A robust soup. It is the only way forward.

Table setting (etching).

With the winter’s first day at 2 C I thought of making a solid soup. It’s not just the cold and raging war in The Ukraine and gun shootings in the US,  creeping inflation and Mr.  Peter Dutton’s face on TV ( our new opposition leader), that my thoughts went to how best to overcome the days ahead. Cooking is a good stand-by when things appear a bit stale or stagnating. Living by myself I am not doing too badly and my advice for the sole person is to stay on course. Cooking together with doing domestics can be good standbys in overcoming inertia.  To cheer me up I also went to buy a new cord-free vacuum cleaner with lithium battery. It has a nice feel and responds well underneath chairs, beds and cupboards by folding almost level with the floor giving access to all flakes of dust no matter how evasive they are.

Of course, the soup followed and as I had some frozen chicken and half a cabbage I thought of combining both with some garlic, onions,  celery stalks, a lost potato and bay leaves in a 4 quarts of water and simmered the lot for almost two hours. The soup was hearty and reassuring. I have enough for the next two week if spread out once every three days or so. It really is worth doing during cold weather.

Mr. Peter Dutton

The New York steak makes US all good.

There is nothing more unreliable than the memories of writers. Remind them of what they wrote last year and they will vehemently deny it. Such is their hold on facts. No sooner have they put down their feeble thoughts and their mind’s shredder takes over and it all ends up into oblivion. Forgetfulness is their raison d’être for writing things down. Forget about vivid evocative pictures as absolute truth.

That’s why my posting the link to Dutch Professor’s Cees Hamelink’s ‘Apology to Putin’ ought to be taken in the same obscure vein. He might well fall in the category of being a nutcase. His writings as short-lived as a fly spinning around on the floor in a last frenzy. It is my own default position; Why not those of others?

Even so, I don’t think America was all that pleased with Mr Fidel Castro either, perched on their side of the world. I have some sympathy for Putin being chagrined about sharing a border with a Pro-West leaning country. Can you imagine the Golden arched Big M in front of the St Petersburg’s Winter Palace?

I am sure the US was miffed with the leftists governments in South America. I have seen enough Oliver Stone movies to consider that the victims of Pinochet, the uprisings of Nicaragua by the Sandinistas, many of the Latin Countries, opposed by the CIA and their induced bloody adventures, would far outweigh anything that has happened so far in the Ukraine. Don’t get me going on Colombia and their past pro US dictators. Garcia Marquez wrote all about that.

It is after all Father’s day.

As early as yesterday I was treated and feted as a good father. I chose New York Steak with peppery sauce. It was fabulous and America is the best country in the world. I haven’t had such a lovely meal for a long time. Sorry vegetarians, I admit to liking a meaty dinner but as a concession and feeble purgatory aim, I have also doubled my vegie and fish intake.

Before plunging in the details of New York Steak, I believe it is known as Porterhouse in England and in Australia. It is the short loin section at the back of the cow. I suppose ‘New York’ steak adds weight and ..above all prestige…Some of my best friends are American and I have always revered New York ,even considered visiting it many times.

An impression once caught sometimes lingers forever while others end into oblivion. I am sure that my New York steak with peppery sauce has now made me benevolent, even more determined to visit that lovely country. We might even go far South to partake in a piece of grilled, honey glazed honest Kansas Steak.
How about that?
It’s delight will last forever.

The inventiveness of a damaged woman (final part)

 

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She entered the village shop to buy some flour and as a surprise for Boris, a bottle of vodka. She walked past the woman’s house on the way back. It fired her rage up again. Boris was still inside, the axe where it was before. When she got home, she put in some more wood in the stove and calmly sprinkled some rat poison in his chicken broth. Not too much, just a spoon full.

The idea she was taking charge made her almost happy. She felt a renewal surging through her that she hadn’t felt for many years. Enough was enough. What right did anyone have to undo her, unhinge her, and make her mad? He never walked into the forest too drunk, to be swallowed up by snow only to resurface in early spring, with a scrawny skeletal hand poking up in the thaw. Akalena was not going to stand for any more of what she got since her marriage. Boris would be taught a lesson!

Much to Boris’ chagrin, his tumbler of Vodka and his soup was waiting for him when he got back. Without a word he slurped the Vodka and soup down before he grabbed his wife at the crutch. ‘You are next, he growled’. ‘What’s up with you and the vodka, he demanded? ‘Just have some more soup dear’, she offered. The vodka and the sex for axe was now getting the better (or worse) of him and he soon snored away on the floor. When he woke up next day she wanted Boris to chop up some more wood. The winter had started in earnest. There was frost on the inside of the windows each morning before she would get up and put up fresh wood in the stove. Boris complained he felt a bit dizzy but managed to put on his coat to chop up a month supply of wood. The pine was easy to split and soon his axe blows could be heard in the neighbourhood.

This time, Akalena put in two rations of rat poison in his chicken soup, next to his bowl another tumbler of his alcohol. He came in looking somewhat pale but let go of his usual cunt calling and grabbing while being unbuttoned. She had left in large pieces of chicken this time. Again, the vodka and soup diverted his attention away from the usual attacks and violence. He was also getting unsteady on his feet, due to either the vodka or the rat poison or a combination of both. This time he collapsed in his bed at the back of the house.

Akalena had run out of rags for her mats but now started to cut up in long strips Boris’ old shirts and underwear. She fed them into her loom while singing softly to herself. The wood pile outside will be the last pile he will chop, she smiled. Boris had taken to staying in bed while Akalena continued feeding him his poisonous cocktail of chicken soup and vodka. He started to look pale and suffered dizzy spells. ‘You are killing me’, Boris would complain while in an attack of delirium. ‘Oh, my darling, don’t say that’, after all I’ve done for you’. ‘Here, have some soup’. This time, the soup was without the poison. She did want him to suffer but not have it over with too quickly. He had to be kept finely balanced between life and death, conscious enough to still experience some of what she suffered all those years.

She kept the door of his bedroom locked and unheated while cutting his best Sunday suit, his pants, his coats, all his clothing. All cut into strips and all fed into the loom. It would be one of her best mats. As she fed him she cradled his head, spoon fed him. She now started to cut his bed clothes, his pyjamas. His face contorted with terror and supreme fright. ‘No, no you are my husband, my darling’ she said while she now cut away his pants exposing his shrivelled pale manhood. Boris had lost his voice, gone was the swearing, the cunt calling. She smiled at him and left the room, shutting the door behind her. The windows where white with frost and Boris would still have a day or so left in deliriums, perhaps still hoping it would all end. Next day, the bed sheets and last blanket was taken away, cut into strips and fed into her loom. The mat was almost finished. It was her best and strongest mat, many would walk over it. Boris was now getting towards the finale. He looked up into her eyes. Was there some recognition finally? Some regret, some admittance of actions? It was too late… His hands parallel to his body lifted slightly and started to shake, a last tremor and that was that. His death as delicious now as her chicken soup had been all those years. Akalena left the room, rolled up the mat. Boris became useful, finally.

The Inventiveness of a Damaged Woman (part two)

Akalena made the best of it, bringing up her three children and making a meagre income from weaving hard wearing floor rugs. Those mats were woven together from old rags that she used to scavenge together from throw me downs by the rich in the bigger towns. She had through the years build up a reputation for her colourful mats.  Her colour combinations and natural taste set her mats apart from most other weavers.

She managed to survive despite Boris’s whoring ways. Her loom was busy, especially in those long and harsh winters with the build up of snow on the window sills and overhanging eaves. Still, she did always have enough firewood and there was always chicken soup on the wood stove.

Anyone walking past her timber house would hear the sounds of the loom when Akalena was weaving her mats. The throwing of the warp across while the shuttle would find its way through the threads, tightening the twirled rags into yet another bit of matting. She would take care into picking the right colours that would be repeated along the lengths of the mat. It gave her peace as well as an income from which she could send her kids to school as well as provide the endless chicken broths for Boris. His culinary needs never varied. Just chicken soup and the home-made sour dough black bread.

The years went by and her children were often witness to Boris violence, sometimes even at the receiving end of his rage, getting belted. Once, Boris broke the youngest his arm. Police were called, but they showed their sympathy for Boris more than her children. They were mean men as well, having witnessed the same treatment when they were young.  This was the way of the Ukraine; it was the way of many men. Men always give back what was given to them when they were young.

Akalena would throw herself in between Boris and her children, hoping to prevent even more injury. What would any woman have done when her children were at risk? She needed to have something to keep her going, to survive and somehow keep sane. What was there to look forward to? There were some whose plight became so severe; they would walk out of the village, back to other relatives, distant aunts, gone forever.

One day, when she noticed Boris’s axe outside the house of a woman known for her generosity in giving sex for axe, she decided she had enough. Her fury and rage welled up. All those years of abuse she had suffered. The continuing sexual degradation when he demanded from her by force what he got elsewhere with money or axing wood for stinking whores. The beatings and rapes, the abuse of her children, the stealing of her money earned by weaving mats…the years of making his chicken soup and  early morning baking bread. What had it given her? Where and when would it end?

The Inventiveness of a damaged Woman

October 18, 2011

There is nothing quite as creative or revengeful as a woman wanting to even out the pain and suffering endured over a lifetime at the hands of a cruel and hopeless man.  Her name was Akalena, his was Boris.

This is her story.

Of course the start of her marriage was wonderful, even loving. He chopped up the firewood. No one could wield the axe in this small Ukrainian village of Pukiv like Boris. He stacked the piles nicely, provided the kindling by going into a small pine forest.  Mountains of pine cones, twigs and even the dried needles he carefully arranged in neat piles. When winter came, and it came to fire wood, there was plenty. He would sometimes drink vodka but nothing too much, certainly not like Ivan from next door, whose wife made him sleep in front of the wood stove when drunk. Her marriage had long ago waned to nothing but she did not want to have her husband found frozen stiff in the forest. Those Ukrainian winters were never kind to those men too scared and inebriated to find their way to the front gate and face spousal fury. When men went missing, the wives would first look into the neighbouring woods, that’s if there hadn’t been a heavy snow fall. In early spring, the forest would then yield its bitter harvest with husbands’ remains found, some still clutching the bottle. It went some way in explaining the surplus of available women. Sometimes, while Boris was swinging his axe, some of those without husbands would saunter by, their hips still capable of a suggestive swing as well.

While Boris did not fall prey to Vodka very often, he did keep a lecherous and leering eye out for those women with loose ways and swinging hips, especially if special favours could be bought. He would sometimes take his axe to one of those women that had walked by, but ended up with more than just chopping their fire-wood. It wasn’t long when rumours became rife of Boris having been noticed whoring and snoring amongst the widows of Pukiv, spending nights away. He had no qualms upsetting Akalena, smelling of Vodka and stale sex. When confronted by Akalena, he scowled and told her ‘did you ever run out of firewood, did you, you bitch’?  Go on, ‘give me my hot soup and pull my boots off’. I’ll fucking well swing my axe wherever I choose to’. Akalena would give him his chicken soup…; boil some water for his stinking feet. The soup had been on the stove for hours, waiting for Boris to show up.

Akalena was disappointed in her Boris and as the years went by, her love also shrivelled as did the love of so many Ukrainian women married to those hopeless men. The swinging of axes or their Vodka fuelled raucous ranting never did make up for their violence, their drunkenness and their hopeless and desperate womanising. There were some who secretly wished their husbands would be found frozen stiff in the pine forest as well. They would give up going into the forest, almost hoping they would not be found except in spring.

(will be continued)

My poor rich Country

 

There are riots in Greece and a ruckus in the Ukraine, terrible events in Syria, a possible overthrow kept at bay in the Philippines. The tribes in Yemen are getting restless; the € euro is wildly gyrating at the mercy of Merkel. Will she kiss or just shake hands with the obstinate Nicolas Sarkozy? Europeans are all bleary eyed, keyed up with tension and Common Market constipation, millions suffering intermittingly serious bouts of intestinal hurry. Some desperate Italians are said to be holed up in caves sitting on hoards of gold.

But, where are the problems in Australia?

Are the butchers running out of T-bones or have the rules of cricket been changed. Don’t tell me the Friday night bingo has been scrapped, the meat raffle banned, cows off their milk? All of a sudden, with not as much as a single seething university student or a hyped up history professor, Australia has gone terribly hormonal. When everything is rolling around in total peace and everyone happily tucked in bed, an ex PM decides at midnight’s hollow chime to chuck it in and go for the Government’s jugular. The bells are tolling, heads are rolling, and tongues are wagging. We are having a serious political breakdown and the whole nation is gone troppo with all the excitement of a coup d’état at the Dungog local ladies bowling club.

This country is, according to almost everyone in the rest of the world, the prime example of a well run economy. Our treasurer even won an award for being the best. We are whooping it up as never before. Mountains of iron ore, together with shiploads of the top few hundred metres of the Australian continent is scraped, sold, and shipped to China. We are all getting rich without even having to be on the boat to China and risk sea sickness. Isn’t it nice to be so well off? Our McMansions are the biggest in the world. Anyone visiting us can’t get over our lovely acreages of rolling suburbs stretching out over those enticing blue hills into the ‘never never’. The Rosella circuits with triple garages to boot, all dress- circled around those flowing round-a-bouts are the envy of the world.

Could it possibly be a personal vendetta that is now holding our sweet nation of Australia at ransom? Have souls been so deeply hurt, almost irreparably, that forgiveness can never be achieved without first hurling wreckage at an entire nation? How could this ever happen to a country known for its people being easy going, tolerant and full of bonhomie? Why the vindictiveness and allow the screaming of the indignant cries of having been personally wronged overpower all and obliterate all the previously achieved good-will and public achievements? How can the personal be put so above the good for the country. Where is the common sense in all this? Is this what power finally does to the person?

No matter how we look at it, Australia has achieved milestones since the last election. Acres of Legislation have been passed, mountains moved and all was going well. Are mere egos now wrecking a political party? How far are politicians willing to go to pursue their narcissistic ambitions above those of their party and constituents? Of course, the media, as ever sniffing around for blood, has been shoveling manure to the max, holding a knife at our Nation’s throat while doing the bidding for those large overfed mining moguls with the help of the shock jock’s blood hound expertise. Has anyone seen the headlines? An orgy of self destruction, and to what end and where are the benefits for this rich and poor country of mine?

How far are any of us from being a Bashar al-Assad?

 

The Inventiveness of a damaged Woman (The end)

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She entered the village shop to buy the flour and as a surprise for Boris, a bottle of vodka. She walked past the woman’s house on the way back. It fired her rage up again. Boris was still inside, the axe where it was before. When she got home, she put in some more wood in the stove and calmly sprinkled some rat poison in his chicken broth. Not too much, just a spoon full.

The idea she was taking charge made her almost happy. She felt a renewal surging through her that she hadn’t felt for many years. Enough was enough. What right did anyone have to undo her, unhinge her, and make her mad? He never walked into the forest too drunk, to be swallowed up by snow only to resurface in early spring, with a scrawny skeletal hand poking up in the thaw. Akalena was not going to stand for any more of what she got since her marriage. Boris would be taught a lesson!

Much to Boris’ chagrin, his tumbler of Vodka and his soup was waiting for him when he got back. Without a word he slurped the Vodka and soup down before he grabbed his wife at the crutch. ‘You are next, he growled’. ‘What’s up with you and the vodka, he demanded? ‘Just have some more soup dear’, she offered. The vodka and the sex for axe was now getting the better (or worse) of him and he soon snored away on the floor. When he woke up next day she wanted Boris to chop up some more wood. The winter had started in earnest. There was frost on the inside of the windows each morning before she would get up and put up fresh wood in the stove. Boris complained he felt a bit dizzy but managed to put on his coat to chop up a month supply of wood. The pine was easy to split and soon his axe blows could be heard in the neighbourhood.

This time, Akalena put in two rations of rat poison in his chicken soup, next to his bowl another tumbler of his alcohol. He came in looking somewhat pale but let go of his usual cunt calling and grabbing while being unbuttoned. She had left in large pieces of chicken this time. Again, the vodka and soup diverted his attention away from the usual attacks and violence. He was also getting unsteady on his feet, due to either the vodka or the rat poison or a combination of both. This time he collapsed in his bed at the back of the house.

Akalena had run out of rags for her mats but now started to cut up in long strips Boris’ old shirts and underwear. She fed them into her loom while singing softly to herself. The wood pile outside will be the last pile he will chop, she smiled. Boris had taken to staying in bed while Akalena continued feeding him his poisonous cocktail of chicken soup and vodka. He started to look pale and suffered dizzy spells. ‘You are killing me’, Boris would complain while in an attack of delirium. ‘Oh, my darling, don’t say that’, after all I’ve done for you’. ‘Here, have some soup’. This time, the soup was without the poison. She did want him to suffer but not have it over with too quickly. He had to be kept finely balanced between life and death, conscious enough to still experience some of what she suffered all those years.

She kept the door of his bedroom locked and unheated while cutting his best Sunday suit, his pants, his coats, all his clothing. All cut into strips and all fed into the loom. It would be one of her best mats. As she fed him she cradled his head, spoon fed him. She now started to cut his bed clothes, his pyjamas. His face contorted with terror and supreme fright. ‘No, no you are my husband, my darling’ she said while she now cut away his pants exposing his shrivelled pale manhood. Boris had lost his voice, gone was the swearing, the cunt calling. She smiled at him and left the room, shutting the door behind her. The windows where white with frost and Boris would still have a day or so left in deliriums, perhaps still hoping it would all end. Next day, the bed sheets and last blanket was taken away, cut into strips and fed into her loom. The mat was almost finished. It was her best and strongest mat, many would walk over it. Boris was now getting towards the finale. He looked up into her eyes. Was there some recognition finally? Some regret, some admittance of actions? It was too late… His hands parallel to his body lifted slightly and started to shake, a last tremor and that was that. His death as delicious now as her chicken soup had been all those years. Akalena left the room, rolled up the mat. Boris became useful, finally.

The Inventiveness of a damaged Woman (part1)

There is nothing quite as creative or revengeful as a woman wanting to even out the pain and suffering endured over a lifetime at the hands of a cruel and hopeless man. Her name was Akalena, his was Boris.

This is her story.

Of course the start of her marriage was wonderful, even loving. He chopped up the firewood. No one could wield the axe in this small Ukrainian village of Pukiv like Boris. He stacked the piles nicely, provided the kindling by going into a small pine forest. Mountains of pine cones, twigs and even the dried needles he carefully arranged in neat piles. When winter came, and it came to fire wood, there was plenty. He would sometimes drink vodka but nothing too much, certainly not like Ivan from next door, whose wife made him sleep in front of the wood stove when drunk. Her marriage had long ago waned to nothing but she did not want to have her husband found frozen stiff in the forest. Those Ukrainian winters were never kind to those men too scared and inebriated to find their way to the front gate and face spousal fury. When men went missing, the wives would first look into the neighbouring woods, that’s if there hadn’t been a heavy snow fall. In early spring, the forest would then yield its bitter harvest with husbands’ remains found, some still clutching the bottle. It went some way in explaining the surplus of available women. Sometimes, while Boris was swinging his axe, some of those without husbands would saunter by, their hips still capable of a suggestive swing as well.

While Boris did not fall prey to Vodka very often, he did keep a lecherous and leering eye out for those women with loose ways and swinging hips, especially if special favours could be bought. He would sometimes take his axe to one of those women that had walked by, but ended up with more than just chopping their fire-wood. It wasn’t long when rumours became rife of Boris having been noticed whoring and snoring amongst the widows of Pukiv, spending nights away. He had no qualms upsetting Akalena, smelling of Vodka and stale sex. When confronted by Akalena, he scowled and told her ‘did you ever run out of firewood, did you, you bitch’? Go on, ‘give me my hot soup and pull my boots off’. I’ll fucking well swing my axe wherever I choose to’. Akalena would give him his chicken soup…; boil some water for his stinking feet. The soup had been on the stove for hours, waiting for Boris to show up.

Akalena was disappointed in her Boris and as the years went by, her love also shrivelled as did the love of so many Ukrainian women married to those hopeless men. The swinging of axes or their Vodka fuelled raucous ranting never did make up for their violence, their drunkenness and their hopeless and desperate womanising. There were some who secretly wished their husbands would be found frozen stiff in the pine forest as well. They would give up going into the forest, almost hoping they would not be found except in spring.

(will be continued)