And Friday, November 18th 2022
Good morning. Last day. Pretty crazy when these things rolled around. That’s the thing about large projects or time in general. We wait. We have events in the future to look forward to. Sometimes we pray for things that don’t exist and sometimes we hope for things that do but never come. But just like the sun comes up in the morning, time Marches on and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Where you stand, no matter how strong you are, no matter how strong you believe you are, is really just a part of the river of time. Moments are fleeting, even lifetimes, even civilizations.
My grandmother put this miserable curse on me. She told me that it all goes by so fast. Those are the words that she used. She said that one minute, she was a little girl playing on the floor of her house in Odessa and then the next minute she was 16 and kissing the man who would become her husband. And then a minute later she was having children and a minute after that, she was saying goodbye to her husband from lung disease. One minute later she was going back to work to make ends meet and then in just a blink of an eye, she was in a wheelchair talking to me. It all goes by so fast.
I say this is a curse because before she said this to me, I never imagined the same things happening to me. I never really had the concept of Life photographs going by before your eyes. I can do that now. I can imagine moments of my life, places I’ve been, people I’ve been with. I do it all the time really. Some good, some bad. The odd trick of this is that you only get the feeling of nostalgia after something has changed. You only have the opportunity to look back at something in order for it to have that sepia colored hue. You can’t have nostalgia for your present. Maybe it’s because you can’t actually capture your present no matter what Instagram has to say. No matter what you do, even though our eyes perceive the real world as it is in the nanosecond it takes for our synapses to realize the colors and the textures, it’s already a memory. It is instantaneously transported to the past.
According to the weather, it’s -5 right now. I haven’t looked. I don’t know whether it’s white or not. They said that there was a 100% chance of precipitation. At -5 this definitely means snow but I haven’t heard it. Maybe you don’t hear Snow the way you hear rain. There’s a drain spout near the War room and so rain has a particular clicking sound. Maybe snow falls too softly to make a sound.
Yeah, it’s true. There is a light frosting of snow covering everything. We are not buried in it, it’s just a light dusting.
Lena loves to talk and she told me that I was lucky to be in the house that I’m in. It is known as a Finnish house because it’s made of wood. Wooden houses are warmer, she says. She lives in a brick house.
I built a fire last night with five sticks. Actually, that’s probably not true and it’s probably more like four sticks. I say this because two of them or even three if I remember correctly were very short. It was a very fast and hot burning fire. And of course I do have an electric space heater that is pretty economical and helps keep the corner of the room where I sleep reasonable. I am also on the floor, just as I like. Not on the floor exactly, I’m on the platform that I built for myself. It only has natural insulation and I never did manage to acquire that foam insulation I thought was necessary. It works just fine at -7.
Tanya hit me in the head one time in a moment of excitement. She asked me if I was a fool who didn’t understand how to heat his house. I’ve had several people tell me that I’m doing it wrong and that you can’t just heat one room. They tell me that the outside rooms will creep the cold inside. I’m sorry, wherever they learned their lessons, they didn’t practice it themselves. You can exactly heat one room and get by just fine. When I get up to leave this room, you just get dressed and stay dressed. You wear layers. It’s not so uncomfortable really. I even sat in the office all afternoon with no heating whatsoever and felt just fine. Specifically, it was a t-shirt under a hoodie under my favorite old sweater under my favorite blue smock. After this, just a simple black knit cap under the hoodie and I was good to go all afternoon. Indoors or outdoors.
There is one modification I need to make one way or another. The kitchen Cafe was designed to be kind of a greenhouse. The light never really does the job and unfortunately, it’s not very insulated so it is a miserable greenhouse. It’s south facing but the world is not cooperative and you don’t get very much direct sunlight. The silicone caulking I put on the windows had an immediate effect. I was surprised by how just that tiny little touch allowed the warmth to stay in that room. But there are only wooden boards on the floor and so when the convection begins, cold air is brought up and the floor can be a bit painful on your feet. I think the perfect answer is to lay down a single sheet of linoleum on the working space. I could probably just lay down some wooden boards to do the same. Last year, I just put a blanket down and it also worked just fine. It doesn’t take much. We just distract the airflow a little bit and you can be in there too, especially with a little gas flame or even the space heater if you need it.
Then of course there is the bakery. There’s a couch in there and my old kitchen table. The kitchen table is next to the big window and in the summer when there are rain storms, it is the most beautiful place to be. There is an overhang so not much water comes through the window but the winds and the sounds and the light show are completely worth it. It’s also the window that gives me a view of my garden. It’s an excellent place for a cup of tea.
There’s also an old couch in there. That is my go-to place for guests. There are two fireplaces in the room. The lower one is for cooking or heating the room. It’s basically the same firebox that I have in the warm room but there’s also a bread oven up above it. You can invest a few sticks and heat that room as well but it’s not that efficient. You have to close all the doors and truthfully, if it was a matter of being warm or if I was having it be a place for someone to sleep, we would have to put a window covering. Just hanging heavy material or even an old blanket is enough to stop the cold from coming through. I’ve caulked those windows as well so it’s better but it’s just old glass, nothing modern or insulated. The windows let quite a bit of cold in.
At the end of our visits, my ex partner and I always end up on that couch. She likes to fuss with the fire in the deep oven there. I don’t like to fuss with my fires. I let them do what they want to do. You can build them in such a way that they get really hot for a while but fires are also fleeting and not forever. You have to have faith that the residual heat is what’s important more than the moment of the burn. Yes, it is absolutely healing to have a wood fire. I don’t know why people burn briquettes. They stink and there’s nothing interesting about watching the bird. You can’t even use the ash as fertilizer afterwards. It’s just a money thing that people use to desperately heat houses. I never use them.
Sometimes when I don’t feel particularly well or I have tensions or stress, a fire feels absolutely healing. When I am really stressed out, I make a fire and sit very close to it, allowing the heat to radiate onto my face and onto my head. I move my head around sometimes to allow the heat to sink in. I remember once when I was riding a bicycle across the United States, I went on an extremely long ride one day. I covered about a hundred miles and I remember that I had completely drained the residual garbage from my system with that ride. I burned everything that I had and it managed to get all the way into the top of my head which felt kind of hyper clean and even scratchy. It’s like the highest place in your body has the hardest time getting fresh blood flow to it. The very top of your cranium requires relief and sometimes it feels very healing to have a wood fire directly blasting into that area. It feels like it melts away damaged tissue that normally has a hard time being washed clean.
I have had a friend come to visit me and look around and he juxtaposed my words and my descriptions of this place against what he actually saw and decided that I overwrite things. In his mind, he imagined a giant expanse of huge wondrous things. The reality is very small and compact. It’s not really so much space unless you count the kilometers of the forest that are directly accessible. Unless you count that wild space that is actually on my territory for a while. Unless you count the distance from the main road and how far away from civilization I am. Unless you count exactly how much of the day is unbroken by the misery of gasoline powered instruments. It’s a nice place. I don’t feel confined here. I don’t feel confined with my gate locked and I don’t feel oppressed with my gate open.
Forgive me for waxing poetic here. I can’t say any reason not to. This is not the Belarusian way of course. You’re not supposed to be this way here. You’re supposed to live in perpetual misery except for when you’re drunk. It doesn’t matter to me. Sometimes I like writing this way because it just doesn’t matter. I also like writing this way because for me, this is telling the truth. I’m not specifically looking for flowery words, I’m just trying to express the truth in the best way I know how. Forgive me if I have amassed a vocabulary and the ability to make use of words. Anything you practice, you get better at and I have been religiously practicing this act for quite some time now. Forgive me for being able to verbalize things. It seems to be what I do.
About today, there are some things that I want to do here. I’m talking about this writing space. I am going to put some links down just so we have the latest news from this date.
The war is of course interesting. It is a murderous bloodthirsty distraction and it has colored the entire year. Things are not going well for the Russians. I don’t know why they don’t look ahead and fold. If this is a big geopolitical poker game, I believe they should cut their losses, put on their coats and go home for the winter. I think they should go home generally and learn to take care of themselves instead of playing these games based on greed and a parasitic attitude towards their neighbors. Better to go home, sit at the computer for a while and study permaculture and Land Management. Better to quit worrying about money so much and start worrying about how to make the country as sustainable as possible for the 180 million people who live there. Better to try and push for a sustainable culture that allows the largest amount of happiness. This would be a genuine national pride to live in a country where people were actually happy for a change.
You have to like living in the North. You have to like the natural beauty of living in the North. Traditionally, the beauty of living in the northern latitudes is the full seasons. You have to learn to live in the cold. It takes a heartier kind of person. I don’t believe in killing animals but I don’t think we need to. I get along very well on beans and greens. Even saved greens don’t bother me too much for a couple of months of the year. I crave the salt in the winter the way I crave The Greens in summer. But even that is possible to enhance. You just need some grow lights and a decent environmental system and you can have fresh veggies all year. For sure there are empty factories all over the place that can be retrofitted for some small amount of infrastructure money. A little insulation, some LED grow lights, a windmill or two on the roof and some really severe angles on the solar panels to catch what light there is. There is no reason not to have vegan food security as well as something for people to do in the winter besides getting drunk.
For sure, the idea of mobilization is exactly the idea of burning fossil fuels. For sure, everything that’s happening is only to make money for the weapons business, to clean out old garbage and to waste resources that came too easily. Any resources that come to you without work are wasteful. Easy money is drugs and the Russians had no physical capacity to understand all of this money coming to them from the oil business. They’re just a bunch of drunken bombs and suddenly they were godzillionaires from the oil business. The people in the oil business are not going to stop being godzillionaires. They are not going to give up the power that comes from their evil cancerous shit. They don’t mind the air pollution or destruction of land and water. They relish the ungodly noise that their product makes and how much power and money they have because of it.
I go a different way. I appreciate the delivery services I have available to me right now. I like the convenience. On the other hand, I’ve also managed to get by on a bicycle with a pretty decent messenger bag on my back on public transportation. I don’t actually need automobiles to feed myself. And really, would it be so horrible to transition to electric cars? Would it be so bad to transition to sustainable energies? Would it be so bad to move away from housing that costs a ton of money to keep warm in the winter and move to more energy efficient ways of doing business? Would it really be so hard to just do the work to get by instead of looking to have your fingers in everyone else’s pie? Is self-sufficiency really so horrible?
Yeah, so there are a few clips I’ll put here. There might be a few more coming in over the course of the day but the usual people who make additions to these journal entries have already posted the latest news.
I also will probably make a section of acknowledgments for the people who have been a part of this year. I am frugal by Nature, I didn’t say cheap bastard, and I’m going to have to give a few presents this year. But there is a decent list of people I would like to mention before we strike the set. Throughout the course of the year, I thought about putting pictures of some of the people I have mentioned on these pages. Maybe some simple black and white portraits but I haven’t taken these pictures. I think we can all live without the photography. Maybe I like having it all just being words and people can imagine whatever they want.
I also have a small essay on the concept of ma that I want to take a crack at. This is something new for me that I never knew existed until a short while ago but it is now one of my favorite concepts.
Other than this, it’s not going to be a big day. It’s very cold and I’m not planning on going anywhere. Some guys from the medical commission are coming by on Monday in the morning. That’ll be interesting to see what they are interested in seeing and hearing and what becomes of it. Most probably, my ex partner will come up on Sunday or maybe I will go to town. It’s the same money either way and I guess we’ll see what becomes of us. And of course today, I’m going to put together some bread and hummus. I’m not planning on eating much today before dinner. I’ve definitely eaten enough and my belly is still quite full. Not stupid full. Not full in the sense that I feel fat and immobile. Just the pleasant sense of not being hungry in any way.
That is an amazing feeling. In and of itself, It’s actually kind of nothing. There isn’t a thrill or a drug Rush. It isn’t exciting or debilitating in any way. It’s more the absence of negativity. It’s strange when you start to appreciate negative space. It’s different from progressive, biting and proactive feelings. The absence of pain, the absence of stress, the absence of hunger and other negativities is its own feeling. Sure, there is an absence of excitement in it and this is what is confusing. I think veganism builds on this absence of negatives. It is difficult to get used to not being stirred up all the time. Except that anything you do, anything you practice, you get better at. Leaving the death out of your diet creates an absence of pain. I really wish people would give it a try. I think it would do wonders for the world.
Anyway, this last general entry of the year is going to have an absence of great excitement. It’s just going to be another parade of words. You have to want to take a journey of words and you have to be in the correct mindset. You have to have interest to see what the words have to say and you have to have the physical capacity to sit and listen. I absolutely know that I am not in the majority for doing what I do. I absolutely know I am participating in what is probably a dying art. I have had a romantic love for dying arts my entire life. But the reason these arts are dying is simply because we have moved the world away from the possibility of allowing people such mindsets. We don’t allow people quiet time to think. Hopefully, if somebody does find the time to take these journeys with me, I’ve said some good things and told some good truths. Hopefully, they understand that sustainability is not really so bad. Truthfully, it’s the best way to live a life.
***
Okay, it’s 10:15 and time for some links.
You really have to give credit to Mr Zelensky. I don’t think they have MVP awards for world leaders but they should. I would think he would at least get acknowledged as the hardest working man in the business. You have to have respect. I’m sure this year is going to change him. I’m sure this year has taken away quite a lot that will probably never come back. But my guess is also that he would do it again in a heartbeat. And of course, Ukraine is coping. It will be interesting to see what happens after the war is over. It’s funny how some people rise under pressure and other people crash.
Speaking of MVPs, I think the best map reader amongst the people blogging the war is Mr Davydov. He has been consistently the most honest I think and I also think as a natural Ukrainian resident, he has the best perspective on what this war means. A lot of the other map readers are good and find good information, but I think Davidov is the one who is doing his part to help rather than simply exploiting the possibility for clerks or glorifying War.
Reporting from Ukraine is another blogger from the country. He tends to focus on military specifics. Today he has some news about potential drone technology developing that has the capacity of reaching Crimea.
UATV is straight propaganda from the Ukrainian side but one would have to say they are effective and truth-based. I am saying this from my own personal experience of having dealt with the empire over the last decade or so. Everything they say is the truth. I guess when the truth is your propaganda, you would think that you would have a bit more success with it. The world generally is on the side of the ukrainians so I guess that plays out is true. In this episode, some details about the life of partially mobilized conscripts. I think it’s pretty obvious that anyone who could leave the country has already left.
I have a friend who is an American now but whose family immigrated from Ukraine many years ago and he was the first one to turn me on to the captured telephone conversations. Some of these are a bit brutal. I think they have the largest chance of being faked. Honestly, everybody speaks the same language and throwing a few curse words into the mix is really all it takes to sound particularly Russian. Nevertheless blyad, it is pretty nightmarish what you hear. And even if it is staged, I don’t believe they are very far from the truth with what they say.
Yesterday had one more example from UATV, this one covering the latest drone strikes and cruise missile attacks. Again, in my opinion if we are in favor of the ukrainians or of trying to help this war come to an end, the way to do it is to stop the flow of money going to Russia. This simply means public transportation and bicycles instead of driving your car. You may not be able to get around the Russian gas that heats your house so quickly, but you can definitely say no to the oil business and figure out how to do what you need to do without them. One small step for a man is a giant leap for mankind. Just take that one step out of your car and leave it at your house is all it takes. Meanwhile, your brand new car helps to pay for these bloody missiles. Thank you for your service.
Also this report talks about the actual extent of reparations being asked for from Ukraine.
And finally, my last mention goes to Synad. I don’t know where he is from. I think he once said something about living in the states. He’s also a staunch Ukrainian supporter and I believe he has good information. I have covered him quite often this year so I will let this be the last link about the war for the year. It’s nice to have people like this to help us keep track of what’s going on. It’s much better than the national news by far because the information is straight to the point and the commentary is much simpler. Nevertheless, the world would be a lot better if we didn’t have wars to blog about. I know my life would be better if I hadn’t had to spend so much time worrying about the drunken fucks. The world will be a lot better when they end up back on the trash heap where they belong.
***
It’s 11:00 a.m. and I am outside for the first time and it is absolutely beautiful. It is snowing and the place is absolutely gorgeous.
We are supposedly at -5 but the day feels comfortable. My ex partner, always nervous, advised me to take in the last of the cabbages. I’m looking at them right now and they don’t look so unhappy in the snow. I’m going to take one of them for dinner tonight but I don’t think they are going to suffer. I could take them all and move them into the root cellar and hang them up. The remaining carrots and beets also don’t look like they are suffering. I guess I could bring in the parsley. Maybe it’s looking slightly dark green. Actually, it’s kind of hard to find things in the snow. I didn’t think of that.
I actually feel a bit like a kid right now. Everything here has a coating of white on it and the forest looks exceptionally beautiful.
It’s a good day to be alive. It’s a good day to have a warm home to hang out in. It’s a good day for some hot soup and fresh bread. It’s a very good day to be alive.
***
Well, that was an interesting little episode. Upon further inspection, I decided my ex partner was right about the cabbage. It looked a little freezer burned and she told me that cabbage was only good to -5. It’s -7 right now. So I cut all of them down and brought them inside and processed away some of the parts that were a bit rotten along the top. Of the five cabbages I took down, only one of them was in bad shape. I think I probably lost half of the mass of that one. The rest of them are looking okay if a little burned. We have more cabbage than we know what to do with right now. That’s probably a good thing.
I also got delivery of my stuff from the wildberries corporation. There were still a couple of items that didn’t come but the driver is always a good guy and brought what he could and made sure he got here in the morning. Nice. Unfortunately, the delivery companies themselves sent bad orders. I made a document to send one back and the other one has some kind of a snafu. It isn’t listed as one of my purchases or deliveries and the online service doesn’t give me any way to send it back. Either this will come online and I’ll be able to do it in a day or two, or I’ll fix this with The courier the next time he’s here. It really is a good service and the guy who does the deliveries really is a good guy.
I got to speak to my ex-girlfriend or at least type a few sentences to her. Basically this was good wishes for the final day’s writing. She has been with a guy for I guess about a year, possibly more. She gave me some history about him and tells me she is the happiest girl in the world. I’m happy for her. She was the best of the best when I met her and she’s really going to be something in the world. Unfortunately, she might be something for the Russians but we can’t all be perfect.
I just finished making a hummus and it is spectacular even before maturing. I added an entire beetroot plant in there and also included some of the parsley that I took up from the garden. The Parsley also looked a little freezer burned so I took all of it. I believe it is a perennial so it should come back next spring as one of our first greens. It will be welcome.
One of the things I bought were some corn chips. I won’t order these again. They are very tasty but I ordered them out of some sense of nostalgia. If it’s really important to me, I’ll make my own in the future. One of the problems is that you can’t really ship bags of corn chips without at least a cardboard box around them. Somebody thought that bubble wrap was enough to keep them in shape. It wasn’t and they were all smashed. However, I am planning sometime tonight or tomorrow to cover those things with some of this delicious hummus and I promise not to complain ever again.
Seriously, the oil that they use for the production of these things is still in my mouth. I can see why they want it to be an addictive product. I will have these, I’ll enjoy them but I won’t buy anymore.
There’s not that much else happening right now and I’m really not expecting anything else for the rest of the day. It’s about 1:15 and I still have to put together some bread and bring in some water but that’s about it. I’ve got the heater running right now to make the office a little more tolerable. I also need to bring in some wood. But that’s about it really. And as for this blog, I believe I only have three sections left.
***
Treehugger describes it this way:
Ma (pronounced “maah”) is a celebration of not things, but the space between them. It is about negative space, voids, emptiness. And it is relished in everything from interiors, architecture and garden design to music, flower arrangement and poetry. And actually beyond; it can be found in most aspects of Japanese life.
The Medium thinks of it this way:
The Japanese concept of Ma is something that relates to all aspects of life. It has been described as a pause in time, an interval or emptiness in space. Ma is the fundamental time and space from which life needs to grow. Space for the Japanese psyche directly impacts the individual’s progress. These principles are universal, when applied effectively they enhance the way one thinks and how one engages with one’s surroundings. Japanese can visually identify with the meaning of Ma from its kanji symbol. Ma combines door 門 and sun 日. Together these two characters depict a door through the crevice of which the sunlight peeps in 間.
I’m sitting in the kitchen Cafe waiting for some water to warm up. This water is for the yeast for today’s bread. Another mixture of white and whole grain. I don’t remember whether the whole grain Bank is rye or wheat. It doesn’t matter that much.
I first learned about the concept of ma a few days ago serendipitously. I don’t remember what I was looking for or what I was thinking but suddenly this information popped up in front of my eyes. For some reason my algorithm believed that this was important to me. It could be my affection for Asian culture, specifically food but also gardening instruments. It could be my desire for peace rather than War. I don’t know why they thought or it thought that I should have it but it was given to me and I’ve been trying to make friends with it ever since.
I asked my new student for her opinion during our interview. She said something that is extremely normal for Russian people. He explained the things that she doesn’t want and doesn’t like rather than expressing her point of view positively. Russian people are extremely passive by Nature. I could go into my explanations why or I can just leave that space open to your own interpretation. Or maybe I’ve already spoken about it many, many times.
The other day, I tried to describe what happiness meant. I feel that if you ask people what makes them happy, the first thing that will come to mind is something that they do proactively. Their favorite and most pleasing activity or maybe having some particular thing within their possession brings happiness. I certainly agree with this. Having decent tools lying around to do important jobs would seem to be the essence of these two criteria. In my life, I have happily invested in tools. Clothes unfortunately have never been a tool for me.
A few days ago though I expressed the concept as an absence of unhappiness. There are a number of things that bring dread, fear or sadness into people’s lives. The world seems to be practicing misery as its number one economic choice. It seems we do everything we can to be antagonistic to human happiness. Therefore it would make perfect sense to say the absence of this noise, the absence of unhappiness would therefore leave happiness behind.
If you ask someone who has cancer what happiness would be, they would probably say a good day. A good day to a person with cancer is a day of normalcy. A day with the absence of sickness and the absence of pain. I suppose it’s the same thing while talking to someone who understands that they are a slave. Happiness therefore would be the absence of slavery. They might say it proactively and say that freedom equals happiness. But freedom from what? Freedom from treason, freedom from treachery, freedom from prejudice and hate, freedom from societal suppression and oppression.
Over the last couple of months, I have been battling health problems. This morning, I woke up with good positive energy and found great happiness and how beautiful the world is covered by a first snow. I get the feeling that this happiness goes everywhere and puts everyone in a good mood. The snow tends to cover our mistakes and the whiteness gives a feeling of cleanness and newness. It is as if we all have a new virginity, a new innocence, new possibilities.
That would be the absence of ugliness. This would be the absence of garbage. This would be the absence of pollution. This would be the absence of the filth we put into the world.
But what mornings are to me is an absence of pain. A night’s rest and some time off of my legs has mornings being my favorite time of the day. Some days I move absolutely freely and I feel good for a long time. Usually on days like this, I start doing things to stay busy. The problem only comes after I sit down. That’s when my leg tightens up and that’s when the pain starts. In the evenings, sometimes it’s everything I have to take those last few steps to get into the War room so I can let it go. The absence of pain brings great happiness.
When I think of this writing project, it’s interesting to think of the things that I did not write about. It’s interesting to think of the specifics I chose not to say, the names I chose not to mention and the activities that just never made it on to these pages. I can also approach this as a reader. It’s not only the absence of photographs that probably drive people crazy. It’s probably just that it’s episodic and skips around and repeats. There are many things being said but there are many things that are forever open. Probably the photographs are the most of it. There was nothing to stare at and nothing to do but keep reading.
I think what I most like about my life is the absence of modernity. This house is not thoroughly composed. It isn’t a modern cookie cutter with all of the things you need. Noticeably absent is running water. I have had the capacity to create running water and install plumbing but I haven’t and I don’t think I will anywhere in the foreseeable future. This is a definite red flag for people from wanting to stay here. It is a joke to them that I would choose to live in a place without it. Obviously this is connected to my personal failure as a human being. Obviously, I screwed up somewhere and am now being punished.
The absence of that noise would make life better and I don’t think like that at all. Not having plumbing means there is no plumbing to fix. Not having plumbing means not having plumbing bills. Not having plumbing means not having to worry about things that are not worth worrying about. Not having indoor plumbing means that I have to do what I have to do in order to take care of my business. It’s a little more work but I find I enjoy the texture. I enjoy the visceral necessity for all of the extra things I need to do to either replace or just ignore the existence of indoor plumbing.
The same is true for central heating. The same is true for everything. The absence of a car. The absence of direct access to the supermarkets. The absence of access to people and conversely, the absence of people having access to me. These are not problems. This is a desirable texture.
The house itself is pretty cold today. I have to do the things I need to do not to be cold. I’m very layered up right now and when I came into the kitchen to clean up and see how much of the cabbage I could keep, I was working with absolutely ice cold water. The water hasn’t Frozen, it will some time but it didn’t today. But yeah, I have to work with very cold water. The absence of hot running water means that I have to make do.
However, this house was built 50 years ago and it is still standing. For the most part, it is standing pretty close to its original form. I have upgraded the electricity slightly but not extensively. My friends helped me add a few more wall sockets and we have a thicker electrical line bringing a little bit more juice into the house. It’s all legal and the electric company has given me a certificate. But other than that, what they put up 50 years ago is still here as far as I’m concerned, it’s been a functional place the whole time. The well works except in August when it bottoms out, in the summertime when it’s hot, simply opening the windows allows the sweetest breeze you can imagine. And in the winter, right now, simply closing the double windows and lighting some fires is enough to keep the place reasonable. It works. No one’s going to die here. And I am not complaining.
I think we also have negative aspects of the concept of ma. What happens to people with the absence of trust? What happens to people when they are told that they cannot believe the information they get, that the news sources they look to to find out what’s going on are lying to them and when they are asked to give their vote as to the way things should go only to find out that their votes weren’t counted, their voice is not listen to and that they really never had to say it all over what actually happened? What happens when we lose trust in our society?
This would pretty much equate to the absence of love. What happens to us when there is a distinct and long-lasting absence of love? Perhaps all we ever think about is how much we fear the absence of money. Oddly, there is no fixed amount generally understood to be enough. I personally have had enough for a long time but by certain standards, we would never even dream of attempting life on my economic level. How often do we use money to quell the pain of an absence of love? How often do we replace loneliness and insincerity with something that can be purchased?
What about intimacy? What about genuine intimacy? Sometimes I think that intimacy is the only satisfying thing in the entire world. We could agree with sexual intimacy but there is way more than that. There is intimate conversation between friends that doesn’t have to have any sexual nature to it at all. There are intimate moments even that we spend alone with our thoughts that are as satisfying as anything. I remember writing music at 3:00 a.m. when I was in university and how thrilling it was to hear the lines in my head being repeated and repeated in the time it took me to write it down on staff paper.
And yet we consciously do everything we can to destroy it. It seems the one thing that we really need is the one thing we fear the most and it seems to me that most people live most of their lives with the complete absence of intimacy. No trust, no love, no peace and quiet.
Perhaps this is what is truly meant by the concept of ma. In the absence of other noise there is the peaceful quietude of meditative intimacy. When one is not bothered or forced to deal with too much information, in the peaceful space in the absence of that noise is the possibility of the thing that we genuinely need.
There have been many things I have left out of my writing. Some people became very angry when I mentioned them and other people requested simply that I not bring their name up. I usually respect this. But I would like to add that the genuine problem between my ex-girlfriend and myself was a lack of intimacy. Certainly we had plenty of time together and certainly we understood baby talk. But what we lacked was the trust and the peace and all of the other things because our world was too noisy and there were too many structures already in place to allow for it. She was so jealous to know that I had intimacies with others. I’m not even talking specifically about sex. It was just the knowledge that I had some level of trust with others to a greater extent than was possible with her.
But let’s not put all the weight on her shoulders. She has enough to worry about in the world. Let’s also point out that you can’t be intimate here with anybody. The objectification doesn’t allow it. The rules and the patriotism and what other people have said and the trolling and the social networks and the visual aspect of it and the money and the money and the money and the money and the money and the money and the money all conspire to make sure that there is no possibility of space enough for intimacy. It was outlawed here. All individual thought was outlawed as a potential for revolution. No One is allowed to question the words from above, not with a protest, not with a vote and not with words spoken intimately with trust.
They do not allow you the existence of ma. The concept that tells us of the joys possible in an absence of, in the space between, in the unused place is never to exist. Which is the intimacy that has been outlawed and that effect is what I’ve been writing about all year.
Anyway, come Monday morning there’s going to be an absence of writing for me and an absence of me for you. I don’t really think the absence of this noise is going to affect the world too badly. I don’t think it’s going to be noticed at all. This is just going to be another non thing that never happened.
But for anyone actually reading these words, thank you for granting me the intimacy to write them.
***
Perhaps just one more thought. In the absence of an enemy, in the absence of a scapegoat, in the absence of someone to pin your sins and blame for your troubles, in the absence of all of our excuses, there’s nobody to blame but yourself. In the absence of our enemies, we become responsible for our own lives.
Perhaps it’s time to quit blaming others and take responsibility for a change. Maybe in the absence of escapism, we will find our future.
***
Acknowledgments
It’s 5:00 and I think I’ve basically done everything I need to do to prepare for my day off. I have a load of wood in the war room and I’ve even set up a fire that only needs to get lit. I have water in the kitchen, the vegetables have been cut, the bread is ready to be put in the pan and the hummus is ready right now. And I’m getting hungry and the day is getting shorter so I think it’s time to wrap up our business here.
There are some people that I wish to acknowledge here as being important to me this year. I believe that this blog/journal has been an important part of my life. It’s been there every day and even on days when I didn’t particularly have anything to say, I still found the energy and detention to put some words down on paper. I have by the way a little bit more than 1.5 million words. That number is not very specific but the 1.5 million squared showed up yesterday during the Torah portion. The 1 millionth word came on the wrap up on Sunday August 14th. The word itself was get and I was talking about heading to town to try and fix the roof water catching system. None of this is really important except that it’s not a small project. And there is no possible way I could have made it through this year without crashing without the help of a few people.
I’m just going to name people as they come to my mind so we shouldn’t think of anybody as being more or less important here.
To start out with, I have a friend in the Jewish community who helped allow my stay here generally. We did nothing illegal but there were sanctions and problems and he managed to help find a way to get me through these sanctions and problems. I was not personally sanctioned by anybody but you end up getting caught in the dragnet and my friend came through and cut me free. I also want to make it very clear that I did not get paid by him and the Jewish community has not financed me in any way. But he was there when I needed him and I would love to say his name but he asked to remain anonymous. He knows who he is.
A second group of people are my friends at the Barents Observer. Even though we somewhat participated in getting Novia Gazzetta, the Great bastion of Russian independent journalism, their Nobel prize, my job kind of came to the end with the exit of the journalist I was translating. Nevertheless, without that job I would have been on much more delicate footing. It also gave me a great reason to make use of my skills and a very worthy fight to contribute to. My opinions of the Russian bureaucracy were not formed while writing with these folks but story after story, the Russians never did anything to dissuade me from my opinion. This is a great newspaper and important at the very least for its geographical location. When you have people in the Arctic arguing about the effects of climate change, you’d best listen to them.
Away from financial help, I really have to say thank you to four people here in the community that I live in for being excellent friends to me since I arrived here. This would be Ria, from home I have several berry bushes directly from her garden. She has also fed me even to the point when I begged her to stop doing it. Even recently she was my ex partner’s guide to the forest. She is a wonderful and energetic lady and worthy of quite a bit of respect.
Ghenna, who was there to pick up the physical slack when I could not even walk anymore needs to be mentioned. I understand that at the end of the day, there was a lot between us that was not really wonderful and he is not the most dependable guy. Nevertheless, he did show up and we did get materials and therefore he became a lifeline of genuine importance. I promise that there will be a gift for the holidays that he can drink to his heart’s content. I don’t forget my friends.
I can also say thank you to Tanya. Also a difficult situation and a very difficult woman. Thanks to her, even though I did not want them, I had more Santa Barbara than I needed. The woman is a walking scandal. But aside from that, my closet is full of dried mushrooms and if you’ve never had local mushrooms from your own forest, you really never lived and these things are spectacular. And, I am still her daughter’s teacher so only good things can be said for this relationship.
And finally, here in the village Lena is definitely my best friend. Another very complicated lady basically doing everything she can to get by. She does not have the wherewithal of Ria and she does not really have even the tenaciousness or work ethic of Tanya. And she’s blind as a bat. But no one else has done so much to get next to me or to do what needed to be done. She’s also someone I refuse to disrespect and will never forget as long as I live. She is my friend and I will knock down anybody who says anything bad about her.
Next, I really have to give thanks to my cab driver. I don’t know how it worked out this way but there was one company in town that agreed to carry bicycles and even after fighting with the guy who runs the place when he decided to get political on me, they have still made sure I get service. They have also set me up with Dima. Dima always shows up, we always get along and even though I am quite sure he works with the KGB, it’s always a pleasure to have a dependable guy who can pick you up in a time of need even if you are on a bike.
Right along with this one, the guy who has been doing the deliveries for me is named Valera and he also seems to be going the extra mile to be cool with me. I just want to say that this sort of service is appreciated.
I guess I should say thank you to my friend Losha for hooking up my house with a better electrical system. He and a partner came in and gave me two days and everything works here and is pretty dependable simply because he did pro work. And yes, his work was signed up so we didn’t do anything under the table there.
There is one more Dima. He was the guy who came and helped clean out the well and put up the gutters on the barn. I collected a lot of water from the roofs and even though this system is probably not going to be with us next year, the new well does the job without collecting water. This was another guy who came and worked politely and without prejudice and without corruption. Considering the number of people who are related to me otherwise, I must give credit to good people when I find them.
I guess I should give thanks to the president of the Republic of Belarus for not arresting me. Thank you Sash. And if you are listening, you should take my recommendation about legalizing marijuana very seriously. It would go a long way to curbing the alcohol problem and perhaps letting people reach their full potential in life is one of the genuine jobs of any leader of any country. Nobody wants this fucking War. Nobody wants this.
And finally I guess I really need to say a thank you to my ex partner. Without her, I have absolutely no idea what would have become of me. She took care of me when I needed to go to the hospital. She took care of me when I was in the hospital and she took care of me after I left the hospital. She was up here almost every Sunday to help do work that needed to be done. And during the two months when I couldn’t even walk anymore, she definitely showed up and picked up the slack and made sure that I had whatever I needed. She’s my lifeline to a lot of things in the world and we talk everyday. She is my best friend in this world and I love her. We are who we are as people and it is crazy sometimes that we have an ongoing friendship. But my friendship with her is one of the best things I have in the world. Thank you dear. You did very good.
***
Final thoughts about green 2022, green food, the ecology of the planet Earth and an unnecessary War.
Well, I guess it’s about time to go to the end of the page. It’s 5:30 right now and the light is already starting to grow dim. I need to go light the fire in the kitchen and get dinner started.
But before I go, maybe I’ll just try one more time to get this thought correct.
First of all, global warming is real, measurable and a genuine existential threat to every living thing on this planet. Global warming is caused by human activity which is a very nice way of saying people driving around in their cars, supporting the oil business generally, giving way to an economy that demands long distance travel and exotic purchases. As we strive for our comfort and take for ourselves our right to be taken care of by corporations, we give them the key to create as much damage as possible and use as many of the world’s resources as possible just to feed our narcissism. It is a gigantic and colossal mistake for us to live this way or even to believe that we should. We cannot live without a sense of humility. This is not a religious request that has anything to do with religious morality, this is simply an acknowledgment that we cannot live like this in a world of 8 billion people. We either need to cut down the population or we need the population to cut down on its usage.
Secondly, I went vegan 4 or 5 years ago. Probably four. And it changed my life. It changed my health, it changed my capabilities for conscious thought, for work and for recovery. It has allowed me the physical cleanliness to do things I didn’t think I could ever do and it brought me back from a person that I am sorry I ever became. It’s not really a matter of being born again or having any kind of spiritual Awakening, it’s just fresh blood being able to come up into my brain enough to learn that I do not need to harm myself just because everyone else says it’s the thing to do. I also learned that I do not need to run from my responsibilities. I’m not talking about not showing up at work with some excuse, I’m talking about actually not having any excuses or even desire not to do my job. That’s a polar opposite.
Veganism is the correct way. We as a species of animals on the planet Earth require certain amounts of nutrition to get by. But we have no need for dead animal flesh in order to achieve these things. It is not a matter of vitamin intake, it is a matter of our species not being built to devour animal flesh. Our intestines are too long, our hands and legs are not appropriate to kill things, our teeth are not appropriate for tearing flesh, we are herbivores. We are herbivorous animals and we function much, much better without causing damage to ourselves.
It is also extremely important that we take into consideration the ecological damage caused by the meat business. This is not only the damage to the waterways and to the topsoil because of the amount of land we dedicate to animal farming. This is not only the cruelty performed on sentient beings. This is also the enormous amount of health problems caused by people who simply never get the information that they are giving themselves cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and any number of other maladies caused by a fat based diet. And even worse, it is a fat based diet that is no longer even natural but dependent on bloated animals drugged up in order to produce more milk and meat. We don’t need this to live and I believe it gets in the way of our happiness.
I also want to say that we live in a world where our leadership wants nothing more than to divorce itself from our opinions. We basically use social media as a drug rather than an instrument. We put our likes and dislikes and commentary on the most frivolous things but yet, we do not use this exact same skill to vote. Never in the history of the world have common people had the ability to communicate with each other this easily. We have never had the ability to have a face-to-face conversation with someone on the other side of the planet in real time as a matter of convenience. Just for the pleasure of seeing someone’s face, it is almost free dependent on nothing more than an internet connection. We don’t even need to be in our houses to do this anymore. I can talk to anyone I’ve ever known in my life just by picking up my phone and clicking a few buttons. With this kind of communication technology in existence, why is it so impossible to understand that people should have a say in world events?
Why are we arguing about voting days? Why are we worried about polling stations we’re using paper mail? With all of the levels of security that exist, with all of our ability to track people, why isn’t there a simple system in place that allows people the vested interest of voting on things that are important to them. Why is it that we are reliant on other people doing all of the work and thinking for us without the slightest regard of what we really think? It’s a stupid system. It’s almost as stupid that’s making politics a profession. Anybody who actually needs a job should be doing something a hell of a lot more useful than politics.
And why are we killing each other? Why do we sanction murder? I understand that this wonderful communication device that I am using exactly right now is the exact same tool that allows everybody to think the sorts of things that they do without any reservations or worries that they might be doing something wrong. Once the algorithm understands that you are a conservative, you will be fed anything that seems pleasing to you and generates likes. And if suddenly hatred of jews, hatred of women, hatred of ukrainians, hatred of black people or brown people or yellow people or people who occupy various latitudes and longitudes on this planet, you will get all the hatred you want. You will get every radical who believes what you believe. You and your electronic friend sitting in your hand will take a trip down happiness Lane no matter how wrong this is for humanity. And this includes all the people who want to feel good about being rich and all the people who want to feel good about spreading hate.
We can’t have wars. We can’t have Santa Barbara’s and soap operas. We can’t have people walking around causing all the disruptions they can. We can’t have people drinking their way out of reality or eating their way out of reality. We can’t have lives that gain relevance simply because money ends up in your pocket at the end of the day. We cannot agree that simply getting yours is what it’s about no matter what language or level of language it’s presented to us. I don’t give a damn about the packaging, if it’s not sustainable, it’s not sustainable.
So it’s about food, politics and ecology. It’s about people taking responsibility for themselves and their lives and their communities. It’s about allowing people to have a vested interest in those communities. It’s about finding a way to allow people to work not only for profit but for the good of those around them.
We live unsustainably. We eat unsustainably. We fuck unsustainably. We vote unsustainably. And we do our economics perilously unsustainably. We have got to take notice immediately.
About me? I’m pretty cold right now. It’s minus today and we’ve just had our first snowfall. I’m going to go have a nice dinner and then I’m going to relax and let it go. I’ll probably have a good day tomorrow doing not much of anything. I’ll probably just keep the fire going and stay warm. And as for next week, I’ll just keep doing my job. Nothing’s really going to change. I’m not going to blow off the diet simply because I’m not writing anymore. I’m not going to radically change. I live where I live and my life is what it is. I’m just trying to do the best I can.
As for my final words? God exists. God exists and is knowable and seeable and understandable and measurable. God is nature and nature is God. Nature should be our God and we should not trespass or break God’s commandments to be good to each other and to be good people. We have lost our way and we are creating a desert for ourselves. Perhaps we should have a thought now and again.
Monday, November 21st 2022
This is just a small update. Today, I was visited by six members of the Minsk clinic. Literally, most of their staff. And they had a look at me and listened to my story. I got both medical attention and some legal attention last two my claims of corruption. Suddenly, though they enjoyed a few extra thoughts of what was and was not possible, I was told that within 2 weeks everything will start moving.
You never know what’s going to be true and what is not. There were a lot of politics flying around the room. The main doctor was there and he acted like the main doctor and an expert but also did everything he could to deflect my accusations even though he himself heard this clearly.
I can’t really say what’s right or wrong. Maybe I should have made this complaint 6 months ago. Or maybe that I didn’t made this one more powerful. I mean, if they are willing to bring the entire shop all the way from Minsk to my house, it must have meant something. I didn’t need this kind of attention but this is what they did. So we’ll see.
One thing to mention though. At least half of the doctors smoke. You have to worry about things like this. I’m not sure you’re supposed to trust doctors who smoke. Bald hair stylists, dentists with bad teeth, out of shape athletic trainers and doctors who smoke should be cause for alarm.
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