Sunday

Sunday morning, March 13th, 2022. Week number 10

It’s 8:30 a.m. and I’m sitting in the kitchen. According to the weather service it’s -2 and that feels about right. I didn’t sleep much last night and it was plenty cold. It was a very difficult batch of insomnia because I had spent almost all of Saturday in bed. I’m usually not this physically inert on my day off but I guess I had done enough physical labor last week to tell my body to just not move anymore and I was happy to do it. Literally, I stayed in bed until my back hurt. I do not recommend this as a way of life.

If you’re interested in the food, the food was not interesting. I made a cream sauce which was nice and used it on top of some macaroni and red sauce. The red sauce was made from some factory garbage mixed with some saved tomatoes that had just a hint of botulism in the taste. I don’t want to overstate that but you could tell that it was a bit past its prime. Not enough to hurt me and once they were fried up a bit, it wasn’t bad to have them but I doubt most people would make use of them. I guess I’m more worried about making use of my resources now then I am over food perfection. Kind of a weird twist to a food blog.

I am thinking hard about what to do with myself. I have about 1 hour to get on my bike if I wanted to go to town. The only reason I would go there really would be to visit my ex partner and get some clothes washed. I could go to the market. But the truth is, if I give it a serious think and I ask myself what would be the best use of my time, this would not be my choice. As far as visiting goes, I can always check in on Viber and say hi. In fact, I think I should do that right now…

***

Well, no help there. She couldn’t figure out why I should come to town either. I mean, I could go to the market but I don’t really need any food. I could go to an alternate market and get a few things to help fix my saw. Or, I can use the tools I have and just sharpen the other saws and hope that that makes things better. Or, I don’t do any of that stuff and I just live with how miserable the other two saws are. Maybe my arm will get used to them and they will become normal after a while.

But I am going to have to go to town during the week for some mild bureaucracy. And then I’m going to have to figure out how to get to Minsk for a day trip. I have a couple of things to do in Minsk that are absolutely necessary. Hopefully good things will come from it but there is no guarantee. But that’s not a Sunday trip. Nobody I would need to talk to would be working. This would be a mid-week trip.

My ex partner tried to help out with the money problem and sent me this article:

https://money.onliner.by/2022/03/11/kak-perevesti-dengi-v-belarus

This article is in Russian but if you use Chrome browser, you can translate it easily enough. Maybe for someone reading this it will be something new but unfortunately it only illustrates that the situation is dismal.

Most ways of getting money to Belarus have now been closed because of either sanctions or services that have closed in support of Ukraine. Our illustrious leaders choosing to openly side with Russia and either contribute troops and material, which seems to be the truth, or just allow the country to be used as a staging ground has cost us all money and the ability to get money.

Talking to my ex partner doesn’t make it any better. She tells me that as of this morning, we have ballooned up to 3.8 rubles against the dollar. I don’t see that on the national Bank’s site but she says that this is what she has heard. Google says that it is 3.0. actually, on the bank site, it says we are not above 3.3 but in fact 3.296. That gives rise to hope. If you forgive the analogy but it’s a bit like a girl getting pulled into the alley by two rapists and when it seems they are finished and zipping up, one of them says that it might be better to go back in for more. There is that brief moment of hope that it’s all over but of course that is never the way things go, especially out here.

She also tells me that there might even be a two-week waiting period. To withdraw money from your account right now. I haven’t read this anywhere and when I asked her for her sources, she didn’t have anything hard for me. She’s pretty good about sending me news that she sees but sometimes she sends me hearsay and overheard ideas and sometimes she just tells me what she’s thinking. I like to get the source straight on all journalism no matter who it comes from.

One piece of news that she sent along was a story about Zielinski inviting Putin to meet him in Jerusalem for peace talks.

https://newsbel-by.turbopages.org/newsbel.by/s/03/12/zelenskij-predlozhil-putinu-provesti-lichnye-peregovory-v-ierusalime/

On Saturday, March 12, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky during a press conference told foreign journalists that he had invited his Russian counterpart to meet in Jerusalem. .Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett recently held talks with Vladimir Putin, Zelensky said. Zelensky sent a message to Putin through Bennett, in which he offered to meet personally in Jerusalem and hold talks. Zelensky also told Bennett that he considered it wrong to hold negotiations on the territory of Russia or Belarus, and Jerusalem could be such a land. The Ukrainian president believes that the Israeli prime minister can be a mediator in the negotiations, and the country itself can be a guarantor of Ukraine’s security. 

It might be worthy to say this right now but Vladimir Zelinsky, the president of Ukraine, just happens to be Jewish. He’s also a comedian but those things are not mutually exclusive. It does shed a strange light on the Russian propaganda that they are in Ukraine to stop Nazism. It’s pretty hard to accuse you of being a Nazi All things considered. But it’s not so far-fetched if you take Russian anti-semitism as being a definite thing. You don’t have to work too hard to understand how deeply anti-Semitic the Russians are or how racially biased they are. They defend insanity to the death apparently.

How about if we call the ruble 4 to the dollar?

And this just in:

https://m.myfin.by/currency/pinsk

She turns out to be exactly right and it’s even worse. They are buying at 3.8 and selling at 4. That makes our monetary problem a beautiful 40% depreciation based on good decision making and our endless almost visceral love for the Russians.

I do remember the president of Belarus once making a speech in which he literally said the words “we will die for Russia”. He meant this in a way to describe the level of devotion he felt or that he felt we should all feel. I guess this is his opportunity to prove his loyalty. I would actually like to get a good look at his hands to see if he still has all of his pinkies. This is some kind of Mafia weirdness going on and I can see why perhaps he was asked to absolutely show how deeply his love runs.

Or in other words, things are not getting better. Things are getting worse. Things are getting a lot worse actually and we are on a downward slide that is going to continue for the foreseeable future.

I asked my ex-partner if she would be willing to go to Minsk with me but she wasn’t much interested. I don’t blame her. It’s a long trip. I don’t really want to do it because it’s a lot of money to be spent. I have to think through this one carefully. I think I might be better off working on paper and pencil.

I guess I should start doing things. It’s pretty cold, breakfast was tasty but now it’s done and I’m just sitting here being cold. I need to start doing things in order to get my blood up a bit. A little bit later I’ll light a fire in the warm room and do some serious thinking.

But before I go, here is something I found on Instagram that is kind of a moving speech. It’s our friend Zeelinski, speaking in Russian for what it’s worth, and making an appeal to the Russian people for some sanity in the face of the current situation. It’s got very good subtitles by the way so you can follow along even if you don’t speak the language.

The Russians beat the living shit out of the town of Kharkov. They say that 1.5 million displaced people, the largest flow of people since world war II, has been caused because of the bombardment of the city. I know this particular feeling of mine doesn’t mean anything but as a track bike rider, the local acquisition of a pretty decent track frame came from the Kharkovsky Velocipede Zavod, the Kharkovsky bicycle factory. Locally, these are known as ХВЗ’s (Khe-Ve-Ze). During the time of the Olympics in 1980, they made quite a few bicycles that are still around today. A friend of mine had a ХВЗ Record and tried to sell it to me before he moved to Italy but I didn’t have the money at the time to give to him. And then later, when I wanted to build one up, local people wouldn’t help me because, you know, it was important that I know that they didn’t like me.

Once upon a time, there was beautiful day for a ХВЗ bike ride in Ukraine

And this just in. According to PriorBank:

About ordering cash

Fri, 04 Mar 2022

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A preliminary order is required when withdrawing an amount of more than 1,000 BYN or foreign currency in an amount equivalent to more than 10 USD. The maximum amount of an order by one client is no more than 3,000 USD equivalent per day. Cash currency can be received on the 14th day after placing an order.

Blyad.

***

Yep…

***

The boss says that everybody must do their job.

(Translation and transcription available)

But then we have this, which unfortunately doesn’t have a transcription or subtitles, in which the boss sits with probably the only man on the planet that he actually listens to. And unfortunately, he just makes light of the situation. He understands that the people are worried about another nuclear accident at Chernobyl, that they are watching their money go away, that they may get stuck without electricity and that they are worried that reprisal against Russians might include battles on the Belarusian territory. But no matter what, the Belarusians will support Russia. I guess you can also see the relationship clearly on Putin’s face. 

And again blyad.

***

Well, I sharpened my two remaining saws. I think I was the first one to sharpen one of them because the alternating pattern on the teeth was still intact. The second one looks like it had been tuned up by grinding the bevel on the same side all the way through. The truth of the matter is, it makes a little bit of a difference to have a sharp saw but still, neither of these has the control and lack of bite that my other one had.

I tried using a drill to cut some holes in the broken saw and I could get through the saw blade itself, but the handle was too tough to go through. I could take the handle off of one of my alternates and just drill two new holes and I might end up doing that. But instead I went to work on cutting a load of wood with what I had. I just finished but it was kind of miserable.

These two songs have a tendency to get stuck and they don’t really allow any alternative angles. I am definitely not a fan of either one, sharpened or not sharpened and I guess I have to do something more permanent.

A good question would be whether I want a skill saw or to even go so far as to get a table saw. I think in the long term, I would not be against this choice. I’m not anti-electricity. I do not think I would buy a gasoline powered chainsaw. I could see myself getting an electric chainsaw but with a table saw, a chop saw or even a skill saw, I think I would cover about 99% of what I need. I understand that if I was in the United States I would go ahead and plan to buy all three. How can you have a shop if you don’t have the tools you need, right? But this is not how I think now and probably not how I will be thinking for quite some time.

I mean, I might be retiring but we are at war, aren’t we? Down at the crossroads near the store, we have a second military vehicle parked and camouflaged. This one more of a personnel carrier and so this makes two fully stationed military vehicles that I know of.

My ex partner is being very kind to me these days. I get it. It’s not like the love and respect is growing and she finds me to be a fine figure of a man suddenly. No, I’m somebody that she knows who has a house in the country and therefore a place that would be less likely bombed. This is how she is talking and this is how a lot of her friends are talking too. If the ukrainians get pissed off and start flying their own missions, we in the south would be reasonable targets.

Not to mention the airport in Minsk. If Belarus was genuinely to go to war, for sure they will hit the capital. It’s only 400 km from us, about 200 MI and certainly within the range of fighter jets starting anywhere between Kiev and the border. And certainly, you couldn’t blame them all that much. They rocket bombed Kharkov. Perhaps there was a military base near there but it seems to be nothing but a civilian center. It was the second biggest city in Ukraine I guess but these were attacks on civilians. That’s beyond protestable. That’s egregious.

When I was in New York, I was there on September 11th when they flew those airplanes into the world trade center. For sure, we didn’t know what was happening. Maybe it was the beginning of war. It certainly could have been the beginning of a war. Nobody knew what was going on or why or even who at the beginning.

I went into work to do my job. I was riding bicycles for cavalry couriers. I took the ball. I did my job. You could hear on the news that they had made bomb threats to Grand Central station. I was aware of that as I was riding by. The last Ride of the day had me on the ferry over to Jersey and I could look back at Manhattan Island and see what had become of lower Manhattan. Miles of billowing smoke and you could smell that dust and smoke for months.

It kind of sucks when you have to make a run to the Capitol and realize that it’s a similar type of hero run. This is not to say that I’m patting myself on the back or complimenting myself on my bravery. I’m just saying that this is going on right now. I guess I should also say that people should be pretty damn aware of terrorist attacks on all airplanes coming and going. The President says that we are quite okay with dying for Russia. Why he has to be like this, God only knows. Why we have to be looking at a remake of the mafia films of the 70s and ’80s is beyond me. Why we have to model ourselves on the mafia generally is also beyond me.

Of course, it’s not like the Americans aren’t like this themselves. And the british. I read through the headlines and the BBC just insists on throwing gasoline on the fire. They like it. They are making money on this. They are selling weapons and anything that makes people upset and crazy means the oil business gets to stay around a little longer. Nobody’s going to change horses in the middle of a stream and nobody’s going to put in or take out a new government during a time of war. 

That’s something I noticed a long time ago about how the conservatives work. Every time they take power and start stealing all the money, everything starts to go wrong in the infrastructure and people start complaining. Of course they’re too incompetent to just do their job so this means it’s time to wage war against somebody who doesn’t quite look white. This one’s kind of weird because everyone in this war is exactly why. This is definitely a white people’s war which probably explains the overabundance of casualties and incompetence of military choices.

I’m just sick of this. And I’m sick of these saws. And I’m sick of being cold. I have more work that I should do but I genuinely feel like lighting a fire instead.

Yeah, being in the winter is a lot like being in a government. You always have three things to do. In the winter, you can eat or drink something hot, move around and do some work or you can lie to fire or turn on the electric heat. If you’re a government, you can lie to your people, make sure you yourself recovered and then start a war to cover your tracks. Same thing. Same result. And we’re all just going to get cold again eventually.

***

Everybody has got smart ass friends and I have more than my share. I even have some British internet trolls and conservative types. This is even true in my family line though truthfully, I don’t really understand my connection with this guy. I think we share the same great-grandfather or something like this. Let’s call him a cousin because it’s just as easy to call him that as to call him a jerk.

But he said something interesting for a guy who is a thousand miles from the front and has no possibility of getting shot. And really, I agree that his thinking is very much conservative British and goes along exactly with the sorts of things you read on the BBC and understand from all pro oil Business propaganda.

Smarmily, he told me that I don’t quite understand the bombing of Kharkov. He told me that I should equate this to a forest fire. Even though there is great damage done to the forest itself, from the ashes rise new plants and new life and the world regenerates itself. He told me that I should think of what’s happening in Ukraine as a demolition job, destroying the old and bringing on new opportunities during the rebuilding process. He tells me that there will be much work for builders, designers, and corporate stores looking to establish itself in a brand new market. And eventually, because of the hunger of those remaining, there will be a whole new generation of young hungry entrepreneurs looking to get ahead in the new economy.

He likened all this to being a part of Nature and even natural selection. This is the way the world is and has always been. He even seemed happy for the creation of new markets. To him, Ukraine and specifically Kharkov had never had such a great opportunity.

I asked him why, as a jew, he was so in tune with the Nazis. Why did he think the brutal rape and destruction of a town was a positive? Didn’t he feel anything for the displaced families? Didn’t he feel anything for the one and a half million lives ruined?

Literally he smiled and told me, like a lot of people do, that I just don’t understand the way the world works. He believes that the Russians have done the region a favor. Certainly, to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. But people require a little blood to be spilled. They don’t even particularly note things unless they can seriously sink their teeth into the concept. This was an opportunity for the strong to get stronger and the week to get culled from The herd.

I didn’t say anything at this moment and then he chuckled a bit and told me he had read my philosophy about veganism and thought it was cute and especially humorous. He told me that if I wish to be meat instead of a meat eater, this was my choice. But the world is designed for survival of the fittest and if I chose to sit quietly in the middle of a field and graze, eventually I was going to get caught by a predator. He said it was almost as if I had it coming or that I’m even asking for it.

I told him to go fuck himself and not to talk to me anymore. I told him that I had never realized how much I actually hate him and people like him. But he just laughed at this as well. He said that feeling hate is also a part of things. This love business is of no use to anyone. If people have love, they’re just not going to make money. And if they don’t make money, they are no good to anyone, not even themselves.

And then he smiled again and wished me well and turned off the line. Just like that the conversation was over and yet another day was ruined. Fuckers like this asshole ruin all the days of my life. I suppose anyone with enough insulation not to feel hunger or not to understand need really enjoy being able to harm other people in their numbness. I guess if you can’t feel anything life-affirming anywhere around you, Maybe they kill from jealousy.

Yeah, I’ve been thinking about my ex-girlfriend’s a lot. Not that I miss them or wish they were with me because I don’t, it’s just how happily they went with the Russians. They really believe in this master race bullshit. They really believe that the world is made up of tops and bottoms and if they don’t find their way to the top, they will be bottoms. I guess I’m just a bit unhappy that they missed my equality argument or even thought of it as quaint. They could have taken me seriously. They could have listened to what I had to say or maybe they would have even preferred the philosophy. But no. They needed to get to work killing as quickly as possible. There was money to be made and pain to be caused and sitting around with a fool like me wasn’t getting them any richer.

***

I’m taking a break right now. I am pretty tired and my back hurts a bit.

I filled in one box with some hay left over in the small barn. Most of that had already been turned well by some termites that I just got rid of this spring. I got them with black plastic and now there’s not much sign of them anymore except for all the hay they ate that kept their colony alive for however long they were established there. I guess following my cousin’s theory, I was Russia and wiped out their City.

I really have done a lot here this year and the end of last year. Last year, this was really nothing but a meadow with a potato field, a couple of pumpkin plants and three or four explosions of zucchinis. We built a couple of beds and my ex partner planted without putting any fertilizer in an incredibly salty spot and we never really got anything from any of that.

This business with the boxes was always my plan. When I took the place, what I’m doing right now with something I anticipated doing. Actually, I thought I would be hiring someone to do these wheelbarrow runs but I’m not sorry that I’m doing it myself. The world kind of turned in a different direction and now I have a reason to do this.

It’s not easy though. I’m not complaining and I’m not asking for sympathy. All of this was my choice and I’m not sorry for any of my decisions. It’s just a lot of work for me to do. Nothing is particularly natural and everything that you do takes a lot more energy than you think.

Then again, I’m a track bike rider. I work without breaks and I understand that riding a fixie takes more energy than a bike with gears, brakes and all of the other mechanical wonders designed to make our experience more interesting. Even electric motors. I understand that it’s all on me and that all I can do is keep pushing the wheels.

That’s another thing I have to do. I have two options about dealing with how crappy the local roads are. It really is like a sand pit. I think I have a 20 tooth rear star that I can put that will take quite a bit of stress off of my pedal stroke. I also have an extremely terrible 42 tooth crank set that is worth about $12 but would also take a lot of the stress out of riding. I can ride where I am right now but the gearing was set up for road riding with my 700c x 28s. I still have my wheelset but I replaced them with the street slicks and old 36 spoke 26 in mountain bike rims. It’s an incredibly cheap wheelset but I got it so it could take some abuse. Not much fun and it helped tear up my left knee which makes things even worse.

At the moment though, I don’t see any road to turning the bike back into its fastest and most beautiful incarnation. I got stopped by the Sandy path near my house four times on my run to the store the other day. Anytime you even try to turn the wheel, you’re going to bottom out and come to a stop. It’s like riding on a beach with no ocean in sight. Pure desertification and the cars have been ripping the roads up without a thought for years.

My thinking is that maybe if I take a bit of the pressure off of what it takes to turn the wheels, it’ll make my life a little happier. If I’m going to have to fight the roads every second of the way, I might as well make the individual crank turns easier. This makes road riding miserable of course. If you’re out on asphalt and trying to go somewhere and you are spinning out or just not generating enough speed to feel like you’re doing anything, it’s no fun at all. It even plays with your head.

The other side though is that this is where I live and all I’m doing is quick runs in town or going off to the local store. There is no bike racing to be done and though I am riding, I don’t really have the legs for racing anymore.

I don’t know, maybe I’ll put that bike back together just for the pleasure of it one of these days. Maybe I’ll do that when I myself get to some level of recuperation that has me thinking about perfection. Maybe I’ll do it when I know I have some City riding to do. But for now there’s just no point in it.

They say a farmer’s work is never done. Pretty true, I’d say. There really is no end to this and nothing beautiful to look forward to at the end of the day.

***

Well, it’s a little after 5:00 and I think I’m ready to go make some dinner and relax a bit. I have a lot of things to think about. There are a lot of things that I need to do probably this week. I don’t think I can put off going to Minsk. Actually, I don’t really think I should wait at all about doing anything I need to do. We live in uncertain times. It is a good time to be careful but it is a bad time to procrastinate.

I only have two boxes left and then I move over to dirt patrol. We have an argument on the table about whether I wish to use animal shit for fertilizer. I don’t much like animal exploitation but you can’t argue that manure is a very good fertilizer. I don’t actually know what ethics I would be comfortable with. I think I would really be happier with green manure only. I think if I call today a rich soil and create a lot of compost, the vegetable beds will turn out okay. You have to put something in there. You can’t just drop things in dirt and expect them to do anything. You have to put something in there for them to eat or they just won’t grow.

I agree that it’s going to be a lot of work hauling dirt no matter what we do. Even if I do find someone here who will bring out a cart of shit for me, it’s still going to be me forking it into the wheelbarrow and raking it into my boxes. Getting all the way to the end of this is definitely going to be a bit of Labor. But then again, this is exactly what I wanted.

For the last hour or so, I’ve been cleaning up some of last year’s gardens. I didn’t fight the weeds very much. The point of it was to allow as much water to get into the land as possible and killing off weeds or cutting down the grass just limits the effectiveness of the plants. They have a job to do. They follow the Sun and they collect water and bare land eventually just blows away. That’s called desertification and this town is a poster child for land mismanagement.

It’s funny that the stupidest people are the ones who want to give you the most advice. Perhaps I’m in this category myself but everybody just wanted to tell me right from wrong last year. They didn’t want to listen to a word I said but they were perfectly happy to scream at me where they were right and I was wrong. It seems like an expression of egotism as much as anything. I got sick of it really quickly and now I have a lock on my gate. I understand that they are angry about this and my friend tells me that they think I’m crazy. I’m sure you already know what my answer to that is. It’s got two syllables and it rhymes with ducks and hens.

But while I was raking the dead weed stocks, I remembered the plants that I was now collecting. I remember having a little bit of intimacy with them and getting to know them and watching them do what they do. Last year, I had a lot of intimacy with my garden and these memories hopefully will never leave me. I know most people don’t want to hear these words that I’m saying. Perhaps it’s jealousy or perhaps it’s their own inability to see, hear, smell or feel anything. They are deaf as doorknobs and blind as bats.

We have more to worry about than neighborly relationships though. People are killing each other right now. That’s pretty serious. It’s pretty serious to live with people with loaded weapons looking for a reason to use them. I’ve been a shit magnet most of my life and this is not a happy situation for me to be in. I may like independent journalists and I may have a proclivity for telling the truth, but I’m not looking to be in a war zone just to have something to write about. Nobody is paying me for that kind of Evel Knievel action. 

But you never know. Maybe it all will just pass us by. Maybe my neighbors will just forget about me and fall into their habits without the necessity of calling on me too much. You may not believe this but I do not feel particularly lonely. Of course there are times when I wish I was amongst people that I really liked and trusted. It would be nice if we were running that family business that I believed was the salvation for everything so many years ago. But even if it doesn’t, the absence of abuse, anti-semitism, generally deleted and stupid people and alcoholics fighting a broken nervous system is much better than placating or trying to fit some image to make people happy. I truthfully don’t care whether these people are happy or not. I only care that they do whatever misdoings they do without thinking of me whatsoever. 

Do you think I should feel bad about missing the party? I have another friend that I don’t much speak to anymore who believed that I would be a perfect fixture at his party table. He couldn’t wait to invite me to all of the games and schemes that he came up with and he could never figure out why I just got up and went home at the end. I guess I tried to explain it to him a few times. He’s 30 years younger than me and what he thinks is fun was similar to what I thought was fun three decades ago. But what he has does not much appeal to me anymore and I feel bad for any aggravation I called but he just never understood that. He was sure that the entire world is exactly like him and nobody ever ages or changes or learns anything or gets tired of anything.

In the middle of this by the way, he confided in me that he was getting sick of his relationship with his wife. He smiled knowingly. He was in complete control and nothing could possibly hurt him. He had everything in exactly the place that needed to be. He was making money, he had a lot of people who liked him, he has a remarkable Instagram following and I guess he gets enough pussy to keep him happy. But there was that dark spot and for some reason, hanging out with me made him want to talk about it.

I really don’t know what to say about that situation. I could easily say that this is a woman for you. If you think you’re going good, your lady friend will be the first one to tear you down. If you’re broken and on the bottom, if she loves you, she’ll help you get back up again. That’s what my partner did for me when I was in the hospital. But you can’t not care about them and you can’t feel that you got everything put together without him because they will bite you on the ass. It’s a shame that this is the nature of the relationship out here. The women stand around waiting for an opportunity to bite an ass as hard as they can. But that’s what exists so you better be careful.

Or I could say that he should be very careful that the government doesn’t come and bite him on the ass. Our government is completely put together by sons of bitches and they learned how to live by their mothers. There’s no other way to say it but they are a bunch of men who listen to women growing up and these are the exact same women I’m talking about right now. Yep, you can’t get too comfortable because the government will come in hungry for some ass as well.

Oh yeah I almost forgot, then there’s all the people who want what you have. If I get followed around, I’m sure any successful person does. I mean, maybe he’s got his thing together and he’s respected and he’s got his organization humming away. But you can’t stop the dogs from sniffing around. If you live in a place that acts like a dog breeder, you have to expect that the dogs will come sniffing around and one of them might just get your bone.

I haven’t seen this guy in a while but my guess is he’s just grooving through his days with the same terminal frustration we all feel. Everybody thinks they’ve got it put together but that feeling lasts about 30 seconds. My daughter’s mother taught me about that. She used to advise me never to feel too good because if I did, something terrible definitely would happen. You have to understand that if you live here. Maybe in America, you really do feel untouchable. You get enough money and you believe that nothing bad is ever going to happen to you. I mean, when was the last war on the territory of the United States?

Or maybe I don’t get that right. There’s a lot of guns in the United States and it seems like quite a few people lose their children when someone decides to go on a suicide mission with automatic weapons. I guess I could Google how many school shootings there have been but I think everybody understands what I’m talking about. Or maybe they start spraying the crowd at a concert. Or maybe a bomb goes off somewhere. Or maybe it’s just when you go out to a show or to a restaurant or just try to enjoy your life and the party. There’s a lot of frustrated people who have their frustrated ideas and unfortunately, those good old boys and the conservative party just love the profits from guns and the misery that it creates. They make money from the police, the shooting, the hospital, the prison and the cemetery. All of these things are money making enterprises and I’m sure they especially like it when the people doing The killing are not white.

So where is Paradise? Personally, I think it’s the absence of gasoline. I don’t like the smell of gasoline and I don’t like the smell of old gasoline-powered vehicles. I don’t like the noise that gasoline makes, all that internal combustion engine bullshit. Everything about that material is poisonous and bad for health but I guess, good for profits. And nobody even thinks about the ecological damage. It never gets into anybody’s mind that they are doing harm by using these machines.

Maybe that’s what all of this is about. Nobody really notices that they are doing harm. Maybe we are so broken down by the economic system that we’re just dull and numb. Deaf dumb and blind and dull and numb. What an amazing combination. Maybe we just don’t notice anything unless there’s a lot of blood attached to it.

That would certainly explain Kharkov. It would also explain Chernobyl. It was explaining the entire Russian invasion of ukraine. They just don’t believe anybody feels it unless it’s covered in blood. 10,000 people have died just so people can feel something again. 1.5 million people out on the road not knowing what they’re going to do with their lives just so someone can feel something.

I think I’m going to throw some chickpeas and a couple of nuts in the blender and fill it up with a lot of water. I think I have three pieces of toast left and maybe even a little bit of spaghetti hanging around. I found some onions out on the field. I could clean them up and throw them in the pot. It’s not really that important. Something creamy and starchy and maybe a little bit salty. I was even thinking of maybe putting some serious spice in there. Just a little bit. Just a little bit of spice to wake things up.

Yeah, today has been an interesting day. I did a lot of work. I got some exercise and I came back to life after my day off. And I did some writing. I told the truth a few times. And I didn’t die. Nobody killed me and I didn’t kill anybody and those are two very good things.



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