Romance novel politics...

Ok, so what has been happening? That court date ended in a standoff, which was really a bullshit standoff which is to say that there was no reality to the decision. The court did what it wanted by again (surprise, surprise, surprise, Gomer) playing with the evidence and otherwise disregarding the truth of the matter. In the end it is Anya who suffers but is this even worth saying anymore? I mean if you see there is abuse but you are not legally able to do anything about it because the place you live simply demands that it be that way, what exactly is there do so? BEING HAD II: 9 Years in Belarus? Maybe…

The basic contention, if this won’t be a spoiler for the book, is that they simply and intentionally disregarded a lot of real evidence. Earlier, they had done this with my claims at the children’s bureau and in the elegantly corrupt, crippled and twisted Anna Kraftchuk but this time around, they decided to do the same with official evidences. Amazing really.

I try to make notes about these things and to keep track of the names so I won’t forget. AP Malychuk. Natailia Igorevna. Olga Petrovna. I am expecting copies of the official documents today and plan on filing my protest either today or tomorrow. I don’t want to sound too calm about this but ironically, I am rather overwhelmed with work these days. Usually, I starve in the summer and fill up through the middle of September. This time though I am already over 40 hours a week and we are not even mid-August. There is still going to be a transition because there are September people planning on coming and many of the summer people are leaving presently. Maybe the summer lovers were thinking of things from my perspective this year, I don’t know. And no, the laws of Belarus do not really allow for my hiring to handle the overflow. And even if I did, what I do doesn’t really translate into such a conveyor belt type of education. I wish I could figure how it could be, but so far I haven’t so, you know, I take what I can get without complaining too much and trudge on.

But the slickness of the child agency was a real blow to the head. I don’t know why it was so up to me to catch them at their game because it certainly seemed as though all of the evidences in the court were properly displayed. They just found a way to ignore it and then the judge, conveniently enough, did the same. Like I said, I really thought that judge was the sort of guy you could have some faith in to do the right thing. But I guess the world is not really like that and he had his hand out just like everybody else. I know, I know, it was my choice to live here. Thanks for reminding me. I didn’t use my legal guy, and rightly so, because I got the idea that he was with them. But it is not like he isn’t a useful weasel. If you call him sometimes you can see where and how he likes getting his hands on some information and you can find out what is going on with the courts by finding out what has become valuable for him. Too bad he doesn’t have a sister. But then again, when you are in a prison camp you learn to work things like you are in a prison camp so a little disinformation here and there goes a long way. And of course, if you can read between the lines, he tells you what is going on in the other side as well. You just need to build the ears to hear him.

There is though the pretext of a legal deal going on so I did put together a rather elegant argument for a rebuttal (Complaint). I was thinking of throwing up the Russian version which is pretty well put together in an artistic sense. It is a combination of good and bad grammar making a few specific points along the way and, I hope at least, it does the job of painting the good picture. Or maybe I would be better off putting the English version back together or just retranslating it and posting it here. Hard to say what is right and wrong. The Russian version is what I am going to have stamped into the court. It fits the form and is for the eyes of the legal bureaucracy of the oblast and the town so maybe this is the only version that counts. There are also some illegalities at play and these involve several people, among them the folks at the court (as usual) so really, all of this is just tightrope walking. Maybe they just do this out of boredom. You don’t give them the right to make money so they just start acting like bad children. We have romance novel politics here in the provinces.

But I spent the last week mulling over the situation and contemplating my moves. I don’t enjoy the game nor do I have time for it. I know this probably makes me kind of an asshole in the eyes of the locals but really I am in business and don’t have any affinity for bad children. I am American don’t you know. And in fact, I find I am saying this more and more lately. I am American so I don’t die when there is a rock in the road. I am American so I don’t need to passively sit back and wait for the fish to come. I am American so I am not really interested in thieves and sycophants. This is not to say that I am lionizing the good old USA. I mean, if I believed that the USA was any better off I would be typing in Oregon or north, north, north Broadway or someplace like that, right? But anyway it is something mean to say to the natives when their spoiled attitudes towards their boring lives start to piss you off.

More soon…