Thursday, January 19, 2006

Essay

I have been doing things lately. Lots of stuff. I really do not think that this one blog a week thing is what I want to do and I am going to make my best efforts to so something different. I don’t know, maybe smaller blogs, smaller themes and send them off more often. Or maybe it is all just about discipline or a lack thereof. .

But there is a lot of stuff going on these days; lots if little stuff to talk about and lots of intrigues and scandals around here. Where to start? Well, this is no question; this blog must start with Sharek, the dog I wrote about a few weeks ago.

Now, I like Sharek, Our little yellow dog that sleeps in the corridor of our house. He is a nice little beggar and has had, as far as I have seen, a rather amazing dog’s life up until now. I don’t know specifically when the change occurred, but recently the fist negative step[s started being taken and now he is starting to sort of drop off into a bit of a depression. Now, certainly the weather has been cold and obviously this would be the first guess. Or even that he is 10-years-old would count for a lot of this. But something has happened though with him and this has him quite not himself.

Well, enough of this BS-ing, I know a very specific thing that has happened: someone decided to hit him in the head with an axe about a week ago. Yes, this is the truth, and if I start to talk about how he is a bit down in the dumps, well, you can see how this might be. No, I do not know who hit him or why someone hit him or what their thinking was. All I know is that about a week ago, someone decided to whack this little 10lb dog in the head. We took him to a vet, and the vet decided there was nothing to do. The wound was only in the skin and did not break the skull, the dog lost a lot of blood, but he will live, and so the doctor simply said to let him get over it himself.
Nice thing to get over, eh?

I have always had this theory about dogs that the world completely tells them what they are supposed to be thinking. I mean, this is obviously not so different for any of us, but what I am saying is that a dog pretty much takes what life gives him without too much griping and moaning. You leave a dog in a closet, and he thinks: Ok, the world is dark, filled with shoes and is about a meter by a meter. And so you take a dog like Sharek and you tell him: Ok, you are basically free to roam the town. You can find food and what interests you as you like, you can do as you please, and all we ask you is to sort of hang around and watch out for us. And so this is what his idea of life was for about 91/2 years. And at least to me, this manner of living made him about as cool a thing as you would ever see. But now, in his advanced age (He is 10 or thereabouts) we say to him: Hey buddy, well, we lied about your freedom. Now, you are to be held on a chain now and again and also, we get to hit you in the head with an axe as well. Don’t try to figure us big two-legged dogs out so much. I know we are kind of messed up in the head, but just take the bitter with the sweet and go with it. Ka-Bam!!!

What else?

Oh yea, speaking of unpleasant human activities, guess who came back to give us some more of her rectal expulsions? That’s right, you guessed it: Ms Molotkov from the housing association came by again today. You remember her? She was the one who had to go and get in Sharek’s face for doing his job. This is the “I am special” lady who has done nothing but shorten the life expectancies of our pensioners by constantly abusing her position as… what, terminator, or I don’t know what they call this battleaxe. But in any case it must be a great thrill to be her. Well anyway, she came around today with another little letter to give to us all. Wanna take a wild stab at what she has to say? THAT’S RIGHT! She wants to take the garden and the root cellars again! Just like last year and just like the year before that and the year before that. This time, the reasoning, and I am absolutely becoming physically ill even writing about this, this time the reasoning is that an “ecological organization” will come and look around the yard.

Now please, stay with me here and see if you do not see what I am seeing. Now, why would an “ecological organization’s” coming to look at our yard be cause to interrupt an unbroken 50 year gardening streak of this plot of land. And for this matter, why would they even come to have a look around? Did someone invite them? Perhaps someone who does not live here and perhaps someone who wants to make a parking lot out of a garden space? Am I sounding like a folk song from the 60’s here?

So Ms. Sour Milk (Moloko is the word for milk in Russian), comes to our door and has a …ehem… a piece of paper. And she says to Tanya at our door: “I am sorry, I am only the messenger. This did not come from me, but we are going to have to take your gardens and your podvals because and ecological organization is coming here soon.”

And you know, like you are not in shock, but you must say something, so you respond: “I though we talked about this last spring. You asked us to paint everything and we did, and now you come back exactly six months later and tell us that you did not say anything that meant a damn in that meeting.”

“Well, as I said, I am only the (bitch of all times) messenger here. It is really not my deal.” And so on and then she leaves and once again you feel like crap.

So, now we have some kind of a fight again. Who knows. I…I… I can’t even write any more about this and so I am sure our ever aging and by the year more feeble group of pensioners is going to have to come once more into the fray against this dead weight of a bureaucrat.

Ache, I am too sick to write more about this. Well, now this is not all that true, it is just that we have just finished a little celebration which included a bottle of Belarus’ finest Champaign ($3) and a terrific supper. Why did we break out the bubbly? Well, because not only has my new work been going well, but I even received a raise of sorts today. I mean, we are not speaking of any really huge amount of money- Well maybe by Belarusian standards it is kind of cool, but appreciation is always appreciated and the extra money will go a long, long way towards making life a bit more comfortable. So on this occasion I popped for a bottle and we ate a really nice dinner and we were nice to Egor and to Each other and this is enough for us. We are old and boring without a doubt and I myself allow for only few and far between huzzahs. But this one felt good and came at the right time and was just great…

So what else? I have a couple of things that I will leave for next time so… Oh, I forgot: We have a new sponsor. I don’t know if you noticed this on the way down the page, but over to your right, you might have seen a couple of new Las Vegas type flash ads. The Green one is the one I am paying special attention to today. And this ad is for:

http:www.yadyisroel.com

Yad Yisroel is a Jewish outreach organization that is going some distance to try and re-instill Jewish culture to the former Soviet Union. They run that school, the Beis Aharon Boarding School that I wrote about not long ago, and they have some other services that they provide as well, such as archive searches, marketing Jewish books and tapes in Russian and doing a travel service for people coming to the region. And you know I work with them and they are great and now they are also an official sponsor of the BEING HAD Blog and merit a spiffy new add.

And speaking of the Yad Yisroel folks, I just this moment got handed a stack of paper that must be dealt with presently which means I am on the way back to the grind.

There is more to tell I am sure, and certainly the world is an interesting place to live in, even if you are doing the living in hit-a-dog-in-the-head-with-an-axe-and-then-try-to-depress-the-elderly-to-death Belarus.

Next time I will talk a bit about some new people who have contacted me of late about some new Blogs, so this will be interesting, and I suppose there will be some new websites in general to talk about. So until then, have a look at the Yad Yisroel website and then drop me a line and tell me what you think. And while you are at it, you can also have a look at the “No Scene For Irene” band’s website as well and perhaps give a listen to their rather cool song, Coca Cola.

So that's about it. Look for a new eddition of the BEING HAD Times in about 8 hours, and other than that, try to stay warm.

More soon…