Tuesday, March 29th 2022
I am in the kitchen next to my old stove and I have just flicked the switch turning off the gas under the coffee. Breakfast was the last of my ex partner’s bread, a little bit of fresh cabbage and a little bit of kvasheni and my usual morning pot of coffee. When I get done with this, there are a pair of bricks taking up space in the oven for some reason that I want and then I’m going to pull the grill, which I also want, and that will be that. They can come and disconnect the gas, haul it out through the front door, bring in the new unit, strip off the plastic, hook it up, check to see that the gas is flowing, make some vague explanation about how to use a gas oven and then they will say thank you and goodbye.
Hopefully. Hopefully they will work with this kind of professionalism. I got that yesterday from the guys delivering my planting soil but you don’t get that every time.
My friend Losha helped me out by strengthening the home electrical structure and put in a new breaker box for me. But all electrical work has to be inspected and the first time the inspectors came out, it was egregious. Firstly, they were not wearing masks exactly during the time of the pandemic, they insisted on trying to be friends with me, they got angry and literally were on the verge of physical violence when I asked them to just do their damn job and get out of my house and barely remembered to get my signature that they had been there. The second time they came out, they were conscious of not being problematic. Probably Losha had said something placating and they just came in, tied off their markers, got a signature and left. Prayer-worthy.
On the other side of the coin, I am happy to have services that deliver goods. I am not particularly rich but I do need some things sometimes. Yes, there are very often free variants and yes, my ex partner is in love with ordering things. Last year, she didn’t want to help at all but this year she has discovered that most of what I need from her is shopping and suddenly, she is an enthusiastic professional in her ex partnership. Go figure.
I am not a car owner and so transport is at a premium. If I go to town once or twice a week, I will go for a taxi cab for the ride back. But even at that, the taxiest doesn’t really have time for you to do shopping. And if you’re collecting things from separate places, the taxi is just not the correct way to go. So for all of this, I am quite happy to have an online shop to go to.
Would I be happier to be purchasing locally? Because you know that this online store I buy from feeds money to Russia, right? Or if it’s not Russia, it’s European ownership. 106% I would be happier to do my purchasing locally. But for that, I have deeply explained how interesting it is to try and work with the local alcoholics.
You cannot depend on their word to mean anything, you cannot even begin to fathom their personal emotions and in the end, what they are most insulted by is my lack of willingness to be a perpetual money pump into their pockets. Ideally, they have the right to come to you whenever they want, you see them entirely as friends for visiting you and then, when they put the touch on you for money, you open up your silver money case and dispense with love and maybe even a kiss on the cheek, male or female.
I don’t remember a day in my working life where people didn’t come unglued if I even showed frustration at their lack of doing homework. I don’t remember in my working life ever having someone pay me to be exactly on my time and my schedule and working to my preferences. In fact, in the last 8 years of teaching, since this whole Russian aggression in Ukraine started, I don’t even remember a client speaking to me respectfully.
And yet the local entrepreneurs seem to believe that the world is built in such a way that fate has given them Santa Claus with an open wallet, an endless heart and a mind so innocent as to believe all of their casual intrigues. In their minds, I must be their mother’s Love personified. I am unilaterally in need to know of their health. I was put on this Earth to care deeply about their adventures.
Seriously, fuck that. I don’t even understand how women can do it. And if you’ve seen any of these guys or got close enough to smell them, I wouldn’t even look at the sexual angle as meaning anything. Mother Teresa would have a hard time with these parasites.
Again, let’s be fair. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and strangers talking to each other at Mass events or in lines waiting for breakfast restaurants to open always have a habit of talking to each other. You go to a ball game and everybody around you is at least into it for the party. And it can be a lot of fun talking baseball, cracking opinions or jokes and everybody seems interested in having a good time.
It is possible that I brought this with me. It’s very possible that I used to have a habit of starting conversations with strangers in like situations simply to pass the time. Let’s say we are on some kind of a bus route to the capitol, you start a conversation with the person sitting next to you. Why not? We are stuck here for 4 hours, let’s pass the time pleasantly.
And perhaps before 2014, you could get away with this. I don’t really remember any open prejudice before 2014. This would be the first 12 years of my life here. You could talk to people and be friendly and people were friendly back. I learned a lot from people just by being able to hang out with them and ask questions. In fact, most of what I know about the farming I’m doing or even most of the things that I cook come from hanging out with people I was next to. And everybody was always open to helping and there was an endless supply of people looking for help for their kids in English. Happy times.
But then we learned objectification. We learned cruelty. We learned the lash, at least figuratively, from our masters. You understand who I’m talking about because you read about them at their finest and the papers these days. And all of the kindness went away. All of it. Every drop of it.
I can understand the starvation. I can understand why people are so needy. I understand why if I am simply going down the street, a local alcoholic will just stand in place waiting for me to approach them simply for the opportunity of a connection. I understand that they are starving to death on every level a human can starve. I’m talking about malnutrition, drug addiction, no money, no love, no respect, no possibility of a future, no possibility of a decent home and no possibility of autonomy of thought. Of course they are starving to death. They are allowed nothing to live on.
But again, fairness demands of me to say that this is truthfully not so different from America. The symptoms of cruelty and objectification are pretty normal for modern American culture, right? I lived there for the first stretch of my life, childhood and adulthood, and I don’t remember getting very much for free. We had to pay for everything and we had to work for everything and if you were on hard times, the fault was your own. Bootstraps up, chin up, March forward and place yourself into slavery as quickly and honestly as possible. And if your boss is a complete and total asshole, get that money and keep climbing until you get where you want to go.
I remember during the elections, there was some kind of a town hall forum and a black guy asked a question or made a comment to Joe Biden about how difficult or even impossible it was to own a home. He was from the inner city, no loans were available, nobody had any jobs and there seemed to be no way to get by. But there was Biden, talking enthusiastically about how his plan to tweak the banking would allow a mortgage loan. A decent loan at a fair interest rate and there would be the possibility of rising in the world if the man was willing to put his nose to the grindstone and do his best.
I remember the look on the black guy’s face. I think culturally but we understand it to mean the word “what?”. The inference is that Biden was talking complete and other gibberish and yet feeling that he was being inspiring in some way. If you looked close enough, you could see the black guy’s soul collapsing inside of him like a house of cards in a breeze. He was probably thinking “Yea, here was my big moment on TV representing my people and this is how they used me.”
I’d like to say something here like after the show, he went out and found some crack just to forget about it. But if I said something like that, people would yell at me for being racist. But let’s be fair with each other, if I didn’t tell you the guy was black and said that he was just a middle class white guy with the exact same question and the exact same problem finding enough money to take care of his family, you might say that going out to get a couple of rocks would be a pretty normal thing. And if you don’t want to agree with that, let’s just agree that there would be a significant percentage of anybody who would prefer to get wrecked after being humiliated on national television.
Welcome to America.
I talk a lot about my writing and lately I have been thinking about putting together a volume of a couple of my Russian plays. This is for publishing and for availability on the website.
The play Pod Kablukom was from 2002 and in it, there is this exact same argument. An American visits Belarus, meets a very attractive girl, finds out that she has a boyfriend and gets invited to dinner to meet her family. Interesting moment, not particularly autobiographical except vaguely and I think a pretty reasonable exposition of the subject matter.
But this was 20 years ago and this idea of what America is or how it is considered by foreigners and especially foreigners in difficult financial situations was obvious even then. And I made a point of the American character making a point that there were great and endless social and economic problems in the United States.
For example, there is a moment when the family asks the American why he does not have a wife. Some of it’s in Russian but don’t worry about it:
Роберт
(Медленно) Ok… maybe what I am trying to say is that it is very difficult in my country to… do love.
Надя
Do love?
Папа
Что?
Надя
(Призадумавшись) Он сказал фразу “ду лав” слово в слово – делать любовь. Но это трудно перевести.
Марина
Ты не понимаешь делать любовь? Возможно, он не поймёт.
Надя
Нет, я думаю это просто высказывание. Но это неискренне. (Роберту) I’m sorry.“Do love”… What is it?
Роберт
Do love? It’s to just, you know, do the things you need to do… to be in love. You know? I mean we, and not just my ex and I, but all of us in America, we fight for everything all the time. We fight for everything even if it doesn’t matter. It’s like being at war all the time.
Надя
Он говорит, что в Америке они должны бороться друг с другом за всё, всё равно за что. И без разницы правы они или виноваты. И как следствие, никогда не бывает хорошего положения для любви… I say that the situation is not good for love to be because you must fight so much.
Роберт
That’s right. And in America, if we find something that even seems to have any value, we feel we must grab for it and use it as fast as we can. No matter if it is bad or good, or even if it helps or not. We just know need. So my girl and I, I don’t know, maybe we just didn’t have time to really know one another. There just was never any time or peace for anything to grow or develop. It’s just like being at war all the time. And after a while, it seemed like we just had nothing to look forward to but more fighting. So we quit. That’s all.
They just know need. Your whole life spent in chronic need. The joys of capitalism. The joys of commercialism. Communism is evil. Communism is bad. Sharing the wealth doesn’t work.
And no, I did not plagiarize this work.
Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement. All published and unpublished material, whether in manuscript, printed or electronic form, is covered under this definition.
It’s my scenario, I listed the names of the people who helped on the title page and that means it’s an original work.
So it’s not like I don’t understand the complaint, I’m just not here serving the public function of being the target for the complaint. And as to why I don’t leave, the new system has not let me have enough of an advantage and the United States has not let me have a clear road or even a purpose for returning. Unfortunately, the United States has been practicing the exact same objectification for even longer than they have been doing it here and they have been playing at capitalism for even longer.
Why should anyone do anything for me? Why should anyone do anything for anybody but themselves?
So, you are dealt your cards and you play your hand. I tried to tell him. It was 20 years ago today that I put together this scenario as a gift for the local theater. I mean that with great sincerity. I asked for no money for this work.
“But of course you plan on making some profit from our playing this play, right?”
That’s what they said. My answer was that if I make money, we all make money. It was, like almost every single business idea I have ever had except for teaching English, we go in as a partnership and we split the money.
They don’t quite understand that part. They don’t quite understand what it means to work on spec. Speculation. To take a shot at something in the hope that something good will come from it.
Well, what happened? Nothing happened. Except that we had to buy a better class of planting soil from an out of country dealer because the local variants were too expensive. Not that they weren’t available, but if I had to deal with a local in any way, you couldn’t trust a word they said. You couldn’t trust them not to explode on you. You couldn’t trust them to do anything but be like my psychopathic chicken neighbor who calls the cops when I go over to ask them if they can please park their cars a little bit more carefully so that they do not fill my kitchen with auto fumes. I am a chef and a foodie and I moved up here for the fresh air. If they would be kind enough to just respect my wishes, we could all be friends. If they would be kind enough to simply deliver the goods that they said they would, I would happily fulfill my part of the bargain. If they would just do their jobs a bit professionally, you never know, the world might actually get better.
***
By the way, trolling is universal and I just got a text from a local person who wanted to remind me that not everything here has been tragic for me. He is someone who believes I have some kind of special privilege here. And it might be true. But if it is, it’s not official and very possibly attributable to celebrity.
However, I don’t have any official special privileges, I have the exact same privileges as anyone else here and in most cases even less because of the celebrity. I don’t have opportunities for any normal pleasures here because of that celebrity. And finally, I never asked for this celebrity or the objectification. I came here because the original philosophy saw me only as a human being and all the things that came to me were the same things that came to any human being who showed up for work on time and offered a decent service for a fair price.
Other than that, I learned my lessons about the local economy a long time ago and I saved my money. You’re welcome to follow my advice, put in your 20 years and see what you get. And never, ever forget that there are no such things as happy endings. People here will kill themselves and take you with them as sure as the sun comes up in the morning. Believe that and maybe you’ll get by.
***
Just a quick update because I feel like saying I told you so.
It’s a little bit before 9:00 a.m. and I’m sitting on the bench in front of my palatial estate. That’s sarcasm. Perhaps 15 minutes ago, Ghenna decided to make an appearance. 2 days late but let’s assume it’s been an adventure up until now.
Just moments before his arrival, I was busy cutting topsoil from the past of The Bean field. My bachi gata, now equipped with a slightly longer handle to spare my back a little bit, was breaking through the land almost effortlessly and allowing me easy kasha to pick up with my scoop shovel. Imagine what we could do to the Republic of Belarus with a bunch of bachi gatas, wheelbarrows and scoop shovels. I tell you, with a little bit of heart, inspiration and reasonable planning, we could move the entire world.
At that moment, my henpecked neighbor was busy talking to someone across the fence from me. They weren’t talking to me but I could feel the long fingers of blackmail and intrigue creeping over my fence. That’s one of the good things about manual labor in that vampiristic Spine tingling doesn’t bother you so much. Let the little minxes scheme.
Why do I talk about all of this dark intrigue? Because this was the moment when Ghenna showed up and when my attention went to him, my handpicked neighbor decided to go home. Listen Sherlock, you read the crime scenes like you see him or you count the money in the envelope. I work for justice.
But we quickly found out that we are not going to be working together.
To start with, the conversation started with the rules. We were going to work professionally or we were not going to work together. He would under no circumstances ask me for three rules. I have no patience for this any longer and I will not accept anyone coming to me and begging for coins along the way. We will make a professional contract, the job will get done, at the completion of the job I will pay exactly the amount agreed upon and no other situation will exist. I had to say that to him several times until he understood my meaning. Actually, that was reasonably difficult because looking at his face while I was talking I could see that listening to my talking was not high on his list of priorities. Red flag? Red flag. I let him in anyway.
I showed my 48 hour late compatriot what I was doing and what I needed but he kept telling me what he was offering me. If I would be willing to hand him 30 rubles, he would collect some shit. That the price was now. That today’s price was five rubles less than Friday’s price didn’t seem to bother him any. Today’s price was still twice as much as the other guy said it was but this also didn’t bother anybody. What was bothersome is no matter how many times I explained how the job needed to be done, he wasn’t interested in listening to a word I said. He was asking if I needed a box of shit and I was telling him that I’m just not ready for it.
In another world at a different time, I would have gladly taken it and put it in exactly the place I had planned to have it dropped. The fact that I have absolutely no patience anymore and that I am actually riding the fence as to whether or not I want animal prisoner shit or prisoner animal shit as a fertilizer is still not clear in my mind. What is clear in my mind is that I am in a minefield, an alcoholic minefield, a mindless alcoholic minefield and you’d better walk carefully. And I already have to walk carefully so all of this bullshit really puts me off.
So this is the update. As of today, the gate is locked until 1:00 when the new stove shows up. It will get opened up for the delivery guys and closed when they leave. And as of the moment, the care and feeding of my raised boxes is up to my bachi gata, wheelbarrow, scoop shovel and the half ton of planting soil I have waiting for me in the barn. I don’t see any alcoholics in that equation and for some reason, this makes me feel much happier.
***
Well, I have a new stove. I don’t need to say a lot about this except to say that there’s a difference between people who work for the state and people who work for private companies. Yesterday, I took delivery of some goods from a private company and they came, did their job and left professionally. These guys came from the state, they charged me more money for the hookup and then left all of the garbage and my old stove sitting out on the yard and drove away.
Sometimes people ask me why I live in the Republic of Belarus and I have a good answer and sometimes I cannot figure it out at all myself.
The only other item of note is that one of the guys spoke to me in English. He was a teacher for 18 years before taking a job with the gas company. His other crew members didn’t even know that he spoke a foreign language. The reason for leaving school? He hated the new breed of telephone and internet bred kids and he could make three times the money from the gas company than he could as a teacher.
Did I need to say that or did we already know the answer before the explanation?
Anyway, we have a new stove, I can bake some bread if I want to and now I have to call the metal works to come and get this stove. I hear they take this stuff for free. I hope this is true. I also think they might charge me for having to come all the way out here. Back to work…
***
I took a break from road building and box filling. I was really tired and wanted to take a break. And then when I woke up I checked my phone and saw these pictures from Mariapol. I guess the Russians decided to just raise the city. Beautiful decision making. Just destroy everything as a means of… denazification? Because this is really tremendous denazifying. I mean, if you’re nazi hunting, a pretty easy way to go about it is just wipe everything off the map. I’m a believer.
***
A little bit later in the day, I had some deep and biting thoughts that I felt truly needed to be here in this place. But I didn’t bother to write them down. I did about twice as much work today as the last time. My body is getting stronger. And then later in the day, I made a meal with no cooking oil. On my day off, I went ahead and had some fried food and my breakfast today was also fried. Still vegan, not even close to any exploitation of animals but fried food is really unhealthy for you all the same. And it’s funny how much difference it makes.
When I finally ran out of gas, I made my evening meal a bit early. Several things water cooked. And it’s funny how much energy I got back from it. In fact, I even got back up to do some more digging. So crazy but I felt my body would let me do it.
I didn’t actually dig but I did clear off the field, the last remaining portion of plantable land, and then I stopped to talk to the ex partner about what I wanted to do there. She suggested planting lilacs. I like that idea. So I think we’ll do that and I think I’m going to use the rest for squash and wildflowers. I ended up using quite a bit of the land that had natural flowers that Drew pollinators, butterflies and bees. I guess I should give something back.
Maybe that’s the best epic thought I could possibly say here at the end. Maybe we’re all supposed to give something back instead of just taking everything we can find. Maybe it’ll help.
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