Wednesday, May 25th 2022
It’s 5:00 a.m. and I’m just checking in here to say that this morning is greeting me with one of the most beautiful orange and blue skies. You know what these skies look like in the evening. It comes when you have a light rolling cloud cover that mixes with a sunset. Absolutely gorgeous and it goes with sunrises as well.
In answer to the question, yes, I slept very well last night. I missed dinner in favor of a few nuts and raisins with tea. I just wasn’t hungry after the pancakes. The only reason I’m awake right now is that the Giants are playing the Mets and I set my alarm to catch the game.
It’s also worth mentioning that some beauty is returning to my life. Truthfully, I don’t get much from the people around me. I don’t care what they think they want or how starving they are or why it’s so important to bother me. But nature is appealing.
Okay, the gnats and flies that were bothering me when I was trying to make the hose stay on the damn pump was more than annoying. We have more than a few carnivore beings here. All that aside though, I just thought I would share a beautiful moment. The temperature is perfect, the sky is beautiful and my two baseball teams are playing each other. Cheers.
***
The Giants are kicking the crap out of the Mets today. A bunch of home runs and Logan Webb on the mound fighting his way out of jams excellently. It’s a lot to a little right now and I guess my day is getting started here at about 7:00 a.m.
The complaint that my neighbor made about the sound of my pump actually had something to do with the quality of the clamping system. What I would really like is to manufacture something serious. In my head, we need two metal bands and a pair of nuts and bolts that can be tightened on both sides. The aluminum strap wrench is not dependable. The original wire tie that I put on popped off under pressure. I used several pieces of wire until one actually stayed in place but the excessive noise came from the fact that it was leaking. I know this from the amount of water pressure I got.
So this morning I went in and tightened that bit of wire that I put on last night as much as I could. I then added a second bit of lighter aluminum wire and tightened that as far as it will go without breaking. I don’t know if this will be a permanent fix but I definitely need to do something.
I could put a rubber shim in there. I’m sure I have some old inner tubes that I could cut down and wrap the pump. A combination of some rubber inside the hose and then clamp it down as hard as possible might create a decent seal.
The problem is that this pump does not have a threaded housing. These non-submersible pumps that we have been looking at all have housing attachments that screw in. This would mean they would have either a PVC or some kind of a metal housing. This would allow reasonable pressure and it probably wouldn’t pop off like this one does. This one just has a notch cut out of it, sort of like an old bicycle crank with a cotter pin holding the pedal on.
Perhaps the next time I go into town I can go to the market and see if I can find something like a 1-in clamp. I can also talk to people down there about what they have in mind. They have been living with these stupid pumps for 50 years so I’m sure they understand something.
It’s also possible that what my neighbor had in mind when she came and complained about the noise of the pump was that she wanted her husband to come in and help. There were two problems with this. Firstly, this is not what she said. She came and simply complained about the noise. Probably this implied that I was an idiot and that’s why the pump was making so much noise. I’m not an idiot and I don’t like any implication that I am especially from lunatic alcoholics. And doubly especially from lunatic alcoholics who need money.
I have thought of going to her husband who does a lot of metal work and has a welder. I’m thinking of putting in a trellis for grapevines and probably I would want that structure made of metal. It wouldn’t be a big deal, just a couple of posts and a crossbeam or two. I also have a fireplace pan that could use a pair of tack welds.
I just find it hard going to the guy for help. First of all, my father always told me that you don’t shit where you live. To me, this means that you do not create excessive drama on your own territory. Probably it has something to do with swapping wives or creating problems. I know this is counterintuitive to the alcoholics who live here. Hysterical women seem to be the norm here.
The drama I’m talking about has to do with one evening at the very beginning of my stay here. The woman who complained was the only person who came and invited us to their house for dinner. They are town people, they both work for the same company as my ex partner and they are both gregarious. They are both also raging alcoholics.
So we accepted the invitation, this is my ex partner and I, and we came and sat with them. I drank tea and ate veggies and bread and my ex partner Dove right into whatever they put in front of her. I remember there were some shrimp that hit the table and I’m sure everybody believes that everything is normal.
The issue began when the lady’s husband started getting drunker and drunker off of whatever Brandy he was pouring himself and my ex partner, the physical difference between his wife and my ex partner had him salivating. And my ex partner is a yoga girl, currently vegan for the most part and keeps herself in great shape. His wife is a panzer tank. She’s a Panzer tank whose voice is louder than a panzer tank.
Consequently last year whenever my ex partner was up for a visit, her husband would show up with gifts wanting to be helpful. If I went to him because I needed something, I remember asking him about some wood pylons once or twice, he told me to go fuck myself. But if my ex partner was up here and especially if she was in shorts, he came with zucchini as a present. I threw him off the lot.
Actually one anecdote about this zucchini incident. I was in my office when he arrived and the windows were open. I smelled him before I saw him and mentioned this. Literally, “what the hell is that smell now in the air. I bet it is…”. And I was right. No, it’s not deep Sherlock Holmes or anything. The guy is a chain smoker and a morbid alcoholic. You can smell him a mile away.
Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m not delicate. I’m not delicate at all. The problem is just that I don’t like drinking and I don’t smoke tobacco. I don’t like the smell. I have sentience. I have a relationship with my house and what I prefer is fresh air and clean water. These have particular smells to them that are pleasant to the senses.
Along these lines, I got to thinking a little bit about how much power we give our visual intelligence in this world. I don’t think we give any credence to genuine taste or smell or sound. The logic in this is that visual understanding, especially through film or television or photography, is devoid of any other sensual understanding.
I got to thinking about this when I started watching the baseball game this morning. Joc Peterson hit a massive home run to write field and I remember thinking how pathetic the television coverage of that home run was.
I was thinking about what was generally good about television baseball, especially in the computer age. Our ability to measure spin rate and velocity visually has led to Great understanding in the techniques of pitching and hitting. Using computers to enhance our teaching and our learning and setting a bar of the exactness that human beings would not otherwise have has created an era of superhuman baseball players. Probably this is why both leagues now have a DH. Pitching is way too specialized to waste time on hitting.
What is not understandable is how majestic a long home run to ride field actually is. You can’t know this though unless you are in a ballpark or playing in a game. One of the most beautiful things about baseball is how superhuman the flight of a well hit ball is.
I was a ball player and forgive me if I’m bragging again, somebody complained that I brag a lot, but I hit home runs sometimes. I was a pretty good hitter and I have in my memory what it feels like and looks like to launch a ball. I’m talking about genuine world class here at times. They are beautiful things. Home runs feel like slamming a hammer into cream cheese and the trajectory and Arc of the ball as it flies away from you and gets very small is a very deep and pleasurable thing.
When my father and I visited Fenway Park in 2016, David Ortiz went deep for his 525th home run. I know I’m talking about how video takes away from a home run but this is a still camera so you might get a sense of it. Also, I’m in this picture but probably too small to see. We are about equal to the right field foul pole just under the overhang.
Or maybe you can’t really see it. We did. It was a high arching majestic drive and you could see the ball straining to remain in flight until it reached its apex and started to fall. It was a mammoth shot, awe inspiring as great baseball homeruns are.
Perhaps my argument here is lost. The video of the moment doesn’t allow you to see the ball and my words just explode into the air with so many adjectives.
Or maybe they don’t. By looking at the video, you have an absolute understanding that someone threw a pitch, someone connected, the people got excited, Big Papi quit running hard around first when he was sure the ball was gone and we know what the date was and what game it was because the Giants were on the field. Pretty rare actually. But by reading my words and allowing your imagination to fill in the visual gaps, you might actually get a more full understanding of how visceral it is.
Modern TV with its quick cuts and numbers about exit velocity and total number of feet that the ball might have traveled is just wonderful mathematics. But it’s inhuman. It has nothing to do with the physical aspect of the act.
One more anecdote before I pull into my thoughts here. When I was a younger and hornier man than I am now, I remember being distracted by advertising. This was especially true during my time wandering around in Europe. Although there were many attractive females, it was hard to get around the giant advertisements of attractive slim young women either in underwear and sometimes completely nude. This was an ERA where simply taking a picture of a nude woman was perfectly acceptable to sell a product. And yes, they didn’t mind if the model was early in her teens.
Truly, advertising is a brutal assault on the senses. When I was in Florida and we would drive down the main road, there were hundreds upon hundreds of corporate restaurants screaming for us to get off and enjoy some meat, grease, sugar and salt. The smell was everywhere commingled with the auto fumes. Seriously, if you’re reading my words, imagine a Chinese opium den or an inner city crack house. Imagine the stench.
What does Europe appear to be to a man open to the possibility of sex? What happens to our mind when everywhere we look there are pretty girls staring at us. And no, I’m not going to print any pictures of pretty girls here just to get your attention. You can use your imagination and make any picture you wish.
But what I will do is show you something.
A friend of mine has a daughter who is a rather popular Instagram model. By popular, she has 31,000 followers and gets paid money by makeup companies and skin care products and such to have her picture taken using their products. She makes a pretty good living and her mom is definitely proud.
But rather than show her picture, sorry dear, let me just explain what’s in the picture.
The girl is facing slightly off center but is looking directly at you. She has placed her thumb on her chin and she has sort of a smoldering quality about her look. There is fire in her is the implication but yet what is intriguing is the blue eye makeup she is wearing that perfectly matches the color of her thumbnail. The blue of the eye makeup is contrasted by the sharp heavy black eyeliner and her painted black eyelashes. She is white but the color of her skin and the shininess of her cheek is obviously also some form of makeup. Her hair is long, healthy looking, shiny and straight, sort of a golden brown and she has one long tight braid weaving over the top and draping down to the bottom. She is wearing nothing but a white fluff blouse that is dipped off of her left shoulder. The background is an abstract Gray.
Okay, here’s the photo and you’re welcome to check in with the model.
Probably the reason that I am talking about this is because of a complaint that I just don’t make pictures about what I am talking about. I’m using words to describe everything rather than taking pictures. The complaint was that they don’t believe me. They would believe a photograph but they would not believe me.
Well, depending on what device you are reading these words on is when you actually get to see the photograph. But if you read my words without seeing the photo, what do you see now? Or even more important, what happened to my words? And even more important yet, if you did read my words and imagined the picture I was making, what happened to your imagination?
I know this girl. I don’t have a personal relationship with her but I have met her and we know each other. And I have seen her walking down Lenin Street, selfie stick in hand, making videos for Instagram of herself. She is extremely animated when she is taking pictures of herself. She is rather small and frightened when she is not on camera.
To me the answer about what happened to the words and the imagination once we added the photograph is that it all went away. Whatever emotions and physical sensations we experienced from our imaginations gave way to whatever it is that connects us to the world through photographs. My guess is that it just became dismissable. Most probably you looked at this girl and your first thought was that she was nothing special.
It became garbage.
In answer to the complaint about my lack of photographs, I don’t care. I’m not really interested in photographing myself or photographing my house. There are a few pictures lying around that I took last year and truthfully, I do take pictures of things. I just don’t share them on the Internet or make them a part of this. I like exactly what I’m doing right now. I like exactly leaving this in words. Whatever these words inspire in you, however you see this in your mind’s eye is good enough. It’s fine. Keep it just the way it is. Because if something I say inspires you to do something or to notice something or to change something for the better in your life, if in some way any of my words about ecology or diet or some fundamental truth about the human animal somehow makes sense to you, I would rather it not be discarded along with the other 10 million images of everything that make everything we have disposable.
That reminds me. Today is garbage day. The only garbage I have is plastic. It is a very small bag with a few plastic bags in it. Everything else I have can go back into the land or get burned into Ash which then goes back into the land. I don’t need to take a picture of my garbage. I just hope you understand what I’m talking about clearly enough.
You know, it is more than amazing irony that my neighbor, this particular neighbor, thought to complain about the noise. They are among the noisiest neighbors I have with the constant metal work. They work near the factory and she doesn’t speak, she screams. When we visited their house, the television was blaring the whole time at top volume and the woman continued to talk, hardly taking a breath, in competition with the television at full volume. How is it possible that the loudest people on the planet come to me to complain about noise?
Anyway, they have changed the weather report. Probably practical sense. It never rains as much as the barometer says it should. We have constipated clouds now. Air pollution, I guarantee you.
Sometime today, I’m going to go and build a pickle box. My ex partner was upset when I told her it was only 2 m long. I can add more if we need more. I could even make it two-sided without too much problem. I’m just not that sure we need it. How many pickles do we need?
I’ll give her a call and listen to her thoughts on the subject. That’s about the main thing on the agenda. Breakfast was split peas and brown rice with a few potatoes and a little cabbage. I made it slightly spicy. No coffee, no toast and no cooking oil. I’m full. I feel solid. I feel calm. I just have some work to do I guess. But mostly, I think I’m just going to enjoy the quiet.
***
I am the biggest jerk in the world. You can’t turn your back on baseball. The Giants were up 8 to 2 and I thought I had a chance to let my wonderful thoughts go. When I got back, I saw the score was 11 to 11:00 in extra innings. I can’t believe I missed that. Oh my god, this is karma. This is absolute karma. Pride cometh before the fall and pedantics lead to self-loathing. Remember I said that. I learned it from life experience.
***
Really, I feel sick for missing that game. Probably, it was the game of the year, I was there and I just turned it off to do some writing. Why was it so hard to just allow the game to play? Why was I so in need to get busy and do something?
I could make excuses. The time difference is huge. They were playing late at night in San Francisco but here, it was early in the morning. I didn’t need to make breakfast. I wasn’t that hungry. I just wake up and when the spirit moves me to start moving, I have to do something even if all it is is to make myself some food.
I could also blame the mosquitoes. We have mosquitoes today. It makes sitting still rather difficult. I’ve tried playing guitar a few times. Since the serious labor of box building and wheelbarrow carrying has come to an end, my hands are not as hard and making chords and playing melodic lines is starting to become available again. But still, you don’t want to do that if the mosquitoes are buzzing around your head and in your ears all the time.
I could also blame baseball coverage itself for being so obnoxious and artificial. Sometimes, not sometimes, most times, I just want to watch the game and I’m not interested in the extra drama that the producer and the director demand to give me. For example, I like the shot from behind the picture that allows you to see whether the ball was a strike or a ball. Also, it’s incredible to be able to see the movement on the pitch’s balls. When you are watching someone with genuine talent pitch a baseball game, it can be equally as impressive as watching a massive home run. The same is true for exceptional glove work or a guy with a great arm. Baseball geometry is beautiful.
On top of that however for me, both the MLB broadcasts themselves and the pirate broadcast that I have available to me both have extreme limitations. The picture is bound to cut out at the most exciting moments. Literally, if you try watching the pirate film and for some reason there’s a great deal of noise, something breaks in the stream and the picture will just stop at the most epic moments. It’s almost like they have a guy with his finger on a red button and his job is to screw with people who got in for free.
Or I don’t need to make any excuses and I can blame my own selfishness. I just wanted to do my own thing more than I wanted to sit and watch the broadcast and in the end, I missed the game of a lifetime. This is not the first time I’ve made major screw ups like this. Damn. Just damn.
Apparently, I am known for this. I’m saying this because of a message I just got from that model’s mother. I wrote her that I had used her picture and had talked about it and that I had used it to juxtapose the idea of visual art against text and what it does to our imaginations. She wrote me back two words that probably sum up almost everything I have been saying about my situation for the last years. She said “Это Гудман”. That’s Goodman.
I told her that I didn’t understand exactly what that meant but maybe I do. She of course didn’t answer my question but that’s also par for the course. I think what it means is that nothing I say or think means anything. You just put your focus back on the meat and say we all understand. All this other noise is just fake news. Just look at the meat, Goodman. That’s your problem, you always forget to look at the meat.
***
Just one more quick story. I know I’m procrastinating against going to work. I don’t know why. It’s not that big of a deal. I don’t know why I’m so against doing things.
Anyway, this story is about when I was in university in San Francisco. We used to play softball in a PE class on this field that had an interesting configuration. There was a building out to right field and in left field there was a hill that led up to 19th avenue. There were also some very tall eucalyptus trees growing on that Hill. It was a picturesque and interesting softball field to play on.
The guy running the PE class happened to be the head coach of the baseball team. Forgive me if I forget his name. He knew me as someone who could play ball a little bit but he didn’t like my body. We had another guy come out and play with us who could also bang and I remember his name was Christian. He was a tall muscular Greek god of a guy and I remember the coach pointing him out to me and saying that nobody could ever mistake that he was an athlete. Like I said, he didn’t like my body very much.
The two of us could put the ball in the trees. Both of us had skills, I think I had a better arm to tell you the truth. I was not a terrible ball player. But he got called by his name and the coach referred to me as meat.
Getting called meat by a baseball coach is not a terrible thing. Baseball players call each other meat all the time and have for as long as there has been baseball.
I asked Google for an explanation and this is what they said:
Usually, the baseball team’s veteran teammates (pointing out) where the rookie belongs will refer to him as meat because they tend to target the rookie easily as the subject of practical jokes and shenanigans.
Fair enough.
But then one day I hit this ball. It was one of those once in a lifetime balls that went up all the way to the top of the eucalyptus trees. I don’t think anyone has ever reached 19th avenue before. And yeah, it was equally as majestic as David Ortiz’s home run or any home run you’ve ever hit that makes everybody stop.
In fact, that ball was so big that it seemed to make everyone in the whole school stop for about 2 weeks. Seriously, I became a bit of a celebrity with that ball. It was interesting enough for an astronomy teacher to do the math on it and it came back something like 497 ft. This is the same math used to tell us how far baseballs fly these days in statcast. At the time, this was slightly more than 1 m less than the world record.
Right after this happened, the coach started calling me Adam and would occasionally come over to me to talk hitting. Can you imagine that? One swing of the bat and I became a human being.
Not that it matters, but I checked Google maps. They have had a lot of gentrification over the last 35 years. Real estate in San Francisco is very expensive. That field is long gone, replaced with a parking lot ironically enough. But I can still see that ball flying and I can still see the look on the coach’s face.
***
Okay, okay, okay. Just so it’s here.
***
So the pickle box is finished and it looks okay. I still have to add dirt but the work went without too much complication. I think that we’re going to add a second box about a meter away and hang a trestle between the two. Next year, we can use the boxes for beans. Same plan.
I just got a note from my ex partner that we have a line on some sweet potato shoots. This is a good thing and I have exactly the right place to plant them.
Also, I think we are going to get into saving food for winter. I like this idea a lot. The talk came because of the pickles and of course we have plenty of late season cabbage. I think I’m also going to save a few Banks of horseradish greens. We can cook them down just like spinach and save them. You never can tell when you are completely craving some greens.
Other than that, there’s really not that much going on. It’s an overcast day, not hot, nothing particularly special.
Okay, and I don’t know whether it means anything or not but I’m really noticing the difference between leaving the cooking oil out of my food for a day. I know I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago and I made a big deal about it but then I went back and had some more. It’s not a ridiculously hard decision and I can’t even say that it is a genuinely horrible thing. All I’m saying is that at where I am right now with the food I eat and what I believe to be good health, I’m not going to break and go to animals and I truly do not need alcohol but a little cooking oil for cheat meals is probably not a bad thing. I really like fried bread and I love pancakes. Also, just fried vegetables, even all by themselves is absolutely tasty. I’m just saying that it’s probably better to go easy on it and leave it for special occasions. My body functions a lot better without it. I guess it’s a matter of what’s important.
I don’t really have a lot to say here right now. I’m just kind of taking a break and taking it easy. But I did run into a map of a tour of Belarus. I know everybody thinks of this as a crazy country with a dictator president that never leaves and of course all of the crappy things that I have to say about my neighbors. But I don’t know if you knew exactly how many world famous places you can visit just by coming here. For example, did you know that only within the boundaries of the Republic of Belarus, you could visit Dublin, Paris, Bali, Turin, Dubai, Bulgaria and even Pinsk?
Personally, I think this is amazing and considering the cost of riding trains here, you can see so many things for so little money. Actually, I think I would like to take a tour around Belarus sometime. I’ve been here for 20 years but I’ve never taken a ride like this. I lived in the capital for about a year and a half and I lived in Baranovichi for about 6 months but other than that, I’ve pretty much stayed in the region. I haven’t even gone to Lithuania in a long time. I don’t know, I don’t really like traveling that much anymore.
The reason I’m thinking like this is that when I first started writing this year and I thought that my main subject was going to be food, I thought that it would turn into meeting people and trying different regional vegan dishes. My Hope was to connect with like-minded people around the country and blog about it. I guess I got derailed. That often is the case. Still, it’s not a bad idea. Maybe it’ll happen this year after all. Or maybe next year. I have all the time in the world and apparently, I have access to the entire world without going very far at all.
***
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Parents waited late into the night for dead children to be identified after Texas elementary school massacre link
Uvalde, Texas(CNN)Just two days before students were to begin summer break, an armed 18-year-old entered a Texas elementary school classroom and opened fire, killing 19 children and two teachers, officials said, in the deadliest school shooting in almost a decade.
The siege in Uvalde, Texas, ended when law enforcement killed the gunman, a local high school student described as a loner who officials said had legally purchased two assault rifles and ammo for his birthday last week.
The violent act shook a nation still reeling from a mass shooting just 10 days ago. Tuesday’s massacre is the second-deadliest school shooting since 2012, when 26 children and adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It is at least the 30th shooting at a K-12 school in 2022, according to a CNN tally.
I think the second paragraph says it all. I don’t have anything else to say…
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