Thursday, June 9th 2022

It’s 9:00 a.m. right on the mark and I am up and about. I took a long time getting up this morning and then when I finally got moving, there was Lena standing at my gate asking me to open up for her. I should have known better.

You know, you don’t really have to be so gentlemanly with people. I’ve lived most of my life believing that we should treat people well. I’ve tried my very best not to have preconceived notions to let people at least show me that they suck before I throw them away into the garbage. I end up throwing away a lot of garbage with this philosophy and as I am an ecologist, maybe it’s better just to say no right up front.

Yes, I like my house a lot better with clean floors. Yes, when she’s around we get along well. Yes, she does her job and works pretty hard while she’s at it for the few minutes that she does it, I don’t have a very big house. But yes, if she gets the idea into her head that somebody is a sponsor, she turns into a badger and starts gnawing away.

“You know, I genuinely thought I made it clear that I did not want people coming to me. This is exactly why I keep my door closed. I am sick and tired of people coming to me and asking me for money. I don’t have a lot of money, I don’t have any to waste, if I’m in the market for something, I would look for it myself and I don’t want people coming and asking me for money. What the hell did you come today for? I was expecting you tomorrow.”

“Listen Adam, let me clean for you today and for tomorrow. I don’t need much money. Maybe only five rubles. I will clean your floors two times and you don’t have to pay me at all tomorrow.”

“Why in the hell would I need my floors cleaned two days in a row?”

“You can pay me today but you don’t have to pay me tomorrow. I’ll work tomorrow without any payment.”

You know the thing is that I really feel bad when I have to be bad to people. Maybe I get this from my dad. He was a salesman. He was an easy smile and a handshake. He was good looking. There’s no doubt about it that my dad was good looking. When my dad was around, you felt good looking just by being around him. That’s probably how we made his money. He was a tough guy when he was a kid, he was a fine, fine sportsman and an avid ball player. You felt good when you were with him. If you were a man, you felt masculine. And if you were a woman, you felt very womanly.

Probably the best advice he ever gave me was to be nice to the ladies. I wouldn’t say that I ever made my living off of women. Probably when I was in my early twenties and thought I might try my hand at professional gambling, I would sit at blackjack tables with female dealers. They would have a tell for me. They liked me. They had sympathy for me. They probably got better tips if we won. I did pretty good with female blackjack dealers for a while. I’m not a gambler. I didn’t like the juice or the action or whatever they call it and frankly, I really didn’t like hanging out in casinos or with gamblers for that matter. I have never in my life been fond of criminals. But be nice to ladies has always stuck with me and my first instinct is always to be kind and friendly and, well, let’s face it, smooth. You might not know it to look at me these days but I can be smooth. Or if you’ve heard stories, you already knew that.

So I really don’t like seeing no. I don’t like being negative and I don’t like closing the door on people.

I have a philosophy of life. I believe that “a friend is a yes answer”. What that means to me is that if you look at someone and you believe in your mind that talking to them will yield a yes answer, you remember them fondly. If you believe that they will be accepting of your company and be open to things you have to say, this feels good. I want to be that person. I want people to feel good when they see me. I don’t like people thinking of me as a negative entity. I can’t stand this wartime propaganda that I have to live through. I can’t stand people thinking of me as terrible because of my passport or my ethnic heritage. I’m tired of being dismissed without ever having a say in the matter whatsoever. I want to be a good solid yes. Even if people never use it, I want them to know in their mind that they can call and when they do I will be good to them.

What do you want me to do though? I’m not going back to last year’s bullshit. I gain no enjoyment whatsoever from having a series of alcoholics come to my house every time they want to drink. I have no desire whatsoever for my fucking neighbors to come to me thinking that I am an open bank account that they may be able to gain some investment from me. I’m tired of female neighbors looking at me waiting for me to rip their clothes off like I’m some kind of mad man Don Juan. I’m tired of all of this begging that goes on in this fucking country. Who in the hell devised A system that leaves people nothing But beggars? It’s not only annoying and a complete drain on my energy and my mood, it’s an invasion of my space and time. I cannot stand people coming to me and thinking of me as money. And really, if you’ve never had a relationship with me before in such a way where we work together, don’t ever come up to me unless you have business plans. We’re going to be mutual or we’re not going to be.

I had to say no. I had to say no five times. She wouldn’t accept no from inference. She wouldn’t stop talking. She wouldn’t listen to a word I was saying. How many times did I need to explain to her that I don’t want people coming on my land to tell me what to do or to ask me for money. I’m not interested in anyone’s fucking unsolicited advice and I’m not interested in doing handouts for anyone at any time for anything and for any reason. I need to put a sign on the door saying that this is a parasite free zone. No beggars, no alcoholics and no uzbekies allowed. No one. No Russians, no sad stories, no deep needing and no glad-handing favors from moronic alcoholic women chasers with loud wives looking to pander to my girlfriend’s attentions. That’s why I keep my door closed. That’s why I don’t care if you like it or if you don’t. That’s where all of this came from.

When I needed help, when I was in a seriously terrible situation and was in need of a little bit of help, where was anybody in this neighborhood? All these assholes were interested in doing was getting advantage over me. All these assholes wanted was to find some way to have power. All they wanted to do was Express their fucking opinions about the world’s politics to me. All anybody wanted to do was stick their tongue up my ass in the hope of getting something interesting for themselves. Where was anybody willing to just be a little helpful in my time of need? Nothing. Zilch. Zip. Nada. The big fucking circular null.

No. No. Don’t come to my house asking me for money. Don’t wake me up in the morning and make me get dressed and come open my door so you can ask me for money. Don’t disturb my life or my lazy mornings or any fucking habit I choose to have on my own land and in my own time. Don’t touch me, don’t talk to me don’t talk about me behind my back, don’t use me to get someone else to listen to your interesting bullshit, don’t involve yourself with my life without my permission, I am not at your disposal, I am not your possession, I am not your thing, your child, your brother, your father, your grandfather, a long lost son, a long lost puppy, a street cat or any fucking thing that you think is beneath your personal omnipotence. Leave me the motherfuck alone!

“Does this mean you don’t want me to come clean tomorrow either?”

I stood up and walked her over to the gate and closed it.

“Truthfully Lena, I don’t need a goddamn thing.”

Not really the same as the ending to Gone with the wind or any particular romantic novel. I even feel stupid for channeling James Agee the other day.

But then I was up so I took a walk around. My ex partner is very nervous about potato beetles. There are no potato beetles on our potatoes. They are all popping quite well now and the box is starting to become a lot greener than I thought it would. This is no dig again and all we did was spread a bunch of hay and lay the potatoes down on some decent ground. I don’t know how much we’re getting and we certainly didn’t plant as much as locals do but they are popping and no, no beetles.

I planted a lot of zucchini. Most probably people would think I am very stupid for doing this. I thought I had some mothers from last year and I just buried them very early in the spring thinking they would pop up sometime. I see no evidence of them at all. I also planted a few seeds next to a pair of trees that aren’t growing very well. They are not popping at all so far and it’s been long enough to believe that they are not going to. The last place just off and away from the middle gardens, one area has popped a bit. One place that I didn’t want them, I got a volunteer mother that I thought I had planted a lot further away than what I was getting. We dug all those up and replanted them and I’m pleased to say that you absolutely can replant zucchinis. If you know anything about zucchinis, they are more merciless than the local alcoholics and they will just keep coming and coming. I don’t think it’ll be a problem but I’m a little disappointed that’s the stuff that didn’t grow

Also, I did plant quite a bit of squash. Little pumpkins. I believe we planted up to a dozen plants but only half of them are in play. We will have some pumpkins. I was thinking a little bigger but we will definitely have some pumpkins.

That one grapevine is not actually dead but it’s not looking very alive. I don’t know if it was something in the dirt where we planted it or if we made a mistake while planting but it just doesn’t look very good at all. The other four including hours from last year that we replanted after it came back to life unexpectedly are doing fine. And the last bit of mint that I planted next to it is also looking a lot better than the first group I planted.

I am planning on doing some watering tonight but I think I’m going to take a little bucket with me down and give some water to the sweet potatoes. They have been looking fine up until this morning but right now they’re looking a little droopy. It is possible that they are brooders like peppers. Have you ever had a relationship with sweet peppers? They just frown and cry and tell you their problems. They are just sitting there begging you for rubles. Well, not rules but water. “Oh, oh, oh, I am so sad. My life is so hard out here in this hot, hot sun. I simply cannot survive. Please give me some water before I just collapse under my own weight and crawl to the center of the planet.”

Do I sound a little less sensitive than your run of the mill online gardener? I mean, I have sympathy. I’m sure I do somewhere. I mean it was around here somewhere. I’m just a lot more lazy than you are. There’s no other way to say it. I am just not going to be a Dynamo anymore in my life. I can go on a diet and restrict my fat intake. I can eat healthy foods and remember to take my vitamins. I can be as mentally astute as mentally astute can be. I can even fly into a decent argument and rip it apart and put it back together no matter who you think you are or what title someone has bestowed upon me. I can be like Jeffrey Hackman Leonard, the old left fielder of the 1980s San Francisco Giants. He said one time that he is the kind of guy that if you invite him to your mother’s house to meet the woman and she serves you cake as a means of being gracious and the cake is not tasty, he was the kind of guy who would tell your mother that her cake sucks. I am that person. I am that person who will tell a neighbor right to her face that she’s a dirty, no good backstabbing bushwhacking traitor to the cause and a polluter of our atmosphere. I’m a person who will argue with a police officer who is holding a gun on me and tell him exactly what a dumbass he is.

Actually, I’m a guy who ignores the warning of the American embassy and sticks around Belarus for the beginning of World War 3 just because I planted fruit trees and built garden boxes. I’m really interested to see how well I pull off this Garden and I’ll be Goddamned if I’m not going to get my water system in just the way I envisioned it when I got here. Global warming is real and these plants need water.

I don’t have any explanation for my behavior except that frankly, if you’re not supposed to be in my garden and I can’t understand why you’re here, you’re not going to be here for very long.

My friend in the Jewish community has a favorite story of mine. He has retold it on a number of occasions and even designed a lesson around it. It has to do with respect as much as anything. The story goes that when I lived in Canada and managed a youth hostel for a while, I used to make a speech when people checked in for the first time. I wanted to tell them that there were a few basic rules: don’t destroy the place, don’t cause problems with the women and pay your bill on time. Not so many rules that need to be remembered. But the thing was that they would sit still for my speech and listen to me respectfully or we would not have room at the end for them. What was important to me was that they were open to the sound of my voice and understanding that these rules that I was making were real and enforceable. They either showed about a minute and a half of respect or they were not going to be in my hotel.

This is usually the place where people find themselves talking to a locked gate. When people who actually make the mistake of getting close to me think they are free to take on ownership options, they are dismissed. It’s not that I demand to retain power over them, it is that we will be even and Democratic and conversational and mutually respectful or I’m the boss. I prefer the first, I don’t like the second at all but I will not accept any other compromises. If you think you are my boss, you are my enemy. If you think you own me or have rights to me or have the rights to do whatever you want in your perverse little stupid backwards low rent trailer trash imagination, you’re dreaming. You are hated. You are unwanted. Your contract remains unsigned. The only vision I want of you is your ass walking away down the road. You don’t belong here if you don’t have enough respect to be fair.

That picture at the top of the page by the way are my poppy plants. It is their time to shine and they are all flowering on their way to producing their little seed pods which taste very good on bread. There is a stigma attached to it because apparently there are certain sorts of poppies that are used to make heroin. You are looking at my entire stash and I have no intention whatsoever of manufacturing narcotics from these Poppy plants. I will harvest the pods soon. I like poppy seeds, don’t you? Little poppy seed on fresh bread? Come on, get out of here! It doesn’t get any better than that.

So that’s about the story here this morning. I’ve got a ton of things to do. I guess it’s time to collect these Walnut leaves. I’m going to make some tea out of them a little bit later. I’ve let the leaves sit outside in the sun for a couple of days now and they are all dry enough to go in a bank.

I am going to water a little bit later today but I am going to bring a small bucket of water down to the sweet potatoes. If it is just that they are a little dry after yesterday, they can have a little cocktail here this morning. 

I’m also going to go deep into my lentil Garden and give those guys a nice drink as well. You know, it’s funny how needy human food plants are. I do not have to do a damn thing to have all of the horseradish leaves or saltbush I can possibly handle. I have so many of these things growing around here that I’m just picking up plants and eating them like a skewer. If I seem a bit sharp here this morning, it probably had to do with how much saltbush I ate. I also had some spinach leaves, a little bit of salad and some fresh onions on a couple of crackers. Breakfast is like hanging out at a buffet these days. I don’t know what to tell you, it just makes you feel a bit alive to eat this stuff.

Okay, I’ll be honest, if Lena shows up tomorrow, I’ll give her a job washing the floors. She’s a good floor washer and I don’t mind her company. Well, I don’t mind her company when she shows up on schedule and does her job professionally. On those days, I have her money in my hands and she’s welcome to it and I am always appreciative of the work and her company and her friendship. If you think I am inhuman that I put my kindness on a schedule, my advice is to bask in the warmth of my kindness by staying on schedule and doing your job well. If you think I’m a phony because the truth of the matter is I don’t want to be bothered at all for anything ever from anybody unsolicited, you have enough of an opinion to go put a like on your Facebook page or a love on your Instagram. You are welcome to vote as much as you like and feel as much consternation as pleases you. In the meantime though, the door is locked. If you don’t have an appointment, you don’t belong here.

***

I was sort of thinking of just letting it lie as it was. In a poker game, this would be a case of me saying I’m good. I don’t need any more cards. I was just about to update on the website when I thought about it and decided that I’ve never actually done one writing stint and called it a day. I never want someone to think that I don’t care.

Or I came back to do some more writing because there was a disturbance in the force. Literally, as I started writing these words I got a call from my ex partner that the water barrel guy wants to deliver tomorrow night after 8:00. My answer was no. This time doesn’t work for me. By 8:00, even though it is still before sundown, I will be long gone and into my weekend. If he had shown up at any time today or even if you wanted to come right now, I would be happy to greet him and I have the money in my hand. 

I understand that local gentiles usually think of Saturday as being their only day to do their private business. This is probably true. Usually people allow Sunday to be their day off. There’s not so much sacredness for the majority of people. A lot of people go to the Russian Orthodox churches, I’m not debating that. But people are not really that religious. They are willing to fight for what they believe is their religious affiliation. I just don’t find too many truly spiritual people. Truly spiritual people are more contemplative and you know, people here are just into money.

I’m just not willing to make this compromise. There was a time where I didn’t think much about it. There was a time when I didn’t even take any days off for myself. If people wanted to work with me and the time to do so was on a Saturday, whatever worked. 

This isn’t to say that I never had religion thrown in my face. I have one story about our local millionaire, you could probably use the word oligarch especially now about him. He literally was my English student at the time. I’m not going to go deeply into our relationship. We have had our ups and downs and unfortunately, he doesn’t owe me any favors anymore. I’ve talked about that here so if you’ve been reading me, you probably know what I’m talking about.

There was always an argument between us as to whether or not he actually wanted to be my student or whether he just liked having access to me. What he really always wanted was to have me somehow on his payroll and to use me however the hell he wanted. I’m not guessing at this, he said this to me on more than one occasion. Me being me however, I always turned him down. I’ve never been known to do things just for the money. He actually insulted my teaching business many times. I don’t remember that he actually offered me a job but the inference was there that my life would be much better if I were to kiss the ring. I never wear jewelry so ring kissing is a pretty alien thing for me.

The story goes that it was Rosh Hashanah and this was during a Time when I was attending services at the synagogue regularly. I didn’t live very far away and was walking over with a kippah, a yarmulke on my head and my tallest around my shoulder. Exactly at that minute though, my phone rang. He by the way didn’t live very far away and my guess is that he saw me while driving past. His message was in the form of text and he wanted me to understand that he needed an English lesson right away.

Come on, what do you think I said? You see, you understand me already.

The thing is, it’s an interesting dynamic when people play the religion card. I’m sure a lot of the shit I get is simple anti-semitism. I’m sure it’s anti-semitism even if the people doing the actions don’t fully understand that it is. Anti-semitism is simply a form of objectivism. Objectivism is basic dehumanization. It is also the number one hobby of our electronic world. The algorithm creates these objectifying barriers and faux ideas for us to get excited over and everybody thinks this is the way the world is supposed to be.

I understood what was going on at that moment. Truthfully, I didn’t really give a damn whether he was happy or not. This was probably my biggest selling point for the entire time we were actually friends or at least openly acting friendly to each other. I was probably one of the few people in his life who wouldn’t kiss his ass. 

In fact, our last stint for English practice came exactly at the time that his new lead acid battery factory was being protested vociferously in the breast region. People were up in arms about this new amount of deadly pollution they would have to deal with. During this time, I of course sided with the greens. I told him it was time to invest in r&d. I told him that led acid was one thing but lithium-ion was probably the way to go. I tried to talk to him about windmills and solar panels and using his wealth to perhaps aid the beginning of green infrastructure and the region. Of course I was barking at the Moon. He doesn’t give a damn about anything but his bottom line and has told me on more than one occasion that he would be thrilled if his entire world was automated and he never had to worry about a human being ever again.

I don’t really feel right about saying I told You so or anything like that. But there were a few episodes during this time, a little bit of it with my involvement which is the main reason why we’re not really friends anymore. But he had some very bad luck after this. The KGB came in and investigated, charged him with corruption or something like that and he actually sat in jail at least as far as the news we got from the papers. I have never had an opportunity to openly talk to him about his experience so I don’t really know. And like I say, he doesn’t owe me any favors anymore. And for what it’s worth, a couple of the president’s own buddies put up a few million dollars to buy that battery factory. Something about the president’s friends being the new owners and remarkably, there were not so many protests anymore. At least none that managed to get into the papers.

I’m not going to say that the water barrel guy specifically targeted this particular time. It might be the truth or it could just be that this is when he had his free time. I mean, I look very Jewish these days. It’s probably the first thing people think about when they see me. Well, maybe not the only thing but it gets the winning percentage. In any case, I’m not going to do it.

The perfect deal would have been for him to call up and show up today after work. He doesn’t really live that far away and he literally could come to me right now if you wanted to and I would be happy to meet him and take delivery. This would be the ideal situation because then he doesn’t need to bother himself on his Sundays or to run harder than he wants to tomorrow afternoon. More importantly, we are supposed to get some rain on Saturday and Sunday and if I had these things now, I could set everything up tomorrow and we would be in business if we actually get some rain.

There is no use in crying over spilled water though. I’ve already used up the best part of two tanks and today I went pretty close to the bottom of the barrel in a third. The tanks I have will refill if we do get some rain this weekend. I guess it would have been nice though to be able to catch a little bit more water.

Actually, I will be able to catch some water tomorrow. I could set up at least two barrels over by the barn to catch the rain during the weekend. That roof will give me that 500 L effortlessly. Actually, if I really wanted to dive into it, I could even divert as many as three barrels to the barn. This is all something to think about tomorrow during the day. I’ll know how ambitious I am by then. Tomorrow is going to be another hot one though. Most probably, I’m not going to be that ambitious at all.

I can tell you one thing though. Money really changes people. Having money in your hand does something to you. Probably the first thing it does is it gets your mind moving with this new sense of mobility that you have. If you have a lot of money, you are free to travel.

You also rise socially, at least in your own head, and become a different type of animal. People who actually get money in their hands very often just get drunk on the power they have. Part of it is this movement but a bigger part of it is just that you suddenly have the wherewithal to buy things that you need or want or believe will showcase your egotism well.

When I was a young man, my parents did not invest pretty much anything in my future. I did not come from a poor background but my parents never really offered me any sort of opportunities to change my point of view. Many American young people have opportunities to travel and look around. I did this too but I did it on my own money much later in life. I am not sorry for anything I did but truly, if I knew then what I knew now I probably would never have bothered. Right now, you couldn’t pay me to travel on holiday. If somebody absolutely needed my body for business, I could probably make the ride but to go someplace just to stay in a hotel is probably the most unappealing thing I could possibly think of. And don’t get me started on restaurants.

I think what I’m trying to say here is that letting the money go is not really as painful as you think. In fact, it’s the exact same process that is weaning yourself off any addiction. I’m not talking about basic food money but really, unless you have no imagination at all, what I’m talking about does get really close to basic calories.

The trick is simply to think about what you are doing rather than allowing your impulses to take over. If you stop and give yourself a minute to contemplate your actions and all of these wonderful things you want to spend your money on, you would probably go a long way towards saving a ton of money just by thinking a little bit about whether this thing that you need is actually needed.

There was a time after I left my family that I went to visit my parents. They always had these remarkably huge houses. Barns really. They were very proud of their houses. They would love to give tours and show people around. They took great pride at being able to afford these giant edifices. And really, I can’t argue about the view or location of some of the places they managed to buy into. And no, I’m not jealous nor am I angry that this money went to these places.

The only thing I’m saying is that they never made sense to me. Why in the world did they need a place that cost several hundred dollars every month just for heating and cooling? Why live in a place where you are obligated to spend three or four hundred dollars just on fees to the local maintenance? We’re not even talking about rent, we’re talking about extraordinary amounts of money just to keep you in a structure and out of the rain.

Okay, I am crazy. But I just don’t get it and we are all supposed to be so very proud of leather couches or fully appointed kitchens with marble countertops and six burner stoves. Everybody is thrilled when it comes time to do some redecorating and we just can’t wait to tell our friends about how much money we have spent to upgrade one room or another.

When I moved back here from the capitol, my first thought was to put some money into redecorating and fixing some negatives about my apartment. I talked to the owners about it and thought I would make a deal about putting decent floors in. This was going to be where my office was and because I was on the 4th floor, I was nervous about walking on other people’s heads. If we put a decent floor in, the room would feel better and I was willing to kick in the money to make it happen. I was actually thinking exactly this way.

I went out of town for some reason and they agreed to do the work while I was gone. But when I came back, all they had done was put a cosmetic layer of laminate over the shit floor that was there. They have not put down concrete or acoustical pads. They had done nothing to build the floor that was exactly in the corridor right next to it. The corridor had a magnificent floor and I thought they understood that I wanted the two rooms to match. 

This was just not who they were. This was not the type of people they were. They weren’t interested in making any deals with me, they just took the money I said I had and did the cheapest possible work. I said thank you and never bothered to fix anything else in that apartment unless it completely broke down. And more than anything, it was a fantastic lesson for me. There was never a day when I was embarrassed about not having Euro styling. There wasn’t a single relationship or a single visit where the state of that apartment mattered one bit. The internet worked, I had a balcony that I could sit on and have a view of the River from and I had a comfortable place to come home to and cook.

The house I live in right now is not ostentatious. It’s not horrible. It’s old. For sure it’s old and it’s very old school. It was built as nothing more than a simple shelter for people that were probably going to spend most of their time outside. Right now I am very comfortable in the room that I’ve taken for myself. I also have a fantastic office here, a kitchen that I can cook pretty well in and of course a ridiculously big Garden. Not the biggest garden in the world but big enough to contemplate putting a flag at one side and hitting golf balls at it.

Except it doesn’t cost very much to live here at all. Last month my electric bill was 13 rubles. And during the dead of the winter, the most I paid was about 30 bucks. The most important thing is not the money. The most important thing is that you’re comfortable in your home. I don’t need very much at all to be comfortable. I just need to know it’s mine.