Tuesday, July 5th 2022

Yesterday’s thinking about the voices of conservative thinking and the detrimental effect on our environment, social systems, quality of life and even since of personal security have been hanging around in my head a lot. Honestly, when I think of how many unreasonable people I know of who all have the exact same lines of thinking, the exact same sense of personal entitlement, the exact same disregard is starting to coalesce in my mind as perhaps a genuine axiomatic truth. There is a genuine specific thing that happens to human beings under the stress, pressure and duress of an unending and unrelenting economic system that disallows anything but perpetual slavery.

We are money freaks. We can’t see anything but money and truthfully, we are not allowed to see anything but money. But in this blinding hopeless hell that we put ourselves into, also exists this lunatic moralistic point of view that we have the right to dictate policy over each other’s moral choices. This is not to say that a certain sense of morality is not vital to people living together well. The point is that people do not attempt to live together well or peacefully but instead use their position on moral issues as weapons to harm others.

Why they choose to do this is to me quite obvious. The answer would be almost universal. In answer to the question “why did you practice this form of cruelty?” They would simply answer that they did what they were told to do or what they thought they were supposed to do. Or in other words, they believed that the rules were out there to act as they do and they just go along with it because this is also what they believe they are supposed to do.

Just a little while ago, I came across this video about Wilhelm Keitel, Adolf Hitler’s Field Marshal and a man who met his end after the Nuremberg War crime trials in 1946.

The truth of the matter is that the death of this one man, utterly ruthless though seemingly known as completely spineless his entire life by almost all of his compatriots, was much more symbolic than it was healing in any way. Millions of people lost their lives and perhaps hundreds of millions had their lives irrevocably changed by the pointless slaughter of the second World War. A War fought for what? Seriously, what indeed was the point of the second World War or the first World War or any of the wars fought by any of the Nations throughout history?

The thought that came into my mind when I started watching this was that this phrase, this axiomatic saying, this bit of knowledge that “those who do not learn history are condemned to repeat it” seems somehow so prophetic has to be qualified as blindingly stupid. Looking at the current War being fought, I cannot help but see the correlations between the Nazis movement and the Russians. I cannot help but see similarities on almost every front.

My conclusion to this is that it’s not just that following in the footsteps of a failed attempt at world domination through military fascism led to the ruin of a country, that lesson could be learned by almost any War anywhere in history. It is that doing so in a country that literally relives its wars and its stories and retells its statistics of the horrors of wars religiously here after year after year seems… incredibly stupid, doesn’t it? I mean, they say that one of the definitions of insanity is doing the same things over and over again but expecting different results would mean that this is insane. But when you have the leadership choosing to do this and the people of the country spinelessly agreeing that whatever they are told is simply fine by them, you are literally having an exact repetition of exactly the thing that they have been speaking of as unspeakable and something that should never be forgotten religiously and ceremoniously.

Okay, putting a thread on this thought has to come from somewhere. It might just be that I am being pushed around by my internet algorithm or perhaps I am the one who is pushing the algorithm around. But right in the middle of this thought, I ran into two videos from the great video essayist Adam Something.

The first one caught my eye of course because it’s about the lunacy of car culture. If we want to talk about an economic system that disallows us to sleep or function normally and forces us into a spineless form of social mutilation simply for the purposes of having enough money to pay all of the bills that are required of US during our lifetime, it is unthinkable to go into business or to have to do everything one needs to do (including driving less than a mile to a supermarket to buy international foods and bring them home in single-use plastic bags), the hypocrisy of road building is brought into the light. Simply put, the mathematics show that the more roads we build, the more people using them and the more we invest in green infrastructure or at least quality public transportation, the less pollution we would get from cars.

Of course I agree with him. This makes perfect sense for me. Pushing people into the car business for the purposes of furthering the oil business is exactly what all of this economic slavery is about and the exact tool that’s destroying our environment (and that got Joe Biden elected and keeps Vladimir Putin in power). 

But then I got even one more video about one of Adam Something’s favorite subjects, “the lunacy of poor urban planning”. This one talks about the ridiculousness of Cairo’s current building project.

And here the thinking kind of solidifies pretty clearly. It seems that the quest for money is equal to the quest for power. And power seems exactly equal to completely spoiled and unsocialized people who believe themselves to be superior to others. This superiority can come from any number of places. One can feel themselves to be morally Superior. One can feel themselves to be positionally superior. You can be or feel racially Superior. You can believe that you are a part of a superior sex, live in a superior geographic location, have a superior intellect or I suppose you are superior because you have larger breasts, skinnier legs or a larger penis.

This is the key. Separating ourselves is All We do. Insulating ourselves and running from or defending ourselves against who and what we are is All We do. Security, fear, hatred of the unknown and everything driving us eventually self-destructively to the conclusion of this planet simply because no one is allowed to breathe.

Why are we not controlling our population? The answer is, the more people, the more chaos. The more chaos, the more opportunities for horrible things to happen and money to be made from the atrocities.

Why was it the most important thing in the world to the oil business backed conservative parties to get the American supreme Court stacked? The answer is to overturn Roe versus Wade and remove legal abortions and personal choice. Why? Two create chaos, fear, uncertainty and moral power for the ruling classes over people’s lives.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that I hear this in the quality of people’s conversation. I see this in the way they deal with information and the things that they talk about and how they talk about them. It is fear. It is an attempt to insulate and isolate oneself from fear that creates a particular mindset. It is an insanity. What I’m saying is that I’m really tired of having my brains scrambled by listening to incoherent people say incoherent things. I am tired of being told that 2 + 2 = 5. I am tired of disinformation. I am tired of people who should not be speaking publicly, actually speaking extremely publicly and people who should be heard and listened to and allowed to inspire are suppressed and pushed aside.

We are going to die from this. We as a species are going to extinguish ourselves and all life on this planet simply because we were too stupid to live. Despite all of the intelligence we created, we found it much more important to continue lunacy, to invest in it, to fight and die for it rather than working for peace.

Just one more thing to listen to here if you can stomach it. I understand that Trump’s people reached out to barstool sports, the guy who invented the one slice pizza review franchise, because they figured he would do it and because the president liked him. Here is perhaps the greatest raw example of a guy who was just a short period of time ago the most powerful man in the world but in reality has the mind equal to a babbling Street person.

Or perhaps the logic of this guy who perhaps currently is the most powerful man in the world.

I still can’t find a film or the full text of Greta’s speech from Glastonbury. There are plenty of trolls telling us how tedious it is to have to listen to her speak. I just can’t find her speech. Apparently, though plenty of people filmed it, there’s some kind of conspiracy theory that disallows the speech from existing all by itself.

***

This video is mine. It’s a short film I took of the ragwort plant sitting in front of my house. You can feel free to crank up the volume on the video if you’d like. It is the natural sound of my house except for gasoline powered weed wackers and really old disgusting and badly maintained automobiles. Oh yeah, and occasionally military helicopters these days.

It’s about 11:45 and I am in the office again. I’m going to do some light work today. It’s very hot, not a cloud in the sky and I’ve lost count of exactly how many lies that have been told to Us by The weather service.

Indeed at the moment I can hear my neighbor happily murdering all of his natural foliage. It is very, very important to keep up appearances. You never can tell who is looking at you or what they may be thinking about you or how you may be harmed by these horrible thoughts. Better to kill everything. Better not to think of anything. And of course, his wife probably wants him to keep busy. Should he stop and start to think, it would influence her power and she just cannot have that.

In theory, my ex-partner is showing up today but I have not heard from her yet. Usually, her arrivals would be a little after 10:00 but as I said, there has been nothing.

Everything looks pretty good, kind of, after last night’s watering. Everybody seems pretty happy to have gotten a good solid watering. I don’t want to say everybody, mostly. There are a few wilty looking leaves. Some plants are definitely not enjoying this dehydration rehydration cycle. It’s not good for them and of course, if they are not healthy, there’s not going to be a very healthy crop coming from them.

The pea pods have appeared. I don’t have an exceptionally wonderful crop of peas but we do have fresh peas at least to eat for a while. We haven’t grown enough to dry and save any for winter but we have some delicious fresh veggies to enjoy for the season. Maybe that’s enough. I mentioned this before but we also have bean pods appearing in the lentil Garden. It’s not an overwhelming success but the pods have appeared and the fruit is growing inside of them.

I’m not giving up on this year but I’m definitely thinking of this year as a learning experience. There are definitely a lot of things that I will do differently next year. A lot of that will be trying new ideas and some of it will be simply more practical thinking.

I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and so I spent my time watching videos. I am sure that you are thinking that I spend a lot of time watching videos generally and this would be absolutely true over the last while. I am staying off my feet as much as I can for practical reasons. If you’re not really available for physical labor either because the heat is too much or because you are afraid of infection, you tend to head towards mental stimulation.

Some of what I saw was mentioned in the conspiracy theory section above. I don’t feel very good about naming it like that. This is not what it is and I believe or at least I hope very much that I made my point. As for why I wrote this, I’m not particularly looking to disturb people or call us a ripple in the fabric of our oh so lovely society. I’m just saying what I see and if you can see it too, maybe you’ll stop driving your car to the supermarket and go there by bike.

I had a brief argument with a friend of mine, literally about this fact. I don’t feel bad about mentioning this because there is no possibility that he reads me and I’m not going to use his name anyway. This was a brief back and forth about ecology and literally, it was exactly about this. I’m the first one to speak:

I drained my well just to have some water available to water the plants and my bucket bottomed out. Maybe I’ll have water tomorrow to drink. I’ve lost almost half my groundwater and it’s not even July yet. It never rains when it’s supposed to and yet people still drive their fucking cars to the supermarket and come home with plastic bags.

Not everyone can get away with walking or biking to the store.

I understand your impeccable logic. But yes they can. Golf carts or ebikes are also not bad for local travel. Or delivery from guys who ride bikes, golf carts and ebikes. Bikes are best. Bring your own bag and please, only buy local food.

That might work where you are but it wont work here unless you go to the store everyday or every other day. I go once a week and there is no way I could or would carry on foot or on a bike.

That’s funny that you should mention that. When I lived in town, I did go to the market once a week and I did buy all the food I needed and brought it home on my back in my bike bag. Technically, I did it here last year. However, I learned something from a very wise jewish sage named Larry David. His eyes became mystical and he said “make two trips”. 

I’m not trying to make fun of anybody. I’m just a little tired of these tired arguments from tired people saying that they simply do not have the energy to save the world today. On the one hand, I can agree with that today. I also don’t have the energy to save the world today. I don’t want to go out into this blinding sunlight just to make some marginal gains but pulling weeds. It is ridiculously hot and I’m also not interested in harming myself anymore than I already have. I really would much rather sit in the cool of the shade and let the world go by.

However, I am going to go do things for a little while. The reason is that I have some energy. Most of this energy I think comes from this really good dietary change I’ve made. Quitting cooked food at least for a large percentage of my meals seems to be working out very well. I have a lot of greens available to me right now and certain things like buckwheat, chickpeas, red lentils, oats, barley etc are very nutritious if simply soaked and not cooked. I am not universally a raw vegan but there are some definite positives to this style of eating. Firstly, there is a bit more clarity than eating cooked food. It’s just the way it hits your system and there is no temperature change at least. The second thing is that on hot days, not eating cooked food is a definite plus. Putting hot things into your body on hot days is basically begging yourself to go into hyperdrive and start sweating through your clothes. It’s also worthy to note that it does wonders for your excretory system. Much more so for these things if eating soaked rather than cooked. And don’t kid yourself, this also leads to clarity of thought.

But getting back to the subject, I didn’t just watch accusatory videos for conservative thinking, I also spent a good deal of time thinking about putting in a simple irrigation system to maximize my situation. Yes, the system of simply walking around and watering everything by hand is doable. I understand I’m having leg problems again right now and there is a possibility I’m not going to see the end of those anytime soon but in theory, physical labor is better than laying out a bunch of plastic hose or PVC. On the other hand, it probably would end up being much more efficient, effective and reliable if I were to lay out a line alone where my fruit trees are planted.

I started thinking a lot about how to maximize my water pumping potential. I have a very strong water pump now. And I started thinking of how to permanently have it in one specific place and then run some simple PVC piping out to the well and back. Running the system by PVC instead of a single hose would mean a very stable system because I could set the depth of the intake exactly in a place that would not draw too much sand and then I could have an outlet manifold that I could send to many different places simply by reattaching a hose. Specifically, I could use it to refill my home tanks, divert it to water storage buckets for gardening use when needed and, I could run a simple line along where I’ve tried planted trees and simply turn it on for 20 minutes a day or less to make sure that the trees always get water at their roots.

I also thought of ways to put a more permanent irrigation system in my boxes. It’s just a matter of investment in something that’s going to eventually end up in the landfill. Again, the most ecological thing I can possibly do would be to stay exactly as I am. But if I were to either fully automate or at least put local watering systems in our planter boxes, this would definitely maximize growth.

Of course if maximum growth was all I cared about, I would be better off greenhousing the entire box system.

Yes, this is probably the curse of an American man. Whenever I work with a local guy, they always have a no money solution and do 99% of everything without purchasing by rethinking and rebuilding with scrap, spare parts and simple ingenuity. If I try to think exactly how they would, the answer probably ends up being that having a permanent place for the pump is very possible but I don’t need extensive PVC, just a hose that is more flexible than the one I have or better, to change the one I have by straightening it out by attaching it to a board. Then, I can cut it at the top of the well and put an elbow joint and run a hose from there to the intake and again, do whatever I want with the output. See what I mean?

Actually, maybe this is the entire problem. All of this work is like a drug. Once you get started, you can’t stop and all you want to do is build more and more and more. Every inconsistency makes you want to do more, to build more to reinvest more.

What’s the true answer? Actually, I think enjoying yourself on the couch is probably what it’s supposed to be about. All of this virtuous building and working and sweating just creates more garbage. It may be better for the economy, but all I’d be doing is bringing more garbage onto my property.

Yeah, a trip system might really be better for the trees. But then again, just agreeing to spend more time giving a little water to the plants that need it also works very well. Maybe the problem is not the system or the things I need to purchase to make a better system, maybe the problem is I just need to shut up and do my job and stop complaining about it. Who knows, I’ll probably get very good at it without ever spending another penny.

***

By the way, breakfast today really was exceptionally good. Like I mentioned, it was a raw vegan affair. Last night, I put some buckwheat, chickpeas and red lentils in a 1 L jar. I think perhaps I used 450 G of material, a little less than half the jar and then filled it up with water. This morning, everything was very soft and edible and nice really. To make it perhaps better, I dropped a small amount of raw peanuts, a tiny piece of a super hot pepper, some black pepper, some homemade mustard and some water to my blender. Then I went out and took some dill and spinach from my garden. I put the dill and half of the spinach in the blender and spun that whole thing up to make a rather lovely peanut dressing and put the rest of the fresh spinach into a bowl and added about a third of the grains and beans. Delicious. Fantastic. Tasty, spicy, no oil or cooking but with a beautiful mouth feel and creaminess. Who could ask for more? Actually I did. Because I had seconds.

Putting together the cost of this meal is difficult because there were quite a few ingredients. I’m just going to take a crazy guess here but perhaps all of the beans together came to maybe one ruble of material. I purchased the mustard seeds and the vinegar that I used to make my homemade mustard, I also purchased the hot peppers several years ago so there was some money in those. The greens just come from my field but perhaps I paid for the seeds. Could we say two rules? That would be about 80 cents plus minus. Is that too much to pay for a healthy nutritious breakfast that tastes good, feels good, does wonders for your digestive system and absolutely fills you up?

And yes, I acquired all these things by bicycle and without using any private automobiles or bringing home any additional plastics.

***

One final note here. I put a call in to my ex partner to find out what the story was. She has a vacation day from work but went to a party at her office. She’s also been at a retreat with the company so she’s in a pretty good mood and never bothered leaving the party. Can’t blame her one bit.

So we talked about possibilities and the answer seems to be for her to take the day off today, she says she wants to go to the beach, and I guess we will do whatever lavender planting we do tomorrow. This is fine by me. We’re getting a few clouds right now and the light has changed to what seems to indicate there’s a potential for rain. That is the most beautiful thought that I could possibly have. Maybe we all get a break today. 

But the final note is from an article that my ex partner sent me last night.

https://zerkalo42.global.ssl.fastly.net/news_/life/17228.html?inst=3

American came to Belarus for political asylum

July 4, 2022 at 05:22 pm “Mirror”

A US citizen came on foot to the Belarusian border and asked for asylum. The video was published by the pro-government telegram channel “Border FM”.

In the video, a man goes to the Belarusian checkpoint, from the territory of which country is not specified. The purpose of the visit, he calls obtaining political asylum, because he believes that he has every reason.

The man says that he is an outcast in his homeland, and the worst thing is that he reads “Pushkin and Akhmatova, which is very annoying to those around him.”

His name is not mentioned, but he showed the border guards a US passport.

Remember, this is not the first time this has happened. In February, several stories appeared on state channels about US citizen Evan Newman , who stormed the US Capitol in early 2021. In March, he received refugee status and decided to move his family to Belarus.

Quite a 4th of July story I guess. I guess it’s pretty obvious why my ex partner sent this to me. I don’t know what I have to do with these people and I don’t really think anything I’ve done here is on any kind of similar plane of existence or explanation. I didn’t come here seeking political asylum or a change of passports. I just liked it the way it was and thought it might be interesting to stay for a while. Absolutely no political intrigue or feelings of pressure.

Well, that’s not exactly true. I personally didn’t feel these things but I did have some conversations with the US embassy about this time. I wrote about these in the book Being Had by the way. You could easily attribute any nefariousness that followed to political intrigue caused by the Bush administration. No conspiracy theory here. But it would explain quite a bit of their indifference towards me.

Anyway, if you want to know and if it’s important to you, my politics are far on the other side of the spectrum. I am not an extremist, I am not anything that you would call an anarchist per se. I’m not looking to lead any political movements other than ecology and environment first. Basically, I just like to hear, taught English for two decades, lived through quite a bit of hardship here and Now I’m building a garden from my retirement and trying not to die so quickly. I just like clean air. Please, don’t make me a political football. I just like to write and I think what I write about is correct.

But seriously, those idiots who stormed the capital at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency? Are you joking me? Are you joking me that this sort of thing was accepted and inspired by the president of the United states? Seriously?

***

Okay, let’s take a break from doing nothing here. Two more pieces of media.

The first, well, I’m sorry but it’s funny.

It’s 10:30 and I’m sitting on a board that is resting on the corner of one of my boxes. A movable bench. And I am watching three white butterflies make a party out of the flowers growing from the daikon radishes. 

I have heard that there is some connection between the color of a butterfly and the color of the flowers they are drawn to. One of the three butterflies just left the row of daikons and made my entire property into a giant buffet. He or maybe she sniffed everything I had including the ragwort But wanted none of any of it. After making a very long journey to the road, it returned and went back to feasting on the daikon flowers.

I noticed this because I wanted to take a picture of my ex partner working in the box along with three butterflies. My decision generally to allow ragwort to grow here had to do with noticing that butterflies go crazy for it. Only this morning, this one very popular spot right in front of my house drew the notice of my ex partner. She said there were maybe even a dozen butterflies hanging out and drinking the sweet nectar.

My love for all of this came from last year when I sat in my kitchen looking out the window and saw what amounted to an aerial ballet over my potato garden. The sun was hitting everything in an almost religious light and the bees and the butterflies and all flying things were all dancing together excitedly over all of the flowering plants. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

There are two schools of thought for growing flowers in your garden. You might be drawn to the beauty or you might be on the science side and believe that providing food for pollinators is generally a good thing for all plant life. I like both sides of the argument.

Something else we have noticed today, this a day after the rain and with the temperature much, much more mild than last week’s Sahara desert. We really have not needed to use any kind of poisons anywhere on the property. True, there are holes in some of the cabbage leaves but it doesn’t seem to be inhibiting the growth of the cabbage. We did spray a little Valerian extract as a deterrent but there’s absolutely nothing poisonous about it. There is literally nothing in this garden that you can’t just break off and put into your mouth.

But all the other life that’s going on in here, even the ants, all seem to be very beneficial to life. Everything really is growing quite well. And there is even one particular bug, I haven’t actually figured out who he is yet, not an attractive guy at all, but after observing him for a while, I’ve come to the understanding that he lives off of other bugs. He lives in the plants, but he is there to eat the bugs that eat the plants. He is the natural predator we need.

I didn’t come to this thinking by myself. I’ve listened to a lot of experts and watched a lot of videos about people who lean towards organic gardening or at least a vegan lifestyle. No killing is a good way to go about your gardening I think. Sure, if all you’re thinking of is money, you might say that I am limiting my productivity. But a lot of these things that I just live and Let live turn out to be pretty beneficial. Anything that supports life is probably not such a bad idea. And if you think a certain crop is particularly heartbreaking, like white potatoes for example, just don’t grow them. 

Speaking of potatoes and live and let live, alcoholic Ghenna showed up today. I guess Lena did her job and told him about transporting the potatoes. Lane is not coming in till tomorrow but he said he didn’t mind the work and of course, anything for a few rubles brings the possibility of some comfort by the end of the day.. so he is down collecting the last of last year’s potato crop. I don’t know where these potatoes are going to end up, but they are leaving here and I’m going to have a clean Root cellar ready and waiting for whatever we want to put in it this year.

It is also possible that Ghena is into cutting back some of the grass on the back part of my property and raking it to a specific location for compost. I am very happy with this development. On the one hand, I have yet one more person who will feel free to come to my property looking for money. This is bad. But, I really don’t want to do the grass cutting myself or the raking or to do any more purchasing those stuff like an electric weed wacker. This variation seems to work best and fits rather well into my live and let live system. I get compost, a local guy gets a small job, I get one less job that I have to physically do myself and next spring, the boxes get some fresh compost to rejuvenate the soil. Everything’s organic except what he’s going to buy with his money.

Tell me how it’s not good to value symbiosis over killing.

***

Well, today was a bit of a Max effort. I’m not going to lie to you and say that I was any Great balls of fire but for whatever it’s worth, we made everything ship shape. All the boxes got cleaned out, the lavender finally made it into the ground after probably a month of waiting. Theoretically, it likes miserable dirt and Sandy land and where it is planted, there is plenty of all of that. But after all of our original plans for it, it ended up serving its true purpose as a decorative. It will bring its scent to the front of the house and all of it found homes. Planting the last one was one of those high five moments.

We even watered and mulched the sweet potatoes, something we probably should have done a long time ago. Blame me for everything but today was the day that everything got done.

In fact, today was such an amazing day, my ex partner even enjoyed my food for a change. We have this unspoken argument about factory foods or at least local Grandma foods versus the variety of edible stuff that I find for myself. She doesn’t like my wild improvisations. But today’s peanut sauce with the daikon plant actually tasted very good with simple spices and a touch of chili. She ate it with pleasure along with the soaked porridge. You don’t have to go in this direction but if you’d like to know why we had a dynamic day, it probably starts with fueling up. Sometimes raw food is good food.

There was an awkward moment at the end though. The ex partner was getting ready to go home and Ghenna decided to show up to cut the grass. I had to make a stand. He really should have known better. I sent him off with a deep explanation that people don’t come to me without invitation, off hours and for any reason for money. I am nobody’s Bank and nobody picks their own time without my agreement to show up for work. And if you don’t have work and you try to ask me for money, I’ll ban you for life.

Truthfully, I don’t know why he tried to do this. That’s bullshit, I know exactly why he did it. The moment the thought comes into his head that there’s money available, the fucker’s like a dog, wagging his tail and begging for bones. I don’t mean to be cruel or dismissive but the man just robs me of my energy. I am sorry I invited him in any way. I’m glad he took care of the potatoes and truthfully, we can use the compost work. I just hate working with this guy.

Tomorrow morning Lena will show up and take care of the floors. And about the same time in the morning if he decides to show up, that’s bs, I know he will, Ghenna will come by to cut the grass. Lena at least has come to the realization but there is no possible way to make any money off me without my agreement and that coming to me off schedule means there is no money for extended periods of time.

What is the truth? The truth is, I don’t really want any help. I need help because there is a lot to do and I end up hurting myself trying to do everything. Possibly this will get better in the future but before it does or even if it does not, I am not going to be on anybody’s radar as an easy touch or an open employer. I’m just not going to allow this bullshit that I got last year and I don’t want alcoholics coming to me for their daily bottle. I’m just not that nice of a guy and I just don’t want their company.

It’s an ironic thing that I appreciate getting help and I don’t mind paying prices for service. I’m not much of a bargainer. If I want something and it comes with a cost and it seems like a reasonable value, I will be a regular client. I appreciate good business relationships and I really appreciate good artisans, Craftsmen and laborers who do their job well and stick to business. But I can’t stand people who try to entangle personal deals in these things. I don’t care what they were thinking or who they think I am or what they thought was going on, I’m just not looking for any more friends. I have enough and even if there are none, this is a perfect number for me. I am not looking to acquire new friends.

If this is a harsh statement, let me give a sense of understanding for my philosophy. The way I see things, the concept of the word friend changes as we grow older. When you are a young child and you are completely at the mercy of your body’s energy, a friend is literally anybody playing near you. There’s no organization from children. Proximity is everything in the world. It’s a thoughtless thing and if you want to put the word friends on it, the children don’t care because they’re not paying attention anyway.

But then adolescence kicks in and the word friends becomes people who are generally trusted confidants. This is a bit frowned upon in Russian education and they ascribe the word friend to everybody who is in the same place as you just as if everyone was still a child. This is a holdover from the ideas of a classless society from the times of theoretical communism. Maybe it’s good to say we all know each other but this is not what I consider a friend. Not everybody can be trusted not to harm you and unless you agree that everybody is a parasite and there is no difference between people who work and people who just sit around looking for opportunities to suck other people’s blood, the difference is evident.

They say you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. In my experience, I have mostly preferred friends to family. I have found family to be a bloody nuisance and the antithesis of what anybody would consider a friend. For this, you can take the Russian idea that a friend is someone who can help you in a difficult moment. My family is completely worthless and difficult moments. My family does nothing but use their nepotism to create difficult moments. Or just steal from you. Not very friendly, are they?

But then we come back to Russian culture again and this extended childhood friendship seems to permeate the culture and everyone looks forward to mindless self amusement. It’s a very black and white place. You’re on or you’re off, you’re working or you are resting. You are paying attention or you are practicing mindlessness. It’s just not my way but that’s what they do. And worse, everybody is always looking for “friends” to practice mindlessness with. Probably the most annoying thing I have ever found in my entire life.

This of course gets worse when you remove the classless society, you put in capitalism and then make sure that nobody ever has any money. This little cocktail means that everybody is looking to become friends so that they have someone to go to in their endless moments of need. Every day is a hysterical moment of need. And if you’re a street level alcoholic like the people who are working for me now, everyday is exciting.

A long time ago I had a short period of time where I hung out with hippies. The hippies had their own philosophy. They used to say that the important thing was to be addicted because without an addiction, life was just too boring to live. Perhaps there are certain substances that make this aesthetically pleasing or interesting way to live. Perhaps there are some substances where all of this obliviousness comes along with kindness and sensitivity. I don’t personally believe in that either anymore. Addiction is addiction. But where this absolutely does not work is with alcohol. Alcohol is just a nefarious beast. 

Alcohol breeds assholes. Alcohol destroys character. Alcohol removes any sense of pride. Alcohol turns everyone into dogs.

I think you’re getting the feel of my opinion of friendship. The moment this bastard got the idea in his head that there was some kindness to look forward to from me, the moment I spoke to him in a kind way and thanked him for hauling away the old potatoes was the moment that he turned on his switch to make sure he wouldn’t milk this cow for every last job he could get out of me. The only thing he was thinking was to keep his friendship going as long as he could and get as many bottles off of me as he possibly could.

There are people here who are very good at managing alcoholics. Ria is excellent with Ghenna. Ria is Russian of course and dealing with guys like him is in the blood already. Her mother knew how to do it as did her mother’s mother and her mother as well. Russian women have been making good bank by making use of alcoholics for time immemorial. It’s nothing to her to exploit a man’s weakness. She was born to do it, raised with the understanding that it was a part of life and she has been honing her skills since her childhood ended. Exploitation is in the blood. It is a part of the nature of things.

But I reached my limit of Ria’s help last year and literally told her not to help me or think about helping me. I like to think we still have a friendship and that I can turn to her in a difficult moment. The thing is, I don’t have moments difficult enough to call her. Mostly I just remember her when I have something that I think she can use. This is exactly the same thinking that I have for all of my “friends”. When I come across something that I think they can use, I send it over free of charge. Just thinking of you darling. Enjoy.

Or better, I call and ask if they can use it. If this sounds a lot like how we work with tradesmen, artisans and workers, you’re right. It’s an old joke about Americans that the first thing we ever ask each other is what we do. Sure, I agree that this is a funny thing to notice about Americans. But I like it a lot better than having people think of me as a friend and come hanging around when they need some mindless moments. I don’t have any energy for mindless idiots. I can’t afford the broken furniture, theft or the personal assaults on my body. 

I can’t stand mindless people anymore than I can stand open handed parasites. I much prefer life on a business level and if this pisses people off, enjoy the piss. Seethe and hate to the limits of your emotions. Go ahead and catch cancer from the bile you create. Better you than me. Keep it to yourself and please, do not come to me for anything without invitation. If you really need my company, call me on the phone so I can reject you at a distance.

Am I going alone about this a little long? It’s the tie that binds everything. It’s the underlying support for war. It’s the underlying pillars holding up all of the theft I’ve ever experienced in my life. It’s the scaffold keeping jealousy alive. It is the glue that has been binding stupid people together for time immemorial. The quest for mindlessness is the essence of Melville. Everybody is searching for the great white whale of enjoyable nonsense.

As I’m writing these words, the sound of my chicken neighbors is in the air. They have three basic sounds that I am forced to listen to. The first one is the sound of their cars while they go burn fossil fuels, pollute the air while hoping to gain their own little handful of money to get whatever they consider their version of vodka is. The second is when they are burning fossil fuels to make sure that nothing alive exists on their property and everything is cut down uselessly. 

The last one is what I’m listening to now. They are chasing their grandchild around. Making use of his innocent gibberish. They are practicing mindlessness. Basically they’re doing drugs. They are doing innocence and sucking every last ounce of milk out of that cow for as long as they can. Don’t worry about it. They’re just addicts like everyone else here.

Why do I still live here? Can’t afford anywhere else. But it wasn’t always like this. It used to be very polite people trying to make an independent country for themselves. Then the Russians got rich again, and, well, we understand what happened. Now it’s like this.

I don’t have any comments about this except to say that it’s a shame I don’t have a washer dryer combination.

Next, I got a follow up from my ex partner today concerning this fellow who asked for asylum in the Republic of Belarus. It is possible that I may have overstepped my boundaries in dismissing him. I don’t know how true any of this stuff is but here’s the follow-up story

https://zerkalo42.global.ssl.fastly.net/news_/life/17246.html?inst=3

And here is a bit of the translation:

July 5, 2022 at 00:51 “Mirror“

The US citizen, who came to Belarus on July 1 to seek asylum, seems to have been identified by our colleagues from Mediazona . His name is Mark Knuckles. And if he is an asylum seeker, then his appearance on the Belarusian border looks very strange – the American was a frequent guest on Russian television, taught at Russian universities for several years and until recently lived in Moscow.

In recent years, Mark Knuckles has repeatedly been a guest of Russian programs, such as “Vremya Pokazhet” on Channel One, the talk show “Fetisov” on the Zvezda channel, and has repeatedly appeared on the air of the Rossiya TV channel.

He was introduced as an American writer and publicist, columnist for the New York Post (the last column for this publication was written by him in 2014, and there were three in total ). It was also indicated that he collaborates with The San Francisco Chronicle ( two author’s columns in the same 2014) and The Atlantic ( three blogs  – the last in 2013).

Various sources indicate that he received a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University and an MBA from Dartmouth College. He provided Russian applicants with the services of a personal mentor in preparing for admission to top US universities.

In Knuckles’ social networks there is no hint of what prompted him to seek asylum in Belarus. But we noticed that in the first days of the war between Russia and Ukraine, he actively commented on the events.

“Putin is a dangerous lunatic. His rhetoric in recent days is pure madness. Yesterday I wrote about his paranoia and obsession with Russian greatness. And from my personal experience with Duma deputies, the Russian political elite is obsessed with the idea that Russia should be a superpower equal to America and China .

-Mark Knuckles February 24th. 

For years, Russian state propaganda has claimed that the Maidan was a fascist coup and that Ukraine is swarming with neo-Nazis. But in his speech justifying the invasion, Putin speaks of overthrowing the “fascist junta” in Kyiv and “denazification” of Ukraine. He also used the absurd justification for the war that Russia was protecting the people in the Donbass from “genocide”. I think he really believes in it. This is real madness. And he also talks about the “demilitarization” of Ukraine. This leads me to believe that he plans to destroy the Ukrainian army and envisions a long-term occupation of Ukraine.

But Ukraine is doomed to failure. I admire the resistance of Ukrainians to Russian aggression. But a speedy surrender would be better than a courageous but senseless armed resistance, ”

– he put forward such a forecast on February 25.

So, it’s possible to understand the man’s politics and that he is as anti-Putin as these remarks allow, it’s possible to understand why he would leave in fear. And as for his remarks of simply agreeing with the Russians and letting them do what they want, this would fit perfectly with the Belarusian profile. 

Weird, weird days. Weird, weird people. Weird, weird countries. 

We are living in a very difficult time and many, many people are getting ripped out of their lives or even being sent off the planet just for oil profits and power. What is to come? I don’t know. And I do not know what Mr Knuckles expects to learn or share on his social media site from the perspective of the Republic of Belarus.

I’m just saying that the world is getting too weird for me.

***

ok, I admit, I am addicted to the noise. The truth just has a particular texture to it…

***

I guess this is where I have to close up this day. I don’t really have anything new or exciting to add here. I would not say it was a very good day. Nothing really happened that was interesting. I was just another day of existence.

The air smells like there is some water in it. A little while ago I heard a few taps going on outside the window and I thought that maybe there was some rain. I can’t say now for sure but it smells rainy.

I wonder if it’s normal for people to be able to smell rain anymore. I know that when I say this, I am quite sure that people know what I’m talking about and know that particular olfactory sensation. I believe this is something pretty normal but when I said the words, I started to doubt whether it was true anymore. Probably it is but then again, maybe this is the skill we have lost. You lose quite a bit of your senses living in town, especially big cities. You lose a lot of sensitivity the more you are caught up in the noise of life.

On the other side, the only thing that I don’t feel right now is any kind of sense of excitement for life. I don’t feel any sense of positive energy as if I was waiting for something. I’m sure everybody knows what nervous expectation feels like. I am just noticing that I don’t have this anymore. I don’t seem to be able to get excited or interested in any possibilities. This is actually kind of a crazy thing to be missing it.

Do you think it’s possible that this is what giving up hope feels like? 

There are a lot of contributory things to this. I fully believe that my current diet might be contributing to this. I don’t really feel any sense of nervous energy right now. Logically, I understand that it’s not just my diet and that quite a bit of what I’m going through is contributory to this. Probably my legs have more to do with this than anything right now. I feel like I’m just disappearing into nothingness.

I feel like I am ready to let life go. I don’t feel like doing anything violent to myself. Maybe it’s the heat. Or maybe it’s just the culmination of everything I know and see and understand about the world and how everything is sort of coalescing in this waterless summer. Maybe I’m just relating to life like my plants. Nothing looks healthy anymore. It’s an alien climate to all of these living things. Maybe everything around me is giving up hope because we can’t live here anymore. It might be this. It’s just not our home anymore.