Thursday, July 7th 2022

It’s about 20 minutes to 9:00 and I’m sitting in the kitchen watching the butterflies come for breakfast on the ragwort plant that’s growing just outside my front door. I don’t know why people cut their grass. I don’t know why they are so enamored with using gasoline products. I don’t know why they equate work so directly with gasoline. I don’t know why they are so immune to the simple beauties of life. As long as this stuff grows, I have lots of butterflies come to visit.

We just finished an excellent breakfast. It was the usual soaked porridge combination. There is a definite difference between eating buckwheat, chickpeas and red lentils cooked. When you eat raw, there is Stark energy to it. There is a sharpness perhaps or a roughness. Perhaps rustic is the correct word. But it makes you feel stronger and harder, more ready for the world.

All of this is nice to say but what really makes this breakfast sing is the blender sauce. It’s also raw food and it’s usually the same. Some kind of nut or seed has a fatty base, a little bit of an acid, usually from vinegar or in this case from my homemade mustard which is just mustard seed and vinegar. And then the most essential part of it, greens. It’s just not the same without Greens in it.

Another cool thing about blender food is that you really can use the entire plant. I have so much Dill growing on my property it’s almost valueless. It’s probably worth drying some to have this lovely freshness available during the winter. Right now though, there is so much of it it’s almost valueless. In the case of dill, I don’t bother picking at the tiny tender leaves, I just pinch off the entire plant and stuff it whole, flowers, stalk and all. Additional fiber? Additional flavor.

Today I also added one small daikon radish. My ex partner pulled it up perhaps a little short-sightedly to see what it looked like. Our daikons are all bolting and making seeds. If I’m doing something wrong, I’m doing something wrong but all of the plants are in full bolt. The route was not very big, certainly not as big as you’d want a daikon radish to be. But what there was of the root and just a little bit of the stock went into the blender and then I pulled off all of the seed pods and flowers, gave them a little wash and it went into the blender too

A little salt, a little pepper, one dried chili pepper, not too spicy and a few chia seeds just for the omega-3s. And it’s delicious. It’s very sweet and mild to The taste. It has a wonderful texture from the peanuts that puts a little fat into it. It certainly brings a curry-like feeling to the raw porridge.

After this, there were some fresh veggies left over from last night. A little bit of sharp lettuce from the garden and a couple of pickles. No argument whatsoever. Right now I’m finishing with a cup of local tea. There are a couple of lavender flowers off of our living plant and a few leaves picked off of our fresh mint. What do you think? Am I talking about the joys of country living?

Last night passed well. It was very cold. According to the weather report, it shouldn’t have been that cold but it was just brutal. I think what happens is that your body makes a general adaptation. My body never seems to want to get used to constant heat. When they crank up the temperature and the sun blares down on us through the hole in the ozone layer, I am destroyed. I cannot bring myself to fight it. If God equals nature and nature equals god, God is bloody well angry at what we have done to this planet. And if the Sun is our governor, and certainly we could go all the way up to king or queen (Queen probably) without fighting the thought too much, when the bitch gets angry, nobody has any fun. And make no mistake, she is angry at us.

It was a bit like going back to winter time. Extra blankets, a wool hat, a padded jacket. I even turned on the heater as a last resort. This was actually a stupid move because I can’t close the window now because of this bloody mosquito screen that keeps the bugs on the inside from getting out. When I finally fell asleep, I had a dream that the World council gathered with a major announcement that they agreed that global warming was indeed an existential threat and also caused by man-made activity. Unfortunately, they decided to blame me for turning on my heater with the window open. Literally, they blamed me for raising the temperature of the World by using a heater with the window open. Punishments to follow, I’m sure.

Do I seem in a good mood? Obviously I am. I have company and I have help and we are getting along pretty well. She won’t be staying on though and we’ll be heading home today. There is no serious talk about staying. This is just how she fits me into her schedule. I’m a hobby boy. She gets to exercise her angel muscles with me.

The only serious bit of conversation though concerned the war. She tells me that one part of the people at work generally think the entire affair is horrible. The people she most directly relates to are in agreement about this that they hate this war. She thinks that most people are against it. She says that some people are extremely afraid that the war will come here but she says that most people have gotten used to it already. The fact that there is a war nearby and that war planes sometimes fly over town is simply something that everyone has got to get used to. Quintessential Russian mentality actually.

Management thinks that Russia is there to destroy fascism and Nazism. This is also the official line.

What do I think? I think the entire kit and caboodle of them are simply saying what they think the next person wants to hear. This is also quintessential Russian mentality. Just say what you’re supposed to say and walk away from any potential responsibilities as quickly as possible.

I mentioned that the philosophy of Mr Knuckles, the well-publicized and well decorated intellectual who fled Russia for political asylum in Belarus was doing this. His opinion that it would be better for Ukraine to simply fold up shop rather than fight Russia was exactly what the Belarusians wanted to hear. This is of course why he ended up with such a remarkable resume being printed in the paper. When you tell people what to hear, they tend to like you more.

The last thing we did last night was to take the last desirable potatoes out of The Root cellar. I called Lena last night on the phone and she agreed to move her helping day to tomorrow. She’s also going to bag and transport the old potatoes out of The Root cellar for a few rubles more. No argument here. That will be the end of last year’s potatoes.

I didn’t plan very many potatoes this year. We have a very vibrant potato box but only one box. It’s the biggest box but we only have one box. It’s a no dig box so we just laid the potatoes out on some decent soil and covered everything with straw. There are some potatoes in there. I can’t say anything about the size but we have them. And we have a very, very small potato beetle existence. Because it’s such a small amount of potatoes, I go out every day and check it and I guess I’ve gotten 95%. When they do lay seeds, it’s just a tiny bit of orange now. I’ve seen some babies appear but not too many. Literally, I was able to keep the pest population under control without any chemical additives whatsoever.

Probably we will do a little bit more weeding. I think a very fast and general weed pull around the lentil Garden will be sufficient. The boxes all look pretty good and the mid boxes are perfect. The beans are climbing the poles, the broad beans are not looking very healthy unfortunately. They got beaten to death in the heat wave. The sugar beets also don’t look so wonderful but they are hanging in there. We should have planted more peas.

One more positive thing, I moved a couple of roofing panels near some of the trees at the top of the property. They look like they were near death from the heat wave but a little bit of rain and the additional water that gets to their Roots because of the roofing panels seems to have both of them looking better than they were. I don’t know if it’s the salvation of all of this but I could see actually doing the passive rain collection roof project after all.

One of my original ideas was to literally build a long roof whose only purpose would be to enhance the amount of water that falls on the line of fruit and nut trees that I planted. I didn’t do that because we invested in water pumps instead. Now though, I’m rethinking as to whether or not that was a bad idea. I think it would be a very helpful structure, definitely an interesting feature for the property and in the end, though it won’t guarantee it, it will definitely help our ability to have successful fruit trees here.

That’s about it. That’s the farm report and the status report and the romance novel all rolled into one. A little later today I’m going to do this week’s Torah study. I haven’t yet gotten a recording from my friend in the Jewish community but we can always add in the commentary whenever he gets around to sending it.

Business as usual. Perhaps today will be another nice day. It has a sweet and mild feel about it. There’s a lot of water in the air but the temperature is not too high. No clouds but no anger today from the sky. I guess when you are able to go to the bathroom at least a little, you feel much better about things. Keeping our planet constipated by constant pollution is a really bad idea. All of the world’s natural systems get gunked up and the planet starts acting really crazy.

The Bible says that man was created in the image of God. Of course we have reinterpreted this to mean that we are as gods on the planet. Big mistake. Big mistake to say that only Jews had this and a big mistake to say this in general.

The statement is true but it is true if and only if we understand that God equals nature and nature equals God. What it’s supposed to mean to us is that we are a part of nature, a living thing along with all other living things. And if we torture our own bodies by bringing poisons into it, we become ill, our functions begin to fail and eventually we die. Misunderstanding this one piece of biblical information has Us close to ruin. Pollution is death. Pollution is not an acceptable ancillary Factor of economics. That’s just Russian mafia shit. Pollution is death and death is never desirable.

***

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.