Monday, May 23rd 2022
Okay, I know what time it is and I know you’re just about ready to go to work or you are on your way. You are like a rock. However, this is one of those Mondays where all I’m doing is watching the clock tick. Enjoy your day in the office my friend. I respect you. But I’m pretty happy exactly where I am.
Shame on you! Enjoy your day.
We are coming up on 8:00 and I haven’t done a damn thing yet. I don’t have any motivation to do anything. I don’t have any physical attraction for doing anything. My mind is not mentioning to me that there is anything to be done. My legs are not interested in any commands about standing. It’s the morning. I’m aware that it’s the morning. But I have absolutely nothing in my body or my mind telling me that this Monday morning requires anything from me. If y’all don’t mind, I’m just going to let this one go.
This is not to say that we’re not going to do any writing. Last year I had some kind of limits on my word count. This year, I’m not really paying attention to it though I have noticed sometimes that I go longer than others. I will show up on these pages and I will put words here and most probably, some kind of intriguing thought about the failures of mankind will require me to bring them into focus. I will do that. I will fulfill my promise. I’ll also show up for two meetings that I have today online. But other than that, I can’t see myself being too active just now.
Okay, I agree. I’m eventually going to have to get up. Physical requirements of the human body require elimination of waste. Also, I’m not fond of starvation so for sure, there’s going to be some food in my future. No animals will be harmed in that endeavor or in any endeavor today with the exception of a few misguided mosquitoes should they show up. I understand that I could be taken away by a moment along the day and suddenly find myself doing some kind of action. I’m also aware that some things might come to my attention as needing to be done and I might also fall into those traps.
All I’m saying is that at least for the moment, I have managed to avoid slavery. There are various places in my life where this becomes evident. I’m aware that there are cat calls from the gallery from slaves who like to peer pressure me or feel that I am free for abuse because of some status issue they have in their mind. But I believe freedom is its own reward and today I am exercising that freedom and I’m feeling the reward here. I do not have any obligations to go to work today.
There is a point of discussion here. It is noticeable that life is sometimes dreary and people have a lack of motivation or suffer depression from downtime. Sometimes people feel uncomfortable when they feel useless. Probably it’s also fear of replacement. Anybody can be replaced and feeling someone biting at your heels is an inspiration to keep it going for many. There’s a lot to be said for having someplace to go and something to do. I will agree with that in principle and from personal experience.
What I’m talking about here though is that I am a raggedy man today. I am tired. My body is tired and I’ve had enough pain. My day off came well enough and I did get some rest but that ex partner of mine is a Dynamo on her Sundays. Even if we didn’t do as much work as we did the previous Sunday when we planted the last of the boxes, I got out there and helped out as much as I could and this is the reason why I feel as broken as I do. Sorry, I am who I am and I have become who I have become. My rough and tumble days are quite behind me.
Do I have any nostalgia for my tough guy days? Not really. When I was in the hospital and that guy just could not let me go, getting up and fighting with him did feel good. That adrenaline rush was real and adrenaline is quite the feeling of life. He was objectifying me as an American and felt it was his right to bother the shit out of me and bring as much discomfort to me as possible and he would not back off and accept me as a human being and fellow sick person in case you want to know why we got into a fight.
The fight by the way was probably a draw. I fell on the corner of a bed and injured myself pretty badly but I got one belly shot in that hurt him. I think he hit me in the head with his drinking glass but I don’t remember feeling that. And no, we didn’t love each other after that or feel any sense of mutual respect.
I suppose there are people who go crazy for that Rush, the feeling of excitement when it starts to fade away. In my mind, I can still hit the living shit out of baseballs or dive and pull line drives out of the air. I can throw touchdown passes or cast them or make an interception. I remember running very fast and I remember what it’s like to box people’s lights out. I just don’t feel the pull to do it anymore and I don’t feel bad that this time of my life has ended. I don’t feel bad about any of it. I’m quite okay with my current reality.
Yeah, life has changed. Next month, I get to make a couple of trips hopefully up to Minsk and possibly some of these problems will improve. Possibly I will be in less pain and be more functional. Possibly a lot of things could happen and I could get my spark of life back. Right now, I don’t have it. Too much negativity, too much financial deprivation from the restrictions placed on us because of the political choices made by this country, too much negativity from people I know and not enough positive opportunities to make a difference. There are just no interesting doors to open, nothing really to look forward to and only the light work of keeping my place going as a responsibility. I get to hang out with my plants and watch the world turn. I guess that’s good enough for me.
Does this seem like anti excitement for you? Does this seem like a life that nobody could possibly want?
Let me tell you one secret. When you lose something, something comes in to fill the gap. When you believe something is the greatest thing in the world but you don’t get it, you get something else instead. Some people think that this is masochism but it’s not. It’s just an observable fact that even if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re going somewhere. As long as your heart is beating, there is a new day coming up.
I have a big problem over the last while of being a great procrastinator. I am financially limited in what I can do because the only person I can afford to hire is myself. If I had the ability to get some help who actually wanted to be here, I could have done a lot more.
I’m not complaining though. Things are working out okay. I mean this was great sincerity. I might be out of the game but I have a very nice situation that is tolerable to me so long as it doesn’t break. Sure, I have filthy semi-psychotic neighbors who can’t seem to get it into their head that ecology means something or that they could just make the tiniest change in their driving habits, bring some evidence of human respect into the mix and then everybody would be friends. I do have relatives who seem to think causing me pain is a pleasurable experience for themselves. They use me as a scapegoat to escape the misery and pointlessness of their own lives. Like I have said many times, my life is far from perfect.
But what I do have is what I have right now. This is the ability not to do a Goddamn thing on Monday morning. I don’t have to move. I don’t have to go to work. I don’t have to get up and get dressed. I’m not obligated to do anything. And because my body doesn’t want to, because I am genuinely tired right now, beat up and tired of being in pain, I feel like I just won the lottery. Just having the right not to get up if I don’t want to seems to be worth about $10 million dollars.
You can argue with me or dismiss me as being out of reality. In a very real sense, you are right. I am out of your reality most probably. But that doesn’t mean that yours is the only possible way to live a life. And if you’d like to consider yourself an ecologist or believe that maintaining a reasonable environment so that life can continue to exist on this planet, it would behoove everyone to consider alternative realities for a change.
What I’m really saying is, you can moan and bitch and scream and hate all you want, but my lack of human activity is the most ecologically perfect thing that any human being could be doing right now. This is not just a self justification, this is a scientific fact. I am not burning any electricity at this moment. I require no fossil fuels for my movement to get to my place of business. I am not spending a penny on the economy or requiring delivery by truck of any goods. I’m not making any noise pollution whatsoever nor am I causing harm to any living thing. Except the mosquitoes.
Like I said, you don’t have to believe these things I say. And you don’t need to blame drugs or some horrible and debilitating disease on where I’m coming from. You don’t need to dismiss my thoughts out of hand simply because it is your reflex action to dismiss or to consider things fake news. I understand limited intellect and I understand that we all look at pictures instead of reading these days. But you really ought to take into consideration that taking it easy is much healthier for the world as whole than working your ass off is. And this is especially true if you are engaged in any profession other than providing food, clothing, shelter, reasonable education or practical medicine. If you’re not working to keep the absolute basic infrastructure going, you’re working on our destruction.
Just keep that in mind. I’m going back to sleep.
***
It’s about 3:30 in the afternoon and I’m in my office kind of putting things together. This room is definitely too cold to spend time in during the winter but on warm days in the summer it’s quite lovely. This last week the weather has finally led me to believe I might be spending some more time in here. I have two places that I can work. One is a traditional desk set up and the other has a laptop on the floor. I have a couch in my office and a bed in the warm room. I don’t know what to say. It’s my house.
I eventually ended up getting up and spending some time in my garden. I used that serrated knife to trim the underside of my boxes. Everything’s coming in nicely. Today is a sunny day and it doesn’t look like there’s going to be rain but we did have enough rain last night to definitely bring things to life. This morning when I looked at the bean Garden, I could even see that the lentils that my ex partner had tossed out into the garden were already split and starting to open. She must have watered them in and then there was more water in the evening. I took a few minutes to cover them with dirt so the birds don’t get at them.
Other than this however, it’s a very common very quiet time. My meeting this morning came and went very quickly. I have my doubts as to the effectiveness of it. There was some new information that ended up on the table that maybe will make a difference. I don’t see any reason to get excited about it.
But my thinking these days is that I probably should spend some time in this office this summer. Again, I don’t mean to sound negative or cut my own head off before I start but there is some work to do. I have some red work that might mean something to somebody. I might be able to do some advertising for next year. Or maybe it’s just about putting some packages together and trying to make myself more available. Again, nobody’s begging for any of this but if you don’t put a line in the water, you can’t catch any fish.
I won’t lie to you. Sometimes I think about what I would do if I actually had a ton of money. Dreaming about actually having some upward mobility or even just a little bit more freedom of movement than I actually have is always interesting. The thing of it is, I don’t really want anything for myself. I think the only thing that I would do is just go visit some people that I haven’t seen in a really long time. I don’t even believe that there’s anything real that would come of any of that. It’s just that these dreams are sort of residue from the last decade or so. Things that haven’t been done.
Then again, I have a great habit of rethinking things until the money goes away. My ex partner is notorious at making suggestions to me that cost money. I get where she’s coming from, annoying though it is. I don’t want her to feel that she’s trapped in any kind of situation that she doesn’t want to be in. Our deal is what it is. But still, even if I had a ton of money, where would there be any difference to move my body here and there and fly all around to do the exact same thing I can do by Skype. And as Skype is available on telephone, what difference does it make at all?
My meeting this morning was pretty interesting because my partner was expecting me to show up in town. He was surprised when I called. I asked him directly if there was any particular need for my body to be in the meeting and he agreed pretty clearly that it didn’t. He just expected me to physically show up.
I’m leaving out all of the details because I don’t want to talk about them here but we’ve had several other meetings, a couple of them in person because they needed to be in person and one meeting just because he mentioned that he liked my company. What a compliment!
So on one trip to town, I actually made a point of dropping by his office with no particular business at hand. And you know what? It was a complete bloody mistake. I don’t mean to say anything bad about him and I don’t want to say anything bad about our relationship and that’s not at all what I’m talking about. All I’m saying is that there is a big difference between meetings that mean something and have some definite end and meetings where you stand around and bullshit about nothing.
I understand when he made the offer that he was being kind and most probably he meant it. We like each other and we get along just fine. But we are not teenagers. We are not teenagers and though I am maybe 90% retired, he’s definitely at work. And I didn’t need his attention as a retiree. I just can’t because he said it would be interesting to share some company.
The truth is that this is something for teenagers. I used to teach this to all of my classes when my classes were mostly made up of teenagers. I talked to them about this thought about having friends. Of course, you can try to live your life by being as connected as possible. This seems to be the thrust of politics generally and for most parasites who you know rely on favors from influential friends to favor their existence. I though have just been a worker. I don’t mean to demean my name or my character but I was raised on the words of Jack London and his ideas of socialism and how a man takes care of himself and earns his money by the sweat of his own brow. That’s actually more fanciful than true. The truth is I learned that you can’t trust anybody to take care of you so you better do it yourself.
This is really the truth. When I think of my family situation, the truth is that my relative fully believes that I was living some sort of obsequious relationship with my father or that he was somehow my patron. Never was anything farther from the truth. The only business I had with my father was an American bank account. My relative was kind enough to destroy that in the first week of his rampage after my father’s death. Other than this though, my father never financed my life.
Actually, there were only two times in my life that I ever asked him for money. Both of them were when I was back in the United States, this was after I started living here, and both of them were just an opportunity to go visit some people that I haven’t seen in a long time. I did not have this money in my purse. It was a bit too expensive for me. But my father in that moment had the money and most probably it wouldn’t have hurt him at all. But he refused me anyway and I said fine.
Other than this, I never asked him for a penny and he never offered any. And this house that I’m sitting in was bought with my money that I earned by teaching and translating and working long hours for many, many years. And for all this nepotism that I get from my relatives, I’ve never had anything to do with any of them. I don’t remember any of them ever sticking out of hand or wanting to get involved with me or asking for me to participate in any business deal and I don’t remember asking them for any help in mind. Literally, when I tried to find some financing to do some green businesses last year, this was the only time I’ve ever asked anybody for any money other than a client who wanted my help specifically.
Why do I do this? I do this because this is what I do. I do this because this is what I believe to be the way we are supposed to live. I am anti-corruption, remember? I wrote the book Being Had. I’m the philosopher who finds genuine texture and honesty and shies away from people with their hands out just to see what they can get off of me. And I am the guy who doesn’t react when people smile while showing me all the wonderful things they have and waiting for me to become hungry and interested. I do not covet other people’s belongings. I don’t do this for religion, I just don’t do it.
That’s the thing you know. I did have a relationship with my father for maybe the last 15 years of his life. I did not have a relationship with him or my family for about 15 or 20 years before that. I left. I left and they didn’t need me. In fact when my mom died, that was the only time my father ever said he needed me and I agreed to be a friend to him. And I did. I answered his phone calls until the end of his life. And he called like clockwork when he had a boring moment in his schedule. Such is life, such as what we get. Honor your father and mother.
Anyway, this strictly social meeting turned out to be bullshit. He didn’t need my company and I didn’t particularly need his and all the sharp banter between us, though it’s interesting to be able to sharply banter with someone, it’s just not one of my emotional needs. I don’t sit here and crave sharp conversation. I don’t actually crave anything. I am not hungry. Maybe it’s a product of veganism. Maybe it’s a product of my physical health. Maybe it’s a product of constant re-examination of my environment both ecologically and economically. I don’t know what it is but I don’t covet my neighbor’s goods nor their wives nor am I jealous of anybody else’s success. I just do my thing and I worry about me and I don’t understand where everybody doesn’t do the same.
I understand that people think we are supposed to be responsible for others. I understand we’re supposed to take care of our kids. I don’t remember ever refusing to take care of our kids, I just remember the legal entanglements that led to my current situation. I don’t remember ever causing anybody any harm. I just remember a lot of people fighting like hell against me for no reason that I could possibly understand. Well, it was always money. It was always greed and money. It was always people jealous of what other people had and deciding that they didn’t give a damn who suffered as long as they got paid.
The other day for about the fifth time I said something to my ex partner but for some reason does not want to get into her head. I told her that if I make her a promise, I would keep it. I’ve said that to many people. I have offered my hand many times. Most people don’t believe I’m telling the truth. Most people these days believe that fake news makes all information up for grabs. Most people feel that there is no such thing as morality or personal ethics or morals. Most people these days believe that it’s about how many fish you catch and that it doesn’t matter a damn what you do to catch him or what you do to the river in the process. Most people these days just want to collect the money and they don’t really give a damn about anything else.
I am the guy who wrote Being Had. I’m the guy who said no. I’m the guy who said that we are going to tell the truth despite the fact that it was almost hilarious laughter for me to even try to do that in a Polish court of law. In Eastern Europe. And especially if I was thinking of living in the Republic of Belarus.
No, I’ve never played politics. I’ve written about politics. I’ve spent a year writing about politics. I’ve spent a year writing about politics during two elections and a revolution and a pandemic. I’ve spent several years writing every single day about what I believe to be the truth and the only one who has done this work has been me. I’m still following the same ethics, money or no money. You do your own work, you tell the truth, you don’t steal and you don’t cause harm to others.
Yeah, I had a small meeting today and I don’t know if I believe anything is going to come of it. I have a situation. Someone wants to steal from me and cause me as much harm as they possibly can. And I just want to put the truth on the table, do what’s right for everybody and go our separate ways. Just like my bloody disgusting neighbors, just like the mother fucking Russians, just like the God damn Christian Monopoly screwing with people’s brains when they drive their useless cars trying to make something out of their useless lives, everybody just wants to make it dramatic and they don’t care how much damage they cause in the process. Everybody thinks that they are the most important stick of wood in the Jenga game. Everybody thinks that if they get pulled out, the whole Tower comes down.
Yeah, I never know the words to say this correctly. When I was talking to the police and the prosecutor’s office last year, I had no idea what kind of words I could possibly use to make them understand that I was telling the truth. I had physical evidence of what I was talking about. I was within my rights and I was quoting law. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference to them. They were not interested in listening to me. Complete indifference up and down the line. No matter who I spoke to and no matter what I had to say, they were just not going to do a damn thing to stop this misery from being in my life. Why? If I knew, I would tell you.
I mean, corruption, right? It was about corruption, right?
Yeah. I’m the guy who wrote Being Had. I’m the guy who writes this blog every single day. I’m the guy who’s been writing this blog. It’s just about corruption. It’s just about sentience. It’s just about common sense and thinking practically about the world we live in for a change. It’s just about dropping the drama and seeing if we could possibly live a little cleaner despite the fact that we would have to give up a lot of drugs to get there. We’d have to give up quite a few bad habits actually. We would have to learn or relearn how to live more practically as a group with much, much, much less unnecessary drama.
Yeah, the meeting was about dealing with the drama fag. I hate to use words like that. I don’t care if someone practices homosexuality or not. I don’t have any politics about people or their sexuality. I don’t give a damn what other people do with their lives. I just hate drama facts when they decide to do their thing on my time and with my energy but without my permission. That is the one thing I get more tired of than anything.
Anyway, speaking of unwanted drama facts stealing from everybody, it seems Donald Trump wants to run for president in 2024. Why must he be in our lives? I asked myself this question every day. I asked why Donald Trump has to be in our lives like I asked why my chicken neighbors have to be in my life or why my relative has to be in my life. All of these parasitic thieves end up feeling that they have the right to cause misery to others, to pollute our air and our water and our land and to steal as much money as they can get their hands on. Parasites and thieves.
I also have two more links to share. The first one is just a few moments of George Carlin telling the truth about climate change. The thing of it is, I’m not the only one who thinks this way. There are quite a few people who don’t live for the drama or the attention, there are quite a few people who understand quite clearly that it’s probably better to be intelligent and clear in your head as to what the truth is instead of just sitting around waiting for your next opportunity to feel something.
And finally, here is a video from avant garde vegan, one of the more artistic and stylish vegan chefs I sometimes pay attention to. In this episode, Gaz Oakley shares his recipe for Vegan fried Chicken. I’m not really into fried foods that much. I do end up using cooking oil more than I should. But honestly, if you’re looking for something epic to make yourself happy some evening, check out what this guy does with 10 herbs and spices and super crunchy breading on four different no harm meat substitutes.
Spoiler alert. Everybody liked the mushrooms best.
That’s about it for now. I’ll make a point of closing this up a little bit later. Suddenly, I feel hungry.
***
Ukraine is going to join the European Union. And then they are going to join NATO. The Polish don’t seem to have any problems with this.
***
It’s a few minutes before midnight and I just got out of my last meeting. I wish I had something good to say but I don’t. The reason for the late meeting is the time difference. I am 7 hours ahead of the United States and if you’re going to talk to an American at a reasonable time of day for them, you have to show up late at night for yourself. This time difference also makes being an occasional baseball fan a pain in the neck.
I don’t really have anything special to add. I used split peas and some sunflower seeds to make a very deep cream sauce which I added to some potatoes and field greens. It was a very satisfying dinner. Extremely high in protein and fiber and absolutely tasty enough. The cost of the meal was almost nothing really. I did pay for this split peas and the sunflower seeds but these are amongst the cheapest commodities you can buy. The greens and the potatoes were free but for my labor. The greens weren’t even my labor except to harvest them. These are gifts from God.
The only thing I really want to say is that I suppose I understand that war has been with us forever and complaining about countries going to war is foolish. I can say that it’s possible to talk out almost any problem if there is cooperation but I understand it’s almost pointless to say so. I could even say that I don’t believe in war and that the actual activity of demanding to physically impose your will on another as a solution to social and economic problems never works or is even just. And in the case of the war going on with my neighbors, I don’t believe in any of it. I understand it’s about oil despite the propaganda but I don’t believe it’s anything more than a giant real estate deal at the end of the day. They’re just murdering people for money.
On the other side, maybe this is the genuine point of what I’m writing about. 2 years ago, I dove into politics. 270 essays later, it occurred to me that the only subject worth writing about was and is ecology. 1.6 million words later, I decided to go into this one more time but my feeling was that what we should really be talking about is the food we eat and how it affects society as a whole. This is my 20th week of this project and it’s getting to the point I genuinely feel I’m wasting my time. I don’t believe that I’m wrong, I just believe that the world simply isn’t capable of being rational enough to save itself from destruction. At the end of the day, the Russians are not anything particularly special or evil. They are the same as everybody else.
Yeah, the meeting was about what I expected. When talking to Americans, even if they are on your side, there’s almost never anything they can do. The world’s not fair there are no genuine checks and balances and unless there’s a lot of blood, they don’t give a damn at all.
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