Tuesday, August 23rd 2022
One of the nicer videos from Mr Zelinsky. Today is national flag Day for Ukraine.
It’s kind of a conundrum that a flag and a country that will be a symbol of peace will be one where yet another generation will have been destroyed because of a lack of it. An entire generation of Russians will have been destroyed because of this war. Two even, because of the residual. Two generations of Belarusians will have mental problems because of this war. This is not even to mention the actual number of human beings killed, wounded, displaced or even forced to flee. I don’t even think I can put together the full number of just my students who simply don’t live here anymore. This would be both adults and teenagers. For what it’s worth, not one of my former students thinks Russia is in the right. I could be wrong about this but as far as following them on the social networks goes, I don’t see any.
Of course it might not be a universal vote. Amongst the young people that I know, my teenage students are now in their twenties and I could probably say that enough of them would be pro-russian. I can’t say this for absolute certainty but there is a selection of them who are inherently only selfish. I’m talking about social network and interpersonal communications. This is a bit of a nuance and it’s only an observation but there are some students with whom I cannot have any kind of relevant communication. You can’t speak to them because they have a particular set of reflexes that disallows simple back and forth communication. Something tells me that they are either completely unaware or they are pretty happy to be or to have been colonized.
My ex-girlfriend was exceptionally pro-russian about the time of the annexation of Crimea. We used to debate this. I wouldn’t say that we thought about this. Usually, she would use this as part of her standard looking down at me. I’m not sure I’m saying this correctly. I was a lot older than her and when the relationship became a relationship, she no longer wanted me to have any power over her. This would mean even teaching things. She rejected any expertise on my part and really wanted no part of working with me. She liked to feel that she had power over me, at least sexually, so this became the prime element of our relationship.
I see now in the social networks that she has turned pro Ukraine. I’ve never thrown that in her face. Perhaps I’m doing it now but I doubt she reads me so it doesn’t really matter. But she put some free Belarus red and white flag posts on her Instagram during the political turmoil here and Now she is a Ukrainian supporter. I guess she blows with the wind, so to speak. We don’t talk much anymore.
It’s hard to believe actually that any of this is more than fleeting. It’s one thing to wave a flag and it’s another thing to either endure the weight of oppression personally or of course, to be or not to be, to take arms against. This is exactly what Hamlet was talking about. When you have had your Independence usurped, it is a great question about how far you are willing to go to fight. Most of these flag shows are in support of people who are fighting. There are quite a few who did not fight and went with the flow. There are also more than quite a few of these flag waivers who would never in a million years have the courage to actually fight.
Let me be clear, there is more to life than showing courage. There is more to life than fighting. We can also look at the situation with my ex-girlfriend as being intelligent on her side. The colonization was, it existed and the financial disparagement between Moscow and Belarus was firmly kept in place for very real reasons. Keeping this country out of disadvantage economically and socially meant an easier road on many levels for Russians.
I learned about this many years ago, well before Crimea. If a young man wanted to be married or for very natural reasons, suddenly found himself a father, the only possible economic solution to take care of his young family was to leave and head north. That was yet another generation of people who grew up fatherless or motherless depending on the attractiveness of the woman because they were forced into absenteeism by the need to make money. You could go to Russia and pound nails for a few hundred dollars more a month or you could just start drinking and get it over with.
I have an IT friend who was a bit smarter than pretty much everybody. He managed to find work with Russian countries without ever leaving. Eventually he left. He’s in Cyprus now along with several of my other friends. Cypress is one of these friendly places for Russian speaking people. As for why this friendly connection exists, we don’t have to go any further than the banking corruption scandal of a few years ago.
What was the Deutsche Bank corruption scandal?
Oh wow, I was not expecting that. Have a look at that link. Apparently, they are still getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Well, with a war going on in Ukraine, we should probably never have doubted that.
Cypress and the Deutsche Bank scandal?
This was from 2010. You can trace the entire history of the rise of Russia from the ashes of the end of the bank scandals just before the turn of the millennia. Those were the scandals that put Belarus permanently into poverty. When money started to flow into Russia through Gazprom and Rosneft, a tiny percentage of that became Belarus’s economic miracle that got the president elected for a third term. That money was all fluff by the way. Belarus never rose out of poverty. Of course, neither did Russians. I’m not talking about the 3% at the top, I’m talking about Russian people like the ones who join the army for a paycheck.
This go with the flow philosophy is pretty common here in Belarus. Ghenna would never have a conversation with that lady about cutting her orchard down. I mean, if they thought the place was a bit overgrown, they could have put in an afternoon of trimming around the fruit trees. They could have simply done some landscaping to make it aesthetically pleasing for her eyes rather than butchering the entire orchard. Of course she would not have listened to him even if he did speak. Firstly, he’s male which means she must control him and have dominance and secondly, he could never turn down money no matter what he is asked to do.
When I spoke to him on the phone, he told me that he had a fresh can of diclofoss. He was ready to poison himself again if I had any more problems with wasps.
This is really what everything is about here. This power game that people play is the only game that is allowed to them. They grow up under the thumb or under the heel really. They are forced into a submissive position through almost every possible means of demonstration. They fear penalties such as police abuse or finds or financial problems. I’ve had businessman friends who were taken down by basically brutality on the part of the government. I know two such business people who got broken by the state for whatever reason. In both cases, the movement and take over was exactly as brutal as having that orchard taken down. It was exactly as heavy-handed as all that.
Let’s just say something happens to you when you live here. Let’s just say that you become a particular type of person. Perhaps you can say resilient but that would be too complimentary. It’s just abuse. You are abused. You don’t really have much choice but to grow up abused or live abused. And the only thing that you can do, the only thing that you have the freedom to do or that you are allowed to do or that you can even try to do is make pictures showing how happy you are. It is the only weapon we have. We make propaganda. We spin the truth. We play with minds.
Let’s just say it’s complicated. And this is not an American propaganda argument because I don’t remember it being much different in the states. I’m talking about heavy-handed brutality. I don’t remember it not being worse. I don’t remember having less pressure. I also don’t remember it being any different in terms of propagandizing. Americans are exactly the same. They also take their relief from photographing themselves and editing for the best light.
Is there an answer to this question? Of course. Figure out a way to live without your car. I’m not joking about this. Simply take away the power that we give the oil business by taking away their money. It’s not such a difficult thing to understand. Simply place your own sanctions against the oil business. Declare yourself an independent thinker, fly your own flag for your own life. Think of how you politically relate to things and exactly like unfriending someone on Facebook or unfollowing someone on Instagram, just block the oil business and call it a sanction.
The same is true for boycotting supermarkets or absolutely limiting the amount of money you give them. Don’t rely on entities that siphon money out of your region, find local solutions and deal with local distributors. Make sure your money stays in your community.
The same is true honestly for the meat business. I’m not going to say anything about raising your own chickens because I really don’t want to eat meat or to use animal products. But you can at least help starve out the factory farms. This would go a long way towards helping clean up our habitat. It would go a long way towards disempowering the people who put their boots on our necks economically every day.
I mean, it is quite complicated how the power structure works. People get hurt all the time. I’m just saying that you have to do the right thing.
My flag is green. Maybe even it looks something like this:
I’ve always liked this one. All green, no red. All ecology and no blood but perhaps that little bit of lattice work on the left side out of respect for the manual labor required to keep things going. That would be a raised fist or at least a fist bump to the workers. I like this one a lot better than the red and white flag. It seems a throwback to another time that is as debatable as the one we have. This one is just a hybrid but at least it’s something new and in my opinion, a step in the right direction.
For what it’s worth we do have other flags. I’m not talking about Belarus, I mean everybody. For example, here are the flags for ecology and a unified planet Earth:
Happy Flag Day.
***
It’s 6:30 now and I am just getting moving. I don’t really think I’m going to have company quite so early in the morning but either I am ahead of the curve or I’m being bothered.
I have two visitors coming this morning. The first will be Ghenna to do a little work around here. I’m going to ask him to flip the compost pile and perhaps take down one fence and rebuild another. The fence that I’m going to ask him to take down is one of the last fences put up by the previous owner to segregate the back part of my property for animals.
I know for a fact that they kept pigs because the house still smells a little like the sausages they made in the fireplace. Also what is now my woodshed was obviously set up for animals. Perhaps in another time for other people, these fences might be of use but for me, some of the retention fences are a hindrance to moving around, some are in bad shape and some restrict access out to the garden.
There is a natural slope that divides the property. It’s just a couple of steps but it has always been there along the fence line. This slope is there because when the field was being plowed, originally the entire thing that I call a meadow right now was used for growing plants and every year, they would plow it in sections leaving drainage canals along the side and forming the center into a crown. These drainage canals can be very helpful for irrigating the land. They are also very helpful for feeding trees.
Removing these two bits of fences will both add easier access as well as freeing up a cherry plum tree that has grown through one of the fences.
My original idea was to remove the fence so that one of the walkways from the front to the back of the property could be moved. This would allow me to put in more water tanks to catch water from my barn roof. However, I am starting to rethink this idea a little bit. I don’t know how well this new well will perform or how much water it will allow me for my plants. But if it is sufficient, I will not need to catch rainwater from the barn anymore and I can allow the water from the roof to flow down into that canal to feed several lines of trees heading out towards the forest.
This was one of my original ideas for a passive watering system. Rainwater from the roof would help irrigate the lower gardens. Before I started catching water from the house roof, a second feed was started near the path that ran down towards the garden as well. It’s not really so much water but it was helpful for the fertility of the lower Garden last year.
This has me thinking quite a bit about the work that I did this year. I’m not sorry that I did what I did. But looking back, I think things were fine just the way they were. I am extremely happy with all of the food that I got and have right now. I have enjoyed eating the food that grows here on my property for several months now and I also enjoy having this Garden to pay attention to. But I changed what was here. I can’t say for sure that I did the right thing or not. The world adapts if you let it and I changed things.
However, I think I changed things for the better. There had to be some modifications made in order for me to live here. I have some physical restrictions and I need it to be able to move freely. This required adequate paths between the gardens and frankly, I prefer working in raised beds than at field level. I also want to say that where my raised beds are was the driest part of my field. It was a place that would require artificial watering no matter what because no natural watering systems were allowing any life. That was the whole point of building there.
But if the watering problem does get solved by drilling this well, I can rethink my use of rainwater. If I’m not obligated to save all my roof water, I can allow it to flow feeding the natural canals leading down to the lower gardens and then plant trees and perennials in the natural basin. I can still water down there but if rain, or what rain we have, is enough to help feed that part of the property, this increases my chances for successful trees and of course we’ll add to the beauty of the entire place.
One of the fundamentals of permaculture is catching and slowing down water as it flows downhill. One of the main causes of these flash floods that are ravaging regions right now is that a lack of fertility in the soil due to mono crop growing techniques and over plowing is that the water no longer seeps into the land. This is called desertification, where we are actually creating deserts.
This is exactly what’s going on right now in this region. We are basically turning a garden into a desert basically. The trick is to catch the water that you do get and slow it down. You don’t want to stop it, you just want to slow it down and give it a chance to soak in. This builds fertility and allows for life.
The reason I did not drill this well last year or at the beginning of this year was because of money and because I didn’t really want to put more stress on the groundwater. But after a year of working with these boxes, and if this well turns out to be effective enough, I might need to rethink how I do my agriculture next year.
What I want is to set up a garden that will eventually sustain itself. I do understand that eventually if left to its own devices, a forest will simply come. The plum trees grow all over this property. Pretty much all fruit trees and all trees generally will eventually take over everything. I’m not talking about allowing a jungle to happen. I’m just talking about having a lot of perennial food lying around. I’m talking about creating an ecosystem that allows this to happen.
Anyway, I’m enthused at the moment. The thought that next year might be better than this year is a positive one. I’ve learned quite a bit and some things that were previously only theory now have some practice behind them. With some good luck, perhaps I will even be physically better next year and be able to do more. Of course the drought is not going to get better and people are not going to stop participating in the ruin of the planet. This I know like knowledge. But for my own tiny little part of the world, I have a little bit of optimism.
Time to get moving. Maybe a little bit of breakfast or maybe not. I’ve got a few chores to do before anybody shows up. Time to do my job.
***
Yeah, it’s 9:30 on a very ambitious day. Ghenna never showed up. I haven’t called him but he hasn’t showed up. I got a call from the other well digger to confirm that he’s coming up. He’ll be here in about an hour.
I just finished a project that I have been wanting to do for a long time but for some reason have not had the gumption or the energy to simply get up and do it. I built a simple drying table for the apples and beans. It took me a while to figure out the architecture but I’m looking at it right now and I think it looks pretty good. Not store-bought. Better. Like I built it myself without spending a penny.
The reason I did this is that I had left the beans and potatoes out on the blanket last night and when I came out this morning, I realized that the blanket was wet from the dew. What is the point of putting things out in the sun to dry if they’re just going to get wet. The problem was the blanket. It worked last year to dry the apples but last year, I always brought the apples in when it was wet.
So I took some junk wood I had and made a simple table and stretched some mosquito screen over the whole thing and tightened The netting along the sides with some more wood. Pretty easy and now there is upper and lower air flow. Probably I’ll have less ants crawling through it, not that it matters.
I have been meaning to make this damn thing for so long I’m almost ashamed to be done with it now. It didn’t take very long from start to finish but it’s one of these things that he just can’t believe you didn’t do sometime earlier.
I’m not going to beat myself to death completely. I have been taking it easy on myself trying to give my leg a chance to heal. I haven’t looked yet, but it is possible I damaged myself with all of the Athletics. I hope I haven’t. I don’t feel as though I have but then again, you never know about these things. But the main thing is that I have improved my lot in life. I have a place to dry things out and let means I am one step closer to food security. I think I have more screen still, even two pieces so if I want, I can make more of these or expand the one I have. A drying table is a good tool. I like it.
Ghenna called and said he is on the way. He said they have just let him go at work. I generally don’t believe a word he says but it doesn’t matter that much. He says he’s on the way.
Tanya’s phone still does not work, I have not heard from her and I still have not seen or heard a word about my pants. I hate to repeat myself but I knew it, I knew it, I knew it that this would be a bunch of bullshit regarding these pants. It’s hard to say what I should do about it. Maybe I will just walk over and ask. The gate is open for the well guy anyway. I guess that’s the next thing I have to do.
I tell you, all of this ambition plays hell on a guy’s legs. I think I was happier in my own hospital. Trying to rejoin life is trying. I don’t mean trying as in making an effort, I mean trying as a pain in the ass.
***
It’s a quarter to 11:00 and I’m not sure if 2/3 of the problems have been solved. Ghenna still has not made an appearance. When I was talking to him, his voice sounded like he was already pretty drunk to be honest. I don’t know how much money my neighbors paid him but apparently it is enough to keep him well in the pocket for a very long time.
I want to say something like “good for him” or congratulations. This is a successful moment in his life. I’m not being insulting about this but if you’re going to be an alcoholic, you might as well be a good one. So as of the moment, this deal is not as yet known.
The old well digger showed up and he was a bit younger than I saw it. Over the phone, he sounded a bit like a codger but in real life he’s younger than me. I know this because he asked me how old I was and then I asked him how old he was. He looked pretty much about the age he said he was but said I look younger. He says that I am well put together. I said nothing about veganism. Actually, he was probably being nice because I’m a potential payday.
I’m starting to see why they want to just call and come to work. It seems that there is collusion in the ranks and all of the people who do this job, though competitors, seem to ask for a standard price and do exactly the same work. His job, his well-placement and pretty much everything we talked about were exactly the same as last night. To be honest, I felt a little foolish about doing this because I did believe it was a cultural issue. I don’t like being out of touch and I am more comfortable taking bids but if everybody takes the same money for the same work, well, I really don’t know. Is there a difference in quality? Is there a difference in competence?
If there was a difference between the two fellows it had something to do with their style of conversation. The guy yesterday was a sharpie, he had all the mental acuity of a very young man and seems to have built a world around it. He even has a pretty hot girlfriend. She was sitting in the car waiting for him. At the time, I thought that’s why he was moving so fast but now I think this is just his general way of working. This guy this morning had a hard time understanding what he was supposed to talk about. I would ask him a question and he would assume I was talking about something completely different. It wasn’t understanding the language, it was just that he kept answering things that were completely non-essential. He would explain something about the pump pressure and that it would not be what I would get here but I was only talking about how much pressure would be at the end of a 45 meter hose.
This happened three or four times in the conversation. We were looking for a good place to sink the well, I showed him the place that I thought would be about perfect for the work and then he said that another place just a little ways away might be good as well. I asked him for his reasoning and he started talking about well construction. He was not saying why one place was better than the other, he just answered a question that I had not asked with information that was completely different from the subject we were talking about. Pretty strange.
The only other difference is that the other guy seemed not to have any problem with paying by bank transfer. Everybody wants this money in cash. The best this guy offered was to drive me to town and back. I’m not saying it’s a deal breaker and he seems like a nice enough guy but if the other guy will let me click a few buttons on my phone to send the money along, this would be significantly less travel.
One small nuance from the end of our conversation is that he knew me from the village that I lived in 15 years ago. I thought that was rather amazing. Of course, how many Americans are living around here? My celebrity status is what it is. But of all the things that I’m known for, that he knew me from a village I lived in a decade and a half ago it was pretty funny. He keeps the house in that region so I guess that knowledge would make sense. He also knew some of the people that I worked there with. At the end, we understood each other.
After he left, I was already at the gate so I hobbled on crutches a couple of houses down the road and found Tanya working across the street in her orchard with her husband. I wish everybody a hello and Tanya tentatively and rather nervously I walked over. I didn’t make any bones about my situation. I just wanted my pants back.
To be honest, Tanya is also a little bit on the alcoholic side here this morning. She played the quiet then shy with me, not wanting to create any problems with her husband. It also never occurred to her that I understood the situation just by looking at it nor that it mattered one bit to me. But you can’t take the girl out of the drama or the drama out of the girl so it is what it is.
We did have a pretty weird back and forth about those pants. At first, she told me that she was really very close to being finished. I could probably get them back tonight or for sure I would get them tomorrow. I mentioned that it had already been a couple of days and I was about ready to put on new pants. This filled her with shock. Obviously I was stupid. What do you mean, you only have two pairs of pants?
I tried to get off this subject. I told her it has its nuances and that it would take a long time to explain it. She doesn’t like listening to me when I talk and immediately started to explain to me the process of going to town, going to a store and buying a pair of pants. To her, it is a very human thing to do and that if I put my mind to it, I could easily accomplish this. I told her thank you very much for the lesson.
So I explained that the problem is that I have been here for perhaps a little more than a month trying to let my legs heal. I haven’t been to town and therefore I haven’t been to my ex partners apartment. Usually, I go to town about once a week and if I have any dirty clothes, I can clean them in her washing machine. But because I haven’t traveled to town, I haven’t had a chance either to bring these clothes in to be washed or to retrieve anything that is still in her closet. I told her that this was not the end of the world and that I can wash my own pants or sometimes Lena does them for me when she wants the work. But at the present time, I really only have two pairs of jeans here and I would really like to be able to change and put on clean jeans.
Everything about that story was amusing to her. She was losing her shyness for talking to me. She told me again that she had made up with her husband and things were going well. I asked her what had started to fight but she said she didn’t want to talk about it. I took a guess and said that somebody got drunk and she quickly agreed that that was most of it. Then I added that they had had sex and now everything is better but she thought that was the most amusing thing I had said the whole time. Absolutely not! Who did I think she was?
The answer to that question was not important. The only thing that is important is somehow getting back the pants. I mentioned to her that if we had any deals between us, perhaps I could put some money on her phone in lieu of cash payments. If she doesn’t have any money to keep her phone running, maybe all money is the same. She liked that I said this and then immediately asked me to give her some money right there on the spot. That was as funny to me as the sex joke was to her. Who did she think I was?
So after a few brief words about democracy, barter and absolutely not being a bank, I left her to her enjoyable life and hobbled back to my house.
Along the way I passed the house of the chicken people and stopped and looked at their property. They have put up a pool, one of those plastic rings for the boy and perhaps my opposite neighbor’s girl so they could splash around in the hot weather. I stood there looking at his property and solving the problems of changing the location of his driveway. The fence he has is a simple wooden one with nothing but a small concrete foundation. I don’t know how deeply anchored that foundation is but my guess is that it is almost exactly the same size as the whole in his fence that is open right now as a driveway.
Briefly, I doubt it would be 2 hours of work to change the location of where he Parks his cars. If he were to move it to the other side of the property, there would not be any neighbors anywhere near it and his cars would be slightly further away from his house. He would not be putting Auto fumes into his own house and frankly, there would be no difference whatsoever about privacy or problems with people touching his goods. He has no security and no garage either way.
There’s also one other small thing. If he did move his driveway, the grass would come back and there is a lovely place that he could change from concrete to greenery in just a short period of time. Also with very, very little effort he could plant some ivy along the wall that borders our houses and he would be living next to a green space. It would also be a very lovely and sunny place to grow some berry bushes or perhaps a small flower garden beautifying the front of the house. It’s an absolutely lovely place, very sunny and bright and right near the front door. Literally, his world would change for the better just by doing this one little thing.
As I was sitting there staring at this space and dreaming about a quieter, more peaceful and less poisonous life, my hand packed neighbor made an appearance. We looked at each other but didn’t speak. I thought about saying you should park your car over on the left and explain my landscaping ideas to him but why bother? You can’t reason with alcoholics, drug addicts, conservatives or henpecked chicken husbands.
So as of the moment, nothing has been resolved. I’ve gotten two estimates, both of the estimators probably think I’m crazy for having wanted to talk to them beforehand. After speaking to them, I understand why they think both they were wasting their time and I had wasted their time. On the other hand, if I am the buyer, I want to get the best deal for myself that I can. Sometimes the deal is in the nuances. There’s a difference between salesmanship and the truth and sometimes you like some people better than others. But if it’s a job that you want done, you probably want it done right and you probably want the right people to do it. I say I did the right thing by bucking social convention.
As of the moment, still no jeans and no workers. I have no idea if and when either of these problems is going to get solved today. But then again, it’s a warm day in August. Things are progressing and moving forward. I have a new drying table. I don’t seem to have any problems between Tanya and her husband, no triangle dramas there thank God. And for what it’s worth, there’s absolutely no change in my relationship with my chicken neighbors. The only thing I know for certain is that they will live the entirety of their lives without a shred of common Sense coming into them. You make your bed and then you lie in it.
Mother fucking piece of shit nazi climate deniers. Anti-semitic white trash.
I tell you, working with Ghenna doesn’t bother me. Dealing with these well diggers has no ill effect. Even chasing my pants from Tanya doesn’t trouble me even in the slightest. But these people living next door to me, they bring out the worst in me. I think they bring out the worst in everybody. Everybody knows about them. I wish it was only racial prejudice against the wife but this is definitely more a case of character identification. Everybody seems to know exactly what I’m talking about.
***
Have you ever had that perfect nap? It comes at a time when you need it, you find yourself in a comfortable place, sleep comes easily and your body just flows into it. It’s a necessary thing, it’s a beautiful thing and it doesn’t come all the time. I suppose you could call this a siesta. I guess you could also call it recuperation or an opportunity to get my legs up a little bit. I was sleeping so peacefully…
But then Ghenna was in my window screaming at me. He said a bunch of gibberish about not showing up, I have no idea what’s going on in his life. He immediately started pitching about all kinds of work to be done. I didn’t know what he was talking about. Fuck. I really have to learn to close my gate when I’m going to sleep. This sort of thing could give you mental problems. Actually, this is exactly the sort of thing that ended relationships with me with women. When people don’t let you sleep, it screws with your life.
Anyway, the new deal is that he says he will be back at about 4:00 to turn over the compost pile and either patch up the whole in the property fence or break apart the fence that the cherry plum is growing through. This will basically open up the entire area and allow a horse cart to come in and material to be moved more freely from the back to the front.
Other than this nap, I am amazed at how creative I am feeling today. I don’t know how this well is going to work out but if it is as dependable as claimed, this will do a lot of things to free up material I have lying around. Amongst these things is to remove the water buckets collecting from the barn and extend the gutter troughs. This will allow a waterfall that will drop directly into a canal which can feed a beautiful line of fruit trees. It’s almost too perfect to ignore and a great place if you like taking showers in the rain.
A second possibility would come because I can move my barrels around a little and use them for different purposes. I can add one barrel near the front of the house to catch rainwater and use this area both for extra water or an outdoor shower. That’ll be a warm water shower because the black buckets are in the sunshine. These water buckets here can also be used to water the front part of the house and this will allow me a lot fewer problems dragging hoses around the property. I’m liking the sound of this already.
Still one more possibility is that there is a perfect place to put a pair of barrels on top of some concrete blocks and use them to make fertilizer tea. Again, these are black barrels so the water would be quite warm and all of the microbial action that you want in making really good weed tea and other nutrient Rich liquid fertilizers can be stored in abundance. 500 liters of fertilizer that can be dropped directly into a watering can in the bottom or even gravity feed through a hose. Thinking of that makes me feel even sexy.
After I woke up, I made my decision about the two guys I was dealing with. I really felt bad saying no to the second guy. When I put all of the pluses and minuses on the table, I like the first guy better. He was prepared with everything needed to get the job started, he is ready to come a little earlier and he’s allowing me to pay him without having to go to town for the money. That was good enough for me.
Unfortunately, when I called the old guy to tell him that I went in a different direction, he seemed really broken up about it. I apologized profusely for making him come out. The only reason I called him was because I said I would call him in any case. I’ll be honest here, I kind of told him a story and blamed my ex partner. I told him that she had found somebody and was very enthused and had made the decision already. I doubt he believed me. He then tried to lower his price. I felt absolutely shameful. I’m not trying to break him! He seems like a nice enough guy. I don’t doubt that he can dig a bloody well. I don’t know, maybe we’ll have buyer’s remorse or maybe not but I went in the direction I wanted to go. We’ll see if everything works out on Thursday in the morning when the well diggers show up.
In the meantime, I don’t think they have one but if there was an online gambling site that let you bet on your ability to get back to sleep, I would go with the no. I would also place a small bet that I’m going to be pretty sleepless tonight as well.
You just can’t play with sleep. Sleep is a sacred thing. You should never live the kind of life where things happen when you’re sleeping that require you to wake up. And I will tell you as a man of wisdom that if you are with a partner, male or female, and they have a tendency to disturb you when you are sleeping, no matter how wonderful everything else is, remember what I told you: this is a deal breaker. If you are living with a person that doesn’t let you sleep when you need it, you need another person in there.
I could probably also say that if you live in a house with animals and they are in the habit of playing with you when you sleep, unless you have someone robbing your house, you tell that animal to leave you alone. If there’s light in the sky and Papa’s eyes are closed, you are either silent or in the papers for adoption.
And why not? Put this on a list of things your children need to learn. My guess is that they will be more successful people and have better friends around them should they harness the power of letting people sleep. I should write a book about this or something. “Let them sleep on your way to success – rules to live by from a man who doesn’t like being disturbed during a nap”. I’m thinking New York Times bestseller and a book tour with the hours of one and four blacked out unilaterally.
***
It’s 5:30 and Ghenna has just left. There are several points here that need speaking about. But before I get started, I need to tell a story.
We have another set of neighbors down the street who are also townies. I wrote about them and our limited interaction a lot last year. She is perhaps the loudest woman I’ve ever met in my life and he is one of the sleaziest people. Both of them are ridiculous alcoholics, it goes without saying but by virtue of being together and both having jobs at a large company, they live at a level and expect social acceptance. I’m not even going to get into our relationship or how they viewed me.
Last year when I first came here, we were invited to an evening of social interaction. During that time, everyone else got drunk and I drank tea. They fed my ex-partner shrimp and I stayed vegan. I agree that I didn’t need to be at this party. But the point was that my ex partner was pretty happy accepting shots of whatever special whiskey the husband wanted to feed her. The basic situation at the party was that the television played at top volume, the wife over-talked it by at least 30 decibels and the husband kept drinking and passing shots to my ex partner. I drank tea and watched all this with I think what they call bemusement.
After this, the husband had a hard on for my ex partner. Anytime that she would come up to help out, he would show up. If I called him and asked for help, there was no possibility. Specifically, I wanted to buy some wood from him but he only wanted to sell me steel. His property looks like a Nazi prison camp. I just wanted some decent posts. For me, nothing but for my ex partner, this guy was the limit.
The story I want to tell here was when I was in my office and my partner was outside and the husband showed up with some zucchinis as gifts. What I remember about that moment is that I knew he was here without hearing him or seeing him. I knew he was here by his smell. I could smell abundant cigarettes and alcohol and I immediately knew who that had to be. It was a pretty high Sherlock Holmes moment. There’s more to the story but at the end I sent him home and told him to keep his fucking zucchini.
The point of this story is that I have a pretty darn good sense of smell. My chicken neighbors hate me for my sense of hearing. They don’t understand what it’s like to actually have all of your senses. Perhaps this is from sobriety. Probably it also has something to do with being vegan. It definitely has something to do with not smoking cigarettes. I may not be the friendliest person in the world but I can bullshit as a gentleman and I have my senses about me. Senseless maybe their opinion of people or of males specifically but apparently they are too senseless to understand that I am not from their mold.
Having said this, Jenna finally showed up about 30 minutes late and I could smell him so easily it was ridiculous. It was not that I could smell the alcohol on him, it was that he had doused himself in Cologne to cover up his drunkenness. He used a lot of cologne.
During the work, I asked him how much silver they had paid him to cut down the orchard next door. I had to ask twice. Apparently the number was 250 rubles. 100 American dollars.
Here we could get into two conversations. The first would be about exploitation and the second would be about why you would give a day labor drunk $100 in one shot.
As far as exploitation goes, I talked about this subject at great length with Ria last year. I mentioned how much of it was exploitation and perhaps we should work out a deal that required some level of responsibility. I had unbelievable problems trying to get Ghenna to stop asking me for money. He wasn’t the only person that I wanted to stop from coming to my door to ask but he was one of the reasons why that door is now perpetually locked. Call me insulting if you want but my putting a barrier between my front door and my house was exactly the same as the barrier that used to keep the animals in their pen. This is just a metaphor not absolutely the way I see things but the metaphor is apt no matter what.
With $100 in his pocket, it turns out that that orchard was not the only thing that that ridiculous woman did last week. She not only destroyed the orchard she also destroyed who was up until that moment a pretty good day laborer. As to whether she was evil in her intent or just stupid is a question for the ages. I doubt there will ever be a time where she will speak freely about her decision making process. I would bet dollars to donuts that it is as I said and that she just wanted a maintenance-free yard. Two or three times a year with a weed wacker and she has no further worries. No worries, no work and who the hell cares about trying to save water in the middle of a 13-year global warming drought. Who gives a damn about the value of a house or the functioning orchard versus a house with a parking lot?
We managed to rip apart the fence which immediately became garbage. Those fence pieces have been the pallets holding up my water barrels. I guess I get the job of putting them back together. I needed to be a bit more Hands-On in talking about how to get that fence out of the tree. The tree had grown up through that fence. Basically Ghenna started hitting everything he could with the back part of an ax until I stopped him and suggested a slightly better form of surgery. We managed to get the fence out only having to remove one small tree limb about the size of your thumb.
The second part of the job had him completely destroy my compost pile. I didn’t realize that he was not listening to me when I told him that I just wanted the pile rolled over 2 m to the left. That was all I needed to do was pull the top off and then just keep pulling in the same direction until the pile rolled over one time. We can roll them back and forth occasionally and by next year we should have some compost.
That was not what he did. What he did is dig from the top and throw all of the compost all over the place. I had to stop him and demonstrate how I had a better instrument for that that would pull instead of lift up. You get better purchase and the job goes by pretty quickly in about 60 to 80 pulls. He finally agreed to use my recommendation but then fell over into the fence three times while holding a very sharp instrument and I called it a day for him.
I tried to be friendly but I asked him if I could say a very true thing to him. He agreed and I told him that he is a lot more effective before he gets drunk. He said that I should listen to him and then made attempts to make excuses about this or that and what he could do and who he was and who he is and who he can be. But the truth is the truth and eventually he smiled and took it. I wasn’t there to abuse him. I understand that the world is here to abuse him but this is not who I am. I just appreciate his existence and I agree to the terms of his labor. I guess it’s not exploitation if everyone agrees it’s a good contract.
So tomorrow he is supposed to come back sometime in the morning. We will see if that works out or not. We had an argument about whether the last remaining tree there at my border should stay or go. Apparently the old woman ordered it removed but I think it’s on my property so she can go fuck herself. Not that she should work too hard at it. She can pretend she’s rich and beautiful while she fucks herself. Anyway, the job will be to close up that hole in the fence so people do not feel free to walk between our two properties. I’m not sure how he’s going to do it but I would accept propping up drunk or simply trying to lift up the fence that exists and prop it up with wire. I don’t really care what we do to close up the hole, I just want the hole closed.
So that and to see if we can put that compost pile back together and that’ll be another 10 rubles for the work. Ghenna tried to fist bump me at least a dozen times until I finally told him it was time to go. He seemed happy that we were still friends and that I didn’t turn on him for showing up drunk. But true, it would have been nicer and less violent to my natural resources had he not been drunk off his ass. But at the end of the day, the fence got taken down. We can move it into the barn and throw a few screws in it to hold it together without too much problem. It will serve another purpose sometime in the future.
So after the last unwanted fist bump, he pushed his bicycle out on the street, I said a few sarcastic remarks to him. He threw his leg over the bike, rolled down a small slope, turned around and rode back up a few meters down the road, fought with his front wheel in confusion about what to do and then fell off his bike. I told him that there were two rules that all professional bicyclists know. You can’t ride drunk and you can’t ride on the beach. If you live here, well, you should really know these things.
Then again, I still have all my senses and I noticed that his seat had cranked over in the fall. I mentioned to him that he needed to straighten out his saddle but he waved me off. I should listen to him. When he was younger, who he is and who he was and who he will be, etc etc etc and then sat down on the bike in a way that simply had to hurt if he has any sensation between his legs and pretended nothing was wrong and went down the street another 20 m. He was unhappy to find that I was still watching him when he finally got off to help stop what was probably a painful thing to his testicles. I didn’t hear him curse Jews or Americans but even if he did, I’m pretty sure he’ll show up tomorrow. Hopefully sober.
It’s 6:00 and the gate is now locked. No appearance by Tanya so again, no clean pants. I’m sort of interested to see how this little drama plays out. I wouldn’t say that this little soap opera is interesting enough to justify my living in this town. It’s sort of a drain on my attention and energy to be forced to deal with it. I’m sure if I was drunk and insane it might be the most interesting thing in the world. If I was a drunk, insane and horny for any possible touch of a woman, perhaps she has an argument. Unfortunately, I am none of the above and it would be nice to get my pants back. Either bring the pants back or show me a picture of how they cut them up. Anything to be done with this situation.
***
It’s about a quarter to 9:00 and I guess this is today’s button-up. I don’t have anything more to say really. I don’t have any philosophies or interesting tidbits or platitudes to Dole out. This day is over, it was hot and dry all day, I did the best I could with what I had to work with and now I’m going to turn off my brain and rest my eyes and my leg.
My leg was really where I took a beating today. Building that drying table was a bit more athletic than I have been. That was pretty painful at the end. I have chores that I will need to do tomorrow including watering. We may be getting a functioning well on Thursday but I still need to keep up with the things that are growing . It’s too hot and there is too much sun. I probably should have done something today but I got to about the limit of my pain this morning. And then Ghenna came by drunk and I needed to be Hands-On with him in order not to have him kill yet another tree.
Maybe that’s the real trick. Everybody requires a little bit too much attention. People love to drive themselves into telephone poles and accidentally fall off cliffs. Then they make it seem like it was your fault. You were not there to guide them and correct them and therefore their failure ends up on your shoulders. It’s a remarkable way of life. I’m trying to remember if I spent a long period of my life trying to commit suicide or not. Maybe it’s that I never really cared what people thought of me. I mean, I wanted a nice face in the market and I wanted people to know that I ran a respectable business but I don’t think I ever allowed myself to be someone’s boot licker for approval.
I mean, I’m sure I have made compromises. I can think of things that I have done, second chances I have given or phone calls I’ve made that I knew in my heart were not worth making. I did them for some sense of nostalgia or in the hope that perhaps things might change and become more friendly. It never works out though. If you’re not together, there’s a damn good reason why you’re not together. If you are together, unless you are a purebred masochist, to me your clock is running. People are going to turn to shit eventually. And then the suicide starts again and then, there you go.
Maybe it’s the sugar cycle. Sugar up and then sugar down and then you eat something sweet to get up again just so you could fall and need something to bring you up again. Maybe we really are nothing but degenerate drug addicts. Attention whores. Glad-handers. Obsequious smilers. Maybe there really isn’t anything of value anywhere. Anyway, more of it tomorrow
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