My brother's friend Stella visited yesterday from Chişinău (kiss-me-now). We (us three) walked up into the big pasture behind the two fields where my brother's been growing rye four-five years now according to the no-till methods of Masanobu Fukuoka. The purplish inflorescences of orchard-grass spilled pollen-clouds as our striding broke the tall stems: wiry undesirables such as this have come in thick this year to many of the pastures around, thwarting sward-health and dispiriting local ruminants. But the rye looked good.

Stella Rotaru is an intimate of my brother's and a hero of mine. In the postcommunist free-market circus that comprises our brutal now, Moldova has been ripe ground for the slave-diggers; the socioeconomics are perfect and their crop keeps coming. Slave-trade! Moldovan souls in cauchemarish foreign bondage, too much to try and understand. I spin around helplessly in the attempt; Stella makes phonecalls, weaves networks, connects, runs hither-thither, mobilizes funds, rescues people. Into the dark sky of this kali yuga world with its governments laughably bankrupt, Stella rises like some kind of citizen Wilberforce. She acts where all seems unactionable, commits cosmic seva, heart by heart.

Later we had tea and rose-cakes in the kitchen, Grebenshchikov on the hi-fi. My brother told the story about the goat and the beet-patch and Stella said, "When I figure out what that little bit of magic is behind the machinery of a fairy-tale, I think it will give me super-powers!"