Sunday, July 10th, 2022. Week number 27

Good morning. It’s 9:00 a.m. on a cool and easy Sunday morning. Forget about the weather reports. They are simply not worth reading. I downloaded several more weather apps but the differences are all academic and dependent on how optimistic they wish to be for you. It doesn’t rain here anymore. All indicators say we are supposed to be in the middle of a nice rainy day. I have nothing but hazy skies.

What this means is that this is going to be an interesting week. I am going to have to be serious about moving water from the well to our storage buckets. I simply can’t depend on the rain.

The garden looks reasonable enough. Our plants are hanging in there. I would not say that they are growing with any type of genuine enthusiasm. I don’t really think this is a perfect climate for them. True, perhaps we should be green housing everything or at least tenting as a way of blocking and diffusing the harshness of the Sun and holding moisture inside. This is an expense I was not planning on nor was I planning on doing enough agriculture to make it a business. You have to justify how much money you spend and have it be at least reasonable by comparison with buying it. Well, unless you consider it an absolute necessity as in the case probably will be if a genuine War breaks out. Perhaps Belarus will be good about keeping its infrastructure moving even under the stress of bombing. It would be interesting to see if they can handle it as well as Ukraine seems to be.

But we do not need to go to such territory so quickly. As of the moment, we are not being bummed randomly by the Russians or having slices of our territory forcibly removed from us. We are just simply feeding them as much money through our use of gasoline, they’re building products, they’re supermarkets and any other number of businesses that they are free to set up here to siphon money out of our economy. They are also free to come here and make use of our people. We seem to be very obliging to the Russians on whatever front they desire us to be.

I have been watching Star Trek lately. I’ve mentioned this a couple of times before. Also, the thought has come into my head a number of times that I could just as easily be using any source of daily reading or watching as a “bible” and subsequently a catalyst for my thoughts. Pretty much anything can be thought-provoking if you want it to be. I don’t mind reading Torah. I am technically and physically and historically Jewish and I am not hiding that in any way. In fact, with my current beard situation, I probably look extremely religious. All I’m saying is that pretty much anything can be the Bible if you want it to be.

The thing about Star Trek as a thought-provoker is that it seems to be amazing at throwing something that has a connection not only to my life and my world or potential philosophy but sometimes it’s kind of eerie how they manage to stick their nose into things. Case in point is the episode I just finished watching which is called “a piece of the action“. This is from the second season and concerns the Enterprise visiting a planet where an ill-fated meeting with a previous star Voyager 100 years earlier had somehow influenced the population of the planet unexpectedly. Literally, they had left a copy of a book written in the 1990s (this would be 30 years in the future of the show) about the gangster mobs of the 1930s. Using this book as their Bible, the entire town was now run by mobs.

I’m not going to give any spoilers or alerts or talk about the quality of the writing but there were two things that were absolutely interesting to me about the premise. The first is exactly what I have just explained. Almost any book can be a Bible if you want it to, provoking thoughts and at least advising on how one goes about living one’s life. Star Trek is obviously an extremely popular piece of literature and entertainment and has been for more than 50 years and concepts of leadership, organization, a reliance on science,  math and technology or even Vulcan logic have become a part of our culture. Literally, flip phones came from this show just to name one gadget.

The second thing though that is really interesting is that this episode predated the movie The Godfather by 5 years. The reason I’m mentioning this is that the godfather, one of the most popular films of all time and arguably one of the best, has been called a Bible both in popular culture and by quite a few people. The logic of how to deal with power and difficult situations, the tactics and ruthlessness necessary to succeed in business have become a part of our culture indelibly since the book and the movie came out.

Just to answer the question, this show was aired a year before even the publication of the book.

The problem with this is that lionizing and practicing mob culture has also been a part of standard business practices specifically for large corporations for the last 50 years as well. Using a book about murderers to teach us how to live in the world obviously has quite a few negatives in it.

When I was in Poland I saw a popular film at that time called Sarah. This slick production was about a washed up Hitman given the job of being a bodyguard for a mob bosses feisty and the independent daughter named Sarah. The film is very sexy, a romance ensues and there are some of the usual gun violence scenes along with plenty of naked screen time from the actress Agnieszka Włodarczyk. I’m not the only one who’s been in love with her ever since.

There was just one scene in this film that comes to mind from this. It is a brief moment where the mob boss is in his office taking a break from his busy day and watching the movie The Godfather. That he had learned how to do his business from watching this film was the implication but as far as we are concerned for this essay, he was using his quiet moment to study the Bible.

But if you can see this picture clearly, it must be understood that this is an actual fact and that it is Mafia mentality that runs through not only the illegitimate businesses of Eastern Europe, but the governments as well. 

There is kind of a strange nuance to how the Belarusian bureaucracy addresses you. Pretty much any deal that you might have that concerns government inspection, taxes or even communication because of a traffic incident or something like that will begin with a threat. I have been stopped a few times for riding my bike illegally on the road, you were supposed to be on the sidewalks in this country for some stupid reason I can’t understand, but if the cops take the trouble to talk to you, they will begin the conversation by talking about deportation. The cop who came on the false call from my next door neighbor also mentioned this word. It is in the initial explanation of the situation. Be careful or we will deport you.

I have a land inspection coming up this Tuesday I understand. It’s simply a surveyor who will come in and measure the current territory. This is a bureaucratic function which basically demands that some official entity sign their name that says what they have in their books as my territory is in fact true. The letter however , telling me about my land inspection told me that if I do not adhere to the rules and pay the money for this inspection, the land will be taken away from me.

When I bought this house, I ordered a gas tank. It’s just the way we have gas here and I do not have City gas. When the truck came to deliver the gas, they looked at the stove, decided it was old and immediately wrote me a paper saying I was obligated to buy another stove. If I did not buy a stove, they would not deliver gas. When the actual gas delivery happened, they needed to change the side of the gas delivery system from the right to the left. They decided that this change required an additional payment and this payment needed to be made in cash. When I asked them if they could bill me, they told me they would be perfectly happy to put the stove back on the truck if I did not have the cash for their hands.

I don’t even want to get into communications with my neighbors. Specifically the chicken people or even a certain percentage of the Town people. There are some nice people here. These are usually the people without any money. Anyone who has to function as a part of normal society, begins with brutality. I have been aggressively approached probably about a hundred times by people. They put their body into it and start with threats. It is how people talk to each other.

I haven’t gotten into this week’s Torah reading yet but last week’s was certainly violent enough. I can talk about how human violence is connected to eating meat. I don’t know, I’ve never actually asked this question before but we can Google it and find out if there’s any basis for my thought.

Is there any connection between eating meat and human violence?

Meat eating contributes to a mentality of violence, for with the chemically complex meat ingested, one absorbs the slaughtered creature’s fear, pain and terror. These qualities are nourished within the meat-eater, perpetuating the cycle of cruelty and confusion.

Well, ask a question and get an answer. It turns out that my thinking is not far-fetched after all. You are welcome to travel through the entire search and argue with me as you like. But it seems a pretty natural and logical thing.

And by the way, I believe Vulcans are vegetarians.

So what is the answer? To me, I guess there are two things that come to mind. Firstly, I do believe that an unexamined life is not really worth living. I can also say that people who live unexamined lives are not really worth talking to or working with or being around generally. I get extremely tired of people who live their lives based on emotional reactions. It’s like having to diffuse time bombs all day long. It gets very tiring and draining and frankly, I prefer peace more than perpetual terror.

And with this thought, I think it’s probably quite okay to use various sources as “Bibles”. I can respect 3,000 years of repetition and I can respect my mental capacities that have been given to me as a birthright, handed down through the centuries. Of course along with that birthright is also the misery of anti-Semitism which seems to be the entirety of gentile culture sometimes. They seem to think that keeping things as stupid and hysterical is possible is the only possible way to live. Again, I don’t like it personally and of course the planet cannot take the results of all of this ludicrous running around and killing each other.

But I do think it is good to be reflective and to think of things. I think it’s important to have a things to do list. It’s important to keep track of your responsibilities and to make plans for their execution. I have a certain number of chores that I have to do every day and there are also items that come up on my agenda that I need to touch on and make sure they get done. Sure, I get lazy and let things go sometimes based on emotional decisions. I’m not a robot and I make bad mistakes sometimes. I’m just saying that being responsible and paying attention to your deal is important. 

In addition to this though, I think it at least equally important to pay attention to your own ethics, thoughts, philosophies and deep decision-making processes. You have to try and make sure that you truly believe that the things you do are good and for the best. I can think of any number of people in my life who have taken the absolute worst possible road. With just one thoughtful day out of the decades spent in stupidity, they could have saved resources, created a more sustainable possibility for people’s lives and certainly not lived with the amount of misery they did. I am talking about not even allowing themselves one single thoughtful moment in an entire lifetime of complete stupidity. I find it shocking. But of course, it is no shock that I really don’t want these people in my life.

The next thing though is that perhaps we really need to choose our Bibles well. I was thinking about doing a Star Trek study. One episode and then add my thoughts to it. I could do that. I was also thinking in the beginning of the year of watching a baseball game every day and seeing what thoughts I get there. It is an interesting organization trying to produce runs and win games and the decision-making process behind that is always worth thinking about. I also could have done a recipe a day I guess and made this food blog much more about food than it actually is. I do talk about the food I eat quite extensively here. I don’t think I’m completely remiss. It’s just not as much fun as it could have been.

The point being that we need to choose our Bibles well and we need to be at least cynical in what we read from it. Is there a genuine logic in the godfather? Well, if you ever find yourself playing the role of the boss, you can probably learn something about handling people from it. There is a particular ruthlessness there that needs to be considered and especially so in a world where you really cannot trust the people you live with. There is also the wisdom that if you are going to find yourself in a conflict, well, you have to remember that it’s strictly business and that no matter how terrible it’s going to be, you’re going to have to do your job. When it’s time to go to the mattresses, that’s where you go.

On the other hand, perhaps we do not wish for such situations.

While my ex partner was here last Thursday, Ghenna showed up off schedule to do his job. We agreed that he would come in the morning. I asked him to do this and he agreed but then showed up late in the afternoon and did so right in the middle of a moment I was having with my ex partner. I did not want to pay attention to him at that moment and I do not trust him enough to let him on my property without supervision. Would you like to question my logic in this?

What was required was Russian conversation he could understand. I needed to speak to him in an authoritarian manner or he would not understand me. When I attempted on numerous occasions to be light and generous, a bit more conversational and Democratic if you will or at least peaceful, the guy would walk all over me and start making his own policy. He literally walked onto my property and started cutting my grass because someone else told him that was a thing that he should do. He has never been allowed here without supervision since and I can no longer trust myself or him if I speak to him in a friendly voice. Either he knows that the screws are locked down tight or he brings misery to my life.

So what’s the truth in all of this? I say we can try. I say we should probably give up meat. Why? It’s actually a stupid question and if you have ever read me for any length of time, you’ve already heard the usual arguments but here:

Would going vegan help global warming and climate change?

In fact, a study published in New Scientist magazine shows that each person can reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that his or her diet contributes to climate change by up to 60 per cent—just by going vegan.4 days ago

Ask a question, get an answer. And here we’re just talking about the science of greenhouse gasses. How about the end of ritual violence and War? How about the reintroduction of logic over Hysteria? How about simply paying attention to our health instead of our appetites?

Breakfast today, by the way, was pretty amazing. I soaked some buckwheat and red lentils and then thought I was adding some of that quinoa. But then, when I was looking through the jars, I had a hard time last night in the dark telling the difference between the quinoa and polenta. Polenta is a much different food soaked. It does not become soft and nice. Still, it wasn’t bad and I feel pretty stable after my carb fest yesterday.

The star of the show though was from a suggestion my ex partner gave me about using horseradish leaves in my blender sauces. I genuinely believed that the taste raw would be too sharp. Today I tried it along with some fresh dill and it was absolutely amazing. So the vegetables went in on top of a few raw peanuts, some black sesame seeds, a little salt and fresh peppercorns and a bit of a super hot pepper just for the Yang of it and a few splashes of apple cider vinegar. Absolute rock and roll.

So this was breakfast today and I ate it along with some fresh salad leaves from the garden and a couple of onions I pulled up. If I do have any lingering covid from my working staff last week (or my ex partners office staff), I’m feeling pretty well put together today. Taking the day off gave my leg a chance to heal a bit. I feel pretty nice and it looks like we’re going to have some cool weather this week. 

They promised water from the sky but they just don’t seem to know what they’re talking about anymore. You should probably try opening up a book. You could probably make some money on suckers who Gamble on the accuracy of the weather report. I imagine these days it’s kind of like betting on cryptocurrency. You’d get some steep odds betting on rain and you never know, maybe sometimes you’d be right.

In the meantime, depending on whether or not I get to call to go to Minsk this week, we will be pulling well water to fill the tanks. No, I am not happy about this development. I’m not happy with the weather or with our climate or with our political situation. I’m not happy with this country or the world I’m living in right now.

I’ll tell you, it ain’t easy trying to be smart while sitting in the middle of the stupidest generation in the history of History. All the possibilities of cooperation and communication we’ve ever had ever had in the history of History and all we want to do is replay World War II for reals.

***

It’s about 2:00 and I’m sitting on a bench next to my water barrels and watching my ex partner do a light Garden watering. As expected and against the forecast of the water bureau, it hasn’t rained at all today. By my account, the people who tell us what the weather is going to be are 2 and 18 as far as rains are concerned. None of the plants look very good and we are giving them water despite the fact that we heard that there is supposed to be rain today, tomorrow and the next day. I don’t believe a word of it.

It’s coming up on 2:00 but we have spent the better part of the last hour and a half trying to get the other pump to work to get some water out of our well. Nothing. At best, our short hose vomited up the water I used to prime the pump, no more than a drunk high school girl getting rid of last night’s party beer. Very upsetting.

As to the reason why the pump is not working, I cannot say. I can blame cheap materials perhaps. The coupling that we bought is plastic and one of the interior pieces is already broken. I wanted metal but it’s just the way these things work. I wasn’t there that day, my ex partner was and she was not prepared to do any arguing with anybody. We bought from good people, I’m not blaming them, but we are unable to pump water with this pretty simple system and I would really like to know why.

This punk however is incredibly bloody noisy. It is easily more than 100 decibels, worse than a rock band without talent trying to make up with it with sheer noise and aggression. I can’t stand the sound of it except for the fact that you definitely know when the pump is running or not. And this pump is reliable and works every time without any problems.

On a positive note, I know for a fact that this damn thing drives my neighbors crazy. They hate it and have come to talk to me several times about the horrible noise that my pump makes. I don’t really spend too much time either explaining myself or even tolerating my neighbors. If they can’t see any correlation between discomfort and noise, I’m the last person to come talk to. If you’d like to tell me why a gasoline powered weed wacker or chainsaw is  music and my water pump is not, you are welcome to write me a long letter and send it to me. I’m sure I’ll have someone read it for me and get the main arguments before I throw it away.

Yeah, they said that it was supposed to rain. The clouds are mildly dark. You could see the pressure system coming in on the radar maps. Everything that everybody knows about weather says that it’s going to rain. But it doesn’t. It just never really brains here anymore, at least not enough to genuinely feed the plants.

When I first got this place, I spent a lot of time just sitting around and staring at the meadow. Certainly, I never really thought of setting up boxes or dividing the place up into gardens. I’m not sorry that I have done this. But what I learned is where there is water and where there is not. I generally set up my boxes on land that was not very good. I did this because I knew I would be watering it artificially and so it didn’t matter that it was a natural dry spot. This was taking the advice of a very smart man that said you take a most horrible and degraded piece of land and make something good out of it.

The problem though is that there’s no water anywhere here. There are a few cool places in the back of the house where there is a lot of shade where we have an abundance of wildflowers. In the front where there is full sun, there are much fewer blooming flowers than there were last year. We are already into July and the place should be loaded with them. It’s not. Everything is very Brown and dry. There are a few places with water pockets to them, usually because they are near a roof that catches and drops an abundance of water. Every place on this meadow that is unsupported already is starting to look like California.

I think she asked me just to hear me talk but my ex partner asked once again to hear the story about why we have no water. It’s kind of like a child asking to hear a favorite bedtime story though in this case, I don’t know whether she was trying to please my ego or quench her own need for depression.

I think the air is too dirty and the clouds get covered by the filth and the water cannot freely escape. I’ve been calling it constipation. It’s like when you eat something that stops up your system and you just can’t go to the toilet normally. It is a very distressing situation and my guess is that mother nature feels this as well.

We also have a very low water table for this region. There are two places here to know this from. The first is from a bog that is about 150 m from my house. It’s very easy to tell where the typical water level is supposed to be but there’s just not any water in there. Anecdotally, I’ve heard people say that it used to be up to their shoulders but now is somewhere around their knees. The second place to look is inside my well. You can see by the inscription on the side that the well is just less than 60 years old and if you look down inside, you can see the stains where the water should be. Right now we are a little bit more than a meter below what would be historically our normal water table.

The difference from the water level right at the end of winter and where we are right now is about 50 cm. I’m talking about at least another 50 cm less than historical levels.

I guess if you want to believe what you’re looking at, you can also see this in the trees. I’m bumping right up against the forest and there is a birch tree leading The Way of the group of trees that are gaining ground on my property. They are all over my neighbors too. When you don’t fight it, the forest comes back. The birch tree though doesn’t look very healthy. It looks dry and sparse and its leaves are sagging more than usual. There is another tree over to the left that is also showing signs of being dry and unhealthy. There is just no water for them. I don’t know how many hundreds of years this Forest has been here, but it is quickly becoming a fire hazard.

I’d also like to point out that we are 12° of latitude further north than California but I guarantee you we are going to be having the same problems with Summer fires very soon. And floods from land that can no longer hold water because it forced desertification from brutal farming practices. We are going in the wrong direction and we are not slowing down.

On an immediate level, this week looks like it’s going to get a little complicated. I still haven’t heard from the medical examiner unfortunately. Why they insist on dragging their feet only seems to make me drag my feet painfully. I don’t like it one bit. We also have the land inspection coming up on Tuesday but now it looks as though I’m going to have to make an appearance in town at the market yet again. The only thing I can think of is perhaps yet another plastic coupling is bad. Let’s go metal. Metal works. Metal can be trusted. Maybe even also a different hose.

We just had one of my neighbors come for a visit and shared some Forest blueberries with us. Absolutely delicious. I think I mentioned her the other day. I don’t know how she manages to hobble out into the forest with a recently broken leg but she does it. Agreed to sell us three half liter Bank jars of berries for three rubles each. I didn’t question the price. She says she needs money, she has none and if she doesn’t do what she can, there isn’t going to be any. Basic words to live by. The berries are outstanding.

Perhaps just one more thought about eating natural foods. I did not go to the market at all for my Friday night meal. Pretty much 100% of what I ate over the weekend I grew myself. It was potatoes and greens. True, I used my blender to grind up some peanuts and greens and no, I did not grow the peanuts. But you get the general idea. I feel lean and tight. I feel calm and sober. I don’t have any anxious jumps in me today. My feeling is that I’m probably supposed to feel this way all the time.

Just let it rain please. Maybe he’s off on the pollution a little bit and let it rain. Let It rain metaphorically or like for my neighbor who has to hike on a broken leg just to make a few extra rubles. And let it rain in the natural sense of the word. Let It rain until it washes our sins away. Let It rain until the rivers run clean.

***

They say that all good things must come to an end. Perhaps all bad things must come to an end too. When I think of all of the good things that life has had to offer me, indeed most all of them have come to an end, sometimes even brutally. But when I think of the bad things that life has to offer, it is very rare that they go away and even when they do there is a lingering residue that stays with you anyway. I’m not so sure that you could prove what I’m saying empirically. I’m just saying that life has a vigorish the world takes its cut. Eventually you’re going to lose. Knowing this, I say we bet on nature every time.