Wednesday, May 10th 2022
When you need water, you need water. When you’re a bicyclist, you are a bicyclist.
My favorite part was when he passed the mountain biker. Brilliant.
***
Back in reality, and it really is very weird to think about this, but for a country to join the European Union, they have to fill out forms. It’s like getting an apartment with a tenants association I guess. Basically, I guess we have to bake a pie and welcome Ukraine to the neighborhood.
Things are getting dicey. When I went to the store last night, I just got reminded that I am a zoo park animal. People just cannot stop reacting.
It’s disheartening that every single interaction has to have drama. Either they think of me positively as a celebrity or negatively. I am instantly interesting and I’m really tired of it. It’s like nobody has anything better to do and hello would be so welcome. Just hello, how are you? How is life? How is the garden? How is your health?
The guy next to me in line got so excited. You recommended that what I really needed was to get drunk and sing songs and play the guitar. And then for some reason he went on to tell me that he has several rifles and that his house made him something like Bin Laden. Can someone please explain to me where this association came from in his mind? I mean, I know all about reacting to stimulus and having something make you think of something else. But can you explain to me what standing in line at the local store had to do with him telling me that he has guns and that he’s like Bin Laden?
The truth is that I’m getting really tired. I’m getting really tired of everything.
Yesterday I learned about the mathematician Alexander Grothendieck.
Alexander Grothendieck 28 March 1928 – 13 November 2014) was a stateless and then French mathematician who became the leading figure in the creation of modern algebraic geometry. His research extended the scope of the field and added elements of commutative algebra, homological algebra, sheaf theory and category theory to its foundations, while his so-called “relative” perspective led to revolutionary advances in many areas of pure mathematics. He is considered by many to be the greatest mathematician of the 20th century.
His parents were political activists and he was a serious pacifist, probably a full vegetarian by the time he got to the end of his life and found it impossible to tolerate militarism. His family was at least half Jewish and they were forced from Germany to escape the Nazis who got to them anyway in France. And then later in life, he became quite reclusive and lived a very rustic life of simplicity. Probably, he just couldn’t take the noise anymore.
You know, the more I delve into my thoughts, the more I come to understand other writers and thinkers. It seems that the things that I want or believe would best suit humanity are in no particular way original. People have been staring at this caustic landscape and watching people simply ruin lives and destroy our home and dreaming that the senselessness will simply end. But it never ever does.
I tried explaining to Mr Bin Laden that my depression is not curable with vodka and guitar music. I’m not looking for male bonding. I’m not looking for bonding of any kind. I just want to plan it to stop being tortured. I just want some common sense to come to the world. I just want the slavery to end. On a personal level, I just want my family abuse to end. I just wanted everyone to be normal with each other.
The world is torture. It seems that every minute of every day the evidence of physical and mental abuse and violence is everywhere you look. It’s inescapable. It’s everywhere. It’s maddening and saddening and ridiculous and hateful and ugly.
I wish I had an easy answer. I wish there was a way that I could get the parasites out of my life once and for all. I wish there was a ticket I could buy or a pill I could take. It’s just so soul destroying.
Practically, what happens to Belarus when Ukraine becomes a part of Europe? My guess is, we get to be a war zone. If we have been passively sitting by and letting the Russians use the country for a staging area, Ukraine joining the EU is going to bring violence here.
There is no possibility of talking peace with the Russians. There is no reasonableness there. Perhaps we could blame covid or maybe it really is just how many cars drive past Red square everyday. It’s Mass insanity caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. Maybe what my neighbors are suffering from is the same thing that all Russians are suffering from. They are insane from breathing toxic care that they have accepted into their lives for the sake of money.
There is no possible way for reasonable discussion to exist. People are just too emotionally messed up to talk things over and figure something out.
By the way, nobody’s paying me to write this. Nobody is telling me what to write. I am not representing any country right now. I have no political connections to anyone and no particular allegiance to any flag. This thing that I am saying is simply what I see as the truth. I’m not trying to make you upset or angry or anything really. I am just looking at a situation and giving you my best guess as to where this is going.
I don’t feel very well at all today. I think I’m sick.
***
You know, sometimes the world just cheers you up.
I walked outside and got a breath of fresh air and suddenly felt much better. And then I took a walk around the garden and it’s all coming alive. Things are beginning to pop out of my boxes and even my first potato is poking its way through the hay that is buried in.
Most of the trees I planted last year are alive. A couple seem to be duds. Almost all of the berry bushes I planted last year are doing okay. And even the beans are starting to move a little bit.
I can’t say that the roofing panels are doing their job because it just won’t rain. But I think the warm weather and the mulch in the boxes definitely had a positive effect. You can feel how warm it is in the boxes and it’s holding what moisture it gets from the morning dew. Nice? Very nice.
My ex partner found two companies that clean Wells. Probably, they will be more expensive than the local alcoholics. Probably, I would not use this word to describe them if I had any belief that they would show up and do the job. But somebody has got to climb down into that well and start hauling buckets of silt out of the bottom. If they can get me one more meter and allow the water to run clean again, we might just be okay.
I also had a very good conversation with a friend of mine who might be able to help with my family situation. You never know how these things turn out but in my best case scenario, We Make a deal, he goes away and takes with him all of the misery that he has brought into my life.
This will not correct our environmental problems. This will not correct the Russians. This will not correct the lunacy that is this country. This will not correct my issue with my neighbors. This will not correct my overall health. This will not correct anything. It will only be my release from a person I really don’t like being associated with.
At the end of the phone call with my friend, I just stopped talking so he could hear what my house sounds like. It’s hard to explain how lovely it is to live where you can listen to the birds sing all day and breathe fresh air most of the time. It’s a shame my neighbors are so in love with cancer. Maybe I should stick my family member in with them. I think they would understand each other just fine.
***
It’s a little bit after 5:30 and I have not done much today. Really, I got out and I walked around and I looked at the state of the boxes and was pleased and that was pretty much all I did. I mean, I got the garbage out and I cleaned up a little bit. But today was definitely not a big work day. Maybe I needed the day off or maybe I just got lazy.
Ironically, I got a call from an ex-student of mine. He is a very nice guy despite the fact of being russian. Actually, as long as I have known him, he’s always gone against the grain. He is purely non-violent and the only problem he ever has is that he is too lazy most of the time.
He told me that he was profoundly against the war and hated the people who were causing it more than anything. I couldn’t agree more. I guess certain people are less immune to ridiculous propaganda than others.
He called me because he noticed that I was not on Facebook. He was thinking about me and I just wasn’t in the neighborhood anymore. And he did something really nice. He asked me for my advice about not being lazy about studying. You like that? I really did. What a wonderful gift. To have an ex student ask your professional advice about academics. Just excellent.
Would you like to hear what I told him? I know you don’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway:
Okay, here’s three tricks that work for me. Firstly, you make a specific time to do this and you make this time absolutely sacred. You are going to work for this period of time starting at this time and ending at this time and you do not accept any arguments or place anything above it. Number two, use a metronome. This is a musician’s trick. Usually, a musician turns on a metronome or maybe a drum beat or something and plays to that. It makes you play more and makes you play in tune and in non-musical situations, it stops you from dreaming. And finally, give yourself a reward for a job well done after doing your task. I know people don’t like to be compared to dogs, but you can train a dog to do almost anything with a little bit of food or a glass of wine or something like that. What do you think? Practical knowledge?
Yeah the click track is a real thing. I use it all the time if I definitely need to do something and I don’t want my brain wandering around. And If I can add one more, do it in the morning. Whatever the thing is that you don’t like or have a problem with, do it in the morning and make it part of your early morning work routine. If you try to leave it to the evening, you’re just going to want to relax and you’re not going to want to do any more work. Especially mental work. Okay?
Of course this also got me thinking about this problem more. And I think what you also should do when you’re having a problem handling problems is to break it down into small manageable pieces. If it’s a matter of studying, get a big overview and then cut it up into bite size pieces. You can make a schedule and work things out as you need them to but very often the biggest issue is that the task is too daunting when seen as a whole. Just break it down and go step by step. Works every time.
But back in the darker side of the world, my American Ukrainian friend sent me a link to Twitter that was definitely on the dark side.
I don’t know whether this is Ukrainian reverse propaganda or psychological warfare. I don’t know how true it is but I tell you, I believe in its likelihood and I’ll tell you why. Ordinarily, you would think something like this would be carried out by the opposition. But when considering how the Russian army has staged this entire operation, brutality comes in many forms. Brutality and senselessness are sort of hallmarks of this entire affair. I understand that there’s reason to doubt the validity of this, but there’s also good reason to believe that it’s true.
They just stack them up and worry about them later. Let him sit for a few days and then we’ll sort them out.
***
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