Tuesday, July 19th 2022

It’s 8:00 a.m. but I feel like I’m already halfway through my day. Mostly sitting around yesterday left me with a ridiculously restless night. I suppose I should have seen that coming. These days, I’m usually at least a little physically tired by the end of the day. It’s easier to get to sleep when your body is tired. When the only thing you exercise is your brain, it’s not the same. I heard someone say that mental energy Burns calories and uses the body’s resources to an even greater extent than physical labor. Then again, that was probably said by the same guy who said that bacon was health food.

I wish I could say that I came up with some great ideas while not sleeping but that’s just simply not the case. Pretty much nothing came into my head. It’s a very funny thing these days about that. I find it almost impossible to get creative anymore. I mean, if I understand I have a problem, my mind automatically starts looking for the solution. I don’t like creating drama nor do I like people making messes in my life or in my head or anything like that. I usually go for the straightest and simplest and most mutually beneficial answer to a question and then I’m pretty happy with it. Unfortunately, I never include anything for after parties or ceremonies or self-congratulations. This obviously talks volumes about my popularity.

The issue right now though is that I just don’t want to move. I honestly thought this year was going to be a way to get back into my physicality. Right now though, I’m limiting myself in the hope that I might be able to get back to that. I have agreed to suffer quite a bit of pain this year. I’m not speaking like a prima donna. I’m not speaking like I’m looking for congratulations for some effort done. None of this is the case. I just thought that I would get a little stronger and be able to work regularly. I didn’t plan on the problems that I’m having showing up again. I didn’t plan on having to do any more of this bullshit thinking that I went through all of last year. I honestly thought that that was behind me.

Of course, I am a little proud of myself. I am a pretty good doctor to tell the truth. I am at least a pretty good specialist for my own problems. I’m not afraid to listen to myself as an expert or take my own prescriptions. I’m usually pretty accurate with my suggestions for myself and this time is no different. I had to look this morning and I am getting better. I made some smart decisions and did good things for myself and you can see positive movement in a positive direction. This is immediate positive movement in a positive direction. I don’t congratulate myself lightly. I have to be good in order to earn my own praise.

The problem though is that taking it easy means I really don’t get to move very much. I’m not foolish enough to believe that I can get help to do things I need done. I’ve learned my lesson about speaking to my neighbors. It’s a really interesting place to be. The answer however is exactly to take it easy. If I go ahead and try to do too much, I’m going to end up exactly where I ended up at the end of the day on Sunday. I can’t bully my way through this because I’m just going to kill myself by doing it.

So it’s a bit of a natural checkmate. There’s no one to blame but me and no one to call but myself. I’ve given myself my best prescription and it looks like I made a good choice. But the world is not really a finger snap. The actual physical human world that we live in is not like making purchases from Amazon. It’s not a twitch of your finger and your life changes for the better because you had the ability to buy some bullshit that you’ll never use. Real life takes time. The seasons take time. Growing vegetables and plants takes time. Real life is not frenetic or hysterical in any way. Only humans do that to each other and usually, just for profit.

It might be a good time to go ahead and do some of that web work that I’ve been putting off. I don’t really like sitting at a computer. I know it doesn’t seem this way because of all the writing I do. Writing words creatively or creating something with words is something that I do because it is something that I do. I dove into this many years ago and I need this. I don’t feel very good if I don’t keep my mind in order. I’m not plagiarizing but it is simply a lesson I learned from Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It’s just something he said. If he doesn’t fulfill his quota, he simply doesn’t feel very good. I guess that would be didn’t feel very good. He is not with us anymore.

This might actually be the best use of my time right now. It makes sense in a way.

I am at the end of my fiscal year right now. My fiscal year runs from August to July. I took up this habit during my teaching career because these were the obvious months to prepare for however many students would come to see me. Most of my business in the beginning was with school children so I had to follow the rhythms of the school year.

August would be when the shoppers would come looking. These were the overbearing parents who liked to control things. They always started calling early and asking for prices so they could make the best decision in time. Probably an excellent tactic for them but not really that interesting for me. Usually, Shoppers are just looking for Price rather than quality. I of course estimate myself as a quality teacher but then again, who buys honesty?

I usually got quite a few more students between the beginning of September and the end of October. These were more speed buyers making emotional decisions or people scared into paying for a tutor because their teachers told the truth about the child’s talent. Usually these teachers wanted the child to pay them after school and this is a good way to make ends meet on the meager pay given to teachers. I didn’t mind my marketplace. I did a fair trade. Yeah, there were a lot of sour grapes. People felt I had an advantage because I was a native speaker. But the question was about the quality of education for the kids. So I wasn’t jealous of anybody and like I said, I made a fair trade.

Then new students would slack off because the winter holidays were coming. Everybody has to spend their money on winter holidays so some of the weaker students would get questioned by their parents as to whether the tutor was worth it or not. They had a party coming up and presents to buy. If they weren’t spending money on this tutor, well, they would have more for the winter. So some students would end up leaving and then after everybody got finished getting drunk, I would start getting calls at the beginning of January.

I never did specifically help people with testing. It isn’t like I was being gracious to my school teachers looking for their $5 after school lessons. I just didn’t really find anything interesting for myself in teaching the test. I don’t know why you teach tests unless you have some inside information. One time, I thought about selling insurance. Why? Did this have something to do with needing money? I signed up with Mutual of New York with the understanding that I would not have to sell to my friends. They broke that contract immediately and I did not end up staying with them. But the point of this story is that they sent me to a school to learn to pass the insurance exam. They vet potential insurance salesmen because standards are to be met. This class though did not teach anything about insurance, it just taught me how to take the test. Literally memorizing a sequence of letters because they already knew what the test was. It was cheating and nobody in the insurance business that I was directly connected to thought anything at all wrong with that. Mutual of New York has an acronym of money. That was the best lesson I ever learned about insurance.

Other than that though, the books from previous years tests are always available for not very much money and usually the answers are included in the back. a person can take as many tests as they want and simply check their answers and eventually, you’re probably going to be pretty familiar with the style and type of questions. I didn’t understand why my expertise would mean anything specifically for the test.

What I did was teach people to speak English. This is a very deep and dark secret locally. I made my entire program out of what I saw as the mistakes of the school program. In fact, when I had a good solid look at what the school problem, I mean program was, I realized that the general and basic philosophy of Russian second language education is to teach students to steal rather than to speak. What I mean by this is that you are taught to understand English but you are absolutely never given the right to give your own opinion or to say what you see. They are not looking for people to be functional in the language, they’re looking for people to be passive. To take without giving.

Well, there is no possible way to speak a language unless you speak, right? You can understand the language just by watching a lot of movies with subtitles. If you really only want to be passive, it’s exactly like training for the test; you don’t need a teacher. You just need books and translate them to your home language.

But this was a bigger problem than you might think. It’s not only second language acquisition that demands people to be voiceless, it is the entirety of their world. Either they are told that they are children and therefore voiceless or, about the same moment that they quit being children, they are told to join the state or corporations or somebody with enough money to pay them cradle to grave wages. They are taught to be slaves. The only skills that they absolutely don’t need is critical thinking or problem solving. What they need is to learn to be attractive passive idiots who do not cause problems and are grateful for their checks and other presents.

Like I said though, I made a fair trade. I had a lot of students who won gold medals. Actually, I had a ridiculous rate of gold medal students. There were even a couple of instances where my worst student, kids so ridiculous that I would lose my temper and scream at them for perpetual incompetence. And yet they would show up at testing time showing me their documents that they were now the best in their class. This was the difference between what I was doing and what was expected of the educational community.

All that turned to crap though when the Russians first decided that they wanted a part of Ukraine. They took a part of Belarus as well, basically whatever they wanted, and what they gave us instead was coercion, objectification and took from me about the only thing that was worth anything to me as a local businessman. They took my reputation as being probably the quality teacher and turned me into a negative Foreigner. Quality went away generally from the thought process. I became unfashionable and had to work a little harder.

Actually, I ended up on the internet and made a pretty good trade until they decided to install a new program called fake news. This has been a very popular brain breaker for quite some time actually all over the planet. Like I said, I’m mostly retired now and I’m just working on telling people who don’t listen to me that global warming is real and trying to grow some vegetables to help me get through my retirement years.

But what I have is a catalog of work. I have done quite a few bits of writing and I do have a pretty good method that probably needs to get turned into something. This is the web work that I have been putting off and putting off and putting off for a very long time. Why have I been putting it off? Because it has been more fun doing this Garden. It has been more fun solving problems. It has been more fun and more interesting writing these daily thoughts. There has always been something more interesting to do than sit around and figure out the HTML to sell things that people won’t care about. There are infinite choices of things I would rather do with my time than sell.

But maybe this is where I am right now. Maybe this is where I go ahead and do this work. I really do need to stay off my feet for a little while. Every day I don’t beat myself up is a day that I allow for a little more healing. I definitely am doing good things right now and I took a look and I’m having a good result. If I continue to take it easy for a while, I might even get better. For sure a little better but maybe even a lot better. And after that, who knows? Maybe they’ll even call me in Minsk and I will get to go there and they will make giant steps towards making my life more comfortable and give me opportunities to remain physical. Well, that is unless they can’t get coercing money out of me out of their mind. They only think of me as an American you know. Fake news and objectification and international politics fed to them by their algorithm. You know this. I’m not allowed to be a human being anymore and obviously, I don’t feel pain.

But all of that good optimism aside, maybe I should just go ahead and do what I’m going to do. Maybe all I need is to get 90% there. Maybe all I need to do is get the scaffold up and not worry too much about how pretty it is. Once the basics are in place, you can always hang bells and whistles and mirror balls and stuff. You can always lie about how glamorous all this is later. I think this was something I learned from the Beatles from their documentary from last winter. George Harrison said something about that. Let’s just make it simple first and then we can make it more complex. Beautifully said.

Anyway, breakfast today was raw food. I had some soaked curled barley and chickpeas. My ex partner Left behind some tomatoes so I chopped up a tomato and a cucumber and dug up a couple of small onions and threw everything together. No sauce this morning and no salt. I’ve decided to put the salt away too for a little while. Fighting inflammation is probably a good idea as well.

Other than this, what else? Not much really. I’m just taking it easy these days. I’m trying to stay off my feet as much as possible. I’m not going to do very much field work. We are promised rain as usual and everything seems a little wet this morning. Probably Thursday is going to be my next day to water so other than taking a short look for potato bugs or harvesting greens for meals, there’s just not a lot for me to do here right now. Even if I wanted to do more, I shouldn’t. I really need to stay off my feet for a while.

***

It’s about 11:30 in the morning and it’s been a pretty calm day so far. I did get out for a very brief walk around but mostly I’ve been sitting down. I have a call into Minsk and managed to get a hold of the primary doctor there. He is hunting around looking for the story. I do not expect myself to be the absolute center of the lives of these people. I know that they are very busy. But I also know that I have one bureaucrat, not this particular doctor, who seems to be going out of her way to make sure that I have every possible chance to pay for this with my own cash rather than allowing social medicine to do its job. I’ve talked about this before and I don’t know how true any of this is. I just understand that it’s additional anxiety for myself. Getting shaken down always adds a little anxiety to anybody’s life.

I’m waiting for the call back now. Truly, from all of the information I have, everything should be okay for a trip to Minsk. But, they haven’t called me so I am calling them.

In the meantime, I had an incredibly strange moment this morning. I have been binge watching Star Trek and I’m currently into their third and final season. I can kind of see why they got canceled. The quality of the shows has dropped and I understand that Gene Roddenberry, the show’s creator, has already basically walked away from the show. Issues of control of course. You can tell the difference.

Anyway, the episode I was looking at today is another one about fascism and control. This is mostly what Star Trek has to talk about. This one is called “and the children shall lead“. The story here is about some evil Fagan type character called Gorgan who has given a group of children special powers to help them control people. Using the force of their minds, the children create horrible anxieties in adults and manipulate them into doing what this evil character wants them to do. They have already killed their parents because of the suggestion of Gorgan and now they are on the Enterprise taking over the place and demanding that they go to a place where their power can be consolidated. Gorgan ironically enough is played by the famous San Francisco lawyer Melvin Belli. 

The reason I’m writing about this though has nothing to do with this particular story but rather a moment in the story where a voice of one of the children made my spine tingle. I knew this voice well. It’s one of these iconic voices that sits in your memory forever and never goes away. It was The voice of Lucy Van Pelt, Charlie Brown‘s nemesis.

As to why Lucy sits in my head so strongly, it is because this was the entertainment of my innocence. This was probably the first film or specifically the film, A Boy Named Charlie Brown.

No, if you are familiar with Peanuts, you know that one of the basic premises is always that good old Charlie Brown is never going to win. His baseball team will never win a game. He will never become a hero. He will never win the spelling bee. And in probably the most evil scenario that he regularly encounters, he will never kick the football that Lucy invites him to kick. No matter how many times he believes in her, she always, always, always pulls the ball away from him.

If you were a boy at this time, there is no way for you not to identify with Charlie Brown. A little bit later in life, I was actually a field goal kicker or tried to be a field goal kicker. I did eventually get to kick the ball many times. Well, they let me kick off anyway. 

So that voice, that horrible voice calling you to do something you so very much want to do and yet pulling the football away at the last moment every single time belongs to an actress named Pamelyn Ferdin. 

Ferdin played hundreds of rolls in the late sixties and ’70s. She was a quite successful child actress. And of course, she made an appearance on the original Star Trek. One bit of information I got about that said that she fell in love with William Shatner on the set and followed him around until he agreed to marry her. To his credit, sharpener left a wonderful impression on Ferdin that she never forgot.

The reason I’m talking about this is not so much that I got a shock while watching Star Trek, it is that when I followed the voice to find out who it was, I found out who Lucy grew up to be.

After university, she decided to get out of acting and instead became a registered nurse. She decided that helping people for real was more important than a make believe career. But more than this, it turns out that she is now an incredibly outspoken and dynamic animal rights activist. The following video is Lucy, kicking ass, taking names, and taking the football away from some worthless losers from the Glendale California City council.

I have nothing more to say about this except that, perhaps it’s true that with great power comes great responsibility. Perhaps when someone realizes as a child that they are smarter, that they have a little bit more life and that they have the ability to get what they want, some of them believe that using this voice and this power for good is more important than any glamor or fame they might get for themselves.

I understand that there was no possible way that Charlie Brown could ever be allowed to kick that football. I understand that in the cosmic realm, such things are simply not meant to be. And besides, Charlie Brown and Lucy are literature. They are entertainment. They are not real people. 

But, you never know. It really might have been nice for her to just hold the ball there and let the boy kick it just one time. The original voice of Charlie Brown was Peter Robbins (Louis Nanasi). He was also a child actor but only stayed in the business a few years. He unfortunately suffered from mental illness, had problems with the law and took his own life in January of this year. Really, maybe she could have let him kick the ball once or twice. RIP.

***

Is changing to a vegan diet good for you? Yes. Want to lose weight? Here is a podcast hosted by Chuck Caroll, AKA, The weight loss champion. Hint: He’s a vegan. He is interviewing Lee Crosby, a leading dietician of more than reasonable note.

Want more? Here is Chuck interviewing Dr Alan Desmond. Here is another hint: Veganism is good for you. Or, if you hate the word vegan, let’s go with “whole foods, plant based”.

ok, ok – you are not only thinking of health. But you are also not interested in ecology and the truth about climate change. To you, economics is the most important thing. OK, how about this from The Economist:

Or maybe you are already sick of listening to me. But instead of blocking me, you decide to give it a try. Good For you. Maybe you can start here with some intelligent thoughts from Delilah Bisase.

From myself, I just want to add one comment after checking out all of these videos about veganism. Inevitably, there is going to be a class of people who are very interested in performance. This would be either for business or for sports. Usually it’s for sports. And inevitably, for all of the people out there who come to the conclusion that they are not going to remain whole food, plant-based or vegan is simply because of two factors. Firstly, someone tells them that their personal choice is the most important thing, especially when it comes to buying products from the marketplace. And they find that this is the most important thing. What is usually true in these videos is that they agree to almost superhuman transitions, amazing energy, increased recovery and a much higher level of fitness than before. They see that they are able to do all of these things but in the end, they can’t get past the drugs. Or better, they never come to the realization that there is a negative aspect to this thing that they choose. They never address the difference other than they assume that it’s about taste. And when they talk about taste, you might as well write in subtitles that they don’t care about anything anywhere in the chain of food delivery or the business of food or even in their own health that should go against their own selfishness. If you don’t believe me, check out a bunch of these videos and just see if you see what I see.

Anyway, in the middle of writing this section I got a call back from the doctor in Minsk. He attempted to be optimistic but as of yet, the bureaucracy allows me no date. He was kind enough to let me State my case as clearly as I could yet again. His main question to me regarding traveling to Minsk and the expense of going there was that he didn’t understand why I would not allow myself a hospital stay while I was there. This would also be free of charge for me.

My answer was pretty simple. I live in the country for the purposes of fresh air and because I grow at least some of my own food. Sitting in the hospital will do nothing but give me covid and they would feed me food that I would rather not ever put inside my body. I told him that I am a vegan and when I did this and explained my thinking, all he could say was that he agreed with me 100%.

See what I told you? I told you I was a good doctor. I’m a good doctor but I’m not a good enough politician to get medical care within the Belarusian system. And when he told me that I should not worry about paying for this myself and that I am within my rights from the social insurance system, he also acknowledged that his bureaucrat, who constantly demands that I am free to pay for things myself if I want them to go faster, was also a good enough reason for paranoia.

Will this conversation get things moving? I don’t know. Is anyone taking bets? Maybe we can make some money on this fiasco. All I know is that it would be really nice to get some relief from the pain. I have been waiting a very long time and regardless of what this hysterical bureaucrat says, I have been doing it quite patiently. Perhaps they could put away the nice words and just do their damn job. I’d very much appreciate that.

***

It’s a quarter to 7:00 and it has been a pretty restful day. It doesn’t actually mean anything directly that I made contact with Minsk but as a placebo, I guess it means something. Looking at it practically, at this particular moment I don’t really mind that they are dragging their heels. Even if they are sandbagging, I really can use this time to let my leg heal. I am a good doctor and what I have prescribed for myself is actually working. My leg feels great. Of course, I’m not using it right now. I’m not banging around the field and just resting mostly. But there are good signs of healing and this is the main thing.

According to the weather report, that was it for the rain. As usual, we only get about 10% of what they say we’re going to get here. When they say it’s not going to rain, you can Bank on that like gospel. What this means is that tomorrow and Friday are going to be watering days. I can do this job. I’m just going to take it easy and not fight too hard or work too fast. I will spend some time in the garden tomorrow making sure everything is in good shape. I’m not in a hospital bed here. I’m just taking things as slowly and as easily as I can. Truthfully, I should probably break out the crutches just to take even more stress off myself. Yes, it’s that bad but yes, it’s getting better.

I don’t think I’m eating dinner today. Again, I ate two meals early in the day and now I’m not even thinking about food. I made some bread today and it turned out really well. I didn’t do anything with it except bring in some salad greens. No sandwiches or cooking or any fufu whatsoever. Just bread and lettuce and that’s all. Sometimes I think that a spinach sandwich is the best food you can possibly have. Actually, any vegetable with Brad seems to be the stuff of life. The bread was tasty, the veggies were fresh.

Getting into this medical state of mind has me thinking rather seriously about dietary restrictions. I stopped using salt this week and I am limiting the amount of nuts I eat. I am simply cutting down on the amount of fat in my diet and anything that’s going to make me retain water. I’m still eating beans of course because you need your protein and everyday has fresh Greens in it. But I think limiting the salt and the fat even more than usual is a very healthy option for me right now. I feel clear and strong but I’m not doing anything to see the diabetes. Sometimes you just have to know what you’re doing rather than thinking about what would be tasty. Luckily, everything is tasty.

I can get away with not going to the store at all this week but there are one of two things that I might like there. I might have to do something about that tomorrow as well. I have a couple of options. I can ask someone to do the shopping for me. I don’t think they will object to making a couple of bucks. I don’t need much but there are a few things that might be nice to have. But other than that, it’s just very quiet right now. It’s very quiet and healing and this is exactly the way I want it to be.