Wednesday, August 3rd 2022

9:00 a.m. and a bit of a late start today. I am getting up late because I ended up not getting to sleep until late. Nothing particular eventful, just a bit cold and by the time I found the sweet spot, it was very late.

Today is going to be a lot like yesterday. I think Ghenna is coming by to clean up the paths in the lower Garden. It is not a gigantic job but one I’m grateful to have someone else do. I think he’ll be by in about an hour.

Other than this, I’m going to end up watering again today and I think I’m also doing some wash and bringing water for the house. This is going to be a bit interesting because I just don’t have so much water in the well. Also, water in the plants is going to start becoming an adventure by the end of this week if we don’t get rain. Literally, it’s getting pretty close to bottoming out all around. I’m not being dramatic, I’m just stating a fact. We are going to try out here.

As to what I’m going to do about it, I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know that there is an answer. I could buy some bottled water for myself. It would be a bit expensive but I could have a few liters brought from town like I used to when I lived there. It’s not as accurate out here and I have to pay for the travel but it’s possible to get water delivered. As for

Having enough water to take care of the field, that’s not going to happen. If I have nothing in the well and nothing in the water tanks, other than pissing on the plants, they are going to dry out.

What does this mean? Well, it means exactly what you think it means. We will have to have an early harvest and save as much food as we can. Whatever is out there that can’t take it is just going to go dry and that will be the end of this year.

I guess we could write letters of thanks to the oil business and all of the countries that live off of the sale of their natural resources. It’s difficult to find one specific Target to give thanks for global warming. You could probably say that this entire blog is a thank you letter for global warming.

I suppose we will end up writing similar letters when the forest Burns.

Or maybe we’ll get lucky and the rain that is promised will be sufficient to add something to the reserves. We only need to keep it up for about four more weeks. Maybe six at a maximum but within 4 weeks, most everything is going to be buttoned up. If I bring in fertilizer for next year, it’ll be in September so all the gardens that can be harvested will be harvested by then. Such is the nature of farming.

Another day without too much philosophy. I’m just not full of deep entangled thoughts these days. Everything’s pretty simple. I tried to take it easy on myself, I do as little movement and walking as I can and this is playing with me of course. There’s nothing I can do about it, Minsk refuses to call, so this is just the shit that life is made of. Everybody wants everything to die or at least doesn’t care who or what dies as long as they can just please keep going. Nobody has anything but fear of stopping.

***

20 minutes to one and we’ve made a decent start on everything. I know last week that I renounced this stress relief manner of relating to each other that is so prominent here. Blame either life under the czars or the Orthodox Church or both for this. Apparently, in Slavic countries, if you don’t start out by beating someone to death, you have no possibility of a relationship. I would advise working on this but it’s probably too deep in their DNA to make a difference. They planted it a long time ago and soaked it with alcohol and pig fat. It’s not coming out anytime soon.

Be that as it may, Ghenna is outperforming his book. Today he is back knocking down the weeds in the paths between the gardens. He is doing such a wonderful job, I put him on fence detail for later on this afternoon. This satisfies the last of my obligations to the land inspector. I haven’t heard from her yet. I don’t know what our date in August is to be finished by but we are in August and I assume we have no choice but to finish soon. I guess the phrase “have no choice” also fits into the Russian mentality stud book.

I managed to talk to the inspector briefly. I guess she is a very busy woman and she doubts that she will be able to get here by the 8th. I’m not exactly sure what the 8th of August is but she promises that I will not have any bureaucratic problems. I hate bureaucratic problems almost as much as I hate bureaucrats. Again and again, I’m not the only one who thinks like this.

Ghenna seems pretty happy working for me. Almost any idea I’ve come up with has a potential yes to go along with it. We talked about acquiring some wood from the local sawmill and even some steel so constructing boxes or repairing wooden structures doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a problem. And as far as fertilizer goes, however much I want is however much I get. The cost is always pretty reasonable for all of this but as long as I’m paying for day labor, I have a day laborer. I’m not arguing with this.

My other neighbor is here for her last visit of the summer. She is a kindergarten teacher and the first words she said to me were complaints that the vacation is over. All School teachers here have to be available in August to work on class plans and arrange budgets and materials and such. I understand this but I do not envy her anything. Perhaps it’s bittersweet to be heading back to work but I’m sure she’s very happy to have the job. All this really means is that it’s going to be even quieter here very soon. Again, no complaints on my side.

I made a call to Minsk but they didn’t answer. I’m on crutches again today. I will put them aside when I water a little bit later in the evening but I try to keep as much weight off my feet as possible.

I’ve brought in water to the tanks already and I’m even doing some wash. I’ve accomplished most of this on a stool which helps a little bit.

The problem though is that I do not think I took more than 30 l for house water and probably another 20 l so far to do the wash. This is just one cold water soapy session and soak and then a couple of rinse sessions. I’m not trying to impress anybody, I’m just rinsing things out so I can wear them around here. Now however, there is almost no water and I cannot even get a full bucket anymore. For sure, if things stay warm for the remainder of August which I’m sure they will, we are going to bottom out completely.

Ghenna just showed up to fist bump and collect his money. He is absolutely on a plan that if he does some work, he gets money in his hand. I guess part of it is that she doesn’t like thinking about people owing him money. I guess I can understand that. I have a few people who have outstanding debts to me and their memory to me is like cancer. I guess I should give credit to Russian pragmatism for understanding this for what it is. Who knows, maybe he was right?

I mean, on my side, I find it annoying to be hit up for money every single time someone comes. This is especially true if I don’t have any work for somebody and they show up begging. If I wanted to go along with this, I would have to have a petty cash fund lying around and I don’t. I don’t want to have a lot of money or basically anything of value sitting around my house. Luckily I don’t drink or do drugs so there’s really nothing that anybody would want or need to break into my house for. But I would also rather not have a bunch of cash being available for exactly this reason.

I learned this lesson years ago the first time I bought a place in the country to do some agriculture. At that time, we had a ton of apple trees and therefore a ton of apples so I made a hobby out of making apple cider. I don’t remember being a complete alcoholic at the time but I was pretty pleased with myself for having some clean alcohol available. This Joy didn’t last long however as some of the local alcoholics found out about this and went in through a window and it took all the alcohol I had. Words to the wise, Life lessons learned the first time, etc, etc, etc.

I’m also not particularly fond of the covid the son of a bitch brings along with him. He likes his fist bumps a lot and I always end up feeling more than a little sick from being in his presence. He has a girlfriend in town who is probably the sickest human being physically I’ve ever tried to sit next to. I’m a bit empathetic as far as picking up on people’s internal problems. I never would have made it as a doctor. And this is absolutely nothing I want to get used to.

So, take the better with the sweet.

Today for breakfast I ignored all grains. I put some chickpeas and most of the cabbage I took from the garden and cooked it with some old potatoes. I’m in a bit of a race to get through the old potatoes as quickly as I can. My thought was that I would probably feel pretty good as a result of this breakfast and truthfully, I don’t feel completely horrible. I don’t feel like trying out for the Olympic team but I’m not particularly sick. Except for the Ghenna residual. This has been with me since the last of the fist bumps. I think I should wash my hands.

There’s still the watering to do for today. Ghenna is off to water the cows, which I think is his work with the local collective farm. Either that or he’s off to drink the 15 rubles I just gave him for the morning’s work. I know for sure he’ll be back because he’s got another 10 coming to him. And I guess I need to hang up my wash to dry. Other than this, I’ve got some free time so I guess I can take it easy. Cheers.

I’ll tell you though, I guess this is what they call a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I’m happy to have some physical labor available to help do what needs to be done around here. On the other hand, it’s kind of terrible to have to physically feel like shit every time the guy comes on my property. The perfect answer is to do the work myself and that was exactly what I was trying to do. I wish the medical establishment and Minsk would have been more helpful towards that end. They could have just helped me out when I asked him to. That would have been better for my health all around.

***

My video watching concerning the war has started to stretch out a bit. My feelings that this is an economic War has not changed. The primary desire is to have access to Black Sea oil. The attacks themselves have created enough human misery and displaced enough people to demand huge amounts of oil be spent on travel and humanitarian aid. And most obviously, war is great business for the defense industry. Despite the humanitarian finale of this short, the point is that almost all of these videos are advertising for weapons and security.

Or in other words, nothing that is happening is doing anything to make the world a better place to live in for anyone except those perhaps at the top of the pyramids who benefit financially from all of this human misery. Everyone else is just suffering and dying for their profits. And of course, war is always an ecological catastrophe. Every explosion, every shot fired, every movement and literally, every meal.

***

I had a brief moment to bathe in the light of the chicken woman. I haven’t physically been forced to lay eyes on her in quite some time. I am treated to the smell and sound of her all the time. She screams instead of talking, cackles really, and then there is the misery of her automobile which is also a complete defeat auditorily as well as the poisonous stench she leaves behind. Basically, I would consider her a weapon of War if she wasn’t so oblivious.

So the cause of this non meeting was our weekly garbage pickup. This is the first time in about 4 weeks I have gone out to throw away garbage. I rarely have more than one bag and that bag is almost always just plastic residue. If I buy grains or lentils from a store, obviously they will give it to me in factory plastic. 

If you want to know why I have so little garbage here it is that I work on it. Anything that I can buy in bulk, I do so and bring my own packages for this. If I must go to a supermarket, I refuse all additional plastic bags. I also recycle all cardboard and paper eventually, either using it as bottoms for garden beds or for fire starters. I will also throw food scraps into the fireplace to reduce to Ash on that also eventually goes back into the garden. So I have very little garbage and anything organic goes to the compost heap.

The chicken people however have a full 60 liter sack almost every time. It goes without saying that they have never in their lives had a thought about the garbage problem or what we are supposed to do with all of this garbage we make. I feel free to say this because I’ve only had two or three conversations with them in my history, all of them on my side have been requests to be a little more gentle in terms of their carbon footprint, at least how it directly affects me, and in response they have called the cops on me. Better to get rid of the messenger then be aware of his message I guess.

So I hobbled out across the dirt road with my little bag of residual plastics. I saw the chicken woman. It’s hard to miss her because she has gotten a bit fatter lately. I don’t need to think too deeply about the diet. If you live almost exclusively on animal fat, well, you are what you eat so I guess you start looking and sounding like a chicken. At least this is the explanation for how I see her.

My other neighbor sent her little girl to take out the garbage. They also had only a single bag. The way the garbage situation works is that the truck goes all the way to the end of our road and then turns around and picks up our garbage on the way back. I think there’s another pickup a few houses up. Immediately my neighbor started screaming at the little girl to do something she wasn’t doing. Russian mothers are convinced that they have to completely control the lives of their children until there is no possibility of life or spiritual growth, individuality or creativity left.

The girl had her eyes locked on me and I wished her a good day and smiled. I am obviously an interesting thing to look at. I did not offer to think for her except to advise her to move slightly out of the path of the oncoming garbage truck. She was too transfixed to move and luckily the driver was nice enough not to smash her.

But then the chicken lady started screaming at her too. Leave it to a Russian woman never to miss an opportunity to order someone around. Men, animals and children all must Fall under the thumb of these feminine fascists. The little girl didn’t have a chance to generate a thought on her own. Not that she ever will. They like to kill them when they are young here. They have the same theory for weeding a garden.

In my teaching career, what would often happen is that a mother would attend our meeting with the child and try to do all of the speaking for the child. They would either do that or start screaming at the child to say more or say less or to answer a question. It was obligatory for a child under 18 to be accompanied by a parent. I don’t know what the actual local laws are but morality dictated to me that I wanted to see both the students and the person paying for the lessons. 

But what I often found is that when a parent was overbearing enough to truly be successful, there was absolutely no brain power being generated by the child. They become completely passive and of course, fascist oriented. Like they say, anyone who has ever worked for the man wants to be the man. And anyone who has ever been bitched into complete complacency simply cannot wait for their opportunity to be the bitch.

So the little girl numbly listened to the chicken woman who then started cackling at the driver of the truck. To her, he was doing something wrong. He argued back with her. It had something to do with what side of the truck the bucket would descend from. The chicken woman kept cackling at him until the little girl titled the back towards her own mother’s hell. The only one the chicken woman didn’t cackle at waz me. I am a minimalist so I am always grateful for even the smallest of favors.

I tossed my little bag of unwanted plastic into the bucket and the driver asked me if that was all I had. There were some plastic bags that came along with some planting soil we got and I tried to throw that out last time. It was pretty funny that he remembered this nuance even one month later. Truck that up to celebrity. This time though all I could think of was saying one word to him.

Ecology.

He made a face as if this word was something only a Jewish American would say. Ecology is not high on the radar of a guy who drives a garbage truck I guess. You would think someone with intimate knowledge of the landfill situation might take notice and be aware of such things. Maybe in private moments, getting drunk at the end of the day perhaps, he has moments of logic concerning the destruction of our habitat by our selfish greed and consumerism. Or perhaps he doesn’t really think anything at all, his mother having beaten any individuality or creativity out of him as a child. Working for the state is a practical thing and all other noise was probably drowned out.

Does it seem a bit too cynical a story to bother with? Personally, I think all of this is the byproduct of writing. When you spend a lot of time putting things into words and analyzing the repercussions and background behind the things you see, you end up with a jaundiced eye, especially for the crimes of corruption and stupidity. It’s hard not to see it once you’ve seen it. It’s hard to unknow what you have taken the trouble to learn so well.

This is not like I’m bragging. This is not a demonstration of Jewish arrogance or trying to demonstrate intellectual superiority. I’m just saying that after a while the patterns are there to see. You pretty much know what’s going to happen before it happens. In my case, I tend to avoid as much confrontation as possible. It’s much more peaceful to let people kill themselves rather than giving them an opportunity to eat me up.

However, I’ve been thinking that maybe there is a name to put on this entire project. Maybe it’s all three years of writing or maybe just this one or the last two. I was thinking that maybe there is a book of condensed events telling the story of the last couple of years. I don’t know why it would be interesting but maybe it is.

I doubt I’m going to do something like that on my own. It’s not worth the effort because I already know what happened and apparently, I’m the only one who cares. But what I did come up with was a really cool name that has everything to do with what happens to someone when they take the trouble to write everything down. I want to call it “an examined life”. The ironic argument would not be whether or not it’s true that an unexamined life is not worth living. The argument here is whether mine was actually worth living despite the examination.

***

The Russians use push logistics. You know, that explains a hell of a lot…

***

So 8:00 is here and that’s about it. Today was pretty eventful. Lots of stuff happening but luckily, I was not the only doer. I am absolutely grateful for the opportunity not to have to be the one to do all the work for a change.

Ghenna did an excellent job of cleaning out the lentil Garden. Both the paths and the beds are clean and tidy. He is local which means he’s very interested in what people think of the quality of his work. These are beautiful words and I’m sure he meant them. I’m just not completely sure how much of it remains practical.

On a positive for Ghenna’s side, the neighbors were interested in hiring him to do a job for them. I have my doubts how much of it is an actual job and how much of it is going to be simply playing with me. I sincerely doubt they are taking an interest in their land as anything more than a brief getaway so, whatever they are doing, I’m sure it’s more political than anything.

There was some interesting global warming talk though at the end of the day Ghenna and I both agreed that God is the best landscaper and that everything humans do has an element of futility to it. How much of this gardening business do we do for image and how much are we actually being practical about feeding ourselves? He said an old Russian proverb that you can’t make the river flow uphill. I’m sure somebody has put a negative spin on that over the last two years. They will not let you turn your face away from commercialism. My neighbors had to run to catch their bus to get back to town.

My neighbor also asked me if my will had bottomed out. I told her it had. She seemed confused. She doesn’t really have a lot of need and it must seem interesting to her that I continue to water the garden. I guess she hasn’t put two plus two together and figured out that I saved my rainwater. If I didn’t do that, there would be no way to justify keeping a vegetable garden.

But about this keeping a vegetable garden business, when all the work was finished and the garden thanks to some good hard work seems similar to how it was when I started the year, it became rather clear to me that I am not going to plant it in annuals next year. I have been thinking that if there is any chance to be able-bodied enough, being able to do more gardening might be something I would be happy to do. Today, hobbling down to check up on the work on crutches, I realize that I will never really want to do those 65 m from beginning to end every year. I don’t wish to take care of that much land for cabbage and root vegetables.

This puts me back to my original plan and my original vision. Thinking about what is probably the minimum allowable, I can see planting three rows of four trees. I’m not so sure I need so many apples but I don’t really think you ever have enough cherries or apricots to be happy. Underneath the trees, we can plant berry bushes and all kinds of perennials, both flowers and edibles.

I’m still going to need to augment my watering system. I’m going to need to put down a few liters of water under the new trees. I’m also going to have to take care of weeds. But in the end, it’s just one planting and eventually, the garden will learn to take care of itself for good or for bad.

Oh yeah, every spring there will be an explosion of color, and every summer we will have some fruit and nuts and every fall we will have all the mulch we need. The word is sustainable and it’ll still be here long after I have gone elsewhere.

Dinner tonight was pretty simple. I’m really not that hungry so I toasted up the last of my peanuts and had five small green apples. It’s funny how good a dinner that makes. And every time I eat something like this, I’m kind of shocked at how good I feel afterwards and how satisfying a meal it is. Chalk this up to knowledge of what the human animal really is and what we really want to eat.

Tomorrow morning, Lana will make her appearance hopefully. The floors will get cleaned and probably I will ask her to go to the store for me. I don’t really need very much but I think I would like a little factory food possibly on Friday. I very much like the bread that I made but I think I would just like to go a little bit later if it’s possible. I know it’s not healthy for me sugar wise. I’m just saying that I’d like to take a bit of a break if I can.

After that, it’s hard to say. I should probably water both tomorrow and Friday. I won’t water on Saturday and they say that Sunday starts several days of rain. I don’t believe any of this but maybe if they are predicting four days of rain, maybe we’ll get a good solid hour somewhere in there to replenish my tanks. I will not bottom out by watering the next two days but I will definitely start feeling the drought. And once these buckets are gone, there is nothing coming from the well.

You can’t make a river flow uphill. That was the saying that was designed during the time of the Soviet Union. No matter what propaganda has been stuffed into people’s brains about communism, at its essence it simply means getting along with your community. I have no idea other than perpetual stupidity, perpetual programmed and practiced stupidity, why people should think that abusing each other leads to anything good. I really don’t know why hating each other leads to good.

When I was in Poland, I had a problem with a student who I caught cheating. She wanted a better grade on the test and simply plagiarized her work. When she got caught, she started putting together a gigantic Web of lies to cover up for her transgression. Eventually it got to be a bit of a sticking point between myself and the owner of the school I was working for. I was told without hesitation to give the girl the grade. The school was there to make money and he really didn’t care.

At that time, all the other teachers agreed that I should just walk away. There was no need for any thoughts of scholarship or academic honesty. The only thing that was important was money and whether or not the girl actually spoke English well was none of their business whatsoever. Everyone told me to walk away.

Later on, when I was running my own school and my own teaching method, I made it clear to absolutely everybody that there were no certificates to be had. I gave out some discounts for great students along the way. There were prizes for people who did the most homework and cared the most. Usually this was in discounted lessons or even free lessons for the subsequent month. I did everything I could to make sure that no one could advance or get anything without actually doing the work. When it was my deal, I said that faking it was never going to work. I also sent quite a few students off simply because they were not cutting it.

This used to drive my father crazy. My father was a corporate man. I was obviously One of these foolish people that just never grew up to understand the way things are. Everybody knows that you’re supposed to look the other way. Everyone knows that there’s nothing to think about but the money. Nobody’s interested in character. Nobody wants me to help people grow. Take the money. That’s what he screamed at me time and time again. Don’t be a fool, take the money.

Today I got to look at the chicken woman and my neighbor from the opposite side. It is impossible for any of them to talk to me because of the thickness of the politics. When the cops showed up because Lena was coming over to clean my floors, this was yet another attempt by the chicken lady to prove that she had not cheated and lied the first time. I guess it’s a character trait for particular types of people. Both Poland and Uzbekistan were outlying colonies for the Russians. Apparently, the Russians are very good about teaching corruption.

You know you can see this in the conservative party. You can see the Russian influence. You can see the timeline from when the Russians started getting rich from oil money and what happened to global politics as soon as the Russians began to be a major global influencer. If you’re one of those people who is still shaking their head over what has happened to American politics since Obama left office, you might easily see that it’s the Russian influence at play. It’s not some vague conspiracy theory. It’s a genuine conspiracy. It’s a genuine influence.

In fact, even if you’re one of these people who have come to understand that even the Obama administration is a part of things, it’s really hard to unknow this. I’m not spreading rumors. Everybody knows about the vice president’s relationship to Ukraine and the Ukrainian oil Business. That wasn’t a big story to break and apparently it wasn’t big enough to convince the Christian coalition not to make Joe Biden their man. It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s the oil business.

So this is all I ever get to look at. People lost in their lies, desperately trying to save face. Everybody’s just trying to find some way to be respected by a giant global community that doesn’t respect anything. I mean, trolls are easy enough to understand. They are the people who don’t do any work. That’s what a troll is. A troll is someone who comes in and makes a comment without lifting a bloody finger to help. They have no problem making you do more work then you have to.

What does all this mean to me? It means that I probably should just plant perennials. I should go ahead and figure out a way to get annual food with as little work as possible. I think I would like to fill my gardens with things that live here permanently instead of visitors that require massive amounts of work every year to prepare for their brief stay. This is not the kind of food I want to eat and it’s not the kind of garden I want to grow. I would like a bit of a food for us that understands where it lives and where everything helps each other grow.