Tuesday, November 15th 2022

It’s already 8:30 in the morning. Very late start today. I actually slept pretty well last night. I was up and down a couple of times but nothing brutal. They say tomorrow we are going below zero for the first time and according to the weather service, we will stay there for the rest of the week. The deepest will be something like -7. I guess we get to find out how effective all of my winterization has been.

I haven’t been doing nothing. I wrote my complaint to the proper ministry today. I still need to make photographs of a few documents to send along and my ex partner is checking my grammar. I also need to make a phone call to the clinic in Minsk and make sure I have everybody’s name straight. We are going to name names. Of course, they might tell me that I am free to come up for help. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

Theoretically, there are outposts in the regions to take care of people but this is not really the case. It’s just a matter of money but everybody is obligated to come to the capital for this kind of medical Care. My ex partner’s outpatient deal required her to go up there for 2 days. I am not particularly fond of Minsk. I’m sure at some time in my life, I would have found it a very interesting urban place to be. There are some hills that would make bicycling interesting and of course they have all of the usual City functions and people.

I’ve just lost my taste for City living generally. Even Pinsk, which has always been extremely provincial, is too loud and noisy and dirty for me. I liked the size of it for quite a long time. But that was before they rebuilt it and gave everything to the automobiles. Now the place stinks horribly and in the winter time, it’s absolutely cancerous.

I’m also not really interested in getting fleeced. There is nothing in the big cities but to spend money. There is nowhere to go that doesn’t cost money and everything that anyone would consider of interest costs money. Even a lot of it. I’ve tried several times to go to an interesting restaurant with people but I’ve never found it to be a very enjoyable affair. There were a couple of coffee shops that I didn’t mind sitting in when I was stuck there or doing an interview with somebody. But even when I lived there, I got really tired of how much money it cost to leave the house.

In my current situation, the whole thing is even worse. Not only do I have to pay money to travel up there and to get around while I’m there, it’s also a matter of how much pain I have to endure. And of course they don’t ever wish to tell you exactly your situation so you can’t plan. There is nothing for them to just play games and waste your time. It’s just more money flowing to the city and apparently it’s their job to keep that flow of money coming.

Indeed, My philosophy is very much rural these days. When I lived in town, my main focus was supporting the local farmers rather than the supermarkets. I spent a lot of time talking to people about how much money leaves the community when we shop at large-scale supermarkets. Universally, these things are either European or Russian and we are just throwing our money away with the only residual being the exponentially larger amounts of garbage we create.

I say this a lot but when I first came here it just wasn’t like this. Everybody was still living basically like during the times of communism and everyone was aware that with a limited income, you had to be frugal. Everybody made even the simplest products last as long as they could. There was almost no garbage going out except for potato skins and carrot tops. Even the amount of cars was limited because if it wasn’t an absolute necessity to have one, most people got around on public transportation or bicycle. Exactly the way it should be.

Of course people were more in tune with other people because we didn’t have computers and mobile telephones to keep our attention. People were more conversational and human in that regard. Our individual algorithms mixed with incessant Russian language propaganda has turned the place absolutely violent. It was never like that. Even in the last season or two for bicycling, people driving cars believed it was their right to scream or even attack me with their cars. It was there right to the road and I had no right to be on it.

Now I’ve come to understand that if we truly wish to be ecologically minded, life in urban environments becomes almost completely superfluous. Certainly there are comforts that are available. Heating inside an apartment is something people get used to and of course the food shopping and Cafe sitting and restaurant eating. Also, there are all of the bars and hysterical adult entertainment and street life to look forward to. 

All of this however comes at a cost. It costs a fortune to finance the clothing and housing and food bill for an urban dweller. Comparatively, I’m sure people not used to it would find living out in The villages much colder and more uncomfortable. They would also find it very boring. But we are natural creatures and sometimes our first reactions should not be considered lifetime choices. A body adapts to its environment given time and usually somewhere between 3 days and 2 weeks is all it takes to get used to things. 3 Days to 2 weeks is about how much time you need to get into an addiction or a new relationship and it takes about the same to get out of it.

I definitely do not feel the same thing my ex partner does when she comes up here. She is mercilessly nervous and is constantly being pushed and shoved by conditions of the weather. I, on the other hand, move at a very slow pace. I don’t have to rush anywhere and I have almost zero clock obligations during my week. And as far as dealing with temperature changes, I find I get used to the world as it is. As long as I remain reasonably healthy, I haven’t really suffered from the cold too much. Physically, you just adapt. Texturally, you adapt as well.

All of these changes have been noticeable for myself. I mentioned watching this Tarantino-esque War film. I am sure that most people would look at the set design and the costume and blocking of the film as being genuinely nostalgic. I’m sure nobody believes that this was real life and the characters were very caricaturish in their depictions of Russian soldiers and Nazis. But I couldn’t help thinking that the state of the rural house seemed remarkably sustainable in its original condition. Before they destroyed the whole thing, everything functioned quite well. There was enough food to eat and there was a place to be warm even in the coldest winter. It seems like people could survive there even without any electricity. Candles and books or good company and stories. Maybe some singing and guitar playing.

But after the massacre, everything was ruined. The landscape had suffered explosions and there was damage to all of the structures. And of course there were dead bodies lying around everywhere. Everything that was beautiful became ugly and broken. Everything that looked like it could support life was destroyed. From a place that was home and Hope at the beginning had become nothing but a playground for psychopathic activity. Of course everyone had to kill each other. There was nothing else that could be done but to try and murder each other and take everything beautiful along with them.

I suppose a lot of my thinking has also adapted in the years since I quit drinking alcohol. Quitting meat made me feel physically better and cleaner but quitting alcohol simply means I don’t get sick so much anymore. I’ve never been a cigarette smoker. Except for perhaps 6 months when I was 16 years old, I have hated the stench of cigarette smoking and have never cultivated the habit. 

Honestly, I’ve never understood why people do it except that it is an addiction and something that they do when they are nervous. But exactly like drinking coffee in the morning, it is a self-perpetuating addiction, a cycle, and one thing feeds the other in perpetuity. We are nervous so we smoke or drink or have some coffee, we calm down until the drug wears off and then we need more. Inevitably it’s the addiction that keeps us in nervousness.

I’ve mentioned that I do like marijuana quite a bit. The thing about marijuana is that it’s not really that addictive. It’s also a remarkably small amount of material, at least the way I use it. As you can imagine, I am what they call a micro doser. I don’t use very much. I just like the creativity that comes along with it and the texture. I’m not complaining or justifying anything but I personally am as suited to a prescription for medical marijuana as anybody is. I am in constant pain from my legs and basically, when I use marijuana it just allows me a better sense of being alive. I like being alive when I have access. It’s not an escape from a situation or a mood, it’s just something that makes me feel much better. And of course it comes and goes without a headache or a hangover or residual damage to my organs. It’s just a plant.

In any case, I look at the systems we have for living on this planet and I see them as unsustainable. I’ve spent enough time in my life as a builder and I have an eye for whether a structure will stand or won’t stand. Also, as I have never been ridiculously rich in my life, it is impossible to consider anything without understanding its monetary cost against its value. There are certain things that are just going to cost you a ton of money and certain things that are not. It is more sustainable to gravitate and adapt to less monetary pleasures and to learn to live without the expensive ones.

The argument really could be as simple as the one where my ex partner leaves her ridiculously warm apartment to come up and visit me in my cold little house. To her, it’s a bit shocking not to have a giant fire roaring. I don’t need them because I simply adapt my life to dealing with the temperature. I keep one room reasonably warm and comfortable and when I get up, I simply stay active or do things that allow me to be comfortable without burning up all of my resources or running up a huge electrical bill. You just adapt and agree that life is what it is.

I guess the alternative is simply jealousy. Perhaps jealousy is the worst propaganda in the world. I often argue with Instagram and the social networks and how we depict our lives only at our most juicy moments. We love to show how much money we are worth and how expensive our things are. We love to show that we are connected to high style and expensive toys. I personally see nothing but the waste of money and the placation of people who have too much of it. I never stop understanding that it’s only a tiny, tiny percentage of people that can play with these things and everyone else is entombed in slavery and miserable trying to feed that machine.

The best quote from that book, A Utopia of Usurers, is “the problem with capitalism is that there are not enough of them”. The meaning of this is not that we should all aspire to be like the rich, it is simply that not enough people have the capacity to be rich and the blame for that is not on the poor. The blame for that is from the people that keep all the money for themselves and disallow even a decent life for the whole of the population. Literally, while an extremely small group of people live lavishly and comfortably exploiting the efforts of many for their pleasures, most of us live small grimy lives complete with hatred and fear. And of course they add insult to injury by transporting the blame for our situations back onto ourselves. It’s our own fault if we are not rich. Just work harder and be a better slave.

I have never believed in that. I am a pragmatic soul. From about the moment I found myself independent and on my own, I saw absolutely no road connected to anything I did or any people that I had that led to wealth. I saw the houses and things my parents surrounded themselves with and yet I understood they were under perpetual stress to try to hold that all together. At any minute, their entire house of cards could come tumbling down on top of them.

When my dad retired, he had a pair of pensions, my mother was no longer alive and he had no obligations to anyone except himself. He lived extremely well in his situation because he had enough money to pay for it. I talked to him about the finances for his life and was absolutely sure that I did not want what he had. There was no possible way I was ever going to live in Florida. At least not in his situation and I myself knew that I would never have a situation where I would even want anything like it.

On the other hand, there would be no way that my father would come in my direction. To him, if life didn’t have that little flair of wealth, it wasn’t worth living. He was in the auto business. He lives his whole life on auto business money. I have no Oedipus issues concerning my family. I had no feelings of competition with my father. In fact, I really had no contact with them for about 20 years before my mother died and my father reached out to me to make friends. For the last years of his life I tried to be a friend to him. I knew how he lived and when I visited, I saw first hand how he did what he did. That was not my life and frankly, I didn’t really enjoy this day but for the baseball weekend.

What I’m trying to get at is that you can either try to live a sustainable life or you’re part of the problem. Most of the time, nobody is even allowed enough space or peace to even think alternatively. On the internet, there are plenty of homesteaders and people moving out to the country. I’m sure most young people dream of going out to the country and trying their hand. I did when I was first married. Inevitably though, the fear of getting crushed economically is what stops people from going this direction. Economic fear is what crushes most adamant eco-protesters. Economic arguments stop everything from happening. I can’t even speak to my American children without them reminding me that money rules everything.

Well, perhaps it’s time to stop this. Perhaps it’s time to make the world great again. Perhaps it’s not the time to go back to an era where there were no antibiotics and life expectancies were low. Perhaps we don’t need to go back to times of violence and depression. Perhaps we do not need to go back to the time of the Kings and the czars. Perhaps we can make use of some of our intelligent inventions and abilities to communicate with each other to be a little bit better at simple rural Life. Perhaps it’s not even a matter of choice but obligation. Perhaps we genuinely need to change what we are doing because the planet we live on and all of the ecological systems in it that sustain us are dying and suffering from the cancer of humanity. Our lunative insecurities and addictions and jealousies have basically killed us. We really need to get off these drugs.

I’m having a slow start today. I only have the necessity of sending off this complaint. I don’t need to go anywhere or buy anything. I don’t have any lessons today. I have enough wood stacked up in front of the house to keep the fireplace going. I might bring up some more just to be safe. I’m not really interested in eating a lot of food today. I’m still full from yesterday and I’m going to give myself a chance to get all of this out of me before I start putting any new in. That’s another bonus you get from being off clock time. I can have as much time as I want to let my body recuperate from mistakes.

So basically it’s Tuesday. It’s a Tuesday in the middle of November. I guess in America we have Thanksgiving coming up. There is no such holiday here and to me, I would never think of murdering a turkey for dinner. The only connection to the holiday I have is perhaps an opportunity to watch some football and to remember the family dog from when I was growing up. His birthday was Thanksgiving.

***

It’s 2:30 right now and I am sitting in the office which is very cold but not impossible. I’ve just finished writing my complaints to the ministry. It took a long time. They have specific rules about the form of such complaints and after checking and rechecking all of my materials, the website itself did not work and I had to resend the letter via email. I have no idea if it is going to go through or not.

To stay warm, I’ve brought my electric teapot into the office with me and I am pouring myself very small cups of green tea. The small cup is another Asian affectation I picked up from my friends from the now defunct tea shop. I guess I drink what amounts to shots of tea. I think I probably got this from watching Japanese films or something as well. The small cups affect the taste somewhat but I think it has more to do with giving your hands something to do. I think smokers sometimes enjoy smoking simply to have something to do with their hands. It’s kind of something I can fidget with. It’s also a lot of warm water which is very helpful.

I ended up eating a very late breakfast today and paid careful attention that it was as straight as possible. I used two kinds of peas and a small amount of buckwheat pasta and ate it with some fresh cabbage leaves. Non-vegans might not understand it but this was actually an incredibly high protein meal. I didn’t use any oil in the preparation. This was the second day back on no oil cooking. If you ever want to feel exceptionally straight in your mind, try no oil cooking for a while.

I did this because I decided it was time to put some discipline on my eating habits. I guess I have been under stress lately and have been stress eating. I think I’ve done almost everything to put the kibosh on all of this. Basically speaking, my day labor has been told that they will remain at the status of day labor and no leadership positions will be offered for the remainder of the season. We love you, we love you, we love you but it’s about money means it’s about money and I definitely think it’s best that everybody remembers this. Tanya understands that she is in my debt now because of my lessons with her daughter so she no longer calls me and Lena simply got told that the river has frozen as far as available cash on hand. That romance died equally as quickly.

However, don’t feel bad. It’s all just a day in the life pretty much 6 days a week around here. I do appreciate having available help and I do appreciate a little feminine attention from time to time. However, I am not in the market for a boss or a wife and certainly not for a wife who considers herself the boss. The philosophy is still intact. If we are working together, I will work happily. If I must work for you, you best find a new employee.

Other than this nothing is happening. Of course Minsk is not ready to take me. They show no particular guilt nor do they seem to be making any effort to ease my pain. As far as obligations go, I do still need to go to town one more time to pick up my land documents. But I am under no stress to do that this week or anytime this month even. They are fine sitting there in their files and I can come get them at my leisure. My ex partner gave me double messages about whether or not my company is needed at her house. In any case, I have no intention of running away from the coming cold. The ex-partner is a little paranoid. Not about me, but about her rose bushes and I just got an email telling me we should buy some material to cover them against the frost. I am dubious about the purchase.

Other than this, I really don’t know what to say. Literally fighting to get that complaint off was my whole work day and other than doing make work on my catalog or future websites, there really isn’t anything to do right now. I’m thinking of having a look around the internet for some interesting links to share but basically, it’s just a slow, cold and empty day. Nothing to be frightened of but nothing to dance to. Probably exactly the way it’s supposed to be.

***

Sure, the situation in the war is worth talking about because there is a lot of good news. To start with, Denys Davydov has a ton of information concerning the ukrainians crossing the Dnipro River and taking several cities back on the Eastern territories. This is happening on two separate fronts including the peninsula into the Black Sea. Additionally, the United Nations has voted that Russia should indeed pay compensation for damages as an aggressor nation. Good luck with collecting that bill but still, it means that the world is against this war and against Russian aggression. That makes me part of the world again.

Davydov also mentions that Zelinsky himself traveled to Kherson to give thanks and present awards to soldiers there. The comment from the video is that the president of Ukraine has balls of steel for appearing at the front. He also mentioned that the current name for Putin is Bunkerman.

About the G20 conference, here is some commentary from Bloomberg.

And speaking of the unsustainability of urban living, it looks like the problems are getting worse and worse as global population reaches the 8 billion mark. And in India, it looks like they might become the world’s most populous nation and with it the most problems with what to do with all of these people and all of the resources they need to get by.

Perhaps there are some compromises possible. Here is an excellently made video concerning sustainable Urban centers and talks about the way both transportation and housing could change from traditional carbon-based energy usage to more sustainable methods. I’ll give you a hint, they trade cars for bicycles and consider alternative ways of building residential structures.

Here is one more video about the city of Gothenburg and what they are doing about transportation and mobility systems. My thoughts while watching this is that it is amazing what a city can do when city designers and lawmakers are more interested in doing their job than getting rich or accruing power. Something to think about.

***

Forgive me for closing up shop early but I can’t see any reason to keep it open. There’s nothing really important to do and frankly it is cold everywhere in the world but the warm room. I can heat up the office but it’s bloody expensive to use that industrial space heater if you don’t have to. In my last moments in there, I seriously considered unplugging the PC and bringing it here and setting it up in the warm room. I can see several architectural changes taking place in here over the next while. This is my bunker. I do not have Zelensky’s balls of steel anymore. At least for the next few months I also will be a bunker boy.

However, perhaps the best thing about today is the feeling of calm I have running all through me. I feel as though I have been a bit hysterical over the last while. As always, I can take shots at the cause of this. Too much time spent with the day labor, too much worrying and purchasing and shopping online. And this is without forgetting that I have been using quite a bit of oil in my food. Sure, I switched from sunflower oil to Olive oil and immediately felt a great improvement in health. But today I simply water cooked some whole foods and now I am rather serene.

The answer to the question is that God is nature and nature is God and we are created in God’s image. The answer is simply that we are animals, no higher and no lower than any other animate on this planet. We have physical needs and we also share in common a desire to live. And to live is to eat. There is no animal on the planet who, if they had the ability to vocalize their desires, would sound a lot like my day labor. They are hungry. They want to eat something. The trick is to eat appropriate food for the species. If you eat appropriately it’s amazing how serene life is.