Friday, June 17th 2022

It’s about 3:30 a.m. and I’m not feeling too well. I feel like I’ve got something in my stomach. I’m not sure what’s causing it. I’m thinking it might be nerves. Too much acid in my belly. Too many worries. Worries are not good for you. They take years off your life.

I’m also up early because I’m interested in watching the NBA finals. I won’t lie. I am pulling for the warriors who can close it out today. At the moment, I have the Mets Brewers game on. I’m thinking about making something to eat. 

I’m reaching an interesting place here heading to the apex of the summer. I think it means something when you live your life annually. What I mean is that most people seem to follow economics more than ecology. Perhaps their business has seasons that relate to actual earthly seasons but I think mostly, people just Las Vegas life. There are 24 hours in the day and they just keep it going.

My neighbors for example never have a single day where they don’t use their car. I understand that I’m on the outside of things and that most people, or at least the percentage of people that live with cars would think this completely normal. You took the trouble to buy a car, why on Earth wouldn’t you use it?

What this means though is that everyday is pretty much the same. Sure, sometimes the roads are more wet or icy than others. But what you do with yourself and how you live your life never really changes. You put on warmer clothes, you wear lighter clothes.

Many years ago when I lived in Northern California, I lived in a town on the San Francisco peninsula that basically had no weather. Further south, our friends had very sunny Summers but we never did. Pretty much every day was somewhere between 50 and 60°, cloudy and overcast. I had some small fruit trees in the back and a plum tree out in front but other than these trees blossoming, growing leaves and fruit and then dropping their leaves, there was no genuine indication that the seasons were changing. There was no difference between winter and summer. Life just continued on.

2 years ago when I started writing essays in the hope of being moderately influential to national politics, I was living in an apartment in town. I started that writing in January and finished in November but really, it was just a calendar. What I was interested in was the movements of the politicians. Of course we had our first wave of covid that year and a failed Revolution during the Belarusian elections. All of these things happened but none of it had anything to do with anything except numbers on a calendar. There was no particular summer or winter. Just warmer clothes or lighter clothes.

But then last year I moved out to the country and started writing about ecology. Suddenly, I had an entire field of life right in front of me. We can argue about how people should or should not keep their territories. My neighbors love butchering everything that grows and using as many gasoline powered instruments as possible to convince themselves that they are working. But I let my field grow and do what it wanted to do. Suddenly, I had seasons.

The way everything looks with the passage of time changes. As the Earth revolves around the Sun and our angle in relation to the sun changes, the sun moves differently in the sky and with it all living things seem to dance and live and act. It’s the Sun that drives everything. Its light and energy gives life to millions upon millions upon millions of plants and with them, animals that feed on them and other animals that feed on those animals.

I’m not a lifetime farmer but as of the moment, I seem to be eating my own food from my own land to a large enough percent to make me absolutely grateful and connected to this place I have. Because I don’t cut my grass, the place is just covered right now with wild flowers. Of course, my ex partner has planted several decoratives. Over the next few years they will grow and expand and perhaps in 5 years or so, this place will look much more human-controlled than it does now. 

But still, we are in the middle of June. We are just a few days away from the solstice. We are right now getting the absolute maximum of light and solar energy that we ever get. I am outside making these words, it’s not even 4:00 a.m. and there is enough light to see by. It will stay light here until just a little bit before 10:00.

Then it will just all start going away. Every day we will get less and less and all of the plants, all of the living things will start scurrying desperately to reproduce.

My onions are already bolting. The spinach wants desperately to put up its stock as does the lettuce. Everything we have is just fighting to get bigger and stronger to be ready for what is coming. Life is a race to be finished before the frosts come. 

I really wasn’t so uncomfortable in the winter. In the winter, it’s kind of a fight to stay warm. There are people whose houses are built a little better than mine, their heating systems are more efficient. But I managed to stay comfortable enough. I got used to it. In fact, the less I went to town, the easier it was to deal with the weather.

Right now, my body is trying to adapt to all of this warm weather. In the first few days of heat, I was simply melting. I couldn’t generate any energy to do anything. It was just too warm and I didn’t even want to move. No, it’s getting easier. I’m doing a little better. My body is adapting to the seasons.

A friend of mine had a trip to Phoenix Arizona and he said it was 112. I don’t know what that is in Celsius but I think it’s probably something like 50. Maybe mid 40s. Bloody hot. Ridiculously hot. Too hot.

I really wish people could see through my eyes. I really wish people could understand and feel what I feel. Global warming is real. The weather here is not correct. It is too cold and too hot and the weather is becoming violent. It’s supposed to be more gentle. The water flow through the ecosystem is supposed to be easier. The sky is too dirty. We have put too much shit in the air and in the water. The body is ill and dysfunctional. 

The Earth is in pain and trying to live but we never let it get healthy. We never let ourselves get healthy and we never let the Earth go healthy. We just keep lyonizing youth and masking the truth about what happens to us.

Yeah, I picked up the pen a couple of years ago. I decided I needed to add my voice to the conversation. I’m glad I did. But this political inspiration that started me has led me down a path of understanding. When you go looking for the truth, you find it. Perhaps it’s like an onion with many layers but you find it. Anything you practice, you get better at. Anything you put your time into will become better.

A lot of people have questioned why I write this. I write this because thinking about life and about my life has changed my life. Trying to find the truth has led me to understanding what the truth is. There is a lot of noise being made by a lot of people who do not wish us to see or hear. There is a lot of noise that prevents us from seeing what is right in front of our eyes. But I see. What is right in front of my eyes is right in front of my eyes.

I guess I’m going to go watch the ball game now. It’s just after 4:00. The birds are already singing. There is supposed to be some rain today. I hope so. I watered yesterday. All living things need clean water. And if it rains, I’m interested to see what my water system looks like. It’s going to be hot for the next 2 months. I’m going to need all the water I can get.

***

Well, that was an interesting morning. It’s 10:30, my shoes are wet but everything works. I am so happy. As far as the barn goes, the gutters themselves leak like sieves. I’m going to have to go and put some silicone or concrete to solidify those connections. It’s not the end of the world because the flow of water off that roof is tremendous. The first bucket that receives the water from the roof was filling up faster than my pump works. And though at the beginning, it seemed as though the connections at the bottom of the tanks were not working, after about 10 minutes of rain, the water pressure was enough to start sending water into the system. As soon as the center bucket was primed it started flowing and now all four buckets are at the same level.

I do want to change this configuration. I don’t really like that one bucket that I have sitting outside the fence. I don’t like it sitting out in the sunshine all day and I don’t like it that it’s a few centimeters lower than the rest of them. This will not have a tremendous influence on the total amount of water. In fact, it’s helpful if I draw water from that lead bucket and let the others backfill as I’m pumping. But still, I think if everything was the same height this would be better.

As far as the front of the house goes, the drop system I put in works absolutely fine and we actually had enough rain to reach the overflow and sure enough, water finds its own level. No leaks there at all and that’s 750 l. 

The last expanse of the roof that I have is a little smaller and so I just have two buckets there plus another one catching a drip. The rain went on hard for maybe only 5 or 10 minutes. Possibly 15 or 20. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention because I was outside staring down into the buckets while this was going on. But just as a guesstimate, even 15 or 20 minutes of hard rain got us 500 L. Every 15 minutes of hard rain is good for my field and allows me two more waterings.

When I got up today, I really didn’t want to do very much. I contacted my ex partner and of course, she told me to take it easy. She loves mothering me. Anytime I say I want to quit, she’s right there agreeing with me. Great lady in that sense.

But suddenly when the rain started I was full of energy. I didn’t care anymore about being tired or about pain. I just wanted to get out and see if everything was working. I mean, logic and physics and engineering say that it’s completely understood that water is going to find its own level and flow through pipes from one place to another. Simple water pressure at one place and water level at the other. There’s nothing even interesting about it.

But let something like this be your own idea. Let something you visualized more than a year ago suddenly materialize before your eyes. Juxtapose this vision of yours against all of the monumental shit and empty voices from neighbors telling you the way things have been for a hundred years. Listen to the voices of climate deniers and simply people who are brain dead telling you the way things are and about their people and how I’m so far behind.

The only relevant thing that I said to anybody was my profession. I told them that I am a teacher, a writer and an ecologist. I told them that science says that global warming is real, that the causes of it are known and understood and that I was really interested if they could give at least a second thought about how much air pollution they cause. They laughed at me. They abused me. They absolutely shit on me and played with me and played with my emotions and played stupid high school games on me as if no one ever grows up and becomes an adult in this country.

But today I win. Today I have water. When these people are baking to death, I have water. When they have no fruit, I will have fruit. When they have to spend their money, I will not. I have water here. I save my water like I save my money. And please understand me, I save my money. When you live in the Republic of Belarus, you don’t worry about them stealing your money. You know they will steal your money.

So the last two squash plants are in the ground. They got some water from me and then God helped out a little too. I’ve brought a little wood inside if I’m feeling it. It’s a little bit chilly today. Not too bad but a little bit. I guess I should bring some water from the well and fill up my house tanks. And after that, I need to go get some greens for dinner and I guess I’m making bread for my day off. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

***

This week’s Torah portion is called Behaalotecha, and basically it’s about the children of Israel now mobilized and making their way through the desert.

In the beginning, they make the rules about dealing with the mobile Temple, they make sure that the priests have enough barbecue and then they head off looking for a new home. They have a dark cloud following them. When the cloud is over their heads they rest and when the cloud leaves them they move. The dark cloud is God.

My mom used to make a joke about this. She was referring to Jewish bad luck. She said that there’s always a dark cloud over our heads.

But then later, there is one of my favorite mentions. I’ve always felt that Moses was an enlightened guy and knew in his heart that veganism was the way to go. I believe in my heart that he was aware that eating meat inevitably caused problems. It kept people hungry and unsettled and occasionally violent. Most probably he understood that meeting was the cause of all Insanity within the ranks of the children of Israel including those that led to all of those bouts of venereal disease they write about.

But now they were marching through the desert and of course, there’s not a lot of water in the desert and people sometimes get hungry. To help them, he provided manna from heaven. This is described as being like coriander seeds and it sparkled in the morning dew. People would gather it and grind it and make cakes from it that were pretty tasty. It was probably pretty healthy All things considered with plenty of protein. 

But yet people started screaming for meat. Like all meat people, they were annoying and bothersome and restless. Exactly what nobody needs and yet there they were bitching and moaning. So Moses talks to God and God says he will hook him up and then Moses says one of my favorite things from the Torah. This is from Numbers chapter 11:

18 Prepare yourselves for tomorrow and you shall eat meat, because you have cried in the ears of the Lord saying, “Who will feed us meat, for we had it better in Egypt.” [Therefore,] the Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat.     

19 You shall eat it not one day, not two days, not five days, not ten days, and not twenty days.

20But even for a full month until it comes out your nose and nauseates you. Because you have despised the Lord Who is among you, and you cried before Him, saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?”

To me, only a real vegan would think like this.

I spent a couple of years being kind of serious about religion. I spend a lot of time with the Jewish community. I met some nice people and learned a lot perhaps. I am not really suited for religious life. You can blame me for my habits of perhaps being headstrong. I’m a scientist first and foremost and my biggest problem was with belief. In fact, it was one of the two things that bothered me the most. I believe in mathematics more than being told that something is regardless of who does the talking.

I was also a vegetarian when I first came to visit. I really did not want to eat meat at gatherings. They were pretty adamant about pushing against me. In fact, up until this particular 4 year stint that I am in the middle of now, I never felt into the point of being religiously dedicated to veganism. I never actually had the clarity that I was doing the right thing or fully believed that there was a difference. I wasn’t ashamed of animal cruelty or animal farming, I wasn’t very knowledgeable about health or human biology or anatomy the way I am now. Vegetarianism was just simply something I did because I liked it better and it seemed kinder. Or perhaps there was no other reason other than I liked it.

But they had a way of pushing. There is a lot of peer pressure amongst meat eaters. People who eat meat tend to desire this form of populism in their thinking. They don’t really rely on their own two eyes to tell them pragmatically what’s in front of them. They like to follow rules that other people set down. Probably it has something to do with restricted blood flow or difficulties coming back from meat highs and lows. This is especially true for people who eat meat at every meal. These are the “you’re a vegetarian? What do you eat?” People. These are people who can’t seem to understand the meaning or nature of food itself.

Again yesterday in that Star Trek episode, regardless of the fact that the people on that planet were absolutely in tip top shape and did not seem to have any health problems whatsoever living without a single animal on their farms, the meat eaters from the Enterprise demanded that they think angry thoughts and get back to the business of domination. When the leader of the colony got angry enough to break the spell of whatever plant had turned them into pacifist vegetarians, his quote was “we have done nothing”. This meant that they hadn’t completely dominated the planet yet and therefore we’re not worthy of praise from the federation.

What a crock of shit. What a stinking load of rancid shit. A group of people are living at peak health and happiness, everybody is getting along just fine, they are not a burden on their surroundings in any way shape or form, they are living a completely sustainable lifestyle and are all experiencing feelings of love, togetherness and happiness. Why in the hell is this bad?

And if we’re talking about the children of Israel stuck out in the desert, it seems like every time someone commits a crime or comes into Good Fortune, they end up donating meat for the barbecue. The smell is in the air all the time driving everybody crazy. Even though you got free food from God himself, probably healthy and nutritious enough to sustain life and probably, enough to make people very clear minded from the lack of animal fat and cholesterol, you just can’t get it out of your head that you want barbecue.

I don’t know. It’s been a long time since I have knowingly eaten meat. I tried going to a restaurant in town at the beginning of this year and the son of a bitch who was cooking decided to screw me over and gave me a chicken sandwich. I couldn’t believe how disgusting The taste was. If you haven’t eaten meat in a while and suddenly it’s in your mouth, well, you should just take my word for this. Quit for a while, let your eyes and your brain clear up and then take a look.

I remember this moment of clarity myself. It came right at the beginning of my veganism. I made the choice based upon science and looking for heart health. I was tired of being too fat and too sick. I wanted to ride my bike. I wanted some fresh air.

So I went vegan, I gave whatever meat was in my freezer to my neighbors and went at it full force. Within a day of leaving meat out of my meals, my bicycle riding doubled. My recovery doubled, my strength doubled. Literally, it was like being on steroids.

But then one morning I decided to go for a bike ride at 5:00 a.m. and listen to a baseball game. It was very cold, still below freezing and I was outside a little too long and I got a cold.

I decided I needed chicken soup. If you’re going to be sick and you’re vegan, you’d probably die. This was my thinking then, not now. Now, I would just as easily go to bean soup for exactly the same effect or even better. At the time, I went to the meat shop to get some chicken.

It was a horror movie. I didn’t see any food. I saw dead bodies. I saw dead bird bodies with their feathers having been ripped off and their heads chopped off lying row after row. It was like watching scenes from war. Death.

It was exactly like seeing pictures from war where the bodies were lying in a line or tossed into a mass grave. Meat. Dead people are meat. We are animals. We are made of meat.

Have you ever heard the stories of Russian homeless people practicing cannibalism on each other? You want me to give you a link or maybe you can just look it up for yourself. They were hungry, they wanted some meat so they just killed someone and cooked his leg.

Get it? Meat is murder. Meat is a narcotic. Meat is carcinogenic. And for the human animal, meat is insanity.

Yeah, those people were in the Garden of Eden. Even Mr Spock was in love and hanging from trees to speak quietly with his beautiful blonde girlfriend. He was in love and in his own words, for the first time in his life he was happy. And all he was doing was living with a bunch of vegetarians. Can you imagine that?

***

It’s a little before 4:00 and it’s raining again. I have finished almost all of my chores. I really should sweep the floor. I really wish I had someone to do the floors for me. I’m thinking that this was a mistake. The next time I see Lena, I will invite her for Fridays to do the floors. Washing, I can do myself. Just the floors would be nice.

I have never seen my plants as happy as they are right now. I have to think that my little watering trip last night at least gave them what they needed. Today everyone is fat! The sunflower seeds are starting to jump as are the beans. The cabbages are proud and open, living funnels drawing water towards their roots. Everything with leaves on them is now exploding. Even the sweet potatoes look like they’re thinking seriously about doing something. And those little straggler volunteer zucchini that I replanted so badly this morning, they look just fine as do the two squash plants. Everybody is happy.

I found and fixed a couple of leaks in my system. Everything is absolutely beautiful. These three brief rains that we’ve had today have netted me about 600 L of water. I am fat too!

What I like about this is that I am maximizing the efficiency of my physical property. Letting things like roof meterage go to waste is simply foolish. If I haven’t mentioned it before, I have quite a bit south facing roofing. One of these days, perhaps if I get lucky somewhere along the way, I might employ a solar system to take me further off the grid. This is not a gigantic problem currently. If the war comes, I might be lucky to have something like that. But I just paid my bill and it only came to about $6. It’s a bit more expensive in the winter, in the summer it’s nothing.

Actually, there is a pretty constant 16 km an hour breeze that blows through the Republic of Belarus. It’s a big flat prairie like the American Midwest. Where I live is a lot like Iowa with a high sky and plenty of wind. Although solar panels are very good and more efficient, that windmill could be counted on all year round. Belarus certainly should invest in windmills. They should invest in windmills and de-invest in Russians. Don’t invest in Russians. Don’t invest in people that start fights where friendship would have been worth millions. Don’t invest in greed.

I just finished making a dough ball for this evening. While I was at the market and had a brief moment of time, I shot up to the store and picked up several bags of whole grain rye flour. Think Russian rye here. I know, I just spent a paragraph saying how little I like the Russians but Russian rye is a different question. Food is for people.

Unfortunately, I don’t have caraway seeds. I probably should look for them but it never pops into my head. I have sesame seeds in there. I also have some chia seeds to make up for the lack of gluten. Rye flour has gluten, you can knead it and it will start to firm up and cling. Maybe those chia seeds are just Overkill. Then again, why would anybody argue with omega-3s?

As for dinner tonight, I actually don’t think I’ll be eating anything particularly special. I like having fresh bread on Friday nights. I also made myself a promise that I would never have a Friday night meal without greens. Currently, I have the entire bloody supermarket at my disposal just by walking out my front door so greens are not an issue. After that though, I’m not really sure what my tasty dish is going to be. I’m pretty close to being able to make a salad. Then again, I don’t really need to make salads. I like solid greens all by themselves. I don’t know.

The only thing I do know is that other than this rye flour, I’m not really going to feature any store-bought nonsense. I’m not buying bread from the factories and I don’t have any factory macaroni or sauce. I’ll get along well without them and I’m sure I can find something tasty and satisfying without looking too hard. There’s plenty of stuff lying around here that will do the trick.

I feel like in parting a bit of wisdom would be in order. At the moment though, I can’t really think of what this wisdom should be. Maybe I’ll get back to this in a couple of hours. It’s not going to get dark until 9:30 and I’m not even close to being hungry. Everything’s ready except for sweeping the floors. And we have plenty of water in the tanks. Really, I feel fat. I feel fat and satisfied. June 17th. I’m going to have to remember this date. On June 17th 2022, I found myself suddenly fat and happy.

***

It’s time to make something to eat and call it quits. This week is coming very quickly to an end. I understand sundown is still several hours away. I’m sorry. I’m a little selfish. I’m hungry and I want to eat something nice and big. Big and nice. It’s a beautiful combination. I want to eat something that takes all my hunger away. I want to eat something that tastes wonderful. I want to eat something that is not only healthy but enjoyable. It’s time to do some cooking.

This was a good week. This was a good week with a good ending. This was a week where I actually got to see the results of my work for a change. It’s hard to explain how it feels. When you work at something for a long time and suddenly victory is yours, this is an incredible feeling. It is so satisfying. And in this case, it is both mentally and physically satisfying because I not only conceived of the work, I did most of it myself. I had some help. I could not have done it without help. But at the end of the day, it’s my eyes that I trust to tell me of the quality of the work.

There is also one other aspect of this week that I did not really talk about in full honesty. There were some personal things going on behind the scenes that just do not need to be spoken about. They were issues with parasites, people who do not understand the things I understand about life and living well. Just small people looking for a handout. Just beggars.

I also got rid of several of them this week. Not just one, but two. It didn’t even take much. But in both cases, my mind is free of them. I do not have any obligation to pay attention to them anymore. And in both cases, which is even better, they get to worry about me forever.

Instead of going into the details of this, let me just finish with the philosophy. We do our own work. We take a vested interest in things that are important to us and we do not tear down and destroy or steal, we build and support and maintain. This is the core philosophy of living well. We cannot simply eat and demand others to take care of us. We must take care of ourselves and if you have any heart whatsoever, it should go to your community.

I feel good. I thought I would have something like a lazy day, like two lazy days in a row. But I still got up and worked today. When You Believe In what you’re doing or if you love what you’re doing, it’s never work. If you believe you’re doing the right thing and helping, it actually feels good. Now it’s the end of my week. Forgive my pride, I did a good job this week.