Sunday, August 21st 2022. Week 33

Good morning and welcome to yet another week of our very somber tale. It is 7:30 and I am slowly revving to something resembling life. I am no longer optimistic about much of anything. Everything from this week on is going to be damaged control.

I checked the weather report on all five of my apps and we have 100% agreement that there will be no rain this week. It’s overcast right now and so it’s not too hot. It is going to be another hot week unfortunately with absolutely zero relief on the way. But at least for the moment it is gray and overcast so this is something.

Yesterday I took a walk around the field and saw that we are pretty much where we are going to be. Technically, there would probably be another month of growth possible but I simply don’t have any water to feed anything with. I have perhaps two brief waterings left in my tanks, three if I took the trouble to drain one tank into another to perhaps make a full one or to simply change over to bucket patrol.

I could put in a well this week. There are plenty of services that dig Wells and perhaps the work could get done within the next couple of days. This would be something that could salvage a few pennies worth of material. It might also allow for a bit more drinking water. This is a decision I can’t make today on Sunday but it might be something worth doing. There are also minor tweaks that can get done for next year but other than this, it’s time to eat everything or at least get it off the field and save what we can.

I didn’t get a chance to mention it last week but my neighbor did something absolutely unbelievable. This is the grandmother. She was on the property with the little girl again and hired my man Ghenna to do some landscaping. I didn’t think anything of it when she called him over. He can use the work and I don’t have any particular claim on him. But what she did was rather unbelievable.

She had him and a partner cut down all of the trees. This included some fruit trees that were growing near the property line that were bearing fruit. They were not immense or tall trees. I don’t know why she did it. She cut all of the trees that were acting as privacy screens between our properties, one even left a giant hole in the fence, and then she just piled all the debris of all the trees down the center of her field. What point there was is beyond my understanding.

A week ago, I saw the kindergarten teacher put some paint on the house. This week they absolutely decimated the orchard. Are they looking to sell the house? Why didn’t they just talk to me? I told them months ago I was interested in taking over the property. I liked it as it was. Now they have butchered functioning trees. In the middle of a drought, they’ve taken away the one thing that sequesters more water in the land than anything else and even removed shade. In one day of absolutely senseless butchery, they did what the coffee companies and the animal agriculture companies do to the rainforest. If they did this for money, they just lessened the value of their property. If they did it for spite, they have not raised the value of either house. For what purpose they did this other than personal insanity I will never understand.

I didn’t know they were doing this because I wasn’t really paying attention. I was in my office most of the day on Saturday and I had headphones on. I could hear them cutting. I heard them doing all of the cutting. I really didn’t know what they were doing until I came out later in the day and saw that there’s a hole in the property fence and all the trees that used to be there are now gone. I suppose I will never understand the genuine reason for their butchery. The only thing that I can guess is they have some sense of aesthetics. To them, no life whatsoever he’s more beautiful than what Nature has to offer and certainly better than fruit trees actually still bearing fruit.

I just stood there staring at the damage. I have to repair the hole in the fence but I suppose they should pay for it. They’re not even there now I don’t think. I think they just packed up and went home on the bus after all the murder was done.

You know, I want to say something like people are funny. I want to think that it’s somehow humorous all of the quirks that people demonstrate. I don’t know why it’s a natural inclination to find humor in mental illness. I don’t know why we lionize mental dysfunction as part of our uniqueness as individuals. It occurs to me that all of this thinking is just what  we have been handed. We are being aimed complete with manufactured insanity down a particular road that I guess just feeds more money to the people who are running this animal farm. They keep us like hysterical chickens because it’s more profitable for them. 

But it’s not funny. There’s nothing funny about this place. There is absolutely nothing funny or nice about this place.

I remember when all of this noise started. I remember when my students changed. I remember when the influx of Chinese phones came in. I remember when the cruelty started.

I had a brief affair with a lady and I remember wanting to show her something on the computer. She asked me if I was going to show her cruel pictures. I didn’t understand it at the time. Why would I wish to show her cruel pictures? Apparently this was a thing. Rape was becoming a social communication suddenly. Maybe it always had been but I never noticed it here. Up until that time, the basic common thread was politeness. Suddenly, cruel images were appearing on everybody’s cheap Chinese phones and my young students began using the word жесть (zhest), which means cruelty. 

We had a hard time translating the word and some of my ESL people thought that the word was tin, as in the medal. But it’s a more interesting word because it has two more meanings. One, it can be used as the word jest, as in a joke but basically means a cruel joke. Cruelty became a joke and became a replacement for the word cool.

We became a rape culture. The Russians had returned. They had been too weak to bother us for quite some time. Politeness was the currency that I found. Everybody I met was very polite. Sure, there were alcoholics and there were some brutal people who got to handle money. We had gambling and we had some tough guys. But basically they were all pathetic really. Everybody was pathetic but we were pathetic together. And of course, I don’t remember anybody bothering me or being less than respectful. I really quite enjoyed myself because of that.

And then the cruelty started. It started when the Russians went into Ukraine. 2014 is when all of this started. 2014 is when the rape culture started. 2014 is when we started raping each other. 2014 is when we told our people to be harder, to be rapists, to be cruel and to be murderers.

And then of course the pollution started and the river started going bad and it stopped snowing in the winter time. And then the pandemic started and the hospitals couldn’t keep up. Cancer is rising, limbs are getting cut off from diabetes, the body shape of the young people has changed from healthy to thin and blind. Everybody wears glasses now and the young people cannot hold conversations nor even remember what respect was. There was a time that if I visited a school, all the students would stand as I entered the room. I was embarrassed by this. Now, you can’t get a student to listen to a word you say. That picture on my website for Practical English was many years ago.

Yeah, we’ve reached a point of checkmate. The mathematics simply don’t work out. We’re not going to make it. There is some possibility we could do something to help ourselves heal but we won’t. We could get smart and change our lifestyles but we won’t. Too many money people. Too many people believing that money is the only thing that exists. Too many people accepting the cruelty that goes along with money. Too many people afraid of not having money. Too many stupid people.

Why didn’t they just talk to me seriously about buying the place? Why were the politics so difficult for them to swallow? There is absolutely nothing here for them. There’s nothing for them to do. There’s not even nostalgia anymore. We don’t have a lake or a river. They don’t grow any food and as far as I can see, they don’t even bother with the forest for berries. They just come and hang around and put work into the place for no other reason than perhaps to sell it. Why didn’t they just sell it to me when the fruit trees were still there? Why didn’t they sell it to me when it meant something?

Perhaps my ex-partner is coming up today. I’m pretty sure she is. She bought some lentils and something else that I usually get at the market. And perhaps a new batch of red peppers. I’ll save some to dry for the seeds for next year. I also have some seeds from those greengage plums I got. I’m going to see if I can sprout them and get them to grow here.

Friday and Saturday I had the most delicious food. I think I made the best vegan alfredo I have ever made. I had some garlic lying around and some fresh black pepper and used raw peanuts along with horseradish leaves and Dill. I think there were also a couple of fresh chili peppers in there. I made pasta by filling my pan with a little more than a liter of water and cooking down some broccoli, kohlrabi and their leaves as well. I added a bunch of pasta and then when the water was almost gone and the pasta was not quite al dente, I threw my very tasty blender cream in there to allow the flavor to cook into the pasta and then reduced it to a very thick cream. It was unbelievable. I couldn’t stop eating.

This is basically going to be the menu for the next couple of weeks. There are quite a few cabbages to be taken out on the field. There are some beans to be collected and we have some plums and some apples for fruit. I have plenty of potatoes for now and I really can’t see going hungry for quite some time. And of course, people will be selling bags of potatoes and carrots and onions and cabbages for not very much money at the markets in town. I suppose people locally will be doing the same. I’m not going to die of hunger this year or next probably.

But it’s gone. What I’m looking at is something very much like my father was in his last year or my grandmother. These were my only relatives with whom I had any kind of a friendly relationship. I had some business with them too. I did some banking through them. But it’s like it was with them when you can see that the life was going out of them. You could see their mental aptitude failing as the health and vitality started to get used for a dysfunctioning body. You knew the end was coming. It was pragmatically plain to see. This is what I feel like right now looking around this village.

When I first got here, I met some of the people in town and listened to them talk. This is what they were saying. There was no life in the village. Nobody came here anymore. There was no school here or children to go to school. There were no jobs and no money and everyone was just drinking themselves to death. At least the men were drinking themselves to death.

For me, I was actually okay with this. A sleepy place was really all I was interested in. I was pretty happy if there was no help or hope of commerce. I thought it would be quieter and more peaceful. I thought it would be a nice place to connect to nature.

But all I have found is the people that make the most noise, do the most damage. And they seem to be doing this for no reason I can possibly understand. There is no profit in any of their actions. There is no helpfulness and anything they do. They just cause harm by reflex. They’re just following a pattern of cruelty, one rate after another as if you couldn’t feel or see anything that wasn’t covered in blood.

So what else? You tell me. I can’t see it. I can’t see anything but death on the horizon. Death and misery and horror.

Look at me. I am Marlon Brando at the end of Apocalypse now. I am Colonel Kurtz telling the world what I see. The horror. The absolute horror of it all is just unbearable to look at.

***

Speaking of actors and incredibly depressing situations, I just noticed on the social networks that today is Sergey Volkov’s birthday. Volkov is a very interesting character. He is an actor by profession and absolutely an artist by temperament. He is more than a little crazy and he’s definitely a man of appetites. He is a man of terrible luck when trying to fulfill his appetites. He has a huge appetite for attention, especially from women. He has an appetite for love that seems unquenchable. He has an appetite for food and does not mind drinking or imbibing in more vegetative possibilities. He is not afraid to go there.

I am a difficult person to get close to. Volkov definitely tried to be friends with me. I can’t say anything bad about him personally. I can’t say that I have disliked the time we’ve spent together nor can I fault him for trying. He’s just a hard luck character I think. He is someone who was blessed with a little bit more energy than most people get. Perhaps he has bigger appetites for life the most. 

He’s not a bad looking guy. He’s very tall and thin. He has a funny voice and he’s pretty good at using it. He’s an actor and he has told me several times that he has as an instrument only his body and his voice.

He is, as an actor, a bit of a scene stealer. I wrote about him once before. I wrote about him that when you see him act, you can’t help but think “yep, that’s volkov.” No matter what he does or the character he plays, you can’t not think that. Yep, that’s Vilkov. This being said, I would not call him a bad actor. I think he can play drama and comedy to a certain level. I would say he was professional and is pretty good at showing up on time. 

I spent some time with him after he broke up with his wife. I’m not exactly sure of the politics of that. I’m not sure whether he broke up with her or she broke up with him. I’ve heard both sides of the story. Probably this is why he wanted to make friends with me. Perhaps I seemed happy as a single. I don’t really know. We didn’t really make it as friends most probably because I’m just not good at this high School concept of friendship. I have no concept how to relate to people with whom I don’t do business. I think I suggested putting together a theater work for him. And once or twice, I ended up unhappily trying to play music with him. I don’t know what the mistake was. I like him though. I really do.

Quite a few people were very unhappy with the last Belarusian elections. We were global news but there were riots after the vote and a good selection of people showed up in the tens of thousands for demonstrations in Minsk. We had a bit of violence in town and a few demonstrations for either side. The politics are ugly here no matter how you look at them.

I had several friends who were beaten by police. When I say beaten, I don’t mean in the middle of a melee, I mean collected and brought to the police station and held for long periods of time and systematically beaten. Some of them have received invitations to go abroad and live elsewhere. I have several common friends through volkov who are now in the Czech Republic. Quite a few people I know have left the country generally because of the war. Like I said, it’s not really so much of a beautiful place anymore.

In the time leading up to the elections, things got a little mysterious with Volkov. He began meeting with people well outside of his circles and his meetings became a bit mysterious. And then during the riots, he participated. That was one thing about Volkov that you could not deny. He was always participating in everything. Really, he was a part of all of the festivals and pretty much everything that happened in town. And no matter where he was, you couldn’t help but say the words. Yep, there’s Volkov.

Sergey Volkov was one of several people who were arrested because of their participation in the anti-government elections riots. He was set free ahead of sentencing during his case and during that time, he volunteered during the pandemic to help clean the hospital. This was one of the most dangerous things that anyone could do. At the time, despite the fact that the government was completely denying the relevance of the covid virus, most people in the world believed it was the thing that could kill you. Nevertheless, there he was again with his scrubs and a mop doing his job to help out.

As far as the court cases go, none of this mattered. They convicted him of a crime and sentenced him to four years in prison. He is there right now. I contacted a mutual friend to find out what she knew about him. She simply said that he still has a long way to go. I passed on my good wishes for his good health and she said that she would and that messages from the outside were allowed twice a year. Yep, there’s volkov. Happy birthday Sergey.

***

It’s 7:30 and it looks like I’m settling in for the night. I didn’t stop in to do any work during the day. I probably could have but I didn’t. Things just moved a little fast and this is the first time I feel the obligation to put some words on the paper.

The day was warm and overcast and without a single drop of rain. I was sure once or twice I felt water touch my face but in the end, nothing fell from the sky. My ex partner showed up on bicycle, bearing staple foods. Lots of chili peppers, some quinoa and some red lentils. I have now plenty of these things. Probably not enough for the whole winter but enough not to feel worried about not having these things. I also got some more tomatoes.

As for gardening work, there really wasn’t so much to do. Several of the boxes are already closed and the broad beans and the sweet peas have already been harvested. My ex partner brought in the white beans today and they looked lovely. Also, one of my plum trees is actually coming in with sweet fruit I’m happy to say. That was a rather delicious moment, one to be grateful for.

I’m probably not supposed to talk about this but it turns out her company is stressing right now. I don’t like to give full details about these things but suffice it to say, she works for a resource company that used to do quite a bit of business with Europe. And now however with the sanctions, everybody is starting to get stressed out.

The nuts and bolts of the capitalistic Enterprise are the same as any company. According to my ex partner, the resources are better sold to Europe because they require higher volume and probably pay a higher price. To sell things locally would have a smaller market and therefore would need less production. This cuts into profits and we can’t have that. The sanctions basically held that contracts that had already been established could go through but no new business could be done. They are now at the end of the cycle and everybody is worried about their jobs.

I made some jokes about how nice life would be with less production. If we quit the general economic system, people could work for the same amount of rubles. What difference does it make? We could just have lower production, cut down less trees and service our own people. Forgive my usage of possessive pronouns but I think you understand what I mean. It would be lovely to have a local company and locally grown resources stay here. There’d be less chance for profiteering and gamesmanship. There would be less corruption anyway.

But then she said that her greatest fear was what was going on at the nuclear power plant. She is old enough to remember Chernobyl. I have heard stories about the time of the Chernobyl catastrophe. I heard stories of The fallout and how foolish people were at the time. I heard quite a few stories about people a little bit closer to the Chernobyl reactor and what happened to them within a few weeks of the radiation leak. We don’t have access to genuine statistics here of course but I would bet that the cancer rates here are significantly high.

If the war comes here, and there are scenarios that would say that penske’s directly in the line of fire because of his proximity to the Ukrainian border, I’m well off the beaten path. This doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have the usual wartime roundups. Martial law sucks that way. But as far as bombing and strafing and rocket attacks, that would be town. We can look at all of the films from Ukraine to know what that looks like.

So there was some nervousness. I imagine this explains the nervousness amongst all of my town neighbors. I’m beginning to divide the people of this village into locals and townies. The locals are generally either retired or on some kind of medical pension. The townies still work. There are so many townies here but there are a few. I don’t know why I had to be so lucky as to be saddled with the ones I have. Maybe it’s just that they make more noise than anyone else. They are in town. They are deaf and they have no sense of smell. Locals may be a little delirious and drunk but at least they’re quiet and pragmatic. You get way fewer games from locals. Pure games, less misery, less aggression and less negative emotions. I am for the most part quite happy with my relationship to the locals.

But with the drought in full force, no rain anywhere on the horizon and my water stores at their absolute minimum, it will be 2 weeks before my ex partner comes back again. I don’t know what she has planned for next week but she made the decision before she ever came up here. I’m okay with it. I don’t think I will die and I certainly have enough food.
Things are coming to a head though. Like I said, we always get aggressive and bitter in the fall. Sometimes I think relationships happen in the fall. People get together for the winter and then in the spring, they tend to go their separate directions. Or maybe it’s the other way around and people lose their tempers going into winter and find a new sense of love come the springtime. I am not feeling particularly aggressive nor lonely. I’m just noticing how nervous everybody else is getting.

It is really strange to be this far out. I don’t mean that in the hippy sense, I just mean that I am really not very invested in the world anymore. I don’t know why I’m getting so persnickety about supermarket foods but it’s just something I want to see if I can avoid if I can. I seem to be happier on local food much more than I am on imported. My ex partner pointed out that the food that she brought was from a Belarusian supplier. I don’t know if we actually grow quinoa here or red lentils. I don’t really know where this food comes from. I know we can grow it here because I just did. I just assumed it was a Russian product or at least a Russian distributor.

But what I’m really saying is that I think I could probably get by on potatoes and beans. I can get by on pickled cabbage, onions, pumpkin and simple grains. I could get by on cabbage sandwiches really. I’m not just being minimalist, I’m genuinely telling the truth. I don’t really feel that I need a vast variety of supermarket products to get by.

When I lived in town, I was only eating from the ladies who sold their own food. I got along really well on about 85 or 90% local. It’s not very painful. And in fact, if you consider things like forest mushrooms which are sometimes outrageously delicious, you can put together some really tasty soups and stews. Split peas, potato pies and bean cutlets with caramelized onions. And of course the entire range of foods cooked inside pastries. This is the best that Russian culture has to offer and winter time is an excellent place to enjoy such foods.

My dinner tonight for example was amazing and absolutely local. I used my steamer and started with a selection of green peas and broad beans. I threw in some new potatoes and some chili peppers. I threw some oatmeal into this mix and just added a pinch of salt. Two of the dark tomatoes my ex partner brought with her broke a bit in the bag so I diced them up and put them fresh in the bottom of the bowl. 10 minutes of steam and it was unbelievably delicious. You’ve never tasted anything as beautiful in your life as absolutely fresh from the field food.

One of the main Staples of my English teaching class was working through movie scripts. We would start out with children’s books and then elevate to graded literature, abridged versions is another way to say it. And then we would get together over movies. The first movie was almost always Kung Fu Panda back in the day. I think I have been through that movie at least 200 times either from watching the film or reading the script. I know pretty much every line of it.

“There is no secret ingredient for the secret ingredient soup. In order for something to be special, you simply have to believe that it’s special.”

You don’t really need international foods. You do not really need a vast collection of spices. You don’t need anything exotic to enjoy your meals. You just have to be happy with your diet and to believe that it’s doing you good. Or to say that another way, if you’re getting your vitamins, minerals, starches, sugars and proteins, you’re doing okay. If you’re not starving and you like what your food tastes like, there is absolutely no reason to go looking elsewhere.

It’s kind of like my view of town people and locals. The town people are very loud and seem to need a lot of drama to keep them happy. They have to keep moving and excited all the time and everything has to be meaningful and big. The locals seem to be able to get by on pretty much the same thing every day. I’m not saying that I agree with the local alcoholic diet. Dairy products, meat, bread, candy and vodka is not a healthy diet. But I never hear anybody complain except that they’re always starving because of the food they eat.

I don’t drink alcohol or eat their food but the principal works. I am quite okay being a vegan on local food. I don’t feel deprived and best of all, I don’t feel hungry. Not for drama or for pain. I just want a clean habitat and clean food. This would be enough for me.