Wednesday, August 24th 2022

I want to say that today is going to be a big day but it’s not. I have some chores to do this morning, mostly water. Perhaps Ghenna will show up to finish yesterday’s deal this morning and perhaps you will show up sober. No matter what, it’s going to be quite a bit of pain.

Ghenna told me that he was going to town today. Something about his daughter. He has a shadowy story concerning his family and why he lives at home. I believe he’s had three wives and he says he supports his child by turning over his pension to her. This is a military pension and technically speaking, the reason why he does day labor. 

Pretty much all of the day labor guys, I’m using this term loosely here, are single and drunk almost all of the time. There are a few married guys who are also drunk all of the time. There are more women than men in the village. This goes along with the Belarusian actuary table which says that men die before they hit 60 and women make it into their 70s. You take your guess as to the causes. 

It’s really hard to say what’s going on for real in the guy’s life. I don’t want it to sound like I care a great deal about what the fellow does. My interests are selfish. I suppose in a perfect world of cooperation, I would have a couple of ideas for easy and sustainable employment that might raise the character of The village somewhat. But this is not going to happen. The state will not allow it to happen and the people are self-policing about their misery. No one is going to rise or move or agree to be helpful. Only the day laborers require their daily fixes and therefore are available during their waking hours.

I have to bring water to the house and this is going to be a challenge. The well has almost completely bottomed out. I don’t mind putting in this well. I am not full in my belief of a constant water flow but even if it helps a little bit, this might be enough. You have to do something if you want to have a vegetable garden. Currently because of the drought situation, you have to do the maximum. There is no other choice.

The plants need watering. I am going to set that up first. I have enough water to give everybody a drink. We will see what the story is tomorrow about how this is going to change but the weather report says no rain inside so no matter what, this is my last saved rainwater going out today.

Was this a failed experiment? I don’t think so. It was not satisfying. Saving the rain water is a good idea. A couple of major tragedies that lost a lot of water didn’t help. And when we did get water, there was a period where I overflowed and was unable to save. Now in the middle of August, we are bottoming out all over everywhere. We planted wrong and didn’t account for this. You need to plant for the earliest possible harvests. But we did have water and I do have a garden and I have been eating from my own food sources all year long. I haven’t gone hungry even a single day. No, I can’t complain about these choices at all.

The only wild card about today is whether I get my pants back. I have no idea. I have a feeling that they are going to show up. It’s hard to explain this feeling. It’s kind of an ESP thing but it feels as though Tanya has plans of coming by.

By the end of this week, hopefully my landscape will be more clear. There are still quite a few things out on the field. Some of the boxes are coming to a close. Next week or the week after, I’m going to set up compost areas behind the barn and leave the space for fertilizer. This all goes towards next year. And if we have abundant water or at least better water, I will be quite grateful. Better late than never and Good Hope for next year.

I don’t think I have anything to add to this. I have a lot of thoughts in my head but I am heading into the home stretch of my third year of daily writing. I feel like I’m becoming redundant. It’s like I’ve said everything I want to say and talked about everything that I know. Sometimes I have moments of ambition to do other things. Sometimes I have moments of creativity. But these moments are few and far between and for the most part, I’m starting to feel like a bureaucrat filling in his document.

Okay, up up up. 

***

The morning went well. I’m saying this at about 10 minutes to 10:00. The well is very low but it is still functional. I made a small mechanical modification to get just a little bit more water into the bucket. If it’s the last week in August I am at least optimistic that I won’t go dry completely. Actually, with a second well going in tomorrow, I’m feeling actually pretty optimistic.

The watering went well although I am down to the very last of the last of my water. I could probably put together one more day if I hand drained all of my buckets and placed them in one barrel but hopefully that’s not necessary.

To be honest, even though it was very sunny and warm yesterday, the plants that are actually still on the field are not looking so bad. They didn’t get any water for 2 days but they didn’t look so horrible this morning. It makes me kind of wonder about how much of a difference watering makes. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to take a year and experiment on doing nothing. At the very least, the raised boxes would have absolutely no prayer without artificial watering. I’m just saying that I was pleased with how the stuff that is still out there looks.

When I got done, I filled up my house water tanks and it was not so bad. I’m good throughout the weekend now and don’t really have to worry about much of anything.

When I got finished, I gave Lena a call and asked if she would come over and grab some laundry and make a run to the store for me. She was pretty enthusiastic about it and showed up in about a half hour. I got the usual gossip about her mother and her medical woes. Lena is pretty happy these days. She is mostly proud of having quit alcohol. She is enjoying her new status as a non-alcoholic because it gives her an opportunity to point fingers at other people. You saw that coming, right?

In one probably sexy moment, she took a look at me and asked me if I wanted my pants washed. Truthfully, I probably did. Not just for the opportunity of getting naked for Lena but because I really would like to change pants. The problem is of course that there is still absolutely no word from Tanya. When I mentioned the situation, Lena also went into an explanation of how I needed to go buy some new pants. Apparently, this is the gossip around town about me. Asking someone to sew my clothes has been food for talk about the relative merits of sewing old clothes or buying new. We could go down the rabbit hole of how this culture has remarkably changed. I don’t agree with all of this modern thinking but you can see what’s going on. Sustainability is not going to be in the local conversation for quite some time I guess.

I don’t really have much else to say because there isn’t very much going on. I had a very nice breakfast of steamed veggies and new potatoes and now I am just keeping the weight off of my rather painful legs. I’m happy that I have the ability to do my job but I am completely unhappy about how much it bloody well hurts after I do it. I’m not going to get into the fact that I still have never received a call from the medical establishment. I suppose they are willing to keep this blackmail up as long as it takes.

Truthfully, I would rather not have to go back to the hospital and repeat this same year again. I would have been much happier to have everything done right and clean and normal the first time.

Extortion is a remarkable thing. It is a normal way of making money around here. The currency is pain. If someone can find a way to cause pain, they can look for a way to monetize it. This pretty much explains the war in Ukraine. You might not understand it because your own sensibilities are a little softer but it’s the way things are around here. If you can find a nerve, there’s probably a way to make a buck out of it.

I’ll be back a little later. I’m just really hard pressed to find anything interesting to talk about right now. Honestly, I’m just cruising. There really is not very much work to do in the garden. All of the interesting things have to do with people helping these days. I really am not very active or mobile generally except in brief moments of activity. It’s not good or bad, it’s just the way it is.

***

It’s 2:30 and this is going to be my last check in during the day. I will be back for final thoughts in the evening but unless something drastic happens, I think this is all I will have to talk about.

Lena came back with the laundry and the shopping in a fine mood. She is completely enjoying her sobriety because the rest of the Town apparently is drunk. It’s too hot to do anything, nobody does anything anyway and with Ghenna having become a hundredaire for taking his bag of silver and killing my neighbors orchard, everybody is hanging out at the bus stop drunk. This includes Tanya which pretty much precludes my ability to get my pants back today. I’m not even going to bother arguing with it. The gate is already locked.

Really, the situation is making Lena extremely happy. Rather than feeling left out of the group drunk, she is existing on a higher plane. She is near Sainthood right now. She takes care of her mother, she takes care of me, she is useful and wanted and becoming more solid in her mind everyday. To even have a group example of where she has been has solidified her walk on the path of righteousness.

As for me, I got some more oatmeal. I’ve been eating a lot of oatmeal lately. You have to put some kind of a starch in with all of the fresh veggies and oatmeal is the easiest thing in the world to toss in there.

Sure, there is still a hole in the fence but I generally have nothing to worry about. The neighbors are not a threat to me and everyone else in town is drunk and knows that I never pay a lot of money. I am no Target.

I’m also not a drinking partner. On this, I side with Lena. There is nothing worse than getting a look at your friends once you become sober. It is a lesson in reality that I feel bad for those who have to experience it for the first time. It’s worse than a horror movie. It’s the truth about your life and who you are and who you have been. There’s nothing worse than knowing how far you fell before something broke the fall. I only wish somebody in the poet bureau would come to a similar revelation and maybe stop this stupid fucking War already.

Great drunks and wars have one thing in common. They allow everyone to forget that we genuinely have problems. For me, I think all discussion should begin and end with ecology. I do not give two shits and a fuck if someone else has their own pet hobby. I cannot understand why anything is more important than our environment and the food we eat. Literally, everything else that comes to mind as being interesting is not only just a distraction but a part of the problem that got us here in the first place.

Not that this situation is anything new. Look at either of the Bush administrations for proof that incompetent thieving governments create foreign wars as a distraction against how miserable their infrastructure is. This has been going on for years with incompetent leaders creating incompetent hysterical problems with lots of death and blood rather than just getting their act together and making sure that everybody has enough to eat. I don’t know why everyone agrees that it has to be more complicated than this. Like I said, I have enough oatmeal to get me through the next while. I’m good to go.

Okay, to tell the truth I am pushing way too hard to find something interesting to write about. There is nothing interesting to write about. If everything is okay, the well guy shows up tomorrow morning at about 8:00. Lena will also come by tomorrow morning at about 8:00 to get through the floors. I doubt whether I will hear from them but potentially Ghenna and Tanya will show up sometime in the morning. By about noon, the world will have calmed down enough to study some Torah. After that, other than trying out my new water supply, there’s not going to be a whole lot to do but kick back and enjoy the quiet of the weekend.

And it will be a quiet weekend because my neighbors no longer have any trees or people to kill. They pretty much ran the table with this last stunt.

Like I said, I’ll check in a little bit later. As for now, I’m going to go back to beating the heat. I don’t really have anything else to do and I don’t mind this situation one bit.

***

This is just a rant but I can’t help but agree.

***

OK, one more just because I am amazed how accurate my algorithm is becoming…

***

There was a moment a couple of hours ago. I was in the office having just finished a pretty tasty dinner. I wouldn’t say it was anything special but it was tasty and filling and I was happy to have had the opportunity to enjoy yet another meal of fresh food. And suddenly there was a knocking. From its direction, I assumed it was my neighbor hitting something with a hammer. But when I turned and looked out the window, I couldn’t see anybody on the street but for some reason, a line that stretches from my gate was vibrating with each hit.

Tanya’s not a very big person. She’s not as tall as the fence and I don’t know how long she was knocking but she was completely invisible except for the vibrating wire.

I made my way outside on crutches. She had my pants in her hands and had a very stern look on her face. I was obligated to open up my gate. She would not accept less and the conversation could not take place over the top of the fence. I don’t think it had anything to do with her height, I think she just wanted to be invited inside.

I invited her to sit down on the bench and she said that it was important to show me the quality of work that she had done. She had sown a piece of cloth in the crotch of my jeans with hand stitching but had not bothered to sew the holes themselves. I’m not here to comment on the quality of her work but she was adamant that I needed to check the work.

There were other patches in these pants. Previously, I had brought them to a professional sewing shop in town. They had matched the material and had machines sewn the patches in place in such a way that the work was completely blended in. Literally, you couldn’t see that anything was sown from the outside. Tanya’s work was absolutely nothing close to that. Literally she just took a piece of cloth and made some loops around the outside of it.

Let me repeat myself that I am not commenting on the quality of the work nor do I particularly care about it. I understand that they are very old jeans and I was just offering her something to do. She took the job, tried to say that she was doing it for friendship and didn’t want money but then we came to an agreement and I gave her the money up front. After a minute, I told her that the work was fine by me and then she told me it was time to talk about payment.

If there was something else at play here, I was not really sure what she wanted. If she was flirting with me, I didn’t really understand it. I also don’t want any problems with her husband or her family. My father’s advice was never to shit in your own backyard. She lives two doors down from me and the last thing I am interested in is inviting dramas into my life. I’m not doing this from boredom. I’m doing this because I need some help and it’s nice to know when you have someone who can do a job for you when you need it. Some people call these friends. Other people have different definitions. I like mine.

My answer was to remind her that I paid up front and she immediately told me that it was a joke. She asked me if I didn’t understand what a local joke sounded like. I told her I was learning every day. No one had died and no one was angry. After this, she started telling me about her problems in life. She was getting ready to go to town. She lives in town a lot. I was pretty sure that she was a permanent resident of the village but she said that she has an apartment there. She had some complaints about her current situation and was fighting with someone again. I reminded her that in her previous conversation, she made a point of saying that she never had disagreements with anybody. I smiled when I said it. It was just a nuance and again, no one died and all was good.

The woman was still a little drunk. Maybe she was coming out of however much alcohol she has been consuming. There’s been a party in town over the last few days. Ghenna got about a month’s worth of money for a day’s work and has quite a few friends that he has been sharing his Good Fortune with. I am not blind nor do I particularly care about this either. I am not here to be anyone’s drug counselor or sponsor. I’m not Jesus Christ or Mother Teresa. What people do with themselves is what people do with themselves. I take care of me and if someone fits my less than romantic view of friendship, I am happy with what I get.

If she wanted me to want her, I’m afraid the situation was doomed from the start. I guess in a perfect world, men have no control over themselves and any opportunity is a good one when you’re in need of money. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really feeling it. I mean, I really appreciate how hard the girl works. She spends a lot of time in the forest bringing back berries that she sells down at the store to distributors. Forest berries are big business here as our mushrooms. Berry season is probably one of her highest paying jobs. Again, what people do is when people do. I have respect either way. I also like Forest berries.

After a while the conversation cooled down. She asked me to loan her some money but I claimed I was empty. I told her that I had paid Lena to go to the store for me and to wash my clothes. My shirts and socks were hanging on that line but she had vibrated when knocking on my gate. They were like flags flying in the breeze.

Both Lena and my ex partner recommended that I talk to Tanya. I think both of them were thinking of sex. Again, I’m not making any comments or disrespecting anybody. I just have a hard time playing with married women. There’s not a whole hell of a lot of good that can come from it and I live here. I’m not interested in dragging any scandals into my life.

If this was our moment, I hope I did well. Unfortunately, I did not pull out a fat wad of bills and suddenly turn into a pornstar. I have no idea what fantasies go through people’s heads. I was just interested in getting my pants sewn. At the absolute best, I had another phone number to use if a problem came up and I needed help. I’m just not very mobile these days and everything hurts. I can use all the help I can get.

Would I mind some physical contact with the woman? No, not at all. I am perfectly aware of the feelings and emotions flying around. I’m perfectly aware of all of the lessons I’m being taught about how all of these things attach themselves to money. I am perfectly aware of who I am and where I am and what I’m doing. If how I handle this situation is not the optimum thing or what is desired, I’m not sorry. I just want to know who my friends are and if I can count on them. There’s not really a lot else going on here.

So I got my pants back and it amounted to a warm moment. I don’t think she’s angry at me and I think she understands me a little better. If this transaction didn’t end in money or more money, I’m not sorry about that either. I mean, let’s all be warm and friendly with each other but I really didn’t understand how that was 5 days work. It wasn’t 5 days work. It was 10 minutes work that took five days for delivery. They’re just an old pair of jeans.

So Tanya left and I relocked the gate. Then I finally brought in the submersible pump from this morning and closed up the windows to keep the insects out. I cleaned up the kitchen and brought in all my clothes. I put them away and blocked everything up before coming into the warm room. I drank a couple of glasses of water and ate some pumpkin seeds. I swallowed a vitamin and distractedly watched part of a movie.

Tomorrow is an early wake up call. We will see how things go. Lana is coming to help clean up the floors and the well digger is coming to drop 18 m of pipe out near the vegetable garden. I don’t know if Ghenna will show up to work on the broken fence. You never can tell about some people. I guess we could say that there are people who drink and people who don’t. I don’t know about this well-digger but Lena is happily a member of the don’ts. I like the don’ts better than the do’s. A lot more. You get a lot more love from the non-drinkers. You get more love and you get more help. It seems all you get is drama from the drunks. It gets tiring. I just offered a little job for some extra money. I just wanted my pants sewn. I didn’t mean to shake the whole town to its roots. It was 10 minutes work.