Monday, August 15th 2022

I should probably do the math on how many days I have done this. It’s not that hard to do because I haven’t missed a day. So, I’ve completed 31 weeks and have done a reasonable job of writing every day 6 days a week. That would be 186 days of work. That makes today my 188th day of showing up and trying to have something to do with green food. I cannot profess to have any particular relevance that I can ascribe to my 188th day except to say that I’m not hungry. I’m not hungry at all. I could be more dramatic and say that I’m not hungry for anything which would also be true. But I guess the truest declarative sentence I could make, thank you Mr Hemingway, would be to say that after 187 days of talking about food, I am not hungry at all.

Last night’s meal was very satisfying. I also had a very gentle meeting with my ex partner which was also very nice and pleasant. Our relationship has changed since the beginning. Probably she has changed too. Certainly I have. You can’t spend time without the influence rubbing off. This I guess is related to the law of practice in that anything you practice, you get better at. I guess we are well practiced together. 

Right before I turned in though, I stopped in at the kitchen and ate the last of those new potatoes that were left behind. There is nothing creamier than new potatoes. Lately, I have been working my way through the last of last year’s potatoes. Comparatively, there is so much difference between new potatoes and old potatoes you wonder why you would ever bother with old potatoes. Old potatoes simply don’t have any life left in them and new potatoes give a sense of hope.

I suppose there’s a metaphor in that. Last night, I got to talking about my relationships with women. I feel really bad about how I interacted with my ex-partner’s neighbor over the last New years. I tried to explain my reasoning for keeping the woman away from me. She’s a train wreck and I really didn’t want that in my life at the time. But my refusing this opportunity for a closer relationship with her, not necessarily sexual just closer and more intimate has put the neighbor off me, probably permanently. I do not feel as though my life is lessened by the lack of her presence, I just feel bad if I made her feel bad if that makes sense.

But this led to a conversation about several train wrecks that I have had relationships with. I hope I’m not being too much from a masculine point of view to be discussing women as train wrecks during these days when women seem to have the right to destroy anything they want. This is not going to be a misogynist essay. I just made a point in saying that I have had enough experiences with women who have no ability to control themselves whatsoever or, perhaps a better way to say this, who practice not being able to control themselves as a manner of controlling the world. Understandable. Fear-based reactions.

I just don’t wish to have responsibility for train wrecks placed in my hands. I don’t really want to take responsibility for other people’s damaged goods anymore. No offense, but has a straight deal, I don’t even see the benefit to myself. I mean, she might think she’s a new potato but once the damage is done, that’s pretty much the end of the Innocence. You’re not going to get much hope from an old potato and much less from a potato that’s been cut by a heavy-handed potato digger.

This isn’t to say that people can’t be friends. But in order for people to be friends, you need some level of reason. If I were to say the word reasonable train wreck, we would have a perfect oxymoron.

But then we can quit talking about people and even throw out the argument about objectification or racial differences or even age. Certainly it’s not about misogyny here in any way. I’m not talking about hatefulness of women. We are also talking about alcoholism. Childhood sugar addiction leading to bad eating habits as an adult. All of those alcoholic parties when you were younger. Let’s put meat into this group and talk about everything that does to you every single day when you think it’s your right and privilege to satisfy yourself with some food.

Listen, I like food too. Last night, I had a couple of garlic bulbs, paper and all, to go along with those leftover young potatoes and it was a delightful eating experience. I haven’t had garlic in a while because our garlic didn’t want to come up. So, when my ex partner brought up some garlic bulbs from town, this from the more professional food growers, I had my first garlic bulb. Actually, I don’t think it’s called a bulb. The bulb is the entire thing. I think we would call it a clove. Delicious with new potatoes.

But this is all the antioxidants that are in garlic. This is all of whatever garlic gives us for the first time this year. This is all of that plus a new potato and I slept like a baby last night. I slept like a baby and woke up refreshed and I am not even a little bit hungry this morning. That’s eating.

There is a gigantic difference between stuffing dead flesh into your mouth and chasing it with alcohol. There’s a big difference to what happens to your body between taking appropriate nutrients for the human animal and feeding your mental and physical illness based upon something you’ve been addicted to without you knowing it. One is freedom from hunger and the other is a reaffirmation of enslavement.

The point is that I understand the woman’s failings and I’m not pointing fingers or looking down my nose at her. She’s an adult and she has the right to live her life as she can. I am not kidding myself that she is a free woman because she’s not. She’s obligated to continue working just like my ex partner. She has never had a day in her life where she was free from economic or social pressures, most of which aimed at keeping her exactly where she is right now. I’m just saying that I have no interest in taking responsibility for her problems or her life and I have no interest in closer relationships with a bloody train wreck. I’ve done that before. I’ve already experienced this misery. I’m just not that masochistic anymore.

Or, I’m just not hungry anymore. Not for food and honestly, not so much for sex. I got older. I have diabetes. I got older, I got hurt and I got experienced. After a while, anything you practice, you get better at, you just know where something is going and you know that you’re not going anywhere good.

This is how I eventually got meat out of my life. It was just a matter of knowing. Pizza. I wonder if my saying this word makes your mouth salivate. I wonder if I’ve raised your desire by saying the word Pizza. I feel like a sexy young girl posing for an Instagram picture when I say the word Pizza because I know I’m having an almost sexual effect on someone who’s reading me.

How about the sound of material being ripped.

I don’t want the fat. I don’t really like fat. I don’t like eating food cooked with cooking oil anymore because I don’t like what it feels like in my mouth and I don’t like what it does to my body. I don’t understand a fat based diet. I do get some fat from eating nuts and seeds. Sometimes I tend to overindulge myself in nuts. But the thing about natural foods is, you kind of understand when you’re getting sick of it so you just stop. That’s a little bit different from eating animal fat. It’s a lot different from eating animals.

And then we have a problem with cheese. I know where cheese comes from and I know how cheese is made and I know what cheese does to you. I know what it is to take in a pure fat no fiber entity. High salt content. Eating an animal secretion that I do not need. But then we even have a further problem. We’re not talking about cheese from the French countryside in 1821. We’re talking about a factory farmed animal stuffed with antibiotics and basically living their life on extended estrogen therapy. What the hell do I need this for? Why in the hell would I put that in my body? I’m not even talking as a male. Why would any human being do this to themselves?

Okay, so what about a vegan pizza. I’ve had some vegan pizzas and very often over the last while when I have eaten at restaurants, I stopped myself from saying “was forced to eat at restaurants”, a vegan pizza is about the best I can hope for. Vegan pizza and vegetable soup. That sounds like my restaurant really. But you would just have freshly baked white bread with some tomato sauce and vegetables. That sounds fine to me. It’s tasty, fresh and hot. Make it spicy.

I personally don’t eat white flour all by itself. I do eat white flour but I always cut it with something else to make it a slightly more complex and more fibrous carbohydrate. I’m not taking the taste out of anything. What the hell do you think you’re doing when you’re eating pizza? You’re eating leftovers on freshly baked bread. Did you think it was something else?

It isn’t a matter of pleasure. It isn’t a matter of denying myself pleasure. I didn’t distance myself from my ex-girlfriend to deny myself pleasure. I didn’t distance myself from my ex partner’s neighbor to deny myself pleasure. I am not masochistic. I’m just trying to protect myself from injury. This is not fighting off pleasure, it’s keeping myself from having pain inflicted on me. This is pain avoidance not avoidance of pleasure. I am trying not to be harmed.

I had a brief moment with a young lady that I met through a friend in town a few years ago. It was a weird situation. They insisted that I bring a guitar to a gathering. I wouldn’t really say that it was supposed to be a party but this is about what it turned out to be. I don’t play publicly or make concerts or anything like that because it’s exactly the same thought process. I’m not denying myself or anyone pleasure, I’m just avoiding misery. But I played and I can play a little bit and I guess I did a good job and there was a girl there who wanted to get closer to me at the end of the evening. Lucky me.

What I didn’t know at that time was how seriously screwed up this girl was. In a moment of foolishness, I allowed a little bit of intimacy between us. What followed was a serious s&m trip on her side. The girl was just into pain. I’m not saying this from a male perspective or complaining about my own experience, I mean that the girl was on an s&m trip. Literally, she ended up doing bondage bar shows where she allowed another woman to tie her up for the entertainment of other people. This was her thing.

No thank you. This is not my sport. This is nothing I need to satisfy any deep urges. I do not need to experience these emotions that you think are important. I’m not into punishment, earned or not. I’m also not into punishing. I am not a pain person.

Crazily enough, this region seems to breed them like rats. It seems that giving each other pain seems to be one of the basic currencies of life. Offering and depriving other people of pleasure seems to be the only way to communicate with each other. If the state needs your attention, the very first letter you received will tell you that you are going to be deprived of something. They do not begin with a request, they begin with your punishment and then allow you to react to that.

Speaking of restaurants, one time I asked a local owner why it was impossible to get a beer to go along with my dinner. He told me that the local people could not tolerate this opportunity. They do not know how to enjoy a beer with a meal, they only know how to go to the bottom of the glass. If they do not touch insanity, it is not even remotely satisfying.

That’s a true story but I don’t need any evidence to prove its truth. Go on the internet and Google the war in Ukraine and tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

So it’s Monday morning and I am fortunate enough to have worked myself into a situation where I don’t need to go to work. I talk about this pretty much every week but it’s not such a big deal to me. The only thing that’s really interesting is that I’m just not hungry at all. What this means is that I’m at a bit of a loss for what I’m supposed to do with myself. I don’t need to sleep anymore. But I don’t need to go to work. I don’t need to clean up because the place is pretty clean. I don’t need breakfast. I don’t have anywhere to go and I don’t really have anything to do. I guess at this moment I simply am.

Well, I could probably throw some water on the plants. I could probably throw some water on the plants and have a look around the garden. After that, there’s probably a lot to think about. I have this business with the windows that probably need some thought. I’d be interested to know the cost of masonry blocks for a bunch of projects I’m thinking about. Also keep posts and cattle panels might be good materials to have going into next year.

I mean, it’s not like I’m dead. I’m not Dead. I’m just not hysterical and I seem to have quite a bit of time to make my decisions. I don’t have to snap into place. It’s not exciting. I don’t really feel like I’m bored. I’m not bored. I’m actually fine and amazingly, I feel pretty good All things considered. My leg is healing, my heart seems fine, I go to the bathroom everyday and I seem to get enough fresh air. I don’t have any huge anxieties and I don’t feel like I’m lacking in physical strength. I guess I’m generally pretty healthy.

I’m just not hungry. That’s the point. I think there’s something about making your diet from appropriate foods for the human animal that does it. It kind of clears your head. Fighting off addictions or at least understanding the difference between addictions and relationships also means something. In my personal opinion, this is kind of the definition of health. Health equals freedom to be.

Anyway, I guess I’m going to get moving somewhere for something. Like Lafcadio the lion who shot back said, you might not know where you’re going, but you know you’re going somewhere. You can’t help but end up somewhere.

***

It’s 12:45 and I am in the office. I guess you could say that this has been a pretty productive morning. I’ve definitely gotten more done than I would have thought when I first opened my eyes today. The only thing I can say is that indeed, once you start moving, something is bound to happen.

I started the day by doing some watering. We did not put any water down yesterday. The water tanks did take on some amount of water during the weekend’s rainfall so the situation is a little bit better than I thought. Probably I have four days of water to use.

Yesterday, I did not spend a lot of time helping my ex partner in the field. I spent most of the day with my feet up. She did not mind this. In fact, I think she is usually happier to be around me but not exactly connected to me. I don’t want to overstate that as hatred. I think she just likes doing life the way she likes to do it and doesn’t need me stepping on her feet. Yes, I am perfectly okay with that.

I got the watering done and had a chance to look around. The broad beans definitely need to be taken as do quite a bit of the sweet peas. Unfortunately, the Cherry plums are coming to an end. All that fuss for about 2 or 3 weeks of sweetness. I have several cherry plum trees but only this one provides the sweet fruit.

We did spend quite a bit of time talking about the future. Nothing I haven’t said here. I do need to expand my water retention capacity one way or another. I’m also genuinely thinking about putting in a roof to provide water to the fruit and nut trees I have heading down the meadow. That was one of my original plans and it came exactly from that cherry plum tree and its situation at the base of my woodshed. That combination of shade and a few extra meters of water dropping on its root definitely allows that thing to be productive in a way that no other trees here have. I have placed roofing panels near some of my trees and you can see that it definitely helps. It’s just a fact of life that the groundwater no longer supports fruit trees in the way it once did. This is not shocking. If we allow the groundwater to drop down to two meters below the surface, you’re not going to raise succulent fruits here anymore.

The watering went without too much problem. Again, I would definitely like to do something to augment my current situation ahead of next year. I don’t want it to seem as though I just idly dream. There are definite things that I would like to see and have. But all of these plans I have are tempered by factors such as money, availability, transportation logistics and so on. I don’t live in a world where you can just have whatever resources you want. I don’t have an endless marketplace and unfortunately, if I think out of the box, I have a very limited marketplace to work in. The vast majority of people think exactly the same way and do exactly the same things, exactly part of the reason for global warming, so you just can’t get to exotic and expect quick results. Even my ex partner used the phrase too much work to describe certain plants that I thought we might like to try growing.

But all of this is a part of the big hobby. It’s not like I have much else to do. If I can learn some things about gardening over the next few years, I’ll be pretty happy. All of this said, I still need to stay within budget and figure out how to use the actual materials that are available.

After this I had a spectacular breakfast. Sometimes the most spectacular breakfast can be what you make of yesterday’s leftovers and that’s exactly what happened this morning. All of the food that I had made for breakfast yesterday that my ex partner wanted no part of became a base for soup and her peanut sauce made that a creamy soup. Absolutely fantastic. And spicy. I made sure of that.

I even had dessert of my last few walnuts that I have had for quite a long time.

I have a walnut tree that is no longer very productive unfortunately. The tree is an excellent size but again, despite the fact that it has a half the roof feeding it with water, it never wants to produce a huge crop of walnuts. This does not mean that it’s barren, it just means that we don’t really get such a large amount of nuts from it. At least we didn’t last here and we are not going to this year as well.

I had a bag of these nuts and I never ate them because I have had a lot of access to other nuts. I agree, we are talking about imports in a lot of cases. It’s supermarket or Farmers market food. I’m not going to disagree with this. But the point is, if you have access to a kilogram of shelled sunflower seeds, this is infinitely easier than dealing with each individual seed itself. The same is true for walnuts.

This bag of walnuts had been sitting around, my ex partner brought me a kilo of shelled sunflower seeds and even a couple of peanuts. This is very nice of her. But not having access to any nuts got me into this bag of old walnuts. The problem of course was the need for a nutcracker.

How do you eat walnuts? I have the capacity to break the shell by putting two nuts in my bare hands. My friend Zhenya the mechanic has the ability to just crack them between his thumb and forefinger. I have tried using a knife to pry them open along the seam. None of this stuff works. What do you do?

I went on the internet and started looking up nutcrackers. You could use a pair of pliers if you had a pair where the jaw could open up enough. There are particular types of pliers that are exactly the same in function as a nutcracker. I don’t own any of these tools. I got some ideas off the internet to perhaps use a big chunk of steel and drop it through a tube and I have from my vacuum. This would be a great way to smash the night and keep the shell from flying away. But then I couldn’t find the piece of steel I was looking for and that idea went to hell along with the rest of them.

Then I came up with my very best idea. I have a steel plate and I put it up on my desk and thought of using a hammer to crack through the nut. This actually worked pretty well except the hammer itself has too big of a head and the other side of it is also too wide. On top of all of that, it was a very clumsy instrument to control with my fingers and I ended up making more of a mess than enjoying any nuts.

The next day is where I made my big revelation. I decided that that metal plate was too big and unwieldy to use just for not cracking and decided to try a piece of wood to protect the table. I went into the kitchen and took a piece of scrap wood and then I noticed that I had a rather beautiful rock that I had brought home from the field. I looked at the shape of it and held it in my hand and suddenly the problem was solved.

This is the best nutcracker I’ve ever had. It’s infinitely articulate, it does an amazing job of crashing through the Walnut shell. I don’t seem to need any other instruments to dig out any meat hiding in the crevices. And it costs nothing and required no building and hardly makes any Mass. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the ultimate nutcracker. A rock and a rounded piece of wood. It does no damage to your furniture and makes eating walnuts pleasurable.

If it matters to you, it’s probably also a pretty good home defense device. I won’t go into any of the details about that.

Breakfast was good, dessert was good and I was back to taking it easy. I had reached about my limit for getting up and walking around and I was okay with just chilling. But then Ghenna showed up.

I heard his voice and my first start was to be angry. But for some reason, no anger came up in me. I think it has something to do with waking up without being hungry. I didn’t think about it until that moment but I also woke up without any anger. Really, I was just okay with everything, even having the man come to my door without calling.

He said he had a gift for me. I told him I don’t want any gifts but then I thought about it and just decided that it was okay. Really, I just felt that whatever the guy wanted was just fine by me. So I got up and hobbled out to the front gate. He had brought me a very big bag of new potatoes and a half liter jar of salad. He said the salad didn’t have any sugar in it nor did it have any meat. It was perfect for a vegetarian. The new potatoes were not really large but the thing about new potatoes is that you don’t have to peel them. You just wash them a little bit and cut them up because the skin is not that thick.

I asked him how much money he wanted and he told me six rubles. Would you like to know what an insignificant amount of money is? There were easily six or seven kilograms of new potatoes. I made a point that I have my own potatoes right now. The box I have has come in and we have not even scratched the surface and have already come up with several meals of delicious creamy potatoes. All the same, I didn’t feel like making a fuss.

I went in the house and found a five ruble note and picked up a handful of change from a change box I have been throwing my extra money into for maybe 10 years. This change box was around when I was living in Minsk with my ex-girlfriend. The habit started when I started collecting two ruble coins and using them to pay for water. I don’t buy water anymore but I still collect change. Actually, I hardly ever add to this collection anymore because I don’t really carry money. The amount I handed him was more than he asked for but he didn’t seem to mind one way or the other.

It seemed like an awful nice gift honestly. I don’t need any more food but you can’t argue when someone brings you food.

I asked him to come back tomorrow. I definitely have some work for him to do if he doesn’t mind doing it. That compost pile needs to get turned over. Also, all of that junk wood that I bought at the beginning of the season is still sitting on my field under some plastic tarps. A little while ago before my legs started going bad, I made a few trips to carry the boards into the barn and lay them up against the wall. I never went back and finished that project. I don’t know how many boards are there. Maybe somewhere around 50 so it’ll take a few trips. And then there is also a fence that is growing around a young cherry plum tree. I have taken most of this fence down already and I’ve been using it as pallets under my water tanks. There are four more pieces that I can use for more water storage. He had no problem agreeing to the job and seemed happy to get to work.

By the way, there are two possibilities of increasing my water capacity near the barn. One thing I can do is come through the barn wall and store the water inside the building. This will allow the barrels themselves to last longer because they will not be exposed to any direct sunlight. The second possibility is only possible if we remove that fence. Doing so will increase the size of the opening and if I do that, I will be free to double the amount of barrels that sit in front of the building. All of these things become possible.

So everything is still calm. Tomorrow, I don’t know if I will need to water. The weather report says we’re going to get some rain. I’ll believe it when I see it. There have been a few drops today but really, not enough to make a difference. I’ll have some work done that will change the general landscape of one area of my property. It’ll increase access to the back part of my property and we’ll make building a compost place and another place to house fertilizer and we’ll make it much more accessible to bring a cart down there.

It occurs to me that there will be times during the winter when I’m going to end up paying the man a little money even when I don’t have any jobs for him to do. I can see that if he actually does a lot of work with me, it’s going to be rather hard for me to simply tell him no just because I don’t have a lot of stuff to give him. There is also the situation that when the weather is cold, it is very nice to have some labor to do to keep yourself warm. And you do need to do things to keep yourself warm.

As of the moment, I’m just too calm and peaceful to really worry about anything. I don’t have any spastic energy making me get up and run around. I don’t have anywhere I need to be and I don’t have anything that I need to do. From this point of view, I’m pretty grateful. What the hell? I have a few more potatoes than I had before and work is getting done here. Like I said, you never know where you’re going but you end up somewhere. Let’s just say I’m optimistic about wherever this is going.

***

So it’s a quarter to 8:00 and I am in the warm room thinking about today. Generally, I feel pretty good about things. It’s pretty odd that I have a day like today where I seem to hit the absolute sweet spot. I’m just talking about what it feels like to be alive. I’m not talking about being in love or being drunk or excited or thrilled. I’m just talking about a perfect Middle ground.

Today was the day without any pain. Even when I did the watering, I didn’t mind marching around at all. Even after, when I got called out of my office, it wasn’t so bad. I guess my doctoring really is doing well and I am doing some substantial healing. It’s not an overnight deal unfortunately but I’m getting better.

Even later on in the day when Ghenna came back trying to sell me a jar of pickles nothing could break the mood. We had a quiet conversation about not bothering me too much for money. I don’t want to overstate things. I understand that the guy needs what he needs. My old 5:00 let’s get fucked up alarm is his lifetime 5:00 let’s get fucked up alarm. It’s still most people’s understanding that the end of their slave day is the time to Let It go. I still feel 5:00. I just don’t really need to get wrecked anymore. He still does.

The point is that I didn’t get upset. I didn’t have any reason to speak harshly and I didn’t even mind heading out to the fence to talk with him. He was pretty tentative about losing his relationship with me. I am a little bit of money for him and I guess as long as this is the case, he will be a loyal friend.

My friend Hemingway talked about this at the end of his first novel, fiesta. After the bullfights in Spain and the debacle between his drunken friends, the love of his life and that bloody Matador Romero, getting back to France gave him the opportunity to let his cynicism come front and center. 

It felt comfortable to be in a country where it is so simple to make people happy. You can never tell whether a Spanish waiter will thank you. Everything is’ on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money. I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me back. I would dine there again some time and he would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table. It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis. I was back in France. 

I know how he felt. It’s just the way things are here. It’s just something you need to know. I don’t delude myself with any deep feeling sentiments one way or the other just like I don’t delude myself about Ghenna’s. Or for that matter my ex-girlfriend, my ex partner, my daughter’s mother, pretty much anybody you’ve read about here on these pages. It’s a pretty straightforward deal. I don’t think it takes away from the experience to know this. In fact, I think it’s very important that we all know this and life would be better if we would just quit lying about it. At least lying to ourselves.

Later in the evening I took a walk around and noticed that the temperature was absolutely perfect for me. Not hot or cool and the breeze felt absolutely lovely against my skin. It was like a caress from God. It was so sweet. And of course the air was perfect and it was almost noiseless except for the wind wrestling through the trees. It was just a moment to notice. It was just a moment of perfection in an imperfect life. Such moments are nice.