I’m a little worried if I can pull this one off. I don’t remember being this fucked up in a long time. I have a couple of stories of medical catastrophes. I’ve been ridiculously sick before. But I haven’t really been sick since I became vegan 5 years ago. Since becoming vegan, nothing ever really bothers me too much. Well, my neighbors are curse on the land but you understand my meaning.

This thing I have is crazy. There’s inflammation in every joint. I can’t push myself up with my hand because my wrist goes into seizure. It’s like all of the tendons and ligaments just dissolved overnight. And I think Wednesday maybe was the last time I ate normally. I know I was down completely on Thursday and there were the kishu situations. I did get up and manage to get something nice to eat for Shabbos. I guess, if you believe in nature, you know, God, sometimes she just takes care of you to remind you that she loves you and that maybe you are a favorite son. Or, maybe a few people love me in the world and they thought about me as the light started to go away and this gave me the energy to get up. I prefer the first one because it’s the energy of my neighbors that has completely blown my guts out, disallowing me to walk or move and forcing me into rather extreme decision making.

I needed help. It’s the hottest days of the year in the hottest year in a series of hottest years and if I don’t get the watering done, I’ve blown everything. But now it’s worse. There are some things that need to be harvested and some boxes that need to be taken care of and I’m not even in the ballpark of mobility and haven’t been since Thursday. I called Dim. He told me he would be available at 2:00 and I asked him if he could find me some berries. I said that I wasn’t buying any more of these things but that I was truly fucked up and my best idea to get some food inside me was to make some smoothies.

I don’t know. I know that the vegan World holds a few things sacred. Everybody has to have a high-speed blender. Let’s not overthink this, these are the same followers as everyone else, they’re just cleaner and they smell better and they’re generally nicer unless they think you’re horrible in which case they don’t really want to talk to you. I have a blender. I don’t know how old it is. It’s a Bosch. That’s right, I bought German because if I was going to buy something, I wanted it to last. So far, and I absolutely know that I am jinxing this right now, I’ve never had a motor breakdown. Only slight chips in the bullshit plastic they use. Can’t we get over plastic?

I only use the thing once a week really. I’ll use it on Sunday morning if I truly hate my neighbors because it measures 95 decibels. But all I ever do is throw chickpeas and some kind of nuts Plus whatever seems like a good idea and this is my Friday night hummus. No matter what, there’s got to be some hummus and some bread or I just don’t feel it. This last week where I got to enjoy the first things of the flock was good. Nevertheless I was still sick as a dog and a bit of vegetable was all I could choke down.

Dim showed up a bit late but I had absolutely no way of defending myself so I allowed myself absolutely zero anger and told myself to tolerate everything. This does not mean I was laying down, it just meant that getting angry was not going to help. Actually, that’s the thing. The guy makes me angry all the time. We were just talking about that today. No matter what he says and no matter how many times he agrees with me, the fuckers Russian and he’s a mook like all the rest of them.

However, he’s my mook. Is he an alcoholic? I think he plays with heroin to be honest. I think my genuinely grateful paydays have set him up into a new lifestyle. He is quite the businessman these days and the hard worker. It’s funny what a regular paycheck will do for you. I’ve been saying that all along about my neighbors. Sure, we have mooks who know they are mooks, but then we have these industrial types who somehow believe that they are better than everyone and have all the rights to dictate policy and cause shit disturbances. Sorry bitch, I didn’t want to do business with you because I don’t like you. Go home, watch tv, play with yourself, get drunk, I don’t give a fuck what you do but if I don’t want to do business with you then take no for an answer. Now, the mookies understand what no means. They can be persistent, but they can be trained at least for the short term.if By train, I mean that it’s remotely possible to hold on to a dignified relationship as we were all civilized dedicated people who didn’t have this ridiculous landscape to live in. You can get moments of reality you just can’t forget that they’re in it for the money and no matter how much they want to say we’re friends, once it gets into their heads that this thought is already in my head, you get good results. And like I say, you can train them.

So I’m lying on the bench. It was literally everything I could do to get to the gate to undo the lock. The sun was boiling but it didn’t matter. There was nowhere else for me to go and there was no shade. I called him and asked him to do the watering and to bring some berries and now I was in that awkward moment between when you call the prostitute and when the prostitute arrives. I don’t want to say anything like we all understand this feeling, but I think we all understand this feeling one way or another.

I had my instructions down to an art form. I told him that the mission had several facets. I had to stop him when his mind wandered and he couldn’t pay attention long enough to get to the 4th point. But I stop them and made sure he was clear how we start the water, what places need to be watered, how much to water and truthfully how to water. That’s pretty strange but I had to tell him three or four times to put his finger over the nozzle to make it rain. I had to use quite a few Russian words and till the Bell started ringing. He was happy to show me that he’d figured it out. After that it all sounded right. Before that, it just sounded like a racehorse with an extreme bladder infection.

I felt like I was starting to get better right after I listened to this podcast with CC Sabathia and my man Barry Bonds.

There is a really good reason for me liking Barry Bonds. Actually, there’s a ton of them. We are the same age and we come from basically the same part of the country. And we are both something. I don’t know the word. I’m sure there is a word but to describe the situation in many words, he’s a workout free loner health nut. Sportsmen who can see things. He made a pretty good joke about that. Barry, tell us what you see. But he can’t, can he? You either got that or you don’t. Or, you choose to build that or you don’t.

When I was in high school for some reason I was into reading the biggest books I could find. Size matters? I read all of Shakespeare and then I dug in to the entire catalog of Sherlock Holmes. Can you believe that? I read every word of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. As a commentary, they will not very well written stories. I mean, you would think that he would take the time to explain how those connective details get put together. Unfortunately, Conan Doyle gets a bit lazy and a lot of times he just says stuff and we were never even allowed to see the event. Just good writing and bad writing. They were just magazine fluff pieces for a day when people read in the evening to relax. A ripping yarn was popular when you just want to let the pain of the day go. That’s a Sherlock Holmes really was.

I don’t know if it’s from this book but I’m also a pretty good Sherlock Holmes just like Barry Bonds is an excellent Sherlock Holmes. And the problem is, when you are Sherlock Holmes, the world around you just doesn’t measure up to your standards. Some people just do things really well. Some people just get it the first time they look. You build it. Barry says that he matured. Yes he did. He became a monster if you want to call that maturity. But then again, so have I.

Dim has a way of just being Russian. Just does annoying Russian things. I really would not mind pulling out the chairs and meeting in the road and having an open and Frank discussion about the difference between going to a friend for some genuine help and screwing people and committing treachery behind their backs. Охуить. So far, Dim a has done this on more than one occasion. He is a glad-hander to the end of his days and an obsequious flatterer. His words are not worth very much and if you actually pay attention to what he does and how he moves, he’s not really the athlete he sells himself as. Not even a little.

Nevertheless, the watering got done. My three sisters were in agony when I hobbled out there to them on Sunday. I had to fight my way through innuendo to get there. I only said two words but I so wanted to explain the nuances of why bothering other people for unimportant reasons is just fucking their minds and I don’t like having my mind fucked. Can you imagine that? When I first came here, I was living with the best people in the world. So polite, it hurt. And now I’m with the worst people in the world and it’s so disgusting, I haven’t been able to move since last Thursday.

And then mercifully it was over. I can’t say you did a bad job, I would say you did a good job. After he was gone, I had to get myself somehow out to the fence to lock it up, and then close up the electricity and the windows. I am talking little steps. Tiny steps. Like, counting every step. Like, I was so reliant on my crutches and trying to keep my balance, it was an incredible expenditure of energy that I just didn’t have. By the time I was finished, I was soaked. I stopped by the water barrel and cleaned myself up. And then, finally, it was smoothie time.

So life is a little good in a little bad. Most people would bring berries in glass jars. Dim brought two plastic bags that immediately started leaking all the juice all over everything. When I asked him to put them on the table in the kitchen, he looked very worried. He of course did not say that perhaps we should put them in a bowl or do something to save the juice, he just took his order and now I have a purple table. Rock and roll.

What was in this? Water, berries and some oatmeal. Do you need anything else? I mean, if I was doing the health thing and I’m like ooh, how much nutrition can I get into this smoothie? Maybe I would do something different. In fact, it is an irony that my thinking of smoothies is predicated by this ridiculous illness and I don’t have the wherewithal to walk around picking herbs and greens and leaves to really jack up the nutritional value. I decided I just would go with the basics because the basics was all I had.

Everything got purple from this mess. I couldn’t even clean it up too much. But when I started gulping it, and I gulped, my body kind of said thank you. Forest berries are not really that sweet. It’s a berry and they are acidic but it’s not sugar. Just a bit of acid and that rich blue juice. I drank the blender. I didn’t have the energy to save anything for later. I hadn’t eaten in a while, I needed some nutrition, this actually worked out really well over the course of the evening. Am I going to be better tomorrow? I don’t know. I hope so. But if I can’t, I just have to figure out how to get out to the gate and at least my field is going to get watered. And he’s got this thumb technique down and he agreed that it made him happy to make it rain.

The only other thing to talk about is it seems that my neighbors have gone dormant. Perhaps the internet had something to do with it. Nobody really likes having their picture. I’ve been running all kinds of scenarios how to end this but the most prevalent have the police coming in and saying that the jig is up. This of course kicks the entire domino theory all to pieces. Because the moment we realize that listening to crazy black chickens is not the way to live one’s life, suddenly it all becomes clear how many crazy black chickens just could not get enough of me.

But Hey listen, we can put the chairs out on the road and have a conversation about things. You are absolutely sure that a man is supposed to make money. Fuck you, I’m retired. I don’t have to make money for everybody and in fact I don’t have to make money for anybody and that’s one real reason I’ve never gotten married. If we want to talk about my daughter’s mother, she just got kind of greedy. Maybe it was the landscape around her screaming hateful thoughts. People love to fuck each other’s mind and talk behind their backs and nothing makes them feel more important than having someone that they believe they have the right to kill. Ask Louis CK about that.

It also by the way makes the stories they told lies. That’s the House of cards. They were just lying. I’m not trying to get out from under cancel culture. I don’t give a shit anymore, I’m retired. I’m just saying that they don’t work very hard at figuring out the truth. The legal system really doesn’t have much proof involved or motivation. It’s just a big parade and kind of a drag show actually. They’re just auspicious but not very judicious. They have power and we don’t and they are fine with this. That’s why they became judges.

But there is no genuine Mercy or conversation in them. You can’t really talk to a Belarusian legal person and expect them to talk anymore than you can talk to any Russian and expect them to be conversational. It’s just not in their nature to put thoughts together. But I mean, if they didn’t base their austerity on stealing and copying the Torah, this is definitely where are they gone the antisemitism. This is another backstabbing lie. Let’s just steal everything they have and ruin their lives and then we can say the truth that we want people to hear about what religion is really all about.

God forsaken place. I thought God was going to be on my side and the weather report said 100% rain and I didn’t believe it and that’s why I called Dim. This war is not just going to cost me my effort in sweat to get through it. I have to get bombed by my neighbors rather than just letting me suffer global warming quietly. Irony is too clean a word to describe people that purposely and as a weapon do things to increase the amount of pollution in the world. That’s a different type of thing. They are people that I simply do not wish to associate with ever. Maybe they are a dormant but they have never spoken to me and of course they would never share their plans because this would also be a way to fuck my mind. There is no other way to say it but that the war goes on but the only difference is that there will be a daily dose of covid for a little while and it’s going to cost me money instead of Labor to make sure my field gets its water.