Windows to Russia

At two a.m. I was woke from a dream and I was dreaming about a small boy who had climbed the bell tower in the village and was ringing the bell. It was olden days and he was ringing the bell out of fear. Fear of being murdered as some of his friends and staff members of the school he attended right there in the old monastery…

He rang the bell and screamed in Russian, “убитый” or “murdered.”

This was not the first time I had dreamed of this boy and I laid back down and put it to a worn out mind that I had from a long day. Then as I closed my eyes; the bell on the tower at the monastery rang. It was just a few minutes after 2 a.m. and it was pitch dark. On top of that it was foggy, so foggy that a flashlight refused to cut through it and with aid of a light, I was able to see barely my hand in front of me. The reflecting light from the water droplets dancing in the air around me,were in fact a hindrance to walking as I was being blinded by the reflections. I was all aglow and the light was contained in an envelope of foggy suppression…

Boza was thinking twice about walking with me, for he sensed I was dumb and going to go to the tower. The tower bell kept ringing, one long resonating ring after another, about five seconds apart. Boza stuck to my side and I held the flashlight as low as my arm would allow and with knowledge of the path up the hill in my head, we trudged upward to the bell tower as it rang in the dark, so thick wet fog, that I was drenched with water running off me in a few seconds. The fog clung like a cloak of suffocating cloth…

I will be honest with you; I turned back three times and three times the bell rang an extra ring. That turned me back to the sound and I kept going. As I got near the tower, I could make out a shrill voice screaming bloody murder and my dream rolled over me in a wave that made the fog thicker yet…

Now if I had ever doubted that sound is a physical force that can alter and effect your surroundings. I will never have such thoughts again. I stood right in front of the bell tower, I knew by the ground around me, for Boza and I have transverse this area many times during the day and night. Then the bell rang and as the wave of sound rolled across Boza and I, the water droplets, were pushed in front of it and collected into a huge sheet of water that descended upon us as a avalanche of water. What was not soaked, became soaked…

Then I heard a wail from whoever it was ringing the bell. It was such a sad and forlorn sound, that my soul wept as I heard it again and again. Boza and I walked around the whole tower, for I knew it was locked up, but as we came back to the front of the tower. I heard a cracking of wood. The sound continued and something grunted and with a last sound of shredding wood, it became silent all around. Then the bell rang again and and Boza barked, then leaped into the open doorway of the side wing of the tower. I could not see Boza for the fog was so thick, but I knew where he went. I walked straight ahead and found Boza and a door. A door that had been locked, was ripped open, the lock torn from the wood around it and the door swung back and forth gently as if in a summer breeze. There is no way around us and or out of this wing, except straight up through the missing roof, or through the newly ripped open door…

Through the door and inside, the fog was not present and I have my camera as I always do. I snapped a picture with flash of course and saw a stairway leading upwards. It was new and I have never seen these stairs. Using the flashlight, I progressed one meek step at a time upwards…

Boza decided he had enough and curled up into a ball near the door to the right side of it. His eyes closed as if that would make it all go away. I being of lessor intelligence than Boza walked to the stairs and with the aid of a flash on the camera and the flashlight, went up to see what I could find. Now, I am not going to tell you that I am a brave and fearless soul, for I would be lying and telling a story. I was scared $%^&*@# and my legs were like weak jello as I climbed the stairs. To what?

To an empty room, that is what! The stairs continued upwards, but ended against a sealed roof and there was no way up any farther at that point. What ever had ripped the door open, could not have gotten by me, for the stairs are too small for more than one at a time. The room I found was effectively a sealed room for now…

Then the bell rang and the sound was horrendous inside that room. The vibration cut through me like a knife through butter and I felt something trying to take a bit of me with it as the sound faded…

It was right at that point that I decided that I am no longer caring who or what it is, I decided, as Boza had already, it is time to go home and allow the games to be played without us. I left the tower, I grabbed a huge log and forced the door closed against its wishes and Boza and I slowly stumbled away in the fog so thick, I could not see. I fell down twice before I realized that I dropped my flashlight somewhere along the way escaping back there and turned to find that no light was visible to see were I dropped it. It was that thick of a fog…

I started to go back to get the flashlight and when I reached the center of the bell tower front, the bell rang one last time and as the sheet of water colluded around me, something fell from the tower and hit the ground hard, right in front of me. Boza growled and the hair on my body stood on end and I heard a shuffle of feet, a groan and breathing as in a dying gasp type breathing. A smell of sweet decay wafted over me and then a wail so loud, that my heart almost stopped and something shot past Boza and I (down the hill toward the lake at a run) and it took the fog with it, for in a few minutes, the stars became visible as I stood there and no more than a few feet away, lay my flashlight shining upwards in all its glory. The sky was just starting to show a glimmer of light in the distance and a bird chirped with delight near by…

We went home after I propped another log against the door, for the air had cleared and the force that had been present was gone and all was calm again…

Fog and deeper than Fog, or maybe I should just say; Truth can be stranger than fiction at times…

Now that is why I love Russia…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

PS: I am going to go back later today and nail that door shut with several boards. Go back with the sun shinning and the safety of its warmth… 🙂

I have been saying for years right here on this blog, “Look in the mirror!”

I have said it a hundred times with the actions I see coming out of the USA…

I will say it again, “Look in the mirror!”

Stand there and stare in the mirror and see what needs to be fixed at home, before we keep terrorizing the world with our idiosyncrasy of a mental issue…

We are walking the road, but do we understand where it is going?

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

I finally caught a pretty fair image of Mr. Hawk or is it a, “Mrs. hawk?”

All I know is that it lives alone for right now and I have not see another like it anywhere near by. We have dozen of other types of smaller hawks and at least seven huge Brown Russian Eagles, but this guy is alone and last year, I saw him and he was much smaller as in a young’um. Therefore, I pick him for my favorite predator bird of the summer…

Mr. Hawk lives at the small natural pond and hunts and fishes in actually a small confined area. It stays away from the big eagles and does not bother the water birds at all. It is a avid fisher and it flies with ballet grace…

That makes it really hard to get a picture of and he dislikes me getting too close. Therefore the image, while a little grainy, was cut from a long distance shot with 60x zoom…

Mr. hawk likes to be left alone and I feel like a paparazzi at times…

Have a nice day…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

Whether it is true or propaganda to push agendas. The west is coming apart at the seams and it looks to be very “Wild West” and “O.K. Corral” as appetizers for all. Either way it is wrong and sad…

Have a good time as you look over your shoulder to see who is getting ready to shoot your ass…

From Cops to Gangstas and everyone in-between…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

The garden is very usable and I eat from it constantly. The onions just keep multiplying and I seem to never run out of them for salad and cooking. The beets are doing great and I pulled the last of the thinning beets and had nice marble sized beets on them. They, plus onions and radishes from my buddy Vova, made an excellent salad. With oil, salt and pepper…

The carrots while disappointing still have managed to produce 18 plants and I figure that is it. I was hoping for at least twice that number, but maybe we will get some big carrots from them…

I am studying the stink bug, for I think this is the one that eats aphids and he will be okay. But if not, I need to get rid of them. Some stink bugs are very damaging to the garden and some will help. I believe in getting rid of the bad and keep the good…

Oh and it was laundry day…

Have a nice day and I picked a whole bucket of wild strawberries and will eat them for several days now…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

Townsend and Sade’s Doctrines Rule the World – by John Stanton

“The citizens whose lives are split between business and private life, their private life between ostentation and intimacy, their intimacy between the sullen community of marriage and the bitter solace of being entirely alone, at odds with themselves and with everyone, are virtually already Nazis who are at once enthusiastic and fed up or the city dwellers of today who can imagine friendship only as a social contract between the inwardly connected.” The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (1944).

“The religious chimeras must be replaced by the utmost terrors. The people must be freed from the fear of a future Hell. Once that is destroyed they will abandon themselves to anything. But the chimerical law must be replaced by penal laws of enormous severity which apply of course only to the people since they alone cause unrest in the state…. What do the rich care for the idea of a leash they will never feel themselves if this empty semblance gives them the right to grind down those living under its yoke?” Horkheimer and Adorno quoting from Juliette by the Marquis de Sade (1797).

The founders and practitioners of free-market ideology have finally succeeded in turning the individual intellect, and the collective that is Western civilization, into little more than value-objects. Now, all are witness to the reality that everything, everyone, every emotion and even every movement has a price and a cost. Western society and individual thought has, at long last, become totally materialistic; which is to say, completely economic according to practices decidedly informed by 18^th and 19^th Century philosophy (often misinformed).

All manner of life from the quanta of action to the intimacy of lovers is irretrievably locked into economic value functions. This has led to the ice cold calculus, and equally brutal callousness, now present in the minds of the rulers, and the ruled, which sees transgender and transracial issues; Greek financial woes; job liquidation and unemployment; private and public pension pillaging; cuts in social safety nets (austerity); head transplants; and; for example, US preparations for open war in/or with Syria, Iraq, Russia and China as natural and as expected as the sun’s presence during the day. No emotion of care or concern arises that would see even a finger lifted to change the system as it is as such.

What’s the Point?

The efforts of journalists and academics are nearly intellectually bankrupt save for the “effort” of trying to report on the world not as it appears, but as it is as designed and managed by a willful economic totalitarianism that provides for a “free” life in terms demanded by economic doctrine, even as it tortures that life daily, providing no escape from the daily routine. Even dreams are polluted.

The intellectual limits of the unenhanced human mind have now been reached. Is it any wonder that technological, bioengineering and chemical enhancements are rapidly being called for by all?

This is not a beyond-Capitalism, Marxist play in operation. It is, rather, the emergence and acceptance of economic, social and cultural Sadism that has now been blessed, purchased and brought into the service of the market economy. The most puzzling forms of human behavior, and their most horrifying, are no longer repulsive or indignant, or hampered in their development, production and marketing. They are valuable in the sense that they are held by society to have monetary value either in the form of debt or credit. Such is the replacement for the concepts of right and wrong, moral and immoral. Boundaries and limits have been eliminated in every sphere of life.

In the era of transgender and transracial one can only expect that trans-life will be next.

Religion and family offer no refuge now having been shocked and awed into defeat by the necessities of the free-market imperative, and the practices and myths they offered which have decisively been ridiculed and defeated by the new religion of the free-market. Christ’s sacrifice no longer matters. Now the view is that Christ was a fool and the Father a nut to sacrifice his only Son. Besides, Paternalism, like all “Western Whiteness”, is not part of humanity’s historical process, but resident evil on Earth. Even here the industries of Diversity have been compromised by the sacraments of “buy and sell” as even they must earn their daily bread.

There is nothing current in 21^st Century academia or journalism that addresses the Sadistic now which has become a perpetual moment-in-motion in which history is despised for its reality and the future lies someplace in the fantasy notions of a pre-history. Perhaps humanity’s fate is a pre-history.

Robert Townsend’s Animal Kingdom

Who knew that goats and dogs were so important to the development of today’s economic practice?

“…Malthus and Darwin owed their inspiration to this source [Townsend’s goats and dogs, see below]. Malthus learned of it from Condorcet, Darwin from Malthus. Yet neither Darwin’s theory of natural selection nor Malthus’ population laws might have exerted any appreciable influence on modern society but for the maxims which Townsend deduced from his goats and dogs and wished to have applied to the reform of the poor law…Here was a new starting point for political science. By approaching human community from the animal side, Townsend bypassed the supposedly unavoidable question as to the foundation of government and in so doing introduced a new concept of law into human affairs–that of the laws of nature.” The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi (1944).

In this excerpt from A Dissertation on the Poor Laws, by Robert Townsend (1786), the masses get their come-uppance. When reading the views of Townsend it is important to note, as Polanyi points out, that in the United Kingdom at the time, “poor” meant anyone who did not have the wealth to be leisurely 24/7. Just 15 percent of those in the United Kingdom were allowed to vote at the time.

“The poor know little of the motives which stimulate the higher ranks to action-pride, honor, and ambition. In general it is only hunger which can spur and goad them on to labor…Who is most worthy to suffer cold and hunger, the prodigal or the provident, the slothful or the diligent, the virtuous or the vicious? In the South Seas there is an island, which from the first discoverer is called Juan Fernandez. In this sequestered spot, John Fernando placed a colony of goats, consisting of one male, attended by his female. This happy couple finding pasture in abundance, could readily obey the first commandment, to increase and multiply, till in process of time they had replenished their little island. In advancing to this period they were strangers to misery and want, and seemed to glory in their numbers: but from this unhappy moment they began to suffer hunger; yet continuing for a time to increase their numbers, had they been endued with reason, they must have apprehended the extremity of famine. In this situation the weakest first gave way, and plenty was again restored…partial evil was universal good. When the Spaniards found that the English privateers resorted to this island for provisions, they resolved on the total extirpation of the goats, and for this purpose they put on shore a greyhound dog and bitch. These in their turn increased and multiplied, in proportion to the quantity of food they met with; but in consequence, as the Spaniards had foreseen, the breed of goats diminished. Had they been totally destroyed, the dogs likewise must have perished. But as many of the goats retired to the craggy rocks, where the dogs could never follow them, descending only for short intervals to feed with fear and circumspection in the rallies, few of these, besides the careless and the rash, became a prey; and none but the most watchful, strong, and active of the dogs could get a sufficiency of food. Thus a new kind of balance was established. The weakest of both species were among the first to pay the debt of nature; the most active and vigorous preserved their lives. It is the quantity of food which regulates the numbers of the human species…”

The Genius of the Marquis

“Individuals in having to fend for themselves develop the ego as the agency of reflective foresight and overview; over successive generations it expands and contracts with the individuals prospects of economic autonomy and productive ownership. Finally it passes from the expropriated citizens to the totalitarian trust-masters whose science has become the quintessence of the methods for the subjugation of the masses of society. Sade erected an early monument to their planning skills. The conspiracy of rulers against peoples implemented by relentless organization finds the enlightenment period no less compliant than the bourgeois republic. That spirt is hostile only to authority when authority lacks the strength to enforce obeisance and to violence only when violence is not an established fact. As long as one does not ask who is applying it, reason has no greater affinity with violence or mediation…it presents as peace or war, tolerance or repression as the given state of affairs…Reason as a purely formal entity is in the service of every natural interest. Becoming simply an organ, thinking reverts to nature. For the rulers, however, human beings become mere material as the whole of nature has become material for society.” (Horkheimer & Adorno)

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer. Reach him at captainkong22@gmail.com

Strawberries everywhere. I am the first, because they are ripe early…

Just miles of them, I mean just miles of them. I guess I will leave some for the rest of the people… 🙂

Delicious and Boza and I will make one last run tomorrow morning early and get a two day supply. That will be enough to make me happy…

They just melt in the mouth and I ate as many as I picked. My grandma use to shake her head and tell me to put at least one or two in the basket for grandpa. I would just smile that red strawberry smile and keep sneaking strawberries…

Sunshine in a berry…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

PS: Boza just could not get excited about the strawberries, he went a slept under a tree. He just does not know what he is missing out on…

I rebuilt the roof on the outhouse and the mud and storage room of the village home. Then I wondered if they would leak or not? I got my answer after two days or torrential downpour, I do not have any leaks. That is a good thing and sets my mind at ease about the confidence in my work. Now I have one more building section to re-roof and it is as big as the others all together. I am studying what and how to do it and then decided what to use for roofing material. I originally thought about just using tar paper, but half of this section of building is going to be turned back into the buildings original purpose and become a chicken coop again. So I think I will contemplate about a better roof material and more permanent solution. I would like to have chickens year around…

Then as a side thought; goats! I want to have goats milk to drink and use for coffee, Therefore, I am planning a outer small barn building to use for goats away from the house. Chickens are fine next door, goats are not!

Thus, the weather which has stopped my forward momentum in getting things done around the house, has also shown me areas to make better and whether I accomplished anything the first time I repaired something. I have had to remember to relearn how to live, for city life is totally different than country life and I am lucky to have grown up in the country…

Some of my thoughts are based on the concept to acquirer the small field behind our home. I need that field for a large garden, a goat barn, and moving the outhouse farther away from the main home. I also have enough room on that land to build a small cabin for family or rental purposes in the summer. These are the thoughts of a person who wants to live the rest of his life in the Russian Village…

I also have laid out the process and plan for getting a small generator that can supply electricity for long term power outages. That way I can have a freezer and store meat and veggies safely for long term. But I am getting too far down the road right this second and need to come back to the now time…

The sun has come out this morning and it will be about 15 degrees Celsius today. Then it looks as if we will get back up to the mid 20’s Celsius and dry up around here. Then I can get back to cleaning the yard again and burning all the piles of what I call, “Snake homes!” Piles of old wood and brush just left for years in every corner of the village home land. I have killed two Vipera berus, adders or a common European snake, but poisonous. That is a main reason I am cleaning up everything this summer, no need for snakes in the house or killing someone by a bite…

I have saved two apple trees over the last few years and finally got them back to the healthy, if not abused, standards. They are going to have a bumper crop of apples this year and we have four trees of apples in all. I will have way more apples than I will be able to keep up with. I am going to dehydrate all the apples that I can, most likely when the time is right, I will run a dehydrator 24 hours a day and pack apples most of the summer. Probably should buy another dehydrator and if the budget can support it, I will…

Well I need to get going, for Boza is staring through the window at me and trying to use his exceedingly powerful brain waves to convince me to walk him again. I guess it works, for I have an urge to walk him right now and then get back to work on the homestead here in the Russian Village…

Have a nice day, for we sure will… 🙂

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

Lunch was great and unexpected. Vova came down and got me to eat lunch with him. He was in the mood to have company and I was in the mood to oblige. Rabbit stew, fresh salad from his garden and salt mushrooms that he did himself. I have to say that it was perfect…

Vova loves to play the spoons and being inside, his moving parts blurred, but that is okay and I got a picture of him sitting still… 🙂

Boza and I did have a good day,even with the rain and all. Vova is a good buddy and I am lucky to have him as a friend in Russia…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

Way back into the woods, behind the village I live in, is the original source of water. I chose today to go check it out because the wind was blowing strong and it was only slightly raining. This meant that I could endure the mosquitoes from hell for an hour or so. The wind would be my protector, for in the woods near the source, the devil rules and his name is mosquito…

It was so bad even with the wind, that I could kill three or four of the devils with one smack, and smack I did, in-between pictures…

Above is the start of the path, below is the path to and from the actual source. It is way down in a gully…

This is the source below! It runs year around and there seems to be plenty of water…

This is the actual water source that created the conditions to build the monastery. For without water, fresh drinkable water, you can not have a village or monastery. This is the reason we have what we have on this hill and the spring is on top the hill, so it is under pressure of some sort to allow it to flow up this high above the horizon…

This fall when the mosquitoes are gone, I will dig the source back out. It has a wooden box to hold water for people to did it out, but it has rained so much and no one cares anymore, it has filled with sediment. (You can see the edge of wood if you look carefully in the water.) I will do that…

I have no idea where the water goes and due to so many mosquitoes, I really do not care at this point. I will deal with that when the devils are gone…

So there is two sources of water, fresh water, that are within a few kilometers of the village. One of them is blessed and this one may be for all I know, but I just know it is vital to have, in case our well dies, that is why I will clean it up…

I have an article from many years ago about this, but my favorite government in America, destroyed most of the years ago images, with cyber attacks. Really sad, but I am able to redo such things and will… (Think about why they would do that and when I filed grievances, I was told to go away, for there is nothing I can do about it!)

Have a nice day, for Boza and I sure have and will…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…