Friday, May 13th 2022
Yeah, that’s right. Friday the 13th. That’s as ominous as It gets.
Here’s another intercepted communication from the war in Ukraine.
It seems that the Russians are waiting for help from the belarusians. And it also seems that they do not believe Putin to have the mental acuity to pull off this war. Again, I don’t know how much of this is propaganda and an intercepted phone call between some foot soldier and his wife is just opinion and not military fact. The only thing that I know for sure is that none of this bodes well for Belarus or for me.
Friday the 13th.
For Jewish people, 13 is a very lucky number. 13 is represented by the word Chai, which is life. The toast that you say to each other, l’chaim, means to life. And this is represented by the number 13.
My plan is to go into town today. I don’t have anything serious to do but I will get a chance to perhaps accumulate a few things that we need for Sunday. I also get to take a shower which is nice and have lunch with my ex partner.
There are three markets in Pinsk. There is one that is primarily a food market and another that is basically the mechanical market. I don’t know if I will have the time to go to Solnichniy. All the markets always close at 2:00.
Basically I think I’m just going to town because I don’t really have anything to do here today. Of course I could do things. There are things to do. There are always things to do.
Basically, I’m going into town because it is transition time. We are definitely moving from the winter into the summer. I’m no longer using any heating at all. I’m personally spending more time on the floor which is where I’m more comfortable and there’s just a lot of life here.
When we lived in California, we lived in a place that was gray and overcast everyday. This is in the San Francisco Bay area. About the only thing that told us that the seasons were changing was a plum tree. Other than that, every day was pretty much exactly the same.
But there is a huge difference in the landscape here. The amount of light available is different, the sheer power of nature to build itself. The greens are just exploding right now. I feel bad for my ex partner stuck in an office all day. I’ve always felt that she would be happier away from being chained to the office. I said the same thing to my student the other day when he told me he was a data analyst. I felt bad for him that he has to spend his life in front of a computer.
Data analyst. He’s KGB.
Anyway, I don’t feel very imaginative today and I don’t have a very big point to make. The day is mostly going to be a town run and I guess I should clean up and get organized now. It’s only 5:30 and my exit is in 4 hours but better safe than sorry. And besides, tomorrow is my day off and it’s better to have everything clean and nice so you have nothing to worry about when you just don’t work for anybody.
***
It’s a little after 7:00 and I just finished breakfast. Very simple. A little cabbage, buckwheat and oatmeal. Savory. I don’t eat sweet meals. I eat raisins and nuts at night with tea. That’s about all the dessert I ever want. And I’ll eat fruit if it’s around.
The well is at 2 m already. It must have rained somewhere. My friend in town told me that it rained a lot and my ex partner said it rained a lot there too. Here, I didn’t get it. I had to water my plants. But the groundwater came up and though it’s still yellow from the pump, it is much less yellow which means something good I’m sure.
I’m also hoping that even just a little bit of water makes the ride a little better.
I spent a few moments picking grass out of the garden beds. Lots of onions are popping up. The beginning of lettuce is visible and some spinach as well. My ex partner planted a lot of lettuce and spinach. Not to be a jerk, but I am definitely going for horseradish greens and noodles for dinner tonight. It’s currently my favorite dish. It is very filling, it is energy dense and it probably does more for flushing your system than almost anything. Wild Greens are simply tougher than human greens. We breed our food for delicacy. We treat ourselves delicately. Wild Greens deal with the world so they are a very interesting food.
I do not know however what to do about the water problem. Push comes to shove, I’ll just deal with the silty water and boil it and filter it. I don’t need so much for myself. I don’t drink coffee on Saturdays and I won’t drink anything more than a glass or two of water with dinner tonight. If I’m making field greens, I’m obligated to make it an oil dish so I won’t need the water for cooking. This morning’s porridge was just water.
If I sound ragged out it is because that’s how I feel. It’s been very hot. I understand that technically, it has not been a blistering heat but my body got used to the cold. A friend of mine said that to me when he found out that I bought this house. He said that people who live in The villages have bodies that like the cold. Of course he was right. I find my ex partners apartment intolerable sometimes and if she makes the mistake of closing the door that night, I suffer. Even when I was recuperating at her house, I would often sleep on the floor simply because it was colder.
I’m also noticing that I crave being outside right now. There has been a lot of time this week where I just didn’t want to work. I didn’t want to haul the wheelbarrow or do physical exercise. My instinct was to crash inside here in the kitchen. But then I noticed that I just didn’t like the temperature here. I wanted to be outside. Even during the storm yesterday, I was happy to be outside because the winds were cooling. It was a hot muggy day and the winds that were strong enough to bring down a dry tree and break one of my windows were a gift to my body.
None of this is really that revelatory. We are animals. We may imagine ourselves to be higher beings but it is not true. We are just hairless neurotic apes who will believe anything for food. We are trained in the same way that dogs are trained. We are given commands and then rewarded when we are good puppies. We live for our master’s kindness. Personally, I don’t understand how people can actually believe that we are more than this when the empirical evidence is right before our eyes. But we like our illusions more than we like reality which is probably why our reality is so nightmarish right now to look at.
I don’t want to say anything anti-American. I don’t want to set myself up as some kind of propagandist. True, I am anti-capitalism and anti-war. True I believe in ecology more than flags and I believe that the only thing we are really supposed to be talking about and working on is keeping food in our mouths and our environment clean. The world is a macrocosm of my kitchen. We either keep it clean or it becomes unhealthy for us. If you can’t understand that lesson, you weren’t paying attention in school.
But I do find that Americans are equally susceptible to propaganda as here. I’m a point out the ridiculousness of the assumption that ukrainians are nazis. It just doesn’t make sense unless you want it to make sense. It is not a mathematically sound proposition unless you just want to see it that way. As an animal farm, they have been breeding violence and hate for quite some time. I’ve said it a hundred times that with the arrival of cheap Chinese telephones and Russian propaganda around the time of the first Ukrainian invasion 8 years ago, cruelty was identified as cool. This is a learning tool. It is exactly Orwellian doublespeak. But they just ate it up because it made sense to their bodies.
Really, the conditioning is simple to understand. I’m talking about preparing the subject for its new line of thought. First, you cut off its air. You don’t want any fresh air rejuvenating anyone so everybody started getting more and more polluted air and were told that it didn’t matter. The polluted air was simply a sign of progress and money. The country was becoming normal and was no longer this old, dirty, rustic communist vision. “We are not stupid anymore. We are smart now.” Is what everybody was told. And they licked it up with a spoon. Got down on their hands and knees and thanked God to be released from how awful the old days were and simply licked up the sugar water right off the floor.
Clean my boots while you’re at it.
The thing is, the Americans think they are immune to this. The Americans think that this is something quite happening A million Miles away. At least half of the American public is just worried about their oil. They thank God for the Russians because the Russians are sending them oil and any little family dispute that they might be having is bullshit. There is no use crying over a few spilled Ukrainians. “You make sure that I can put gas in my car, that it doesn’t cost too much and keep your hands off my guns.”
My American friend simply cannot understand why I am not pining for America. Again, I’m not trying to be a propagandist or a terrorist or anything like that. I’m just talking about land. Dirt. I am standing on a piece of dirt. My house sits on a plot of land and my trees and my garden boxes are on this land. The sun comes up in the morning, if we get out of our motherfucking cars it might rain a little bit more, and in the evening the Sun goes to the other side of the planet and we get some darkness. Get it? There’s no flag here. There are no politics here. I’m not agreeing with some leader or antagonizing another. I’m just inhabiting a little piece of dirt and I care about it.
All they see is what’s in the news. They don’t really care about me. They don’t really give a damn about me at all. There’s no reason to. They don’t care about anybody or anything. But they read the news and they assume that this is hell. Truthfully, exactly right at this moment it is. Or if it’s not hell, it is absolutely Russian purgatory. We are sitting here waiting for a madman to decide how much more violence he wishes to inflict. We all stand here and wait for the boot to fall and kick us.
But what exactly is the media about the USA? Would you like to argue about what is available on the internet based on queries? I’m not talking about the media that is being fed to me while I’m driving my car in the morning. What about the media I get when I ask for it?
How many acts of gun violence are in the USA?
According to the FBI, there were 345 “active shooter incidents” in the United States between 2000-2020, resulting in more than 1,024 deaths and 1,828 injuries.Apr 22, 2022.
Would you like to explain that away for me? Would you like to give me your explanation of how these sorts of things are smaller than they really are?
How many murders have there been in the United States in the last year?
I don’t have a blurb for this but just glancing at the top page gives me the answer of “a lot”.
What is the air quality like in the United States?
I just want to say something about that AQI (air quality index) number.
EPA (the environmental protection agency) establishes an AQI for five major air pollutants regulated by the Clean Air Act. Each of these pollutants has a national air quality standard set by EPA to protect public health: ground-level ozone. particle pollution (also known as particulate matter, including PM2.
When you see a number like 27 or 35 or 42 or something like that and then you see a word that comes after it, that word is usually pretty reassuring. 27 will be good. 35 will be fair.
The actual point you are supposed to consider in this is that the number is supposed to be zero. The air that we breathe is not supposed to be polluted at all. Making relative numbers to make people feel that it’s reasonable or to tell them that it’s okay to get in their car and go to work today because today, specifically today, they don’t have an enormous chance of getting cancer by doing something stupid like breathing the air without a mask.
The air quality in town is horrible. The air pollution along the main roadways is visible all the time. I understand that everybody wants to celebrate the summer. All the girls want to get attention and all the boys want to chase the girls and everybody wants to make money in their corporate businesses along Lenin Street. I understand that there’s money to be made and happiness to be considered and we are really not supposed to worry about anything. Don’t worry about the war, don’t worry about the money, everything is stable.
What the hell is so amazing about the United States? You have more money? Good for you. And what do you pay to have this money? What happens to your lives and your health and your psychology to have this money? And I promise you that 99% of everybody is scared to death of not having their money. I promise you with absolute belief in what I’m saying that 99% of every American lives in constant desperate fear of losing their money. It’s true for Europe too. About the only people in the world who are not paranoid to the core about losing their money are the people who used to be in communism.
Me? I understand this. I’m supposed to be more friendly to my neighbors but they are never really friendly to me. They stare at me and put their anger on me or their politics or whatever they think they understand from television and propaganda. They objectify me and they do everything but be friendly. Sure, if they think they are going to get money from me, they will come visit me every day. If they think they’re going to make money from me, I will certainly never feel lonely and left out. And right now, I get to feel the brunt of their drama. I have closed my gate. They are not free to approach me with their bullshit. And of course this means that should I actually need something from them, they have the right to practice drama.
So what I’m saying is that the world is a mess. It is not a mess like “oh, this room is so messy, let’s clean it up”. It is a mess as in it is unfit and unsupportive of life. I am saying that human beings are an ecological catastrophe and this game we play to chase money around is the culprit that has caused this mess. And instead of paying attention to it and putting all of our resources into the problem, we never do anything to stop slavery, we never do anything to stop the abuse that we practice on each other, we never do anything to allow people to calm down and take a breath of fresh air. We just keep the fires of Hell stoked. And this is true there and now, with the greatest misfortune in the history of life on the planet, we do it here.
My most hated relative who is an American and thinks it perfectly natural to lay on me and coerce me and pressure me into misery is almost the same person as the chicken lady. They have the same body type. They are of the same money grubbing philosophy. They are both cereal polluters and utter narcissists. They believe themselves to be on some high status above the rest of the world and both of them feel that money is the thing that allows them to do this. And most probably, both of them probably see themselves as absolute Angels who, if only I would be more subservient to them, they would have had so many good things that they could offer me. If only I wasn’t making them cause me pain, they would really be the most wonderful people in the world.
Perhaps on this last note, I have this too because I saved my money and I don’t need the local alcoholics to dig my well. On the same note however, I don’t take the trouble to inflict myself on other people. No matter what my neighbors think about my closed gate policy, I do not walk on to their properties and inflict myself and my problems on them. Even if they would welcome it in their boredom, I leave them alone to live their lives.
So what is the answer here? For me, I have about an hour to gather a few things and then I’m going to get on a bicycle and ride over to the train and then ride the train into town. If I can get everything I want to do done on time, I can have some lunch with my ex partner and we can make a plan for Sunday. And then I’ll pick up some bulk sunflower seeds that I like very much and maybe a couple of packages of my favorite noodles and come back up here to enjoy my day off.
Maybe if I do have something that I want to add to this it is that I wish you could hear what I hear right now. With the exception of my chicken neighbors we have bird sounds all the time. Bird song. I have a cuckoo bird who never shuts up. And we have a stork family nearby who like to Clack their beaks. And then there are the collection of sparrows and crows and all nature of birds that live here. And there are some chickens and dogs. But what there isn’t is the sound of automobiles and industry. What there isn’t is the sound of hateful conversation. What there isn’t is the sound of human beings screaming. What there isn’t is the sound of gunshots being fired. About the worst sound that I get here are the gasoline powered tools that people use to cut their grass and to cut wood. And those are horrible, horrible machines that pollute the air and pollute the quiet and pollute my body.
I just wanted some peace and quiet for a change. The war is not worth fighting. No war is worth fighting. And a world with war is not worth living in. Neither is a world with slavery. Neither is a world with fear. And neither is a world where you can’t even get a fresh breath of air when you need one.
***
Okay. It’s 8:00 and I must close up. My trip to town was a little good and a little bad. A little successful and a little unsuccessful and unsatisfying. Such is life. I’m going to say my prayers in a couple of seconds and I’m making a very nice meal I think for myself. Field greens toast and some Japanese noodles. I already feel that it’s tasty.
This has been a very long and strange week. I’ve had some things go through my head and before my eyes that I wish I’d never been there. There are a lot of thoughts I wish I wasn’t thinking and a lot of things I wish I didn’t notice. I had some conversations today that I should talk about but I just don’t have time now. Maybe I’ll get to it or maybe it’s not important. But in any case, you know what I said already because everything was already here on these pages.
Every week when I close up shop for my day off, the last prayer I make is always for peace. It’s my favorite prayer and always has been and sometimes I think it’s the only one we ever need. Here I’m not only talking about Israel but the whole world. People and animals. And really, the only way to do it is just to agree to be good to each other. We don’t need the extra crises. We don’t need any of the drama. We just need to be good to each other.
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