Friday, August 12th 2022

Yeah, this information, lies, intrigue and coercion. This is also known as drama. We can’t throw a rock without a bunch of drama starting as to why you threw that rock. I’m not sure if it makes you want to throw rocks or not. I’m not a fan of rock throwing. But rocks end up getting thrown and then everybody looks to find out who should get stoned for the crime.

That’s a weird way to get started on a Friday.

Speaking of misinformation, I am still in the warm room. It’s 7:00 and I do not want to go water my field. I should. It’s part of the plan today to do some watering but my leg is still killing me from yesterday. I overdid it. It doesn’t take a lot for me to overdo it but the problems run deep and sometimes I just end up doing more than I should. Lana had something to do with this. The inspector showing up had something to do with this. Just dealing with my normal day had something to do with this.

The issue is that all of the weather reports say that it should be raining right now but of course it is not. We did get a little rain this week. While it was falling it looked like rain and seemed like rain and smelled like rain. But when I looked inside my rain barrels, nothing had really happened. I had not come up to any real usable amount. Perhaps that little rain gave me one additional watering.

But now I’m in this stupid position right here. I don’t want to harm myself but I really should put some water on the remaining plants. Then again, according to every weather report that I have, I think I now have five or six weather apps installed, it should be raining right now. Even the ones with radar coverage literally say that it is raining right now. All of the electronic apps and all of the weather services all say that it’s raining. Except I’m sitting here looking out the window and I know that it is not.

We have a lot of cloud cover so I’m not looking at everything getting burnt up. But everything needs water and I should go and do this thing.

But then there is more. The weather reports say that it’s going to rain a little bit every day and even that the probability of rain is up in the 80 and 90% tile over the next few days. We are going to have rain in the coming week. But what am I supposed to do about today?

I know I should just get up and bully it. That’s how I ended up in this mess in the first place. Actually, that’s not true. I can’t blame myself for trying to be active. Actually, there’s no point in blaming anybody although certainly there are people who could have done their job and helped out. But all that is just things that have happened. Right now I have to make a decision to go turn on my hose or let the morning pass and just hope for the best.

I want to say that I actually had a nice meal with some homegrown napa cabbage yesterday. The plant itself was a mess when I took it. It was a bit dry and literally was home to seven or eight insects. What I did was simply to throw it in water for about 20 minutes. In the first three or four minutes, all of the bugs floated to the top and got tossed outside if they were still alive. And then I went and cooked other things and by the time I got back, the cabbage had delightfully rehydrated and actually became rather tasty napa cabbage. The real selling point was that there was nothing rotten in there, it was still a clean plant, it just wasn’t very big and was functioning more as a home for lost insects.

Still, it’s nice eating your own food. If you don’t do this regularly or if you have never done it, I strongly recommend it. It’s an amazing pastime when you eat food that you have grown yourself. I’m not going to say that this is only because you save money. It’s not really about that. It’s just something nice and familiar about eating your own food.

Another chore that I probably have to do today is harvest some apples. I have a green apple tree. It’s kind of lost and out in the forest. It was a part of an orchard that quit getting taken care of long ago. But the apples are ripe and falling and I really should make a journey out there and collect some.

When was the last time you had fruit directly from the tree? When was the last time you had fruit from a tree with absolutely no chemical additives?

Yeah, all of this requires some movement. I’m not really so worried about the fruit gathering. It’s not as athletic as dragging the hose around. Watering is really not that big of a deal. Neither is gathering the sweet peas and broad beans which needs to happen about now. I can actually let the broad beans go a little further but the sweet peas need to get picked up. It is actually another Garden that’s about to be put to sleep. Or at least cleaned out for now.

There really is a lot to do. There always is a lot to do. I am not a farmer but this is at least fractionally a Farmer’s Life and you really have to agree to do the things you need to do. I just don’t want to have to pay for all of this physical effort with leg problems that I cannot solve or heal myself. I’m just trying to stay healthy as much as I can in the hopes that I am more free to do all this stuff in the future.

Anyway, today is friday. Tomorrow is my day off. I’m going to make some bread today I think. I don’t have to but I think I am going to make some. I also need to figure out something nice to eat for dinner tonight. Other than that, the house could use a little bit more cleaning, I have some clothes that need to get washed and I think my desk in the office needs to get straightened out a little bit. It does seem like a lot for a day that I don’t really want to walk around a lot.

I really hate having to make decisions like this. I kind of wish I had help today but I don’t really have that possibility at the moment. It isn’t that anything I have to do is so technical, I just don’t have anybody to step in.

Or maybe I do. I have to think about this a little bit more. I might have a possibility. Yeah, I need to think about this. But in the meantime, it’s time to get going. One way or another this day is going to get started and there’s a lot of stuff to do. Let’s see what happens.

***

It’s 9:00 and I’ve just had my breakfast under the plum tree. The final decision, if you will be so kind as to pardon my language, was to not be a pussy. I’m not sure if I apologize for this terminology or not. I think the point is clear enough. Sometimes you just need to shut up and do your job. So far, at least considering the sweetness and freshness of my breakfast of fresh cherry plums, I am pleased with my decision.

So far for dinner, I am looking at fresh zucchini. I have several large squashes in my kitchen thanks to Lena but tonight I will have some of my own, thank you very much. I also stuck my hands into my no dig potato box and pulled out several fresh hard golden bulbs. We have some potatoes. Perhaps I don’t have a Belarusian amount of potatoes. I’m not going to be collecting six or seven sacks for the winter. But even just for the moment, we are looking at a fine fresh dinner on Friday night.

I am on my way out to the forest apple tree to pick up some greenies. It will also be nice to have some fresh apples lying around the weekend. As for the sweet peas and the broad beans, it’s just a matter of going down there and taking them. I don’t know if I need to do this today or not. They are not going anywhere and what we have left is what we have.

As for veggies, I have some kohlrabi to add to tonight’s meal. I also have some walnuts believe it or not. I should definitely dry them first but we have walnuts.

This is one of these delightfully quiet moments. It’s a moment without the sound of automobiles or gasoline powered chainsaws or weed wackers. There are some dogs barking in the distance. They are having quite a tussle actually. There are bird calls of course. There are even a few crickets plaintively making some point. The biggest sound right now is the rustling of the leaves. Some of the leaves are already turning brown. I have a birch tree up front that is already becoming autumnal. It is already fall.

Somebody must like what I’m writing because three Cherry plums just fell down next to me.

I have mixed feelings about this time, this moment that I am enjoying right now. I realize I’m playing with it by banging these words out. I usually feel at least a little bit at a loss sometimes, nostalgic for some people I wish were with me from time to time. but this is one of these complex thoughts. It’s exactly like the sort of thinking I do at 5:00 when I crave a junkie cheat meal, some kind of escape, some kind of release or forgetfulness. Food is a great drug when used as such.

What I do during such moments is think deeply about what I’m doing and ask myself if it is what I really want or really need. I also think about the totality of the experience, not just the mouth feel or taste but also the after effect. Am I going to enjoy digesting this meal? Am I going to enjoy the feeling in my body after? Am I giving myself pleasure or causing myself pain? It’s a pretty good line of thought. It works out well because most of the time I end up making wiser choices. I’ve managed to get out of quite a few bad habits by thinking like this.

Unfortunately, these feelings of nostalgia or loneliness for some people that I wish I had with me in this moment get colored by the fact that I absolutely know that they would not enjoy this moment. There would be too much drama and personal difficulty in them to do what I’m doing right now. I couldn’t show it to them or explain it to them. Their minds would simply fight it to the death rather than let it in. I’m nostalgic for the time when we were free together but those times are long gone. There are only memories but I’m afraid not much hope of these things ever coming back.

I guess this is the problem with knowing. It gets proved to me often enough. Sitting here and enjoying these Cherry plums, this business with my next door neighbor refusing me when I told her to just walk over and pick some up is now a part of this story. It is a troll, a hatefulness that never leaves once it’s in there. It’s not only that I understand this mentality as being a part of the world right now for everybody, it is also that the people I probably am missing right now are cut from exactly the same cloth. They are also a part of this great modern world that seems held bent on never, ever allowing moments like this to be.

The Cherry plums are generally yellow. But sometimes a little bit of red creeps into them. Maybe this is an extreme ripeness but sometimes it’s just a bit of color. Those are the absolutely sweetest ones. They are the ones to be grateful for.

So half of the cleaning up that I needed to do in the house is done. I’ve had a walk around my field without watering. Everything looks okay. We of course got no rain this morning and I really should throw some water on the field. I’m probably late but I should do it anyway. But before I do that, I have a big bucket with me and I’m going out to pick up apples and bring them back to the house.

Another cherry plum fell down just next to me. You can just sit here and God just keeps giving you food.

***

It’s 2:45 on Friday afternoon and things are coming to their appropriate conclusion.

I managed to get the watering done in a way. It was not a full watering job, just enough to give a few things a drink. There better be some rain this weekend both for me and the field. The only positive thing about this is that we are at The natural end of the cycle for many of my plants so it’s a bit appropriate for them to start going brown anyway. I played the potatoes appropriately and they are basically ready to be taken this week or next, their skins are already starting to darken and harden. I still have some potatoes in the closet, old geezers getting softer by the day. I am not worried about food.

I collected a couple of apples. They are of course hard and not particularly sweet. The same is true of almost all of my plum trees. I found one or two who seem to have found enough water to do something with themselves. The fruit is still too hard. There is no such thing as a sweet plum anywhere here except for that one specific cherry plum tree.

It would take a massive amount of work and a ridiculous amount of water to make this place pretend that global warming did not exist. All I can do really is pray for better legs next year and that maybe I can enjoy my activities here a bit more. Maybe I can do a bit more and be more helpful to everything that’s growing here.

Truthfully, I’m beginning to feel like I’m in a Cancer Ward.

Speaking of complete debilitation, I just finished washing my clothes. I limited myself to only 20 L of water to do the job. But as I was finishing dumping out the last of my water I heard someone groaning from the road outside my fence. It was Vanya, one of our local non-attached alcoholics, and he was crashed in the grass next to his bicycle either trying to get his pants open or closed.

I called to him and asked him if he was okay and his pride forced him to get up on his legs and push his bicycle over to say hello. He forced himself into a semi-serious conversation if nothing else but to prove that he was still strong. This I can certainly understand.

I’m not going to be insulting to anybody but as far as Vanya is concerned, there is a love triangle between us and Lena. I refused to say or do anything insulting or to even allow myself to think anything insulting. I told him what I believe to be the absolute truth. The woman is a widow, she has many friends throughout the town and does her best to be a friend to everybody.

Vanya is the guy who crashed into her house demanding food according to Lena’s story. She told that story with sympathy reminding me about his bad body and that he has lost his family. Vanya lives off of this sad story and my ex partner and I were lucky enough to hear it first hand on the first days we arrived in this village. Everybody knows Vanya’s situation. 

We also have other things in common. He is notoriously prone to being abused by our skinhead cop. The latest escapade was when he was threatened into obedience by the cop saying that he would take away his pension payment from him. I can completely understand that this is true. Everybody knows everybody and we both agreed that after the first time that he came to threaten me, he has eased off probably because of fear of international conflict. We both laughed at that because it was funny.

Then he told me that he loved Lena and I told him he should get himself together and try to be more of a gentleman. He nodded his head in agreement that this was probably true and then we said some words of understanding about Russian women and we nodded again in accordance with our wisdom.

Then he asked me why I keep my gauge closed and I told him it was to prevent people from coming to my house to ask for money. It is one amazing thing about living here still, especially with the old people. You can say the absolute pragmatic truth, no matter what it is, and someone will agree with it simply because it is a pragmatic truth. Sometimes, again, at least with the old school people, that’s all we all need to know is that we are straight and not playing games with our heads. That at least used to be the same that I really liked about this place. I am good at speaking direct pragmatic truth.

Then I came inside and made a wicked hummus. The feature of this of all things is zucchini seeds. I have a bunch of those and I’m very limited to the amount of sesame seeds I have around so for the protein / fat addition to hummus, I dropped in a bunch of those and ground it all up into a beautiful creamy mess. I don’t add oil to my hot mess but it’s definitely fatty enough. I also put in some cardamom seeds and a super hot pepper. It has everything anybody would want and we’ll go wonderfully whatever I bring out for Friday night dinner.

If there is something that divides me from the people around me, it is not any money I’ve ever had in the past or being raised American. It is not even really my sobriety, though I’m sure this gets daunting for the non-working alcoholic class. We might have a few words that we can understand from each other but we’re definitely not going to hang out. But if there is something that generally divides us, it is the vegan diet. It is the absolute number one thing that sets me apart from people here. I think leaving meat out of your life changes things radically.

I’ve been putting a lot of YouTubes and articles about going vegan or the problems with meat. I’ve been doing this all year. This is supposed to be a blog about food first and foremost. But I ran into a really interesting thing that I thought I would share. It has something to do with everything I’m talking about here and perhaps it’s important enough to flesh out.

I mentioned that I got into watching the original Star Trek show starting probably a couple of months ago. There are 79 hour long episodes from this 60s American TV program. I wouldn’t say that I completely immersed myself in it nor did I lose myself in nostalgia or fandom. I just went through them in order and took from them what I could. Sometimes there was some philosophy that I thought worth mentioning and sometimes it was even noticing the production values. After a while, especially with all of the backstories and study I did about the series itself, I kind of got to seeing it from an inside the theater perspective. I knew that it was a show and I was watching the actors read what we’re usually, especially in the third season, amazingly terrible scripts. Way, way too much theater and Shakespeare for my taste.

Somewhere towards the end of season 3, I started thinking about the most popular character from this show. Without any doubt whatsoever, Leonard Nimoy’s Mr Spock was the focus of so much attention and interest. In fact, when the writers figured out how important he was, he became the prime focal point of almost every episode. Even in the incredibly tedious third season, they were constantly giving him long speeches and allowing his Vulcan eloquence to go on unendingly. Yeah, we get it that it’s all logic but really, he started coming off incredibly bitchy.

So I made a query on Google for a question that I couldn’t help but get out of my mind. 

Was spoock gay?

I didn’t find anything interesting in this search except that obviously, I was not the only one who thought this way. Evidence towards this idea were that he gave up his wife to follow Kirk around, he definitely seemed to enjoy the company of men more than women and his discipline of the service more than he wanted any particular life of his own. He usually spurned any of the available ridiculously sexy women who showed up, almost always wearing some form of bikini in their costumes and was happy enough observing Kirk Mac away at any of available females. He also showed himself to be ridiculously subservient to Jim Kirk that one cannot help but believe there had to be some sexuality behind it. At the very least, a remarkably suppressed sexuality.

As an aside, I hate to bring this up especially during time of War but removing the opportunity to be with women during armed conflicts would seem to be a great opportunity to Foster homosexuality. In fact, the entire chain of command seems pretty damn homoerotically s&m to me. I mean, gay fashions even…

Just last night, I had the opportunity to watch the very last Star Trek episode. This was episode number 79, Turnabout Intruder. If you are interested, you can watch it here:

I’m not going to go deeply into the plot but basically, Captain Kirk has had an affair with one Dr.Janice Lester who has always held a grudge against him. When he shows up on the planet Camu II, she tricks him into a machine that allows them to switch consciousness from their own body into the others. Suddenly, Captain James T Kirk becomes a rather powermed, spiteful and vindictive woman. William Shatner has the opportunity to basically play this up all the way and becomes a drag queen basically for us. I think the joke amongst the cast was to rename the episode Captain kirk, space queen.

It is not seen as one of the better episodes in the Canon, the last episode was delayed in its final broadcast and this allowed Shatner from having an opportunity to win an Emmy for his performance but maybe it’s worth a watch.

Anyway, this gender bender definitely fit into my thinking about Spock’s sexuality. Perhaps he was even jealous of the captain’s ability to go completely girly girl.

In the end though, I did learn something more important about Mr Spock and this came during the second to last episode All our Yesterdays.

In this episode, Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down to a planet whose son is about to supernova and find themselves in a library that has sent the population of the doomed planet back in time to the previous eras of the planet to live out their lives. Kirk ends up in what would amount to be the 16th century of Europe and Spock and McCoy end up in an ice age some 5,000 years in the past.

There are of course women everywhere and in the ice age, there is a remarkably sexy Marriott Hartley in yet another leather bikini and amazingly, given the trip 5,000 years into the past, Spock turns into an alpha male, even threatening McCoy to back away from him and “his” female.

Now, as far as his sexuality, this was not the first time that spark found himself incredibly happy in the company of a woman. That happened several times and more than a few of the sexy extras that came on the set would make plays for him one way or another. Hard to crack the Vulcan exterior but he certainly had his attention.

But what absolutely happened was that looking at no other food other than meat being available, Spock made a point that eating animal flesh was an absolute necessity. He did mention that the availability of clean water and heat from a local hot spring would make a greenhouse perhaps possible in the future, but he made a point of eating meat. He ate that piece of me like it was the biggest deal in the entire world.

Mr Spock was not gay, Mr Spock was a vegan.

It had never been mentioned anywhere in the show up until that point specifically. There were scenes where they would dine together and when there was an opportunity, Spock would usually eat a different type of food. Usually this would come to mind simply as him having a different physiology then the humans but in the second to last episode it was made exactly clear. And in fact, a lot of things became clear.

Vulcans are purely logical people and they distrust and dislike displays of emotion in themselves or others. They also have a strict ethos of peace. There is also a code that says taking life unnecessarily is not logical. And though he agreed to fight and even kill at the Captain’s side, it was never forgotten that his choice would be to work out the problems logically first and foremost.

He never lost his temper, he had the most remarkable mind of anyone there, pinpoint accuracy and the ability to do complex mathematics and solve multi-level problems that made him basically a computer. In fact, he was replaced by a computer in all subsequent Star Trek shows.

“The future is vegan and Star Trek says so”.

So what can we say? I guess it would only be the most logical decision made by the most logical of people. Indeed, it seems as though the humans eventually figured this out as well. Not all of them – we could talk all day about James Kirk’s sexuality, mentality and relationships with men and women. But in the end, let’s just say that all of this was rather fascinating.

***

Anyway, I guess it’s about time to shut things down. I don’t really have anything else left that I need to do today. I don’t particularly feel like I performed any acts of heroism or anything like that. I just did what I needed to do and hopefully I didn’t cause myself too much damage in doing it.

This has been an interesting week. Some really good things happen at the beginning of it and things have been easy pretty much the whole way through. I kind of feel like I’ve been a decent influence on at least a few people. I feel like perhaps some things that I believe in have managed to cross barriers and get into people’s minds at least a little bit. As a teacher, this is pleasing because basically it has been my job for 20 years now. But more so, as a human being, a sentient being, if I have helped at least a few people move a bit towards some mildly higher sense of consciousness or conscientiousness at least, this is a good thing. I’m not a power person. I just admire things that run well.

I had one observation come to me recently as a result of my Torah portion yesterday. They said that I was not a religious Jew after all. They I guess had been completely convinced that my religious affiliation was first and foremost in the things I do. They said that I was not a religious jew, I was a religious vegan. I would love to be able to accept my objectification with Grace and simple agreement. Unfortunately, no matter what I do, objectification leads to trolling and eventually to death and torture. I generally don’t like this kind of attention or this kind of commentary.

But let’s just say that it’s true. Let’s just say that food is the most important thing to any living thing. Let’s just say that the food we eat has everything to do with the way we live, the way we think and the things that we believe are important. The food we eat is not only the fuels that sustain our bodies, they are also the fuels that maintain our philosophies and our mentalities and the things that we believe are true.

I think the thing about Judaism that stopped me from remaining with my Hasidic friends was a simple problem of a lack of belief. Imuna (אמונה) is the Hebrew word for this and it is one thing I have never been able to generate in myself. I just cannot buy into the mysticism of a greater being somehow manipulating the world. I don’t believe in it as a scientific fact, a logical fact and most importantly, because it has been the cause of so much murder and death throughout the history of civilization that I personally cannot stand the concept. I could never allow myself to believe.

What I have always believed in is that reading and writing builds intelligence. What I have come to believe in over the last few years is that taking a day off religiously is possibly the greatest thing people can do for themselves. I religiously take Saturdays off and make them very special. And yeah, maybe I do believe in veganism with zealousness. Maybe even my overriding religious philosophy that God equals nature and nature equals God is absolutely something that I believe in. I also believe that the human diet and the Torah are both in accordance that we should not kill. This means each other, people I mean, or any other sentient living species that cohabitate with us on the planet. This to me is the word.

What I have learned over the last few years is that being honest with ourselves comes at a price. To even try to be honest means you are separating yourself from the doublespeak, the prefabricated propaganda, the religious callings and the political ideologies and all of the people screaming for our attention, screaming to make us followers. This would include all of the so-called influencers on The Social Network and all of our slick suit politicians yearning to be in a position to be above the law. The only thing any of these people never do is be honest with themselves. Some can’t but most simply won’t.

The big mistake in the world is choosing economics over ecology. Perhaps I could also say that pursuing selfish agendas, ideologies and philosophies also misses the point that we cannot have 8 billion people thoughtlessly using all possible resources just to please themselves. The world cannot take the human activity, the human competition or the hysterical quest for said resources. We don’t own the planet, we just live here. We are supposed to be better guests. We’re not supposed to be so belligerent and harmful.

So I’m going to shut this down here for the week, make myself something nice to eat, say a few prayers and Let It go. This is my favorite part of the week. This is literally the moment that I work for. Everything I do seems simply to get me here well. This day off is the best thing in my life by far. Nothing else compares. And the very last prayer that I say every week, after a prayer of gratitude, a prayer for the children, a prayer of thanks for the food and for my life is a prayer for peace. My last words every week are for peace.