Sunday, August 28th 2022. Week 34

It’s a few minutes before 5:00 a.m. and I’m up because I’m up. I went to sleep early last night. No parties here. Just a long day of taking it easy. I guess I needed it.

I had that brief phone conversation over Viber with my ex partner on Friday. I felt the urge to give her some video about the new water situation. The only thing she had to say is that I should take it easy and not do too much work. She ended up being right. Overdoing it did turn out to be a problem and I was pretty much in pain all day yesterday. I don’t think I did any lasting damage, it’s just that I can’t take too much abuse before it comes back to get me. Taking yesterday off was perfect timing and I am only now starting to feel a bit better.

Yesterday was a great food day. The only reason it was memorable was because of a very simple split pea hummus / peanut sauce that I put together. This was amazingly tasty by itself and with that pasta and with whatever else. I know that it’s nothing particularly original but it’s just the kind of thing that elevates food from boring to delicious. I don’t know what else to say. I take a day off every week and I treat myself very well. Yesterday was a lot of couch time broken up by two great meals. Who’s arguing?

I just finished going through my weather apps and there seems to be a definite consensus. This is pretty unusual. Usually some of the apps are more optimistic than others. It might also be that I’m not only fixated on rain for a change. Having this new water source has certainly changed everything. I noticed this Friday that all of the plants that were still in their life cycles and not heading towards the finish line looked absolutely thrilled to be alive. Simply being able to flood the boxes, to create genuine Rich mud for them seemed to bring everything back to life. All of this really does give me hope for next year.

When I read the weather reports this time I was interested in other things besides rain. For example, today seems to be the last hot day. It’s been pretty brutal and warm and sunny for the last few days. Stifling hot for this region. Today is going to be another one of these clear hot days but all the weather reports agree that the temperature is going to drop significantly starting tomorrow. There’s also some chance that rain is going to fall. We are in the fall.

I’m not really so attuned to the rhythm of the growing season. This is not the first time that I’ve done this and I’ve never been blind to the change of the seasons but it is different living in the country. When I lived in town, the change of seasons only connected to my ability to ride my bike and the types of food that were available at the market. I was working, money was coming in and I was just like everyone else and surfing finances and mild environmental changes.

But then in the spring of last year I quit town for some better air. There are a number of things that happened to make this happen but eventually, all I wanted was to get out of town. This is not to say that I didn’t have something in town. I was able to get everything I needed there and I was used to living there. Nobody was bothering me in my apartment and I had enough company, love and could get the food I wanted all without killing myself. It wasn’t a completely horrible life.

Except that it was. It was becoming really bad to live there. The pandemic meant something. People getting sick and what it felt like going around people got really bad. After this, the air pollution started becoming so horrible and so noticeable. There was also really noticeable noise pollution. I mean, perhaps I could blame covid for this. Perhaps the illness started making me even more sensitive than I was before. Perhaps over sensitive or perhaps not.

After this, things started getting violent. I started running into confrontations. People started getting incredibly harsh and with the normal scapegoat bullshit that I end up having to endure here, I started feeling like something bad was going to happen one way or another.

The writing had something to do with this. I understand I do not have massive numbers or an audience but when I started writing, it got noticed on the local radar easily enough. This had something to do with the amount of attention I was getting. I got talked to by the KGB and started getting a lot of unwanted attention.

Of course the war broke out and people know about things here. There are many nuances connected to a corrupt society. I have experienced many times that people are aware of economic trends concerning the value of money well before they hit the public. You become very aware of the games that get played. I was aware that there was going to be some noise made around the time of the election. I guess I was also being told that war was coming. 

So I left. I found this place. It has some unfortunate nuances such as filthy neighbors. I’m not talking about the alcoholics, I’m talking about the chicken people who never learn or stop polluting or stealing. Horrible drug addicts who believe themselves to be good people. There are quite a few Town people here and unfortunately, they are the ones who make everything shit for everyone else. The people who are genuinely local to this village are generally peaceful. Life is a struggle but people live gently. Not the town people. They have that hatred that I was feeling and it never goes away. This place would be much better if they would just completely go away.

Other than this, life is more interesting in the country. Life is more interesting without Town drama. Life is more interesting without people screaming like divas, crying for attention to be paid to them. Everybody is a diva here. My daughter explained to me that there was a male version of the phrase drama dama. Males are called drama llamas and we have more than we need.

I was thinking yesterday that we are all trained by the media one way or the other. If I was trained by old school media, people are taught how to behave by what we have now. The kids grew up with a phone in their hands. They learned to believe in images as meaning something. They bend themselves into conforming into a visual photograph of themselves. This is what I look like here, aren’t you envious?

News of the nuclear power plant shut down got around the world. That was interesting enough for people to pay attention. Not enough to mean anything. Nothing is enough to mean anything. Ukraine created a plaque to Boris Johnson to honor his involvement and just as suddenly, the corporate media turns on him and begins writing stories about his downfall. Like I said, they don’t really like to live without their Jewish scapegoats. If you get too involved with Zelinsky in any other way except to send him guns to help, you get to taste what Jewish scapegoating feels like.

I also read somewhere that Russia is looking for even more people to throw into the war. What the locals say is that they will go all the way to the bottom of the glass, до дна, it’s the only way they know how to be. They won’t stop until there is nothing left. It will never end until the entire world is a desert, too polluted to work and then they’ll just shoot off the bombs.

I listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about this new hot / Cold War. He says that the Western countries and Russia are like a group of people sitting in a room where the whole floor is covered by gasoline and everybody is carrying hundreds and hundreds of matches. Everybody is threatening each other with all of these matches when all it really takes is to make sure that no one lites even one.

I don’t really know what’s going to happen this winter. The only thing I know is that it’s getting colder. I’m not really worried about that. I have plenty of safety outlets in case of an emergency. I don’t feel I’m going to starve in any way. I would certainly be happier with some genuine medical Care. I cannot believe for the life of me that the medical establishment has decided to screw me as bad as they have. This is blackmail by the way. I am being blackmailed by the medical establishment. I wish I was kidding but I’m not. They straight up told me I could pay or they would refuse me service. There are no laws here I guess. There are no laws and I have no rights. They just do whatever they want and all they want is to get some money.

I’m going to have to do some watering today. It’s amazing how much easier and how much more effective watering is. The only real problem now is the hose crimping. I’ve been thinking about some moderate investment for next year to change this. Picking up a little bit more hose would allow me to stretch out everywhere I need to stretch out without hauling the hose around too much. It’s not very much money and again, it would take even more stress out of the situation. I thought about putting in a sprinkler system but I am against it right now. I do well enough by doing the job myself and it’s not like I have so much else to do.

Other than this, today is yet another easy day. I still don’t feel particularly ambitious as far as my old job is concerned. Maybe the cool weather will bring some more of this. Or maybe I’m just on a slow fade out. It’s really hard to say.

But listen, I’m just playing the cards I have been dealt. I was the center of drama for a long time. For a very long time, I didn’t know that I had any social interactions that were not laced with negative drama. It was all about money. None of it was ever about anything but money. Now, this fact has not changed but the amount of people that actually get to contact me is much smaller and the world is much quieter. It’s still the same greedy place. It’s still the same poverty and insanity and malnutrition. It hasn’t become any less violent or stupid. It’s still the same group of drug addicts and attention junkies. There’s just less of them. Less of their noise, less of their smell and less of the blackmail. I’m calling this a win.

If this is week 34 and we are going to be in September before the end of it, I am heading towards the finish line of this year. If the kids are going back to school and the weather is cooling down and heading towards the gray, that means this year is winding to a close as well.

I guess this is what it means to follow the Sun across the sky. It means that you live on the planet Earth.

***

2:30 in the afternoon on a scorching lazy hot day. A friend just called me to congratulate me because today is some kind of a Christian holiday. I had no idea what he was talking about but whatever holiday this is it has everybody quiet. Nobody is cutting wood or murdering small animals or whatever these people do. All is quiet and ridiculously hot.

I’ve been thinking hard about what to do with my garden space for next year. This New Hope has me thinking deeply about what I want to plant and where I want to plant it. I do not consider this year to be a failure, I consider it to be a learning year. But there is a direction that I want to go. I have an idea in my head for a place that this will be in perhaps 5 or 7 years. I am working on a picture, a picture that will feed me. It’s a beautiful picture and hopefully, a lot shadier than it is right now.

I feel pretty confident that I can get the materials I need. I have five great plants that still need to be trestled. This trestle however needs to be made of steel and not of wood. The plant will last a long time and I can’t put anything that will degenerate in place to hold it. I also need to build permanent places for storing compost and fertilizer. As far as infrastructure goes, these are the most important things. Perhaps I need to raise a few barrels to make them available for making liquid fertilizers. And that’s not major construction though.

What I am thinking of now is exactly what I want to plant and where I want to plant it. I don’t have an endless supply of garden space. I purposely sectioned off my garden to give me the opportunity to work a little more comfortably and to have better control over my planting soil. But all of this requires some care.

But the real question is what kind of things I want to plant and having access to get them. I’ve been rethinking my fruit trees lately. I realized I have alternate ways to deal with the area then my original plan that would do basically the same thing. Even though I have more water, I am completely sold on a passive watering system that funnels rainwater to the base of the trees. I’ve seen the difference between trees that get absolutely no care and trees that get naturally soaked when it rains. I wasn’t planning on being so Hands-On about things but the difference is night and day. You figure out a way to get roofing that catches and drops the water in a particular place, you will have sweet fruit. Watering plants is also good but enhancing nature I think is the key.

I’ve also been thinking of enhancing the back part of my property. I’ve never given it much thought because it’s a shady spot because of the house. But now that my neighbors have cut down their trees, the property line seems naked. I would like to do something to enhance both privacy and utility. I’m thinking of building up Vines of different kinds to both raise the level of the fence and cut off visibility between us. I’m not really interested in what they’re doing over there anymore. There’s nothing really interesting about their property now that the orchard’s gone.

In fact, I have this picture in my head of being surrounded by green Walls. I understand that this is a seasonal thing and that it would only be a couple of months a year when this is really in place and even at that, there won’t be anything for three or four more years. I just like the thought of it. I like the thought of the extended privacy and I like the thought of having an opportunity to grow some more food in a multifunctional fashion.

I guess all of this is dependent on my physical health. I can’t really say what the future holds for me or how much investment in pain I’m going to end up making. It’s hard for me to imagine that I never get to get up and move again. This torture I am being asked to endure can’t go on forever. I’m also praying for a future where I get to move around with a little bit less pain. All I really want to do is to have a little freedom of movement. I don’t know why I have to be tortured for this simple human desire. I just want to be able to move around.

I don’t know why this thinking is so complicated however. The more I think about it and the more I crush the numbers of what everything costs, I have a bit of a quandary. It’s not that I can’t afford the things I’m thinking about, it’s whether or not I want to invest. There is enough misery around me being caused by truly miserable people that make me wonder why I should invest even a penny here. On the other hand, this is my home. It’s an equal shame that I have to be tortured here for whatever reason they are torturing me in Minsk. I don’t know why people choose to torture in the first place and I don’t remember what I did to earn any of this. But this is the biggest quandary. This is the biggest problem.

But you never know. You never know what’s going to happen. You never know what Revelations are going to come over people. You never can tell what sorts of motivations are going to fly through the air and how it’s going to change people. I have no particular plans of funding anybody’s mood. I do not intend on either dominating or supporting or even being particularly friendly to the human part of this community. I will continue to work with people who are open to working with me and I will be happy to suffer their quirks and inconsistencies. But I will not buy my way into anyone’s heart and I will not invite any carpetbaggers or scapegoaters, anti-americans or anti-semites or just foolish alcoholics who think I am easy money into my life. Let my memory dry up on the vine for all of them, there will be no American handouts here. Let the place go to sand outside my little place. I’m not going to lift a finger because of pressure.

This is the current issue. If I were an investor looking to perhaps gentrify the place, I wouldn’t bother. It’s a hostile region full of stupid people who have been fed bitter and shit food by an empire run without any foundation. There are ways to express this that my parents taught me a long time ago to describe people who like to be flashy with fast money. I have no taste for this game nor am I in any way attracted to it. I don’t give a damn what your Instagram picture is. Either you make sense, you can help, you are a sustainable and trustworthy person or I would rather not even waste my time with you. This is casual conversation and this is business. I would rather be ignored and forgotten then be bothered by creepy people with sticky fingers. I have had enough of those, thank you very much.

So, there you go. It’s a perpetual quandary. I really want to Green the place up. I really want some perennials and as much food production as I can find. I want to find a way for the garden to pretty much sustain itself. I’d like to learn how to live with this growing season and become accustomed and knowledgeable of its nuances. I need to find a way to enhance what I have and do better each year. At the same time, I want a place that takes care of itself. I don’t want to be burdened with excess work every year. I don’t mind breaking ground and I Don’t mind investing in infrastructure but eventually, I just want to sit back and live off the interest. All I want to do is walk out and get something to eat when I feel like it.

One last nuance of this thought before I forget about it came this morning. This year, we invested a lot in cabbage. I understand where this thinking came from. It was my ex partner’s idea after noticing that I eat a lot of cabbage. She thought that this was pretty sensible, dedicating a lot of my garden box space to growing cabbage. 

The problem was that this thinking came from a distance. These decisions were made from town. I don’t want to be too dark about this but this is exactly the same way as the blackmailers think. Everybody thinks they know what’s better for everyone else even though they are nowhere near the place they are thinking of making their plans hatch. Everybody thinks they know everything from A million Miles away. Trolls. It makes everyone exactly the same as internet trolls.

What I have is a lot of horseradish. I don’t care how invasive people think this is or that they like to use the roots for a condiment. Without lifting a finger or doing anything to preserve its life, I have had wild Greens all year. This morning, with hardly any effort and not even thinking about it, I pulled up 15 or 20 leaves and chopped them into my breakfast. I’ve had this all year in any amount I’ve ever needed it. You can fry them, boil them, steam them and toss them in a blender or even dry them and crumple them into food as a spice. The most abundant natural food I have on this property and it makes almost all other greens redundant.

I’d be really interested in planting perennial kale. I’d be very interested in bringing more greens in here. I don’t mind growing plants that do well without too much effort and that come back year after year. I just don’t want to go through this huge bloody process of trying to be perfect for 8 months for something that you can buy in the market for pennies. Perhaps I’ll regret this decision but to be honest, if the world is about Greens and beans, starches, nuts, fruits and berries, I don’t have to do anything and I’ve got the first box ticked and covered.

This is all I’m talking about. It’s all the same thing. When you try to force nature to your will, things get ugly. When you try to bend people to your will, it gets even uglier. When you try to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear – wait a minute, I absolutely hate that metaphor, let me try again – you can’t create golden idols and expect to find God. You can’t worship things that don’t last and you can’t waste your time on people trying to fill the vacuum of an empty life. It just doesn’t work that way.

So these are my thoughts here on Sunday. Things are definitely slowing down. I agree I’m getting a little angry myself at the change of the season. I will be very happy when this hot weather goes away. It’s too hot. The sun is too strong and it doesn’t rain enough here. This used to be a very wet region and now it’s turning into a desert because of mismanagement just like everywhere else. Everything about this place just sucks the life out of everything you want to do and everybody thinks that’s perfectly fine for them as long as it nets them their little bags of silver.

Yeah, I’ll probably have a cooler head with the cooler weather. And it’s not like I don’t have time to figure out what’s going to happen next year. Next year, we start in on the perennials.

***

Well, this just goes to show you how the world works. You think you’ve gotten to Rock bottom and that nothing is ever going to work out. Then suddenly, something comes that brings you great happiness. I guess that’s the way the world is, a little good and a little bad.

I just finished what was probably the fastest and most effective watering I’ve ever done. The more you practice something, the better you get. Today I used a couple of techniques that I thought of since Friday night and the results were just too easy for words. I have enough power to get to all the plants and trees I need to without much effort. Everything gets a good soaking. All the plants that are still doing their thing look happy and as strong as I have seen them since early spring.

And even better, today I tried something I hadn’t up until now and simply filled all the inside jugs with well water in about 3 minutes. Less than 3 minutes technically and the water was clearer than what I get out of my well. I’m not giving up on my well and in the winter time, when it’s freezing, that will be my main water source. But as of the moment, this is just too easy. By comparison to everything else I’ve been doing all year, this was a walk in the park.

If there was even some extra in there just for the happiness of it all, I came up with a pretty good leg idea and even it made walking around palatable and almost enjoyable. Again, by comparison to how it has been lately, this was a pleasant evening stroll.

This is not to say that everything in the garden has been a great success. There are certain things that were planted on soil that was not properly cared for. I’m not going back to the springtime or pointing fingers at any local assholes who shortchanged us. Like I said before, there’s so much ugliness and bitterness in the people here that you almost can’t blame them for being Nazi sympathizers. Either they don’t know the difference or they just go where the wind blows even if it goes through a sewage dump.

But if this is what I have going for me, I can see doing some planting next year and making use of the back part of my house. I can see putting in some Vines and more trees to add some privacy. I can see bringing in more trees generally and making use of a lot of places that I simply did not believe in until now. I can do this. I can see this and I can see how all of this will be a bit of a success. In fact, if I can keep things going physically the way I feel right now, let’s just say it’s a lock. That’s not overconfidence. That’s just practical talk from a pragmatic point of view. If I can do this, I’ve got it.

Meanwhile, this is the end of a very sleepy day. I really do not know what the Christian holiday is and I’m not even interested in looking it up. If it convinced local people not to cut wood and grass, the place was that much more peaceful, quiet and maybe even beautiful to live in. I can’t ignore how dry it is. I can’t ignore how Brown all the grasses and how hard it is for things to grow. Last year, I had little mushrooms growing along my path down to the lower gardens. This year, it’s too dry. The mycelium fungi don’t have anything to live on and are simply not appearing.

There is a way to do this. I’m not kidding myself into believing that the locals know everything. It’s a bit of a mix of old and new. But everybody agrees that there is less food this year. There is less fruit on the trees and less yield in all of the plants. I don’t hear anybody bragging about any wild growth on their part. And when I’ve seen the local gardeners, they never look anything but miserable. The world has taken away the tools of the trade. This is no longer a place where you can plant something sweet for your grandchildren to enjoy. We are on our road to becoming a desert and nobody’s bothering to even stop along the way and have a look around. They are on a mission.

So what about tomorrow? I don’t know. I might have a chore for someone to do. Perhaps Ghenna will make an appearance looking for something to do. I have jobs that I need done. There is a conversation to be had there. These are larger projects, not day labor and I’m sure that will make things a bit more complicated. I don’t care what my orchard killing neighbor has to say about it, you can’t give the guy more than he needs for each day or you will lose him for a week and possibly forever. If you give them enough to drink themselves to death, there will be people who will not show up in the morning. That’s a promise.

It’s also possible to see Tanya tomorrow. I don’t know if I believe in this and I’m really not interested in any drama down this road. But I have some things for her to do that I can’t do myself and if she does show up ready to help, I’ll give this a chance. I don’t understand what’s going on in her mind except that it’s alcoholic delusional. That’s not my problem. My problem is that we come to an understanding about each other. I have rules. I’m not interested in being taken advantage of and I’m nobody’s fool. Like I said, we’ll see.

Other than that, I guess I need to make some phone calls to the medical establishment. I probably also need to find myself a lawyer. This is not the same system as it is in the states. All I will need is a genuine document to be passed to the appropriate people. If it works out in Minsk, I might do the same thing regarding my chicken neighbors. Perhaps this entire business should be actionable before we get to Winter. The cold air is going to keep those Auto fumes right down at human level. I don’t need that at all. Nobody does.

Right now it’s absolutely quiet but for what I’m doing. A few roosters and the buzzing of flies. We have horrible flies these days. A few crickets are chirping and a couple of birds are singing. It’s just very very quiet here. So quiet you can even hear yourself think.