I find myself stuck in the mirror. No matter how much I simply want to do something, the focus of attention just comes back to me. Not the work. Not the ideas. Not even if it’s fun to read. Nothing. Just staring at me.
So it’s about being Jewish in a newly minted anti-Semitic world. This election and in fact the entire Donald Trump, the entire conservative party voting in unison, the removal of restrictions on media throughout the upper Midwest and lower south and every single move that completely enabled the Christian right to have utter and complete political control over the United States of America. Because this is what we’ve been looking at. And with this, and with their obvious agreements that they have paisans in Russia because of the oil it provides them to keep everything moving just the way it is, profitable, we have nothing but to learn to live under complete totalitarianism. Welcome to the jungle. We have fun and games.
So they like talking about tossing nuclear weapons about. Boy, when I was a boy, I was out of my ass in fear about a nuclear bomb going off. I was blessed or cursed with a ridiculous view from this house we owned in California. And I kept seeing mushroom clouds going off. I kept wondering what it was like when our landscape was suddenly being ripped apart by bombs.
Oh yeah, I live in Belarus. No one’s arguing this. It’s a matter of my American address but I live here and this is my residency. Like it or not. Torture or not. For good or for bad. That’s the fact Jack. And this is the best deal I got in the whole world. So that tells you something about the world.
But if we travel just to the south what do we see? Missiles falling out of the sky and ripping apart structures? Specifically, what structure did they blow up with that missile? Were there specifics as to how many missiles were fired? Because it’s a matter of how many hit and how many miss, right? Okay, there is human and material damage. Do we have that quantified? Do we know exactly the value of the fallen business, the local real estate under reasonable such times and the potential cost of rebuilding there? Have we calculated that already?
I remember a television interview I saw with Vladimir Putin. Living in Belarus and speaking Russian reasonably well allows me access to basically some stuff that gets into the media here that the West never hears. If I want to tell you that the Russians laugh at the Americans, you would never believe me. They are nothing to you. But they own you. You are their bitches just like we are there bitches. Donald Trump won a popular victory to be president of the United States? Are you fucking kidding me? And you doubt the Russians ability to control the media? You doubt their ability to put shit in your head enough to turn you in the direction they like you going in? Do you understand what media control is?
In the interview, he was asked about the Miss universe contest when it was held in Moscow. Of course Donald Trump was at that one. He and Putin are thick from the time before he was president. And since. Putin has taught him everything he knows about statesmanship. Did you notice how his first act of government was to muscle Canada? That’s a Putin move. Canada. Are you getting this? He wants to threaten Canada.
Anyway, they were asking if there were any elements of coercion considering that there were 500 millionaires coagulated in the beauty card. And the response was very funny. Putin looked at the so-called journalist asking the softball question and said that keeping dossiers on 500 people would be a ridiculously large task. And then he said nothing more. I guess you have to speak Russian or maybe you don’t. Did he have fucking dossiers on everybody? Yeah. Did he have one on me? Yeah. Did he show it to me? Yeah. Was it on target? Sure. I work as an English teacher. All kinds of interesting clients. Nothing. Until this.
You would be going a long way to making yourself a happier person and the world a better place to live in by not driving your car.
That statement was at a cost. There is no possible way to communicate with people who have been told not to communicate with me because I say things like this publicly.
I believe meat and alcohol to be necessary evils. In fact, if I look specifically at the history of the world as a male centric episode fueled by meat and alcohol, I can see how we could have done a lot better.
If every study is true and we take away vanity, there is no argument. I did this willingly and happily for heart health first of all. I did this selfishly. The altruism comes with expanded heart capacity. Everything I know about what I just said to be true is true. A person lives a better life without meat or alcohol. That’s any animal product please. Leave the world alone. No more animal farming and no more animal hunting. Leave the animals alone. And by the way, that is enough to get you label to homosexual. That means someone’s going to get into a fist fight with you. No matter where you are, someone will stand up and ask me to fight. That’s everywhere, everyday, every time.
I’m not trying to present myself as a fop or a homosexual or anything. I’m an old fellow and I’m actually kind of feeble but mostly I am really literate. I read a lot as a child. I apologize. I also watch TV until I threw it away as garbage. And then I took up the pen and I started writing and writing does something to you. Try it sometime. I mean instead of throwing rocks, try it sometime. But I believe that this veganism is the right way. I believed everything about it logically and then it proved itself out athletically and intellectually and in a very real sense. I became a better person because not drinking alcohol and not eating meat made my metabolism run cleaner. Cleaner metabolism meant more blood going to the brain, I got smarter and I was already pretty smart.
Saying things like this got me completely blocked off the internet. There is no way to know how many people read me or don’t read me. I don’t know really what the number is. I can see that I have been a media influence, even to a great extent. However, I am in complete isolation because I say things like this.
I do not support this war. I think it’s the most redundant vanity project I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s a nightmare demonstration of how to destroy a planet. I don’t believe there’s a single hero from this or any other war. Just a waste of time destroying things instead of doing what’s necessary to make things better.
If I’m not into the war, I can forget about medical care. I can forget about getting a lawyer to protect me from blackmails. If I’m not into the war, I can’t get resources locally. If I’m not into the war, well, let’s just say there’s an absolute minimum and if you can afford it, you got it. But I believe they have just canceled my pension. So there you go.
Anyway, I discovered Shabbos very late in life. I didn’t go there because I was in the middle of a religious rapture. I was writing this thing. Not this thing but the upcoming elections. I was right at the beginning of it. I was right at the very first month of work and the original stunt was to write every day. And I was going out of my head. I was too sick of the keyboard. I was running away from it with all my heart. I hated this thing and I didn’t know why I was doing it. And in this deep horrible moment of despair, I noticed a Facebook post from a Jewish friend showing how he had prepared for Shabbos. Bread, soup and candles.
I am Jewish. I’ve always been Jewish. Sometimes I forget that I’m Jewish because I don’t do anything particularly Jewish. I’m not a synagogue goer. I don’t know nothing but I don’t know much. I know more than a lot of people maybe because I did hang out for 2 years with the local hasidim. That’ll teach you a thing or two about how far that is down the road in that direction. But I found my relationship to them, same as it was when I got here, but when I started taking Saturdays off, with zeal and full agreement as to what I was doing, it changed my life. Literally, it was the peace I had been craving.
When I write paragraphs like this, it changes the way any bureaucrat sees me. My American passport has a lot to do with this too but being a Jew basically means they’re going to work you for money. You will never hear anything that comes from their mouth except money. There will never be anything for you, nothing particularly to agree with you and certainly no one with any interest whatsoever in anything you do towards that goal, as long as you demand to say you’re Jewish. If you want to play for the other team, it’s up to you and people are perfectly happy to close the door.
In the end
Is there anything good in life? It’s so hard to say. Sometimes you get a hold of the ball just right and it just doesn’t stop flying. Sometimes you grab a line and it’s just the right line and you don’t have to worry about anything except holding it. And if we’re talking about writing, they just write themselves. The only problem we have is having enough energy to follow the muse as far as she wants to go.
But there was a romantic moment with a dear dear friend over the internet. I’ve been reading my catalog with a friend. I would never in my life ask for this. Such vanity. But she refuses me nothing right now and agreed to do this. And it is the same as with every new thing. The first day was a honeymoon, the second day was a tragedy, the third day was rational agreement and the fourth was fire. Last night was the fourth night.
We read one of my screenplays. Nadia. Hope. It has a double name. We read it mostly in English but I chimed in some Russian from time to time when I thought the jokes were funnier. I laughed at the jokes a bit more than she did. But she got the depth of the texture going on in the interplay between the women and she was into it. Reading out loud is beautiful therapy. It’s also great for your language skills. But reading aloud with another person is so much fun. Why do we reserve this only for parents and children? Why is it only for actors who are seriously trying to portray roles? What’s wrong with reading a script together with your friends? It’s so much fun and probably more fun than actually sitting in the theater for 2 hours and staring.
Gosh how I ramble on when I’m happy. The emotions of the play come alive when someone reads them for the first time. Sure, it’s vanity. But it’s the deepest kind of vanity. I think there are so many guys since COVID who fancy themselves as chefs who now wish to cook themselves into the beds of beautiful women. Or maybe it has always been this way for the kitchen guys. I’m a kitchen guy. But let me tell you something about this read my text business. When you have an A+ text, you get the Oscar every time. When your writing is clean and sharp and the elements of the film directly in your face, when your emotions are getting stretched even though you didn’t expect to be moved by a series of words being spoken or the picture of the speaker. And the award for best screenplay goes to…
It just felt good. And it’s not the first time I’ve experienced this. Not even close. Lots of people have read my stuff. And it’s not that you get a call afterwards. I have read my stuff with people. And they love it. Maybe it has something to do with being here and maybe for outsiders it might be really interesting because it’s kind of a different texture. But I’m a writer. They have been whittling me down on every front because I elected to speak on the internet for free would I believed to be the truth. And I’m still saying it here. So, advice for all future Jesus Christ’s. If you’re going to try and get smart in a Christian world, they actually enjoy the brutality and the opportunity for punishment. They love putting their sins off on you.
What I want to say is that it’s not that I’m stupid for doing this. I’m not stupid and I’m not masochistic. I’m saying it because I’ve been a brave man and a hero once or twice in my life and I like to stand up to bullies if I can. I’m not a bully. I have never been aggressive or acted in a self-important way a day in my life. I’ve never offered or asked for more than a day a fair wages as a workman or perhaps a reasonable contract where I am the boss of me and my time and I am responsible for the results. I’m not a spy. Or if I am a spy, all journalists are spies. And if I’m not a journalist, if I’m only a blogger or a diaryist or simply the greatest writer in the world in this moment, I am doing and have been doing this because I believe it’s the truth. Why not go commercial? I tried. And then I decided that it should go on even if I had to pay for the whole thing. I decided it had to go on.
I didn’t plan on punishment being so culturally normal. It seems that when one woman gets a legal opportunity to punish a man, word gets out and all women like to get their shot. It’s interesting that the original woman who got to bully me was lying. I proved it just like approved the cop was lying in Poland and my neighbor was lying about the car. Whooptie do. I proved that liars lie and that people love listening to women because of the juice they get from the game. Just blood dripping from their fangs at the opportunity to dish out some pain.
I am not going to live through this. I know this. I know this really well. I know everything really. But it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. I don’t recommend this as a way to make a living as a young person. I admire the hobby if you want to be straight and be a weekend activist. Not that they listen but at least you get to hang out with other people who are at least aware of the miseries of the world. It’s good to be aware. It’s good to be woke. And it is very very good to make sure there is an opposition voice voting for ecology. Ecology gets nothing because the desire for profits from the oil business are to overwhelming. Too much cocaine and prostitutes will pretty much get you rolling on a train you can’t stop. But we need to vote to ecology. Badly. And forever.
Anyway, I keep Shabbos. I need the rest badly.
