets. I have asked if they have the possibility for certain items. No one is aware of such a thing where people can actually request the food that comes to the stores. Some executive makes the decision, the products appear and they just check the animals to find out if they are being brought. For myself, when I find things that work for me I generally buy in bulk. I suppose they see me on the cameras, realize that only one person is buying and then you never get these products anymore. Or maybe they find out a Jew has bought them and they stop it out of Christian kindness.
I believe there is a kosher food store. I’ve heard it talked about. I’ve never actually seen it. It’s very mysterious. It’s not like a grocery store that you can just walk into. Actually I can’t even describe it. It’s not that it matters much. My concept of kosher is doing exactly what I’m doing which just happens to be kosher. I don’t need a lot of traditional kosher things that have to do with particular meats or normal grocery foods that happened to pass rabbinical inspection.
It’s probably very natural for me to worry about this. I don’t really fear starving to death. I am not starving to death and in fact I ate way too much yesterday and it’s playing with me today. I don’t feel like eating anything at all. But I can’t help worrying. That’s the worst thing about this. I just can’t stop worrying.
It is about time to be getting up though. I think I better go through the activity of dumping out my water tanks. I haven’t been putting it off, I just haven’t gotten around to doing it. There is gardening work to do before the snow comes. I am probably going to need to push the wheelbarrow out to the forest and collect some leaves to use as top mulch for the remaining boxes. We used the entire roll of hay. Everything looks nice and I hope we will get something but I don’t think it is as good a mulch as leaves. Forest leaves are gold eventually and leaf mold is an excellent growing medium for vegetables. I don’t think you can put too much down and it’s one of those resources we have a lot of if I have the legs to go out and get them.
I’ve also considered investing in a wood chipper. I suppose you can do the same thing with an ax or a saw. I have a ton of Forest Wood available. I’m not talking about entire trees, just the fallen branches that come every year and the trees that have already fallen and started to rot. This also makes really good mulch and it’s great to put down in the past to keep down weed growth. It also makes a pretty good box filler. Again though, it’s just a matter of my ability to go and get it.
I have time to do all this. The weather is supposed to be stable and we are not looking at any genuine freezes through the first part of November.
But it needs to get done. And I have to fix my gutters for winter as well. I think they are strong enough to handle a little bit of snow. I don’t think this is the problem. But I need to get them reconfigured. I have to take down the system that feeds the water into the water barrels and extend the end of the tube so that it drops water where water is supposed to be dropped. The garden is going to be fed this extra water from the roofs. Technically, there is a small percentage that says I should wait until spring and the first snow melt to do this because the place where the gutter sticks out will not be very strong. But this is just minutiae. It’s not very important and infinitely fixable.
I just got a call from Lena. She was unavailable yesterday. I told her pretty much the same thing that I told Tanya. Her little game was not enjoyable for me and very unappreciated. I tried to tell her that I was attempting to keep her going but if she was just going to invite all of this noise and drunken stupidity into my house, I wasn’t going to have it. She told me that she was not drunk now. This is a fine thing to know at 8:00 in the morning. But I also told her that I am aware that she’s been running her mouth around town. Not that it particularly matters but it also invites a bunch of shit into my life that is completely unwanted.
She did the exact same thing as Tanya and spiraled off into insanity. I managed to close the line slightly before the end of her speech. I have seen this play before. I know how It ends. It’s one of those tragedies that the actors believe is a comedy.
Which reminds me, I have to do a wash today.
But that’s about it. It’s going to be quiet today. I’m not expecting anybody to come to the house and I can’t think of a single reason to open the gate except perhaps to go for a bike ride. Unfortunately, I have to change the tire before I can do that. I don’t know if I’m going to have all this energy or not. Maybe it’ll be another lazy day or maybe the spirit will hit me and I will start moving around. The only thing I do know is there’s not going to be so much alcoholic noise in my ears today. That I believe is a very good thing. I think my ears need to heal a little bit. I think I need to take a break from all of this drunken stupidity I’ve been engaging in. I don’t think alcohol is very good for me.
***
I must repost this. It is from 1420 street interviews and this time, they offer a petition saying the Putin that he should nuke the “collective west”. The collective west is what Russian television calls Nato, the USA and Europe. Again, these are probably the most perfect man-on-the-street interviews I’ve ever seen from Russia. Watch, learn and understand the way Russia works.
For those of us who perhaps wish to continue life on planet earth, we have a news story about a new scientific discovery that makes a lot of sense to me.
Doctors say ‘fossil fuel addiction’ kills, starves millions
Extreme weather from climate change triggered hunger in nearly 100 million people and increased heat deaths by 68% in vulnerable populations worldwide as the world’s “fossil fuel addiction” degrades public health each year, doctors reported in a new study.
Worldwide the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and biomass forms air pollution that kills 1.2 million people a year, including 11,800 in the United States, according to a report Tuesday in the prestigious medical journal Lancet.
“Our health is at the mercy of fossil fuels,” said University College of London health and climate researcher Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown. “We’re seeing a persistent addiction to fossil fuels that is not only amplifying the health impacts of climate change, but which is also now at this point compounding with other concurrent crises that we’re globally facing, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, energy crisis and food crisis that were triggered after the war in Ukraine.”
In the annual Lancet Countdown, which looks at climate change and health, nearly 100 researchers across the globe highlighted 43 indicators where climate change is making people sicker or weaker, with a new look at hunger added this year.
“And the health impacts of climate change are rapidly increasing,” Romanello said.
My only take to this is that we have two sides of the coin. We have people who are trying desperately to suppress and destroy life. We have people trying to humiliate and ruin life as much as they possibly can and to disallow life from appearing. Where this culture of hatred came from is available for argument. I know I have taken my cracks at it. But it exists and its effect is horrible to the eye.
On the other side, we are finding people trying desperately to allow life to be. To find some sustainable way of living that allows us to continue. Perhaps even without misery is possible if we follow this road. At least I think so.
***
It’s 12:00 noon and I just made one of the stupidest mistakes. Instead of being careful, I tossed a plastic tub that I use regularly in the kitchen to hold water out the door in the direction of the well. I had just cleaned it carefully with a scrub pad and a sponge. I had just scrubbed out all of my pots and utensils. And then I casually tossed it out the front door and it landed on a stump I use to cut wood with. I heard the snap and now the bottom is broken.
I can use a different vessel for the same job. I guess I can also still use the piece for other things. Right now it’s being used as a laundry carrier and perhaps with the broken bottom this will help bring clean laundry over to the line to dry. I guess it can also be used to transport veggies. It will get recycled but still, I feel stupid for breaking it.
If it seems that I have burst into energy, it is because I have. Let’s say some of it goes with rejecting my alcoholic lady friends. But mostly I think it comes from breakfast. The last few days I have been carbing out. This also probably having to do with my alcoholic lady friends. The result is that I have been very tired and very restless and very slow the last few days. I hope it has not ridiculously affected my writing but probably it has.
This morning’s breakfast was an amazing cure. It was a one pot affair in the duck pot that included some of my potatoes, onions, garlic and cabbage. I followed the usual cooking instructions but instead of dousing it with water to create soup, I put some peas, spices, peanuts, one or two forest mushrooms and a touch of vinegar into the blender and whipped up a very thick cream. Peas tend to harden up when you cook them and they are an excellent thickener for soups and sauces. They are also some of the most ridiculously wonderful protein people can take.
It cooked into I guess what you would call cream of mushroom or cream of potato soup. It was delicious and I had two bowls for breakfast. Now it’s about an hour later and instead of needing a nap, the spirit has moved me and I am back in motion doing a wash and taking care of my stuff. My legs feel super strong, my heart feels good and I’ve had the energy to clean up all of my pots and reorganize everything. This is the kind of energy I like having.
Well, except I threw that bucket out the door lazily and cracked the bottom.
Anyway, I’m in motion right now. It’s pretty cold. Probably too cold to be playing around with clothing but I’ve got to do it. I mean, somebody’s got to do it and I’m the only one here.
***
It’s 1:30 and I guess you could say that I have finished all of my wet work. I think in military terms, wet work means jobs where there is some level of killing. It’s a sad term but probably appropriate here today.
While I was doing my wash, Lena showed up at my gate looking sad and forlorn. Her pity party was not working out the way she wanted it to.
She stared me down as if I should have some guilt. I had none. She asked me again if I needed something and I told her no. Whether she agreed she could see it or not, I was in the process of doing my laundry. It takes about 15 minutes and I pointed out that it’s of equal quality to the work she does. She mumbled something about taking more than 15 minutes but that has nothing to do with anything. She could spend all day telling me she’s washing but it’s doubtful there’s exactly that much time actually washing in there.
Then she pushed again and frankly, enough is enough. I explained to her again how tired I am of the situation. I told her I had been in town and heard people repeat the gossip they have heard from her. Her response was to find out who had spoken. I told her that was the least important thing of the equation. I told her I had tried to be kind and be a friend to her and for her to repay me with this bullshit alcoholic nonsense in my house was the end of everything. And to find out she walks around talking about me behind my back was really more than I can stand. I said something about having bought this place with my own money and have it be my own property and I can do what I want with it and I don’t need people walking around spreading gossip. If I couldn’t trust her to keep her mouth shut, I couldn’t trust her. She didn’t listen to the whole speech and wandered off down the road.
The genuine question though was how she had found out that I was doing my wash myself. That would only be the neighbors across the street listening to The sounds I was making. I know where the spies come from and I know that they believe they are in a war. Probably the same War Mr Putin is fighting. The exact same anti-semitic War of the stupid people versus people who do more than be stupid.
I’m probably not the only one who has ever made this joke but if Ukraine ever decided to invade Russia, they would also fire missiles to damage critical infrastructure. The first Target would be the vodka bottling plants. The place would fall before the end of the weekend.
I really didn’t need it but after finishing the washing, I still had energy so I decided there was no time like the present to dump my water barrels. The actual work was a lot easier than it was to set these things up. I just needed one wrench to open up the straps and 2500 L of captured rainwater return to the Earth where it was intended to go in the first place. I have all the barrels standing in front of the barn and still have to bring them inside and find a place for them. Also, I’m probably going to take down the gutters on the back of my root cellar. It’s always been like this and for now and until next spring, it’s better to just let things do what they like. Next year I will allow this roof to turn the corner and dump into a trough that heads downhill towards the garden. I doubt it will be needed for more than that.
I don’t feel wrong or stupid for having captured rainwater. Honestly, it was just an information problem concerning the cost of digging a well. When I take everything into consideration, I spent slightly more money building this rainwater capture system then I did digging well. If I would have dug the well at the beginning of the year, we never would have had any problems or agonies. I didn’t do what I did for the material to write about. Not that it wasn’t worth it in its way. I paid much more attention to the weather and got a lot clearer as to the local effects of climate change and global warming because of all of this. But as far as taking care of the garden, I was much better off just digging a second well. Maybe if someone would have just called and asked for the price none of this would have happened.
There was one sort of snappy moment when I was dumping out the barrels. 250 l of water is 250 kg. In the barrels that are right near my house, I had plumbed them to drain from the middle instead of the bottom for some reason. I don’t know why I did it like this. Probably it was to prevent a failure like the one I had under the barn where I lost 1,000 L of water when the wind blew over a bucket. Perhaps I was worried about a repeat like this.
The water was coagulating on the path that we walk from the house down into the garden. If it means anything, I can completely understand why now the Grass grows so tall until a very specific place and then turns dry afterwards. There is a natural trough to the path that the water stops and soaks into the ground as it falls off the roof. I never noticed it until now. Obviously dropping hundreds of liters of water in one spot will make a little lake for a while and this is how I saw it.
I was trying not to get my feet wet. It was hard footing because the boards are standing on were a little slimy from holding water buckets all summer. I eventually got one of the buckets to move and it went over and I lost my balance a little bit as it fell. It wasn’t a big deal and I didn’t go over with it except for ending up with one foot underwater. No one dies from this. But right there in front of my eyes I saw something at the bottom of the puddle of water I had created. It was a small light.
A light? What was the light doing at the bottom of my…
So my phone had fallen out of my pocket and was sitting submerged under the water I had just dumped out on the ground. I grabbed it and hit the on/off switch to turn off the lamp and it responded. I walked into the house and took a towel and dried it off and pulled off the rubberized protective sleeve. It works. I have a little bit of a problem with the speaker. Probably the speaker got wet but none of the electronics got damaged and I haven’t seen anything not work. I definitely don’t get sponsored by these people but you can’t go wrong with a xiaomi redmi pro. I bought it because it has a big battery and a metal case. It hasn’t failed me in several years and this is the first time it’s taken a bath.
I feel pretty good and I have more work to do but I decided to take a break. I have a new bucket in my kitchen to take the place of the blue one I broke. I will find out over the next while whether I need to replace the old one or not. They are not very expensive. I still regret throwing that thing. I actually regret it more than dropping my phone into the water.
But I do regret yelling at Lena. If I have to say something good about her, she was successful in organizing her pity party. She’s made a living off of drinking with the local alcoholics and begging people for pity. I understand how handsome and charismatic I am. I can see where the attraction is. I also understand that you would rather not lose a money source she has worked so hard to cultivate. I really don’t like hurting people. I do feel bad about that.
In fact…
No, calling doesn’t work. And besides, even if I did call, that just puts the power on her side and only brings back everything worse than before. Better to let this die its own death. She will get drunk, work this result to the deepest possible value to herself, live with it and then the next time she’s in need she’ll call to find out if the door is open. Unfortunate but true. This is the way the world works.
But I just got a call from the government house and my documents are ready. It’s my obligation to go to town to get these documents stamped at the police department. It’s not really the police department but it’s the police department’s wing for resident aliens and visitors and such. I don’t know what’s supposed to happen to this but this gives me a reason to get back on my bike to go get the document so I guess that’s the next thing I’m going to do.
After that, it’s Thursday and that means it’s time to read Torah. The office is getting really cold. I should probably make some tea for myself before I go in there. I’m also starting to think very seriously about moving the computer into the warm room. It really is a much faster instrument. There are positives about both my laptop and my PC but there is definitely less frustration from the PC as long as the electricity is flowing.
Back to it? I’m glad I am wearing my riding pants today.
Oh, the specific plan for Lena’s regrouping will be to tell the local alcoholics how terrible I am. They will tell her some bad things about Americans and Jews and how difficult the life is here in the Republic of Belarus. They will of course recommend getting drunk and she will of course agree. She will get hammered for a few days and then she will wake up realizing she needs some money. That’ll be about the time I get my call.
And no, I am not going to lift a single finger to fight this. I’m going to be a scapegoat no matter what I do. Let them have their fun. It’s all they do.
***
This week’s Torah reading is Noach(נֹ֔חַ). And yes, this is the name of the guy who built the boat to save humanity from the effects of global warming and floods not generated by human activity and pol;ution but because god was angry at mankind for being so horrible and disrespectful.
Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, it’s probably the exact same thing happening again. Think about it.
The reading starts out on Genesis 6. In the first portion, God tells Noah straight up why he is angry.
Now the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth became full of robbery.
12And God saw the earth, and behold it had become corrupted, for all flesh had corrupted its way on the earth.
13And God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth has become full of robbery because of them, and behold I am destroying them from the earth.
The word for robbery in this translation is חָמָֽס. Asking Google the meaning of this word got me the following concepts: violence, cruelty, theft, oppression and Injustice.
Again, I don’t claim to be any expert on Torah and I do not claim to have wisdom beyond my station. But taken metaphorically, everything that is going on in the world right now seems to be leading to the same ecological disaster being proposed by God. And if we remember that God equals nature and nature is God, well, it’s like we never learned our lesson the first time we were given a chance. If you play greedily with the world’s resources to the point of causing vast and perhaps irrevocable damage to the environment, you get stuff like crazy weather and floods and droughts and starvation. Get the connection? Did I make that clear enough?
In the second portion, the floods have started and Noah starts bringing the animals onto the boat. There is a specific point in Genesis 7:2 and 7:8 that there were animals that were seen as clean, kosher and edible and those that were not. The order also specified that Noah should bring seven pairs of the animals intended for food and sacrifice and the other ones that are not to be eaten by people only have two sets each.
What are the basic laws of kashrut?
According to the wiki that is found within the above search, the laws of kosher are numerous and complex. I completely agree with this. They are certain animals you can eat and certain animals you can’t. I’m not going to name names or go through foods or ask your mouth to water in some pavlovian fashion. I just want to say that if you have it in your mind to try and be kosher, clean, the word kosher means clean, you can either learn all these complex rules and drive yourself crazy or just not eat meat or milk and you’ve got it nailed. And for what it’s worth, in the reading that we are doing the word to designate clean is the word Torah,(הַטְּהוֹרָ֔ה). The Google list of adjectives are pure, sheer, unalloyed, unadulterated, straight, absolute and fine.
My thinking is that you end up with much more pure, unalloyed and unadulterated straight thinking when you just stay off of meat generally. It is the greatest addiction in the history of man and the biggest mistake we have ever made as a species.
In the third portion, the flood came and it is said that the water was 15 cubits above the land. Now, as I understand this, a cubit is basically the length from your elbow to the tip of your finger. It’s about a foot long and what we call a standard measurement foot, about 30 cm, comes from this particular measurement. The Torah says that all land life was wiped out. I’m assuming the fish were okay and apparently at least one bird lived but it would be pretty tired after 40 days and 40 nights of flying. I’m just saying that Moses was not really so much of a builder and he had a really hard time keeping his labor in line. Kind of like me.
Genesis chapter 8 starts in the middle of this portion and carries on that eventually the flood waters stopped and the Earth came back to basically the same place it was. The bird, a dove, did not come from land but was sent from the boat. It was 7 Days of trying before it returned with an olive leaf in its beak.
A dove with an olive leaf is by the way the international symbol of peace. I guess this means that when the war is over and the anger is finished, we all get to go home and try to start again. Hopefully this time a little bit wiser for having been through such a miserable time. Maybe we even vow never to let it happen again.
What does “never again” mean to Jews?
“Never again” is a phrase or slogan which is associated with the Holocaust and other genocides. The phrase may originate from a 1927 poem by Yitzhak Lamdan which stated “Never again shall Masada fall!” In the context of genocide, the slogan was used by liberated prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp to express anti-fascist sentiment. The exact meaning of the phrase is debated, including whether it should be used as a particularistic command to avert a second Holocaust of Jews or whether it is a universalist injunction to prevent all forms of genocide.
The phrase is widely used by politicians and writers and it also appears on many Holocaust memorials. It has also been appropriated as a political slogan for other causes, from commemoration of the 1976 Argentine coup, the promotion of gun control or abortion rights, and as an injunction to fight against terrorism after the September 11 attacks. – wiki
Right. Never again.
In the fourth portion, Noah and his family got off the boat and Noah immediately set up an altar and they had barbecue. Like I said, nobody ever learns. You tell them and tell them and tell them but they just never bloody learn. Apparently, in a gesture of complete unfitness for the job, God is moved somehow by the smell of death and burnt flesh and promises never to wipe out the world again. Good luck with that. Most probably it was all that barbecue that caused all of the corruption and violence. And yet, here they were on a fresh clean world and the first thing they do is start murdering things.
Right after this barbecue by the way in Genesis 9, we get something kind of weird and cryptic about this eating animals business. I’m going to make the call that it’s really hard to understand why we’re doing it at all. Here, it is the existence of a soul that exists for some animals but not all. It’s hard to say the arbitrary choice of who has a soul and who does not. It’s also hard to measure.
And your fear and your dread shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the fowl of the heaven; upon everything that creeps upon the ground and upon all the fish of the sea, [for] they have been given into your hand[s].
3Every moving thing that lives shall be yours to eat; like the green vegetation, I have given you everything.
4But, flesh with its soul, its blood, you shall not eat.
5But your blood, of your souls, I will demand [an account]; from the hand of every beast I will demand it, and from the hand of man, from the hand of each man, his brother, I will demand the soul of man.
6Whoever sheds the blood of man through man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God He made man.
Like I said, God really doesn’t like you killing the wrong things and it’s really difficult to know what is correct and what is not. Historically, white Europeans have felt free to kill people with dark skins. Nothing much has changed in this regard. If you don’t have white skin and show Aryan traits, you are something without a particular set of Rights. Currently, one of the great Bible interpreters of our time, a fellow named Vladimir Putin tells us that ukrainians are evil and unclean. This is definitely the pot calling the kettle black but it is par for the course for Bible interpreters. Like me I guess.
In the 5th portion, God makes a covenant with Noah. He says that this is an everlasting covenant between God and between every living creature among all flesh. Again, we have another vegan loophole. If all of this stuff had something to do with souls, why is it that God can make a covenant with every living thing? Doesn’t that mean that all living things have souls?
I also had a thought last night that kind of works right here. I am starting to think that as organic creatures who are so changeable based on even the tiniest of factors or distractions, should we really be making perpetual choices and rules for each other? I mean this for several specific things but also generally. People should never make forever promises. We shouldn’t get married forever. Get married for a couple of years. Maybe the duration of a presidential term. What’s that supposed to be? 2 years? 4 years? I forget because presidents just stay forever in this part of the world.
What I’m trying to say is people change and the world changes all the time. Maybe we are not supposed to make forever promises about anything. Make a promise for a year. Let’s do this for a year and see how we go. Let’s try this for a year and then we’ll get together next year and try again. And if you come up with a rule, everybody should be able to vote on that. I’m serious. I don’t think we should elect anybody to make rules for us. Let people think of rules to make and then put it up on a vote. We don’t need to vote every four years. We all have telephones and Internet and mobile phones. We could vote every day. We could vote for sure once a week or once a month. We can make it a holiday. Nobody works because we’re voting. One day a month? I would do that. That would definitely build a vested interest in our communities, wouldn’t it? Everybody votes on everything. I like it.
In the 6th portion however we get some weirdness. I told you about the problem with eating too much barbecue. And if you’ve been reading me all week, you know that I am at odds with drunken parties.
And your fear and your dread shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the fowl of the heaven; upon everything that creeps upon the ground and upon all the fish of the sea, [for] they have been given into your hand[s].
3Every moving thing that lives shall be yours to eat; like the green vegetation, I have given you everything.
4But, flesh with its soul, its blood, you shall not eat.
5But your blood, of your souls, I will demand [an account]; from the hand of every beast I will demand it, and from the hand of man, from the hand of each man, his brother, I will demand the soul of man.
6Whoever sheds the blood of man through man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God He made man.
So what happened here? He got drunk and started playing with himself? The guy was 600 years old. Good for him if he still had something to shoot in that gun. But then, you just can’t reason with alcoholics. His sons are trying to be cool with him but then he curses them in the land for all eternity. See what I mean? Nobody, absolutely nobody should be making rules for all time without checks, balances and a general vote. You put people in charge and give them power, they just get drunk and start playing with themselves and putting curses here and there. This is no way to run a civilization.
The portion continues and in Genesis 10 we get a listing of generations that followed Noah and his sons who were indeed fruitful and multiplied extensively. You think everything would work out okay but unfortunately, in the 7th portion, it seems that God doesn’t like democracy at all. Again, this is the problem with dictators. They are not Democrats and they don’t want people having freedom of thought. Here, people started talking and building and growing and eventually they tried to build a building that would go all the way up to the heavens. Does this sound like a pyramid? How about a pyramid scheme?
Anyway, not speaking the same language doesn’t stop people from having sex and they get busy begetting for the rest of the reading and for the next several hundred years. One could say that none of these people did anything interesting. Or we could just say that we have explained that God gets angry, barbecue will make you weird and drinking too much will make you embarrass yourself and say things you wish you didn’t.
How about one more dove with an olive branch and a prayer for peace that maybe this time we learn something. Go green. Live green. Be green. And only bargain for peace.
Well, God created a bunch of languages so that no one will understand what anybody else is really saying. He did all of this just to keep man from growing. Sounds like the conservatives to me all over again. At least we know where they got this from.
***
It’s a little before midnight and I guess this is when we close it up today. I understand that this is a little bit later than usual. My only excuse for failure is that I fell asleep. I was actually very tired. Days where I get the call and actually start humping and moving around have a tendency to tire me out. No rocket science there.
I got some calls today a bit later on. A bit earlier than expected but no less meaningful.
The first one to call was Tanya. She rang my phone once in the late afternoon. She told me that the one thing she appreciated about me was that I am a straight talker. Are these massaging words? Yes. Is she working me? Yes. Did I tell her to go back to hell? No. Of course not. That’s not how you do it. We are friends. We are neighbors. Everything’s okay.
Literally, at the moment of this call which was just about the time I was ready to go, I got a second call from the cat. He doesn’t need my help to come and go. He simply said hi, saw I was busy and there was no food for him and left. Maybe he doesn’t like oatmeal.
But before I could get up, my phone rang again. It was Lena wanting to apologize and explain. I didn’t really want to hear the explanation. I told her everybody understood each other. I made a speech about people minding their own business, nobody was property and how my life is my own. I told her I would call her next week and find something for her to do. We are friends. We are neighbors. Everything’s okay. She was very happy. Kind of.
Just after dinner my ex-partner called. It turns out that she is going to have an operation in Minsk. She never told me that this medical issue was an operation. I’ll save the details. So she is a bit more scared than I thought and she wants to come for a visit tomorrow. Not so much to me but to Ria for a walk in the woods for some mushrooms. And for me. She is a little worried and wants a little attention. I told her she was welcome. The gate will be open tomorrow.
It’s nice to have friends. I understand where I live. Yes, we are all connected in our way. I get the deal. It’s okay. I live here. I know it’s messy but it’s nice to get a little love from time to time. It’s okay. It is what it is. I’m not complaining. This is my life.
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