Friday, April 29th 2022
It’s a quarter to 6:00 and I guess I’m not sleeping anymore. I’m also not drinking anymore. Drinking is nefarious. I hate what I feel like waking up after drinking and I hate my life with drinking and I hate being connected to drunks.
So it didn’t work out yesterday. I don’t have any tolerance left and I can’t keep doing the same thing over and over without any possibility of feeling anything good. There’s no other way to look at this. There’s no game that’s worth playing.
The thing is that we are affected by the people we hang out with. If you hang out with people who you get some sense of enjoyment from, your time is enjoyably spent. If you hang out with people who don’t enjoy your company or whose company you don’t enjoy, you end up falling into this abyss of lies and distrust.
First of all, I don’t blame the woman. And I don’t particularly want to assault her character or her choices in life. She’s a free human being as far as I’m concerned. I mean, I could comment on the level of slavery that she lives under or you might say that perhaps I was jealous that she has different Masters. I don’t see it that way but you could say that. But I don’t particularly feel ownership for human beings. I would like to know that I have a certain amount of loyalty from friends but I don’t believe in owning people.
I also don’t believe that everybody is suited to every job. Yeah, I have seen guys on YouTube who have no arms who can play guitar with their feet. Because I have seen this and heard the guy play, you can’t say automatically that you don’t give a guitar to someone with no fingers because it absolutely doesn’t make sense. I mean, way, way, way up in the 99th percentile it’s a pretty futile Enterprise to give someone with no arms and guitar but there’s no accounting for tenacity and if one individual armless guy decides he can be Steve Vai, Vaya con dios! Go for it dude. Bring on the field goal team. Kick that guitar!
The problem with this relationship is that I guess we met like a bar pick up even though we are at the market and not at a bar. At the time, I was living in the apartment in town, I had had a couple of brief encounters with younger women, my ex partner said something in English to get my attention and when I looked, I thought she was in shape and about my age so I said let’s go for this.
Let me say this another way. I’m not Elvis. You’re basically I just said yes, made some small talk and invited her to meet me for a cup of tea. We got along and ended up seeing each other. And for a while, during the honeymoon, I thought it was warm enough to be a keeper.
But wait, she is a slave of a different master and she wasn’t interested in making a go of it with me.
It was a money decision and probably a logical decision. She works for a big company that’s probably not going to fall apart anytime soon, I’m nobody in particular, you can’t blame her one bit.
On the other side, I guess she just started doing me like a hobby. We are kind of well, well, well past the honeymoon stage and she has even said that it’s mostly from boredom. Cool. Understandable. Nice to know where you are in the world. I know what she does for a job and I can see why boredom would be an issue.
But this 50/50 business gets old fast. Having to wait for someone who is not deeply invested in whatever it is you’re doing is more than a little frustrating and this relationship got old a long time ago.
Last year in fact, the ending came in January or something like that. I told her that I was going to do a project in ecology, that I was looking for a place out in the country and that if she was interested in helping, we could probably do this together. I remember this moment quite well. I have been a part of this more than once in the region and basically, she took pleasure in saying no to me.
Well, I did what I did anyway and she continued to 50/50 it. Just movement out of boredom. I asked her for some bureaucratic help and some leg work and she kind of halfway did it. This has sort of been the de-evolution of our relationship really. I asked her to help out sometimes and she says she will or not.
I also want to make one thing very clear. I understand that most people want to say that relationships are purely emotional and that we cling to each other to help us get through our terrors and fears. Or we fuck each other and we use each other as sexual receptacles. I understand this is the general interaction of the region other than boss slave relationships.
Emotionally, my ex partner is not the one to go to. She is not particularly emotional or nostalgic. Perhaps this is one of the reasons we got along so well or maybe I just got used to the brutality but, this was not an emotional relationship.
Physically, well, this is not a problem.
But what I really needed from her is to do some bureaucratic legwork for me. This is the biggest interaction of our relationship in terms of my personal needs.
And it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that this emotional need thing is really big for most people and I cannot stand being used as a celebrity for other people’s boredom. I’ve talked about this a hundred times and I cannot stand that the world has to stop and the drama has to start just because these people are in the presence of someone who is not originally from here.
What I needed from her even much more than sex was to be a beard for me. She is my purchasing agent. She’s my shopper. She is my “go find this thing for me” person. Sometimes.
So we have had this relationship for a few years. On a personal emotional level, we do not vibe. On a level where you would say we are enjoyable company for each other, other than physically, it doesn’t happen. And as far as being physical is concerned, the honeymoon ended a long time ago.
I’m just saying that she’s not my conversation partner. She’s not someone that I really look forward to spending time with because we don’t really spend time well together. Except in some physical sense.
And let me even get more technical about that because I’m not really just talking about sex. I’m not her drinking partner because I don’t like drinking. I also don’t like being with her when she is drinking and I don’t like being with her when she acts the drunk.
She’s an independent Russian woman. She has kept her job for many years and runs her own life independently. I respect her and I respect her independence but it’s not really that much fun hanging out with her.
But then we have an interesting wild card. I’m not talking about a relationship between young people just getting started in life. We are old. And me? Well, I’ve had leg issues. I may be generally healthier than I’ve been in a long time but leg issues are leg issues and there are certain things that I just can’t do.
Physically, she’s a bit of a sportsman. I sold her on bicycling. I sold her on veganism. I could not sell her on quitting alcohol or quitting her job. And she could not sell me yoga. Or sugar. Or slavery.
So I went ahead with the project, the original bureaucracy of buying this place caused me to do a lot of walking around, more than I should have done and I got a huge infection that went septic and colored all of last year. During this time, my ex partner was not involved at all. When I spoke to her in early January or February and asked her if I could count on her to help out, she took great pleasure in saying no and that is how she became my ex partner.
I managed to live through that first septic episode. And of course my neighbors stepped in to bring as much misery into the void of my life as they could. And then in the fall, I got over enthusiastic about getting fruit trees planted and I again overdid the physicality of the job and ended up in the hospital. In gratitude, my ex partner was there to help out and brought me fresh food during my hospital stay and let me stay in her house for about a month for recovery. Cheers to her and gratitude forever for this time.
Yes, she was there for me when I needed her.
But we just don’t get along very well anymore. We don’t have a conversation that means anything. Physically, she doesn’t mind me and I’m sure appreciates having me around from time to time. But in terms of a conversation that does not fuck my mind, she takes quite a bit of pleasure in causing harm.
And this time, we were both drunks.
The other day when I was at the market and talking to that young Christian girl, she asked me if this blog was just about me. What I said was that sure, I am the hero of My own story but it’s not really about me. It’s about a particular set of ideas that I live under that I think are true and correct and that I wish more people would adopt. I’m talking about not eating meat, I’m talking about not drinking alcohol. I’m talking about getting out of slavery. I’m talking about being more intelligent in our Land Management and in our breeding habits and in our general logical intelligence of not destroying the only habitat we have because of greed and empty commercialism.
You could say that it’s about ending slavery. And you could say that my relationship with this woman would have been quite different if she had said that she would throw in with me. At the time, I still had something of a business and I suggested that she could probably get along independently without too much fight. I really thought she might like having more free time or being more responsible for her own success. But she wanted to stay exactly where she was. She has spending habits. She is used to her situation. She is scared to death of screwing up her situation.
Or in other words, she has no time for my bullshit philosophy. Same as most slaves. Same as most people here. Exactly the same as everyone else. She can handle my body, she has no use whatsoever for my mind for my ideas or even reasonable ideas about doing something to help fight pollution and the destruction of our world.
So somebody’s crazy. I’ve heard one definition of crazy is simply being outside of societal norms. There is also the very common pop culture definition of doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.
Let’s just say that this relationship is crazy and I’m tired of insanity.
So basically what I’m recognizing right now is that it’s time to break the dependency. I have been relying on someone who is not a reliable partner to do a particular job. She’s not a reliable partner because she’s not fully invested. This 50/50 business means that if I go to her to find something I need for me, I cannot count on her to do the job. I can’t count on her because she is not fully invested in doing the job. This is not about her personal character or talent OR ability to do things, she is one of the most capable women I’ve ever met and thoroughly independent. But she has a divided head and in this, she ends up breaking my head.
So if I look around the world right now, I see that quite a lot of my life has been built up because of frustrations caused by this relationship. I agree that the human animal is fragile and I believe that we become or take on the traits of our environment. When you start hanging out with one type of people, you get certain types of experiences and get exposed to certain types of time being spent. Then you go off with a different group and you get a different music.
I just think that I like the quiet of the country more than I like the noise of town. I didn’t like the noise or the pollution of town when I was in town and I didn’t like playing with them in the manner that they think time should be spent. I grew up a consumer and it got old really fast. Chasing money was never satisfying. I lost my taste for it a long time ago. I lost interest in the things money can buy and I really just prefer nature or at least clean air and water and natural sounds.
This divorce is not going to be very messy. And we unfortunately have a bunch of vegetation sitting in her living room that she took the trouble to raise. When I talked to her about restraining herself when visiting my home, she basically let me know that spending time with me is as uncomfortable for her as spending time with her is uncomfortable for me. And indeed, it’s very possible that all of this work that I did this year, all of this forced nature was out of frustration from this relationship.
On the other side of the coin, this was a good build for me because it was the first time that I could be really physical in many years. It’s been a bit painful and as usual, I overstepped my limits. But I dig what I’ve built, no pun intended, and all of these gardens are eventually going to be homes for trees and berry bushes. Eventually I will have the land in decent enough shape to support ongoing planting and with any luck, even my neighbors will find God. That’s doubtful. But you have to have hope.
So again, I don’t really know what’s going to happen. Maybe somewhere between now and Sunday she’ll find God. I don’t really mean that in the Christian sense, I just mean that perhaps she will take a breath and calm down. Doubtful. Really, really doubtful. But you have to have hope.
And even if she doesn’t get it and we have reached the end of the line once and for all, I still get to hang out here in the quiet and the fresh air. And she gets to hang out in covidtown. See what I mean? Everybody’s happy.
***
Okay, this:
***
28: And let the land not vomit you out for having defiled it, as it vomited out the nation that preceded you.
This is a quote from Leviticus 18 which is part of this week’s Torah reading known as Acharei Mot. The translation of this is “After the death”.
There are basically two parts to this portion. The first is the usual animal slaughtering that is given as a law to the priests. It’s a bit strange to get clear in my head but Aaron, Moses’ number one man and head priest has either lost his two sons or perhaps they are planning on them dying and then there is a list of important meat slaughtering rules. There is a lot of animal slaughtering at the temple these days. Pretty much smelled like a barbecue pit all the time I imagine.
But then towards the end, there are a bunch of rules discussing “not uncovering or perhaps looking at the nakedness” of other people.
לֹ֣א תְגַלֵּ֑ה עֶרְוַ֥ת
Basically, you’re supposed to have sex with your wife. You’re not supposed to have sex with her sister or her mother. If she has had children from another marriage you’re not supposed to sleep with them or your own children. You’re not supposed to sleep with your parents, you’re not supposed to sleep with animals and you’re not supposed to be a homosexual. Basically you’re supposed to have sex with your wife.
All of this other sexual activity is unclean, not kosher. You could be reasonable and say that it creates problems and makes messes. This would be a pretty reasonable secular reading. If you are making a set of rules by which people can get along well, you have to learn not to make messes. When you make a mess, you have to clean it up and this is extra work for everybody.
From personal experience I would also advise you to try not to have sex with people who enjoy making messes that other people should clean up. You should avoid observing the nakedness of people who make problems to get attention.
And then suddenly there is that quote at the top about the land vomiting us out because of the impurities brought to it. This I understand perfectly well. This I felt when I read it.
The last time I visited the Jewish community, I had pretty much the same talk I’ve had since I know these guys. I was a vegetarian when I first met them and hung out for a while. The scientific background for my vegetarianism was not as clear in my head at that time. At that time, it was just one of these personal choices. I felt better not eating meat.
You’re not going to beat down a 3,000 year old religion though and you’re certainly not going to dissuade people who have created for themselves alive based on a very particular Orthodox lifestyle. I’m not going to convince them of any ideas that are not from the book. And I was told of the wisdom of the water against The Rock. The rock is harder and Waters of course liquid but if the water continues to pound day after day after day, month after month and year after year, the rock becomes worn down and eventually the water wins.
So I ate meat with them and drank with them and gave it my best shot and the relationship lasted about the same amount of time as the relationship with my ex partner.
I seem to have a limit for how much I can tolerate being in relationships I’m not enjoying. If I’m not really getting anything back from what I’m doing, eventually I’m going to go dry. I think this is wisdom for us all by the way. It works in many areas including politics. If you’re really not getting anything from them, you have to let them go. It’s also true if they are harming you.
My argument is much more sound these days because it was based on some serious study. It’s not just anecdotal, I’ve read the medical journals and engaged in the science and I’m pretty clear that what I say is the truth about the human animal and what constitutes good health and what constitutes propaganda and brainwashing.
But it is true that when you have a dirty group of people living someplace, poisoned land is one of the signs of immoral activity.
I mean, you can look at sexual activity through many lenses. There is a species of monkey who just fuck each other all the time without particular regard for familial connection or even sexual orientation. They just seek out comfort and don’t worry about it too much. I’m also extremely aware that sex is unbelievably profitable as an industry and quite a few young girls here, without any other particular way to get rich enough to afford an Instagram lifestyle, are perfectly happy to put their body on display in the hopes of collecting some money.
Just as an aside, on VK, this is the Russian Facebook, they often have cruel humor depicted. This is satisfying to the rest and taste and of course everybody knows the way the world is. In this piece of cruel humor, there was a picture of a girl posing near Red square and the text below it talked about how she agreed to sell her virginity in order to get a new iPhone. She lost her virginity, was given a cheaper phone and this was the humor. The reason I remember this is I am absolutely sure that the girl in the photo was at one time one of my students.
Anyway, we all understand about sexual restrictions. Sex is a very, very powerful thing especially when you are younger. I do not claim to be a mystic or some kind of sexual Superman or anything. I am and have been and was as susceptible to stupidity because of my dick as anybody.
I can also very easily say that some of the happiest times of my life were when I was with someone because of my dick who genuinely made me happy. For a while.
The problem is that we do not live in an equitable world. We live in a world with slavery. We also do not live in a world where we know who we are because we are owned. And we can’t really tell what’s going to happen to people or how we are going to relate to each other over time. And when we start bringing money into the argument and all of the things that money can buy, it’s really hard to say what’s going to happen to people over time.
People change. People grow or people fall. People pick up habits or learn new things. Sometimes we meet new people and the excitement is such that it makes our old relationships seem boring. Sometimes we’re just jealous. Sometimes jealousy begets hate.
Maybe we are supposed to take sex very seriously. Maybe we are supposed to understand that sex and the sexual instinct is there for the perpetuation of the species. It is a great feeling, and overwhelming feeling that touches you and becomes the feeling that all drugs are measured against. Sex is the hand of God and I have felt the hand of God in my life and I agree, when God touches you, you really can’t say no.
The wisdom comes in managing the amount of children we make and the diseases that we spread. That people want to have sex, need to have sex, is completely understandable. It is probably the most important thing in the world and people die for a moment of intimacy. They will kill for it. They will ruin their entire lives for it.
There is no rule book that can fix anything. I think the only thing is to understand that we need clean water banging on the rock. If we understand that we live on a planet revolving around a sun and that we have maybe four billion years before the merry-go-round is over, we might want to try and make our habitat last. It might be a really bad idea to shoot our entire wad right now just for ourselves because we’re too drugged out to stop.
I remember when I was married and we made our first child. I remember the moment that it happened. I remember extremely well that moment because it was a conversation between my partner and I, my wife and I, a wordless conversation but a conversation nonetheless. And I agreed.
Of course, it would have been a much different situation had we been in a much different economic situation at this time. it would have been a much different history if hysteria over money was not a part of our lives. Everything would have turned out differently if we weren’t connected to hysterical people making hysterical decisions inspired by hysterical needs.
Maybe the only thing I can say is that there are quite a few people in the world who do not want to have children. Sure, the number one insult a Russian would call someone else is to call them a homosexual. Only real men are allowed. Real men make babies all day everyday indiscriminately.
Insanity!
First of all, we have to feed everybody. And although more people means more profits for the food corporations, the food corporations are feeding us at a 40% cancer rate and a 30% diabetes rate that is only going to get bigger. The local hospitals, looking at the first generation of packaged food coming into a people who had previously been living off of whole foods, we’ll be seeing a flood of diabetics within the coming years. Even in this little town that I live in right now, there have already been a series of amputations because of diabetes related illnesses.
You can’t. You can’t just follow your sexual urges. And we can’t antagonize people to the point of insanity without regard for having decent living situations. You cannot breed hysterical people to live in a world that requires calm heads.
I say if you have people who come to the decision that they don’t want to have children, I say they’re being bloody fucking logical. I say they have their senses and they are avoiding needless pain. I say we need to have a few less human beings, much less Hysteria, much more clean food to eat, much less economic, social and military pressure and a much, much, much more loving and calm habitat to live in.
***
And this…
***
And what else? It looks like the Americans have arrived.
One would think that the breakdown of the money spent should be in the other direction. 33 billion is a lot of money. Belarus has never gotten anything close to this kind of money or support from anyone for anything. But just 10% for humanitarian aid and everything else for killing.
***
By the way, the other day I went to the store and bought three bottles of vodka. I drank all of them. And last night when I got home, I drank the last of the last one. I slept all night, woke up feeling rather sick and stupid and decided I’m not drinking anymore. Last night when I got back, my first thought was to go to the store and buy some more vodka to get very drunk. Because of all of the things I’m saying, I’m not going to drink anymore.
On a positive note, vodka is a very good sterilizing agent. If you use a piece of sterile gauze, and pour some vodka in it, you can really clean things up very nicely. It’s excellent for that. Also, the gauze with the alcohol in it is a great fire starter.
What I’m saying is, vodka here is about $3 for half a liter. I think I could keep a bottle lying around just for wound cleaning. Of course, I have iodine as well. But iodine is brown and it kind of stains and is ugly to clean up. Vodka is clear. If you spill some on the carpet, you don’t even notice it.
But but that’s it. I don’t want to drink. This experience has not been good. I don’t feel good. My intestinal tract is not feel good. I don’t feel normal in the morning. I feel really sick most of the time. Everything got dollar and stupider. Perhaps I have slightly more ambition to do physical labor. Or perhaps I’m just imagining it because I was certainly doing enough physical labor without drinking. I just don’t feel very clean. I don’t feel very clean at all.
I’ll tell you if I break my promise. I promise to tell you if I break this promise. But I don’t want to drink anymore. I’m going to let this shit go.
***
It’s 12:30 and I guess this has been kind of an active morning. Once you get going, it’s kind of hard to stop. Or maybe I just have too much nervous energy.
I did the water and brought some wood for a fire, I swept the floors and mostly cleaned up the warm room. I made some hummus with a little bit of spice in it for tonight. I know what the main meal is going to be but it’s hard to pass up some hummus. And besides, when you start with dried chickpeas, you have to give him a chance to soak up some water.
Then I decided I could probably make a run to pick up some Forest material but as I passed by that damned oak tree, I decided I needed to pull the trigger. Maybe it’s just slow to come to life this spring or maybe it’s dead. But I didn’t like it where it was. I want a bit more Garden space and there was an opportunity for a pretty cool horseshoe shaped Garden. I didn’t have enough room for a straight box but I did have enough room for a nice spot to grow things. I guess you could call it a U, or maybe looking at it from the other direction, it’s the Russian letter П, which is the same as the symbol for pi.
I haven’t exactly decided where to replant that oak tree. I have plenty of room but maybe she should go back to the forest where she came from. I don’t know why I thought of planting an oak tree here in the first place.
Things are really starting to grow. I have lots of volunteer onions and a couple of volunteer sugar beets showing up where they were planted last year. They’re home got fluffed up quite a bit but the seed was there or maybe it was a chunk of the fruit but now there are little leaves popping out.
There’s still some work to do around here. Maybe I need 12 trips to the forest. Maybe I can do with less. It’s just some better quality dirt and some organic material to mix in. And then it’ll really be done. I mean I’m sitting here on the grass, I lost my balance and fell over a little while ago and decided this was as good a place as any to rest. It’s pretty weird and strange with nothing growing yet. Just a lot of wooden borders and fluffed up dirt. But it’s going to be something.
I took a walk down in the bean field and I found two places where we just spilled the package of seeds. Both of the accidents are growing just like the stuff we purposely planted. I’m starting to think right now that we might have been better off just broadcasting the seeds instead of planting them carefully in rows. We could always go back and do it again but seriously, there’s quite a bit of wild grass growing in certain places there and it will take a miserable amount of work to do all the weeding. Maybe we would have been better just using the beans as ground cover and letting them do whatever they wanted to do. We certainly would have had more beans planted.
This is a very damaged place. There have been a lot of hysterical people here before me. There has been a lot of hate here. A lot of mistrust and a lot of ugliness.
There was a war with the next door neighbors when Olga lived here. Olga didn’t like the chicken woman either. Actually, nobody I talked to here really likes him very much. When I first got here I thought it was a racial thing because she is from Uzbekistan. Now I’m pretty sure that character has a lot to do with it too. They are incredibly miserable people.
But I think I could get used to this. I think I could get used to bringing out a chair or a short stool and playing with a few meters of garden. I think I could come and spend time here every day. It’s nice here sitting in the grass listening to the birds. It’s nice watching the butterflies chase each other around. It’s nice being in the country. I definitely like it better here.
***
It’s 5:00 on Friday evening and I am going to shut this down. I was out working and brought in as much material as I could before my balance just went and my legs didn’t want to carry me anymore. I’m hoping things get better with time and I’m hoping all this activity is good for me. But when you’re done you’re done and I’m done.
Maybe after a bit of a rest I’ll have my strength back. Also maybe once this alcohol gets out of my system I’ll get my strength back even more. I can always add in things to the top. I have all the time in the world to enrich the soil. I’m getting better at understanding soil health as I go. Anything that you practice you get better at and I’m learning more and more everyday.
After I brought in the material I raked it into the gardens and turned them and then raked everything smooth. It was the first time that I could stand out there and look around and see all 17 beds that I’ve made here.
Almost all the trees I planted last year are alive and well. Some of them have flower blossoms and most all of them have leaves. There are a few slow starters but I’m hoping adding a little rain catching ability will help. I’ll also be getting to that little by little as I can.
About the oak tree though, I don’t think she made it. I took a good look and the trunk was pretty dry. She had tiny buds but when I broke into them, I didn’t see any green. Just dark brown. Either she didn’t like being transplanted for the hole we put her in was over cultivated. The alcoholic who was there for that dumped an entire bucket load of Ash in the hole. It was Ash I plan to spread over a much, much wider area.
I really don’t want to move around anymore. I really hurt. I’m going to keep pushing at this and I’m not going to quit but there are limits to what I can tolerate. The reason I’m saying this is that I have it in my head to go collect some baby horseradish leaves to add to my dinner tonight. It’s a fresh natural salad with a little bit of spice to it. I don’t really think they work raw or steamed, they are really too sharp. But they go well if they are cooked in oil. The oil seems to take some of the sharpness out and they are just really Hardy greens. They’re also the absolute tastiest when they are new.
I also bought some mustard seed and put up a jar of homemade mustard. Spicy brown mustard is my favorite condiment and it’s probably the easiest thing in the world to make. At its heart, it’s just mustard seeds and vinegar. The taste is fantastic and if you add a touch of it when making vegan creams, it raises everything to a new level. It’s an excellent condiment.
But the big deal is what kind of a person I am. Or I can look at it another way and ask myself how I could have possibly been foolish enough to end up here.
The issue is not breaking up with a girlfriend. People break up all the time. The problem is that there is a reaction that comes because of how the women believe their relationship should be honored. Maybe this is a global issue these days and I’ve heard quite a few male comedians commenting that we perhaps have shifted too far in our respect for women. I’m sure Johnny Depp has a few choice words to say about this subject these days. Have you been watching that nonsense? Kind of makes you want to be gay really.
The issue with this though is punishment. Do you get punished for what you do here. Actually, you get punished for everything. And if we’re talking about relationships with women, though it is never spoken of, punishment is the currency of what they truly offer.
A long time ago I had a student who talked about his relationship with women. He was a young lad at the time. I don’t think he had ever had a girlfriend up until that point but to him, women represented emotions. If you spent time with a woman, she would give you emotions. Good and bad but this was his cultural understanding of the situation. Of course he was also thinking of sex. But emotions are the thing you talk about.
I wrote some things this week that have angered some people. Immediately cries for punishment appear. This person will never do this again. Another person will never do this again. The word never shows up right next to the word again many times. Never again and punishment and that’s what they do. When I think of my relationship to my daughter’s mother, I don’t remember ever receiving anything but punishment. That was for everything good and everything bad.
When we had a small farm, I brought in the harvest by myself. I remember calling a taxi cab to help bring home six full sacks of cabbages. These were eventually going to be turned into kvasheni and the entire point of doing the agricultural work was so that we would have food during the winter.
“We don’t need your fucking cabbages”.
That’s how she greeted me at the door. I remember thinking that my career as a farm worker was over. I couldn’t for the life of me see any reason to do this kind of personal brutality again. Especially if it would be completely unappreciated. Unappreciated, that’s a good word. Without appreciation.
Or non appreciation. Punishment. They punish you for being yourself. They punish you for being a man or they punish you for not being a woman. They punish you because they have been told that their job is to control things. That’s another handy word I picked up while living here. This is the mantra that they put into the head of my daughter’s mother. She had to control. She had to control the child, she had to control me. The only person that a woman is not obligated to control it’s herself. A woman is under no obligation to control herself. The men are to blame and it’s their job to control us and make sure we feel the pain of the task.
No matter what anybody thinks, I can’t sit back and be bullied. I can’t be bullied in my own home and I won’t be bullied by anyone. I grew up with a psychotic bully and I have been fighting back ever since. I am tired of listening to women say that they feel something or they fear something or they experience some emotions and yet they expect people to act on this. I don’t have to do anything, they just say that they feel a certain way and they expect us all to be as brainless as they are in our actions.
It just goes like this. I’m an artist. I’m a writer. I’m a scenarist. I’m an author. I’m a musician. I’m a human being. I’m a vegan. I’m not a killer. I’m not a pussy. I’m not a pushover. I’m not a fool. I am not a masochist. I am a human being and I am awake and alive and sober. If I am not being romantic in my actions, I might just be too smart for it.
So as far as what’s coming up, I don’t care. The market is full of people selling baby cabbages. The market is full of people selling berry bushes and cabbages. My cupboard is full of squash seeds and pickle seeds. I can go to the local store and pick up a bunch of onions and stick them in the ground. Yellow or red. I can buy as many packages of carrot seeds. I have a root cellar full of potatoes.
All I asked my neighbors was to perhaps Park differently so that they didn’t fill my house with auto fumes. They have been punishing me for a year. That’s what they do. I asked to spend more time with my daughter, and I got punished. I asked her mother not to hit her and to control her temper and I got punished. I asked my ex partner to control herself. I asked her if I could count on her in a difficult moment and I asked her to talk to me before she took action because she has a different style of gardening then I do. I’m less brutal and more thoughtful and I like to go slower and I like to let things live. And for this, I’m supposed to be punished.
I decided I didn’t want to live in town. I didn’t like the auto fumes. I got punished. I decided I wanted to do some writing because it is what I do and I needed it and I needed to say what I needed to say. I got punished.
The thing of it is that you just get punished. I don’t really like people observing my birthday because the presents feel more like punishment. The admiration ends up being punishment. But turning it down and saying “no, I’m okay. Just let it go” inspires punishment.
And lastly, people just act so happy when they see me. 99% of the time I don’t even know who these people are. But they know me or they know my name and with great happiness and enthusiasm they approach me expecting me to know something or react in a particular way to these wonderful things they want to say to me. And either they punish me because I don’t satisfy their expectations or they just punish me for being a Jew or an American or just because they feel they have the right to punish me. I’m not with them. I’m not a Christian. Punish him.
Is this particular piece of writing a bit redundant? I agree. It’s really redundant. It’s redundant to me because I have been in this situation many times. Not because I am particularly a bad person but because no one ever thinks to do anything but cause punishment and pain. Nobody ever tries to relieve the pain. Nobody ever offers anything helpful. Nobody ever asks if they can be of help. Nobody even keeps their job if hired. It’s just the way they do things here. They punish each other.
I’m sitting here right now and I can hear my neighbors across the street screaming at each other. That’s how they talk. They scream at each other. That’s how almost all of the women talk to their men. They scream. They scream hysterically and they start talking very quickly and they bully the living shit out of the men. This is who they are and it’s how they act and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t fight back because you get punished. And if you don’t fight back, you get punished. And if you try to run away, you get punished. And if you try to stay and be a good person and be a good father and be a good man, you get punished.
So forgive me if I’m not feeling particularly repentive. I’m physically tired. I feel like an ass for getting drunk for 3 days. I won’t lie, I have a great urge to get on my bike and buy some more vodka so I can be drunk tonight. But I’m not going to do it.
Three bottles of vodka and I’m feeling the pains of addiction. I just wanted relief from the constant pain and now I’m being punished for it. I just did what is absolutely legal, cultural and something everybody dies here. And I am punished for it.
So what I’m going to do is make a really nice meal, say a few prayers of thanks, make a nice place for myself over in the warm room and let all of this punishment go. And maybe that’s the whole difference between me and the people I live with. I am free to say no thank you.
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