Finally, some new words.
If you are tuning in to this blog for the first time, maybe you might want to go over to the HOMEPAGE and see all of the rest of the stuff. To do so, just click HERE.
Yea, well, I have gotten a few words to the effect that I made up that excuse about the internet disallowing my opening the blogger homepage. And I am here to tell you that that sort of thing really pisses me off. I don't know if it pisses me off because I don't like being called a liar, I don't, or if it is because it insinuates that I am lazy; I am not. More likely I don't like hearing this sort of thing because I think of it as a simple excuse on the part of the accuser not to listen to what I am saying. Or in other words I hate lazy liars and take offence when I am forced to have to give ear time to one.
Sorry, but no, I don't suffer fools well. Never have and never will. And you can ask Zaremba if he doesn't understand this about me. He'll tell you.
But no I really worked at trying to get that bit about the fingers and the current situation out there. I don't know how many ways I had attempted to get into the system but it just simply turned out to be a no-go. So you know I had some other things to do back at the dacha so there I went. The onions needed to be finished off and the beans planted. Also the peas- and for those of you who don't know about planting season let me tell you something: There is the smart way of doing things and the hard way of doing things. And the smart way is really smart and not just lazy.
And one of the smart things that I just found out about, as an example, is that peas should not be planted one at a time. This is simply not necessary and especially not when you are planting like 1700 of the little bastards. Yes, I try to keep my garden orderly and yes I like tight and straight rows when I can, but this is no reason to have to be bent over for hours and hours punching shriveled little green balls exactly 1 and 1/2 centimeters under ground with your thumb and index fingers. A much better variant would have been to make several trenches(I have a great tool for this), toss the little devils into the trench and bury them with one sweep of the rake. They are sur to come up exactly as easily and in the same general shape as if "sat" by hand and wihout the spinal/kidnal rigamaral. But I didn't and my spine and my kidneys have in fact sent in their notice because of it.
(Note: "Sitting", sadits is how they say that here. They like the word sit quite a lot and "uspolzivate" it for a number of things. Of course the word for garden or orchard is "sad" so it could mean something like "gardenize" also. Polasy word in either case but that essay is for another time.)
But I went back because I wanted to. I knew I had only a couple of days before crunch time and other than talking to some local people about starting real work with them come September, I hadn't anything of such pressing business here in town that I felt I couldn't use my time better out there. The Russian word for utilizing one's time materials is "uspolzivate". There is another word "Polasy" which means being useful. Both are arch-typical words form the culture and as the culture is a part of me- THE big reason for my being here, it is a natural for me to think of such things.
But just because I went back to hoeing, fluffing, softening and sitting for a few days that doesn't mean that I wasn't also thinking about exactly how I am handling crunch time. I am handling it as best as I can and I have been doing same for some three years now. Hence my being back in town now. Now it is time for talking and so this is what I have been doing. I have been taking some meetings with potential employers and partnerss and the results have been… mixed.
Yea, mixed. Not great. Not what they could have been. Mixed. Of course I would have rather been greeted with open arms, bread and salt at the door, contracts and checks with open spaces where the numbers should be. But this was not the case.
And that I did get the reaction I got was not completely unexpected. I mean, I know what my face is here in town. Oh, I am not without my admirers. I have friends. But in the end, I did not come through on a promise I made several years ago and that, by default, made me a liar. Oh, there was a time when I indeed did "have it" here. this was in the beginning when I was fresh and new here. Hard and fast, still in riding shape and fresh off the boat and filled with a religious verve about bikes and biking. But that was then, and there has been a long, long road from then untill now. And of coourse, what have been the results?
So you know I got a less then warm reception. Lots of water under the bridge and all of that. I guess no matter how understanding a person you might be, it is possible to have your patience stretched to the point of breaking. I have nver even wanted to touch these feelings of friends but inevitably I seem to have become the king of stretching patience. And, once you do manage to message someone into that uncomfortable shape of no longer look at you but "down" at you, eventually you are going to get one of the "pull yourself up by the boot-straps speeches". This speech is the usual an indication that your star has fallen. You can see it coming a mile away and I have become a fare expert at seeing it coming. I don't know how many such speeches I have been asked to endure. And the worst part is, but the time the speech maker has revved themselves up enoough to feel like making the speech, of course you know that they are not listining any more at all, which makes the whole deal even more depressing then the situation that inspired it.
"Well, you are just going to have to do what you have to do. You can't just sit there and do nothing. You have to fight for it, you have got to want it. Plan your work and work your plan. Set your goals and aim high. A man's got to do what a man's got to do. I know you. You are a real killer oout there. I know you have it in you. You had it once and so you know how to get there. You know the road, you know the dance. Nothing to it but to do it."
And not that this sort of venting isn't at least helpful to the ego and all, but in my case these clensing moments tend usually to come from people who in general could not even find Belarus on a map, much less have even a modicum of understanding about what this place is about. I mean, do you understand where I am? I mean, let's forget about police corruption in Poland and losing all of that money and time and face and all: Have you heard what goes on in our little country? I have been working here and writing about the place for three years and I am still as bewildered as a babe at some of the things I see happen. Do you understand that I am in Belarus and not Moscow, Idaho or St. Petersburg, FLA?
But in any case I am broke, and things are really fucked and regardless of my face or place, this man does need to do what he needs to do. And in my case, that job is simply feeding my family and I am doing it as well as I can and that is why I am amidst the crunch/ decision time about having to leave or not. It is about finding the very best use for a frighteningly small amount of money and the lives of my people and especially my daughter very much lie in my choise.
But it is really hard pulling the trigger of leaving. I know that if I do pull out, at the bottom line I am going to lose a lot of time with my daughter that I will never, short of some Faustian deal make get back again. I mean, I have no such connections that will put the kind of money into my hands that I would need to start over again. Not within a couple of months anyway. So inevitably I would be looking at years of back and forthing. Years of "vacations" with Anya-
"Oh, you have gotten so big. Look at you now. I remember when you were just a little sprig, just this big. You used to be able to sit in my two hands. Oh, you were a terror how often you would throw up on me. You would just smile all happy that big, open mouthed, toothless smile of yours as if you were the happiest little girl in the whole wide world. And then floosh, out it would all come. And there's me screaming for Tanya to bring me a towel. And you would smile even wider afterward. But look at you now. YOUR FUCKING THIRTY YEARS OLD AND I HAVEN'T GOT A CLUE IN HELL OF WHO YOU ARE BECAUSE I WAS NEVER WITH YOU ONE FUCKING DAY OF YOUR LIFE…"
Yea. So you know I am in this situation and all, but I really want to see if I can't work this out somehow. And it is harder with this damaged face. You have to understand that this face business is really so very, very huge. I mean, when you live in a place where people don't have money, the slightest misstep throws you right on down the side of the hill. And in my case, what with being an outsider, and now thanks to Zaremba and Borus and Weisniakowski and company a liar as well, well… well, it is rope and piton time, folks because we are doing some steep climbing.
But of course real bikers you know, never step off on the even the hardest climbs. And yes Virginia, I am a real biker.
So I am standing here. Or I am standing on the peddles. The bike ain't moving. And maybe all I am doing is sustaining the track-stand from hell here, but I am still here. I had a friend offered me money for a ticket out, and I wrote to him asking if I could use the money to stay. Imagine the look on his face. But is this the right move? I have gotten gifts here before. We invested once but it came to naught. We saved it once, but it ended up going for food. It's fucking hard here. Really hard. And though I am looking at a chance with this no-pay visa deal I would be working on by staying on further, there is no easy ride up ahead. Just more hard work, more climbing; more pain.
And my only choice as I can see it, would be trading some "amount" of potential money, both for myself and for Anya and Tanya for pictures and descriptions of Anya's life going by without me. And even in that, there are no guarantees, higher outgo and... and what?
And what? Let's leave it at that today. I'll see if I can't let one more go before zero hour strikes. That time by the way is Midnight, May 1st. Where I am standing when the bells chime is as big an investment, one way or another, as it is possible for a guy to have. And it will not be the first time I will have to deal with it either.
So NO, fuckhead, I am not lying. The internet cafe really refused to allow me into the blog, I don't now why and it took me a week to fix the problem. But I did fix that problem and this is how you just heard the news. Blame who you want for your own problems. I stand by my word. And if you can't deal with that, you can just go and stuff all that boot-strap pulling bullshit up your ass! In case you haven't noticed, I AM STILL STANDING HERE. I am still trying to do what I started out to do several years ago, and I have kept going through shit you couldn't dream of. You wanna talk heart? I wrote the book. I am still on the peddles. I am still alive and I still use my real name.
What have you done lately?
More soon.
If you are tuning in to this blog for the first time, maybe you might want to go over to the HOMEPAGE and see all of the rest of the stuff. To do so, just click HERE.
Yea, well, I have gotten a few words to the effect that I made up that excuse about the internet disallowing my opening the blogger homepage. And I am here to tell you that that sort of thing really pisses me off. I don't know if it pisses me off because I don't like being called a liar, I don't, or if it is because it insinuates that I am lazy; I am not. More likely I don't like hearing this sort of thing because I think of it as a simple excuse on the part of the accuser not to listen to what I am saying. Or in other words I hate lazy liars and take offence when I am forced to have to give ear time to one.
Sorry, but no, I don't suffer fools well. Never have and never will. And you can ask Zaremba if he doesn't understand this about me. He'll tell you.
But no I really worked at trying to get that bit about the fingers and the current situation out there. I don't know how many ways I had attempted to get into the system but it just simply turned out to be a no-go. So you know I had some other things to do back at the dacha so there I went. The onions needed to be finished off and the beans planted. Also the peas- and for those of you who don't know about planting season let me tell you something: There is the smart way of doing things and the hard way of doing things. And the smart way is really smart and not just lazy.
And one of the smart things that I just found out about, as an example, is that peas should not be planted one at a time. This is simply not necessary and especially not when you are planting like 1700 of the little bastards. Yes, I try to keep my garden orderly and yes I like tight and straight rows when I can, but this is no reason to have to be bent over for hours and hours punching shriveled little green balls exactly 1 and 1/2 centimeters under ground with your thumb and index fingers. A much better variant would have been to make several trenches(I have a great tool for this), toss the little devils into the trench and bury them with one sweep of the rake. They are sur to come up exactly as easily and in the same general shape as if "sat" by hand and wihout the spinal/kidnal rigamaral. But I didn't and my spine and my kidneys have in fact sent in their notice because of it.
(Note: "Sitting", sadits is how they say that here. They like the word sit quite a lot and "uspolzivate" it for a number of things. Of course the word for garden or orchard is "sad" so it could mean something like "gardenize" also. Polasy word in either case but that essay is for another time.)
But I went back because I wanted to. I knew I had only a couple of days before crunch time and other than talking to some local people about starting real work with them come September, I hadn't anything of such pressing business here in town that I felt I couldn't use my time better out there. The Russian word for utilizing one's time materials is "uspolzivate". There is another word "Polasy" which means being useful. Both are arch-typical words form the culture and as the culture is a part of me- THE big reason for my being here, it is a natural for me to think of such things.
But just because I went back to hoeing, fluffing, softening and sitting for a few days that doesn't mean that I wasn't also thinking about exactly how I am handling crunch time. I am handling it as best as I can and I have been doing same for some three years now. Hence my being back in town now. Now it is time for talking and so this is what I have been doing. I have been taking some meetings with potential employers and partnerss and the results have been… mixed.
Yea, mixed. Not great. Not what they could have been. Mixed. Of course I would have rather been greeted with open arms, bread and salt at the door, contracts and checks with open spaces where the numbers should be. But this was not the case.
And that I did get the reaction I got was not completely unexpected. I mean, I know what my face is here in town. Oh, I am not without my admirers. I have friends. But in the end, I did not come through on a promise I made several years ago and that, by default, made me a liar. Oh, there was a time when I indeed did "have it" here. this was in the beginning when I was fresh and new here. Hard and fast, still in riding shape and fresh off the boat and filled with a religious verve about bikes and biking. But that was then, and there has been a long, long road from then untill now. And of coourse, what have been the results?
So you know I got a less then warm reception. Lots of water under the bridge and all of that. I guess no matter how understanding a person you might be, it is possible to have your patience stretched to the point of breaking. I have nver even wanted to touch these feelings of friends but inevitably I seem to have become the king of stretching patience. And, once you do manage to message someone into that uncomfortable shape of no longer look at you but "down" at you, eventually you are going to get one of the "pull yourself up by the boot-straps speeches". This speech is the usual an indication that your star has fallen. You can see it coming a mile away and I have become a fare expert at seeing it coming. I don't know how many such speeches I have been asked to endure. And the worst part is, but the time the speech maker has revved themselves up enoough to feel like making the speech, of course you know that they are not listining any more at all, which makes the whole deal even more depressing then the situation that inspired it.
"Well, you are just going to have to do what you have to do. You can't just sit there and do nothing. You have to fight for it, you have got to want it. Plan your work and work your plan. Set your goals and aim high. A man's got to do what a man's got to do. I know you. You are a real killer oout there. I know you have it in you. You had it once and so you know how to get there. You know the road, you know the dance. Nothing to it but to do it."
And not that this sort of venting isn't at least helpful to the ego and all, but in my case these clensing moments tend usually to come from people who in general could not even find Belarus on a map, much less have even a modicum of understanding about what this place is about. I mean, do you understand where I am? I mean, let's forget about police corruption in Poland and losing all of that money and time and face and all: Have you heard what goes on in our little country? I have been working here and writing about the place for three years and I am still as bewildered as a babe at some of the things I see happen. Do you understand that I am in Belarus and not Moscow, Idaho or St. Petersburg, FLA?
But in any case I am broke, and things are really fucked and regardless of my face or place, this man does need to do what he needs to do. And in my case, that job is simply feeding my family and I am doing it as well as I can and that is why I am amidst the crunch/ decision time about having to leave or not. It is about finding the very best use for a frighteningly small amount of money and the lives of my people and especially my daughter very much lie in my choise.
But it is really hard pulling the trigger of leaving. I know that if I do pull out, at the bottom line I am going to lose a lot of time with my daughter that I will never, short of some Faustian deal make get back again. I mean, I have no such connections that will put the kind of money into my hands that I would need to start over again. Not within a couple of months anyway. So inevitably I would be looking at years of back and forthing. Years of "vacations" with Anya-
"Oh, you have gotten so big. Look at you now. I remember when you were just a little sprig, just this big. You used to be able to sit in my two hands. Oh, you were a terror how often you would throw up on me. You would just smile all happy that big, open mouthed, toothless smile of yours as if you were the happiest little girl in the whole wide world. And then floosh, out it would all come. And there's me screaming for Tanya to bring me a towel. And you would smile even wider afterward. But look at you now. YOUR FUCKING THIRTY YEARS OLD AND I HAVEN'T GOT A CLUE IN HELL OF WHO YOU ARE BECAUSE I WAS NEVER WITH YOU ONE FUCKING DAY OF YOUR LIFE…"
Yea. So you know I am in this situation and all, but I really want to see if I can't work this out somehow. And it is harder with this damaged face. You have to understand that this face business is really so very, very huge. I mean, when you live in a place where people don't have money, the slightest misstep throws you right on down the side of the hill. And in my case, what with being an outsider, and now thanks to Zaremba and Borus and Weisniakowski and company a liar as well, well… well, it is rope and piton time, folks because we are doing some steep climbing.
But of course real bikers you know, never step off on the even the hardest climbs. And yes Virginia, I am a real biker.
So I am standing here. Or I am standing on the peddles. The bike ain't moving. And maybe all I am doing is sustaining the track-stand from hell here, but I am still here. I had a friend offered me money for a ticket out, and I wrote to him asking if I could use the money to stay. Imagine the look on his face. But is this the right move? I have gotten gifts here before. We invested once but it came to naught. We saved it once, but it ended up going for food. It's fucking hard here. Really hard. And though I am looking at a chance with this no-pay visa deal I would be working on by staying on further, there is no easy ride up ahead. Just more hard work, more climbing; more pain.
And my only choice as I can see it, would be trading some "amount" of potential money, both for myself and for Anya and Tanya for pictures and descriptions of Anya's life going by without me. And even in that, there are no guarantees, higher outgo and... and what?
And what? Let's leave it at that today. I'll see if I can't let one more go before zero hour strikes. That time by the way is Midnight, May 1st. Where I am standing when the bells chime is as big an investment, one way or another, as it is possible for a guy to have. And it will not be the first time I will have to deal with it either.
So NO, fuckhead, I am not lying. The internet cafe really refused to allow me into the blog, I don't now why and it took me a week to fix the problem. But I did fix that problem and this is how you just heard the news. Blame who you want for your own problems. I stand by my word. And if you can't deal with that, you can just go and stuff all that boot-strap pulling bullshit up your ass! In case you haven't noticed, I AM STILL STANDING HERE. I am still trying to do what I started out to do several years ago, and I have kept going through shit you couldn't dream of. You wanna talk heart? I wrote the book. I am still on the peddles. I am still alive and I still use my real name.
What have you done lately?
More soon.
posted by BEING HAD at
2:44 AM
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