Tuesday, March 15th 2022

“Yeah it’s the result of a culture that needs to end. I’m not really talking about Slavic culture though if you’re Jewish you might think that this needs to end as well. I’m just saying that this business of creating misery simply to retain power needs to come to an end. The oil business needs to come to an end. The economic system has to come to an end. I’m just going to grow food this year. There’s nothing else that matters.”

It’s 5:30 a.m. and we have just finished breakfast here in my ex partner’s very warm apartment. Breakfast was wonderful. It consisted of some of her unbelievably scrumptious homemade bread, toasted without oil, and some napa cabbage, they call it Peking cabbage here, just for the cruciferous vegetables. You cannot digest your food or receive nourishment from it without vegetation. This is the truth and if you ever wanted to know the greatest reason in the world why we are herbivores as a species, consider this fact: You cannot get nourishment from food without fresh vegetation. And yes, this is where the concept of garnishing things with greens comes from.

The final decision was to call a cab from her house to the bus station, yet another internal combustion engine to get up to Minsk, some public transportation and a little hoofing to talk to my medical specialist and then reverse the process all the way back here for dinner.

Over breakfast, I was thinking about two things in my life. I was thinking about my general health and the difference between living a mostly physical life and a life where you are in your head most of the time.

Okay, certainly if you want to talk about money making, there are more possibilities from flipping money than there are by building houses. My family, or at least my father’s side of the family, lived a very interesting dichotomy. They were builders and they made their money hour by hour and job by job. They didn’t just do the financing to make things happen, they would climb the framing and make sure the roof didn’t leak. I know this is who they are because I feel this inside myself. I also know this from my father who was very happy being as physical as humanly possible his whole life. He was not a great businessman, he was a worker doing job by job, day by day.

When I got to the end of my first stay in University, I was in a relationship with my future wife and I needed money so I went into sales. This was basically my dad’s line of work and literally, I took a job at a car lot selling cars, new and used. I hated it. I continued in sales for a couple of years because it was a way to make money. In my mind, you made more money by flipping things than you did by working with your hands and this seemed a logical extension. Except that I hated it. I hated every minute of it. I hated approaching people. I hated asking them for money. I hated playing with their minds and I hated living in my head.

When this situation came to an end, I’m talking about the marriage, I suddenly had a much smaller necessity for money. I was effectively free from the necessity of chasing dollars and in this situation, I decided to stop talking for money. I decided I was tired of lying. I decided I was absolutely tired of creating rhetoric that would lead money to my pocket. I decided that I did not want the life of a parasite anymore.

I found honesty in building. There is a level of truth that the thing you are talking about is physically right in front of you and the argument as to whether it is straight or not can be settled with a plumb line or a level. If something works, it’s not a matter of debate, it’s a matter of engineering. 

I didn’t listen to him at the time, but when I was a very small boy, my father wanted me to learn German and to study engineering. At the time I did not understand the connection that this was deeply in his own DNA as being the highest level of building possible. It is the mathematical extension of building, the theoretical understanding of if something is straight or not and what the tolerances of the material are. I can see where this would be the highest place that he should have hopes that I end up.

Interestingly, my mom ended up making money by being a headhunter for engineers. She would find people who her clients wanted working for other companies and convinced them to leave for a better job. She got paid a commission on each of these moves. A gentrifier to be sure. Human gentrification. She was flipping people. God rest her soul.

Over breakfast I was thinking about this because of how happy I am right now to be building this Garden of mine. Hanging out with one of the big shots of the Jewish community yesterday reminded me of the business of flipping. I know they were doing important work and helping Ukrainian refugees would be considered a mitzvah, a good deed and even an essential obligation in a life devoted to God. But then again, that’s really overstating things and there’s a lot of egotism in there that has been there since I know these guys. It’s the fly in the ointment. It’s the flaw in the argument.

I’m not saying anything bad and these guys are saving asses right now. And in fact, I can see myself bothering my friends about getting some help and relief for Ukrainian refugees in the very near future. Or even now. We need money and we need places for people to live. We have displaced people looking for a new life, who need a new life, who just got bombed out of their lives. We’re going to need some houses and some jobs and some situations.

But I think the one thing that I noticed is how good it felt having breakfast with my ex partner. It is much different than it has been. My body is tight right now because of all the labor I’ve been doing. And even though today is a lot of riding around in cars (and spreading carbon monoxide and killing everything we touch), it’s me doing these kilometers and doing these hours to get my body up there to Minsk. This is a physical task and breakfast is just energy for my body to move around with.

If you are reading these words, there’s a very good chance that you’re going to let them go in one ear and out the other. I would say there’s a 95% chance that you will consider this to be just more media, 1/1000th of the media you will digest today and it will be forgettable almost from the minute you take your eyes from this page. Electronic or paper.

But please remember that everything I’m talking about began its life as a physical reality. This piece of writing is about food and the thrust of what I’m writing about right now and the fact that we are in the middle of a war right here is about how many people right now are going to be having problems with food, clothing and shelter. It’s not like the governments got together and fixed the problem. The governments got together and created the problem. They displaced people from their homes and they took away all of our money and said “this is our power, worship us.”

I say this is important. I say that we were not supposed to be doing this again. And there is a phrase that all Jews know very, very well. It’s a phrase from the second world war and it’s used as a remembrance of the Holocaust. We say “never again”.

And yet, here we are again…

***

It’s 6:10 and I am at the bus station waiting for my transport. I would say that it’s cold but not so bad. I think I’m dressed warmly enough.

The cab driver opined that people are starting to sell their cars these days. The new economic crisis, perhaps some distaste suddenly for Russian oil and the realization of how much money they are losing by maintaining automobiles, is starting to make sense.

I quit my last car more than 25 years ago. All of these same arguments were in my mind completely. Although at that time, it was the oil business in general that I hated and not specifically Russian oil. But as the world is now, there is absolutely no difference. One hateful culture in one place is exactly equal to the same hateful culture in another. Keep people crazy for the purposes of making money. Wrench them from their comfortable places and put them in insanity. This is no way to live and probably my main reason to quit sales.

Anyway, the second thing that came to mind concerned my ex partner’s neighbor. If we were a part of a television comedy, the two of these single women are sharing adjoining apartments and I would be the hapless fool falling into their humorous mishaps. Sort of a Belarusian Three’s Company.

Yesterday afternoon, my partner’s neighbor made a brief appearance to tell us about the latest catastrophe in her life. If that salesperson at the gas company’s appliance store was the most dramatic woman I’ve seen in a while, she must be a relative of my ex-partner’s neighbor. Actually, if I bring inbreeding into this, they probably are connected in more ways than not.

I have Jewish eyes. This does not mean that Jewish people are particularly special, it means that there is a certain amount of caring that goes along with the act of placing your eyes somewhere. Maybe it’s a lack of Christianity or maybe it’s the trust that we have given ourselves as people who have the ability to read and write and think and argue. Maybe it’s the responsibility of freedom. Maybe it’s the Spider-Man “with great power comes great responsibility” idea. Maybe if we’re going to be free people, it means we have to take what we see seriously.

I could be more local and say that aside from being from a family of builders, my grandfather who was from here was a doctor. We could also point to how many doctors and lawyers and therapists and writers that come from the Jewish faith. I’m not claiming that we are better than anyone else, I’m just saying that all of these professions and all of this thinking comes from the simple act of demanding to put our eyes on a book and read. Not just one book eventually, there is an entire encyclopedia of philosophy to be covered and people spend their entire lives in these books. 

I mean, it’s not magic or a gift from God, it’s a physical gift from doing this work for millennia. It’s also the reason for Christianity and anti-Semitism but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

What I am saying is that I really want to have some heart for my ex partner’s neighbor. I want us all to be friends because she wants us all to be friends because she needs us all to be friends. And truthfully and despite her personal urge for freedom, my ex partner really needs us all to be friends as well.

But she comes into the apartment to share her current hysteria with somebody and all I can do is look at her health. All I can see is her diet and the way she lives.

I understand where she learned this. She learned this from the same culture that my daughter’s mother comes from. She comes from the same belief that there is an absolute division between men and women and that women should avoid physicality except for women’s work. She comes from a Christian ethic that says we are not animals or a part of the natural world. She comes from a mind where men are hyper-masculine and women are hyper feminine and milk products are the most essential food. She comes from a place that says her insanity is the wealth of her life and she sits in the center of this rather unhealthy spider web trying to catch flies well after the flame and beauty of youth has left her.

I found an Instagram picture of a woman perhaps 20 years younger that looked exactly like her. I wish I could get this understanding into my daughter as thoroughly as possible. There was a time when this woman looked in the mirror and absolutely believed that she was a treasure. But then time happens and the world turns and nobody buys her and suddenly she finds herself in a store that’s going out of business.

I’ll be honest with you. I want her to switch drugs. I am really not interested in being her physical comfort. I don’t really want to touch her. I don’t want her touching me. If you think that I’m onto this subject because of sexual attraction, you’re out of your bloody head. I mean, I don’t want to insult her but this is not my cup of tea. My friend Steve taught me a long time ago “if you won’t eat it, don’t fuck it”. I think he was actually talking about cannibalism but I’m a vegan either way.

No, I think first and foremost that she ought to discover marijuana and quit alcohol. The sugar is not doing anything for the ridiculous loser cycle that she’s in, it certainly is not doing anything for her health and I don’t understand why she never learns that quitting and waiting for other people to solve her problems has never worked.

This is the same argument I have for so many people from this country. When I look at people’s faces and bodies and consider body chemistry and their diets and how they spend their days, my first thought is that they are suffering. And whether you believe it or not, every muscle in my body tells me to do something to stop the suffering. That’s the doctor talking.

I understand that most people believe that this personal suffering is a part of their Christianity and therefore a part of their inherent goodness. They base their pride on their ability to suffer more than other people. In fact, I would not be lying if I went so far as to say that the pride of Belarusians is their ability to suffer. It is their national identity and part of that obsequious smile that goes along with my not understanding their people.

But no animal on this planet chooses to suffer. I hate that they have convinced people that there is some ethereal reward for suffering on the planet today. To me, this is insanity. There is no guarantee. God does not give us anything in writing. And no, the Torah is not God’s contract, the Torah was written by a man or a group of men just like every other book ever written. 

If God is intangible, this means this idea that you must suffer is equally intangible. Use your own judgment. And maybe think about this: If you want to believe that you will be next to Jesus in the next life, can you just do the math on that for a second. I don’t have to Google the question of how many Christians there are in the world but you know the answer is billions, right? Now let’s take that mathematics and ask how many people have ever been Christian and are now dead. How close exactly do you think you’re going to be to Christ at that table? Do you have any idea what a billion of anything is? Do you know how much room you would need to hold a billion marbles?

According to Google, an average Marble is 14 mm. To get one cubic meter of marbles, you’re going to need slightly less than 38,000. That’s one cubic meter. We’re talking about 26,000 cubic meters. That’s a whole city of marbles and apparently, an entire country of people who have lost their marbles.

But I mean hey, if you don’t mind being number 497 million in line, just picture yourself in my position talking to the big shots of the Jewish community. Do you know how much time these guys have to sit around and bullshit? Let’s say at best you get one minute to say your peace. We’re talking about waiting a thousand years for that minute. I mean, a cool concept but not practical.

No, I don’t want to drink with her. I don’t want to drink with anybody. This week is Purim. Purim is the traditional holiday when Jewish people get drunk. Literally, it’s Jewish law that you’re supposed to get drunk to the point that you don’t know better. It’s a tradition. I just don’t want to do it. I don’t really want to drink with the big shots, I don’t want to drink with my ex partner or my ex partner’s neighbor. I just don’t want to drink. I don’t like drinking. I don’t think it helps and I don’t like how I feel or what it does to my body.

But I’d get high with her. I’d happily get high with her. I’d get high with her and talk about being dead and hanging out with Jesus. I’d get high with her and talk about having really great sex with someone that you really love.

I would get high with the big shots of the Jewish community. That’d be fun. That’d be fun to tear each other apart with our Jewish eyes and tell each other the truth just for the laugh of it.

Actually, I’d love to get high with Lukashenko. I think that would probably be one of the most terrifying things in the world. No more terrifying than getting high with Putin. That would be an aspiration actually. What kind of guarantee could you have that you’re not going to end up in jail forever or shot immediately? And besides, we would have to share with all of the bodyguards and all of the military guys and then you would have a bunch of alcoholics with automatic weapons getting high all around you and that’s really frightening. These people are bloodthirsty.

But you know what really needs to happen? Putin and Zelinsky need to get high together. They should go somewhere where it’s warm and they should go out in a forest and just get zooted. Maybe my ex partner could bake some bread for them. These two guys should just go flying up to the 7th sky together and talk about what it’s like to have the responsibility of millions of lives on their shoulders. And you know, sitting in the forest like that, they might even fall in love with the trees and the fresh air and the quiet. Maybe a thought or two about air quality and quality of life might come into their heads. Maybe they might rethink their ideas of how cheap life is. Maybe for One moment they might understand that they are no more or no less than any other people. Maybe they might realize that we are all nothing but a bunch of neurotic apes and that they don’t know what they’re doing any more than any of us and have never known what they are doing even a single day.

Actually, my ex partner’s neighbor should be in this picture. I could see her sitting between these two men thinking that she’s pretty lucky in the moment to have two boyfriends that she could brag about the next time she barged into the apartment.

“Oy, Adam, You were so right. We were just in the forest and admiring the trees. And they were wearing these beautiful clothes and they had such nice manners. Really, you must try this. It was the best day I’ve had in a long time.”

“They are both married”

“It doesn’t matter. Adam, you don’t understand our people. It doesn’t matter.”

***

The springs in this minivan are fucked just like all suspensions in all minivans that make this run. I’m going to shut up and bounce around quietly for a while.

***

You know, I was just thinking about how nice it felt to have my ex partner fuss over me this morning over breakfast. We had to make sure that my bag was  squared away and that I would be on time to make my transport. She was with me about figuring out all the nuances about how I would get to where I was going and what kind of food I would take with me. She was pleased to be feeding me and fussing over me. I will admit that it felt very good to be fed and fussed over in the morning.

I think all men would agree that this is one of the great pleasures in life. I also think all men would agree that there are pitfalls and needs in any relationship. The fact that we men are so easily pleased opens up quite a door for the women and we do understand that the oldest profession in the world is the one where they flatter you for money. After a while, I’m sure we all understand what the pain is like when you find out that your breakfast had a hook in it and that you were the meal.

This is not to say that all women are good or bad. I’m not speaking in generalities. I’m just saying we understand that the game exists. It’s wonderful when it’s real. A real moment is a real moment of joy but it sucks when it’s not, which is unfortunately also a real moment.

This morning I was remembering a moment when I visited a friend of mine at a cafe. Like most people here, my friend has a few nefarious people as acquaintances and when I got to the cafe, I noticed that there was another guy about my age sitting with five young women, one of them was on his lap. When I say young, I mean in the 20-year-old range. You make what you want of this picture. I certainly did.

When I showed up, I guess they assumed that I was joining the party. I wasn’t planning on it but nevertheless, two of the girls disappeared and returned miraculously with a pizza only a few moments later. One of the girls who stayed behind. Tanya was her name. As I remember, she started talking to me about music. My friend introduced me as a musician and she started asking me questions about my process. Specifically, she asked me what words I thought of while I was making melodies.

You know, it’s one of the most pleasant feelings in the world when a woman fusses over you. When a woman cares about what you’re doing and asks questions and pays attention to things that are important to you, it’s amazingly good for the ego. Or maybe that’s not a good way to say it. You feel it in your ego. Your ego gets bigger and depending on your age, I suppose your penis gets bigger too.

I remember her name. I guess that’s all you really need to know about how effective she was at getting through to me.

I didn’t want any of the pizza. I guess they neglected to find out that I was a pretty hardcore vegan. Or maybe they knew and wanted to know if a little ego stroking would have me munching on cheese. It didn’t and I took care of my business with my friend and got up to leave. The girls and especially Tanya seemed upset that I was breaking up the party. I didn’t feel like I was breaking up the party. I didn’t understand why it was a party. I mean, I understood what this was, I just didn’t understand why I had to be a part of it.

Then Tanya asked me why I was leaving and for some reason I decided to tell her the truth. 

“You guys don’t look very healthy at all.” 

They didn’t. They had the same hollow eyes as my ex partner’s neighbor. They had the same listlessness, the same lack of energy flowing through them. Their eyes were dead as fish and whatever they felt they needed to do to get through their days, I really didn’t want to get stuck in the web.

I have never enjoyed the company of criminals. I have avoided many things in my life simply because I don’t like being around criminals. Most people here explain how things are and excuse themselves from what they have to do in order to make money. In the economy where the entire currency tends to fail every few years or so, you have to do what you have to do to get by. And after a while, money is the only thing that matters and whatever you have to do to get it is fine. Nobody’s going to argue with you about anything that actually gets money in your pocket.

I just don’t like it. I have always made my money fair and square. I like to pay my debts on time and I like not having debts more. I don’t like being around people who have power over me and I don’t particularly like having financial power over people. I don’t like power generally.

In this world I guess, you’re either a top or a bottom. And anyone who’s ever been a bottom probably dreams of their day at the top. I know this is true with my thief relative and I absolutely know that this is true up and down the chain of command in the government.

I prefer to meet on the level. Maybe it’s an engineering thing or maybe it’s a builder’s thing. Maybe I have some Mason in me. I like things on the level. On the level, on the square and under the all seeing eye. I don’t like looking down at people, I don’t like people looking down at me and I don’t like looking up.

If I do have to take sides though, if it is a matter of you or me, it’s me. This doesn’t mean I join in the fight and do the competition. It means I leave the party. I leave the party for self-preservation. My life is more important than whatever power game is being played. 

I wish more people thought like this.

***

Theoretically, today’s the day for peace talks between Putin and Zelinsky. Let’s hope they figure things out between them pretty quickly and truthfully. I do not believe it’s going to happen but it would be nice if the Russians just decided to go home and manage without Ukraine for a while. I don’t think this is going to happen in my lifetime or anybody’s lifetime but it would be nice if the Russians decided to just quit the oil business and go home. They can grow their own bread. They don’t need anything from Ukraine. They can take care of themselves just fine.

***

I just got an email from a Ukrainian friend. The message was very short. Російське прокляття. Basically, he was saying that this is the Russian curse or the curse of the Russians. 

***

Today was a rather long and brutal one. There was 8 hours of sitting in a minivan and another 4 hours sitting in the clinic. I can say that they were okay with me. I got the usual bureaucratic runaround. One doctor said that I got the national hunt treatment. I believe this meant that being with them was hanging out with people whose hands are completely and utterly tied to Russia. And in my case to germany. Nothing is going to happen quickly. 

What they did do for me was good and technically speaking, I’m in the system and something good will happen in a while. But this war has everything slowed down to a crawl and perhaps people are insecure. Actually, I can’t really say that because it seemed to me like everybody was just minding their own business and going along as if nothing was happening. I didn’t see any seething emotions. People just do what they do and they don’t have much choice in the matter. 

So I went to Minsk in a minivan, I talked to some doctors, I got a little bit of help and that’s what happened.

Right now I’m in my ex partner’s apartment and just feeling completely empty and spent. Maybe it was the food or maybe it was the day in general. I don’t really know.

Tomorrow I have some last bits of bureaucracy. A bit of bike riding in the morning and then I’ll head back home and that’s it.

I just wanted to check back in and wrap things up for today’s riding with one last thought about the war. You can look at these things a lot of different ways but the feeling I get when I look at anything except the people who are directly in the center of the terror, and Russia is dropping bombs all over the country, is that it is pure opportunity for those sorts of business people who look for opportunities as a way of life. The only thing that makes sense to me really is that people are making money off this war. Certainly, the gun manufacturers and oil businesses are profiting greatly. But there are also bankers who are moving currency at special rates under the table. There is a business in finding homes for people and in exploiting people who are now in need of a situation. There are humanitarian efforts, there’s no doubt about this. But there are also people making money off this misfortune because people will pay whatever they have to pay to look after themselves and their families.

Belarus, at least the government, is completely behind Russia. There is no hesitation and all the rhetoric goes towards International markets. It seems that the only thing that matters to the government is international trade. It is a shame to them that we are experiencing problems with the currency but they are assuring us that pretty soon we will be using Russian rubles or Chinese yen as our alternative currency. They are trading partners and that’s really the most important thing to our government.

Here’s a video with subtitles.

Minsk was busy. Minsk is always busy. The hospital was packed, everybody was busy or even over busy. It’s a very bureaucratic country and everybody has their operations and obligations. Pinsk is also going through the motions and keeping its bureaucracy going. I think everybody is completely stunned at the situation.

The cab driver told me that nobody is doing anything right now. The cost of gasoline has gone up, the value of the money has dropped and nobody is going anywhere or doing anything.

I don’t know what I see. I don’t know what I see and I don’t know what to say. Truthfully, I think everyone is just taking it as a matter of course. Our country is involved in this deal, the Russians are attacking Ukraine and after that, make sure you have enough coffee and bread for the morning and let’s get some sleep and wake up and go to work tomorrow. Just nothing. We’re getting massacred again economically, we are universally hated now but there is nothing any of us can do. There never was anything any of us can do. We didn’t really vote for this. We didn’t really speak about our opinions or say what we thought. Nobody really stands up and expresses their feelings. Everyone does their job and goes to work and nobody ever thinks of doing otherwise. I’m a stranger and a foreigner here. Whatever is in my mind, I’m just crazy. Things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do about it and that’s how they think.