police on my back

Standing on line at the Maanteeamet, overheard a fellow traveler's tale of woe. He was traveling down there in the border area, between Võru and Läti, when the police stopped him, judged him to be in possession of the wrong papers, and promptly took his car and drove away with it. "But you do have the correct paperwork," the official, an older lady, said, reviewing his file online. "You should have told him that everything was in order and he wouldn't have taken your car." At this, the man, a stocky, gray-haired sort with a jolly countenance, peered over at me with a grin, waving his hands in the air, as if to say, 'Can I get a witness?' "Don't you understand?" he told the official. "When you are stopped by a police officer, he is like the king, and I am just a peasant." He smiled to me again. "Nii see on," I backed him up. This is true. If a police officer in this country tells you something, there is no debate, there is no point-counterpoint, they just decide it so, and it's done. Nobody reads you your rights, although they might hand you a slip of paper that has them written somewhere. This gentleman had his car commandeered by some cops in Võru. The rest is just an embarrassing story. Algus ja lõpp.

way of the samurai

Just when this gray weather has me contemplating suicide, some little soldier inside me convinces me to go on. I have been struggling, both with cultural differences as well as physical challenges. I think people misinterpret the Estonian ideal of stoicism as being somehow Germanic, but I have after many years here begun to appreciate the populace's farther eastern links. (Ask yourself this, could any Estonian ever give a rousing, Nuremberg-like speech?) They aren't some warlike tribe from the central European peneplain, no, they are from the silent, distant east, like blond Yupik or something. So I can forgive myself for feeling lost, as lost as any Westerner would feel in, say, Japan. My eldest daughter's obsession with Japanese anime hints at recognition of that island country's mentality, the warrior-poet Art of the Samurai corresponding roughly to the stiff-backed, impersonal manner of Swedbank customer service, or the static reception you get at Eesti Post. There is a woman who works at Eesti Post who is most fetching, but whenever I give her the eye, she shrinks and wilts, as if she has never seen the sunlight.

elusive inner peace

Tomatoes, tomatoes. The chosen food. This is the one that helps against seasonal affective disorder. I could take the easy route, go for dark chocolate, but that's just too much, and it's not easy on the constitution like tomatoes. I've also got some cranberries, some mushrooms, some avocados in the mix. I saw my friend Mart at Selver, told him that avocado was the Aztec word for testicle. It's a fertility food. Maybe not a good idea for him or me (we have so many children). "Don't you know, Estonians use garlic for that," he said, bifocals on. My life is still so tuuline, windy, and he -- someone who knows -- said it won't ever go away, but might congeal into a scar. Elu läheb edasi. Life goes on. This stuff, the murky skies, the residual hirm, the stiff, almost sensei-like demeanor of the Estonians, it's like nine chains dragging me down. Apparently them too. All across this nation, nothing is more elusive than inner peace and self improvement. Yoga classes and tantra lessons blossom up like mushrooms. They say I should go too. Let a bunch of Estonians touch me there. Costs money though. Maybe it's worth it though. The wonderful sensation of being touched.

sick for a while

Yesterday was rough. And the day before. I am not sure when the objectionable food sneaked into my diet. Too much coffee? Too many white potatoes? White rice? You don't notice at first, then your energy gets weird. Too intense. Now I have what is called 'die-off.' This is when the bad gut bacteria dies. It releases toxins into your blood stream. I have concentration problems, I feel weak, tired, irritable. I have incredible anxiety and mood swings. In short, not a wonderful person to be around. This health problem has caused me more trouble than you know. We all have our ailments, and in Estonia, we are expected to keep quiet about them and tend to them ourselves. When someone dies, the cause of death is not announced. Too personal. In the meantime, I've decided to get the hell off of Facebook for both personal and personal reasons (yes, both kinds). Ask yourself this: is Bob Dylan regularly posting status updates? No. Too busy playing concerts. How about Haruki Murakami? No. Mr. Murakami's too busy writing great novels. What about Jerry Garcia? No. Too busy being dead. Listen, learn.

a whole lot better

Frosty mornings -- though beautiful. I don't mind shaving the ice from the windshield. The neighbor's business is called Saja Krooni Pood. I assume you got everything for a hundred kroons in the pre-euro days. I am not sure what they charge in euros, but the discount ethic is still in effect. If you ask him about the name of the firm, he'll put his hands in his pockets and say, 'Well, you never know with the euro, maybe the kroon will come back some day.' I love it. It's my own personal Õnne 13-like Estonian sitcom. My other neighbor is named Endel. He's always trimming the hedges and carrying wood and harvesting apples and cycling somewhere. He has a woman in the house too, though I never see her in light of day. Endel is always reminding me of something, because I always forget. The water meter! And the money! I really am useless. There are two older ladies who run things in these parts, both of them plump and adorable as pigeons. We talk through the windows sometimes.

everything in its right place

America does seem to be engulfed in a sewage-like stew of molten fucked-up-ness these days, don't it? You thought the amplified instances of black men getting gunned down by the cops was enough, but then the snipers started shooting at police in daylight, and you knew the boundary had been penetrated, that there was no way back, the membrane was punctured, perforated, leaving the poisonous goo that infects the purple and green gangrenous American wound to only seep more visibly. Not just that. Everything. You know what I am talking about.  Reality TV show fascism. Lord have mercy. I still do not despair for my nation of origin, though it has become synonymous with the overly indulged, overly indebted, overly gunned down obese. I do not despair when I hear the cutting remarks of the insatiable Europeans, with their fussy, pedantic, hierarchical thinking schemes. O, professor. O, great poet. O, prime minister. Yes, yes, yes! Everything in its right place.

comrade dos

So who is this "Comrade Dos?" What happened to "Giustino"? I'll tell you -- briefly -- then I must return to typing up this column about monkey slavery and coconut oil. My handle "Giustino" developed not just out of my Italian background, but because people sensed some inner effeminacy on my part, rendering me as "Justine" in correspondence so often that I decided to add the 'o' to the end and come fully into my own as a swashbuckling Mediterranean man, a Greek sailor, which is what I am actually underneath all of this, that's what I am. I am a shipwrecked Greek sailor, except rather than being deserted on the sunny atoll of the cyclops I must fend for myself in this ghastly land of free wifi. That handle Giustino was linked to a now defunct aol account, and I moved my blogger account over to gmail, hence the birth of Comrade Dos, which is what John Dos Passos was called in E.E. Cumming's book EIMI (see profile for full quotation).

kinnised, kinnised

Tartu again from the metal synthetic catastrophe that is downtown doubling for a "real city." Milk soup gray sky. Tartu people are closed, kinnised, they say. Not to the isolated degree of the Tallinners, but still -- remote. You know your neighbors, you know your friends, but there is that added degree of hesitance. People are busy in Estonia, busy, busy, busy. So goes Tartu. After living here, Tartu, for two and a half years again, I know some people, even others well to the minor degree, but I am not in their shit to the degree that I am in the shit of the people of Viljandi, where I am well acquainted with dirty laundry (and they no doubt have sampled mine). People in Viljandi wink at you knowingly. They know everything about you. They know the color of your underwear before you know it yourself. In Tartu? That reluctance, those pulled kisses, those restrained kalli kalli-s. Fine and good, fine and well, yet somehow dissatisfying. Trade intimacy for a movie theater, a shopping center, an apteek that stays open all night long, and a bunch of wannabe Italian restaurants and one real one, except that it's run by northerners.

day two

Viljandi is where I am today. It's not so bad, even though it's gray and somber, the chill of winter biting at the holes in your socks, that kind of thing. The Estonians too are extra tetchy, extra bitchy, because they know all of their summertime fun time is over and now comes the Big Dark before the Big Cold. When they drank beer in the summer it was fun, but now it's kind of like for survival. I had a squash soup at the Rohelise Maja Kohvik, got to see Enn in the streets, gave his sister a peck on both cheeks. It's so easy to flatter these Estonians, they are so unused to expressions of affection. Her cheeks got all rosy with blush. "Hey, how old is your sister?" I asked Enn. "I dunno, a hundred." Probably. The atmosphere inside is always soothing to me, loving to me. One never feels safer in his skin than when he's eating some squash soup and Jalmar Vabarna from Zetod stumbles through the door. I can relax around these musician types, these poets, these designers. I can breathe. I can breathe in Viljandi. I don't care if my püksilukk is lahti here. Let my fly be down. Have a look.

this was actually fun

God, I was looking through my archives and found some wonderful stuff, good stuff, tantalizing stuff. Stuff that hinted at greatness, before all the pomp and bullshit settled in. That's the trouble with becoming a professional. People pay you to do what you love, then you no longer love doing it. Then what you produce is no longer good. That's all right then, isn't it? As Jimi Hendrix said, "I've still got my guitar." So, it's mid-October in Tartu and the weather's shit. I can smell the smoldering smoke from the chimneys. The leaves, when the sun hits the piles strewn on the ground, are pretty. Immaculate. Natural. Love 'em. Lunch I take in at Kohvipaus on the corner of Rüütli and Küütri. I get the big Greek salad. Sometimes I look at Kroonika. Sometimes I look at all of the blonde women and try to figure out how they once overwhelmed my hormones so much. Youth is beautiful, isn't it? Idiotically gorgeous.

mis juhtus?

It's been well over a decade since a young New York City biotech editor began to fill patches in his schedule with relentless thoughts about Estonia on this blog. At first, its purpose was to remark on public events and to counter Russian propaganda, but later it became something of a personal diary, and even later, an ongoing surrealist manifesto. Those blogging years were good for my fingertips. When I read what I wrote at the beginning now, I can see what a novice I was. Blogging allowed me to build up my chops in a way that no other daily writing could. For that, and to you, my readers, I am grateful. Tänulik. At the same time, it was a distraction. Arguing with faceless Russian nationalists was a distraction. It held me at distance from my spouse, from my young children, from my greater priorities and responsibilities in life. How many moments of my young child's life did I miss because I was typing away hotly about citizenship or language laws? In this manner it was an utter waste of time. I suffered from a chronic illness in Estonia, brought about in part by cold weather, that spiraled into a true systemic challenge thanks to the over ingestion of antibiotics. This had an impact on my mental state and my ability to communicate. I fell into depression, as evidenced here. I made foolish decisions, as evidenced here. Only now, years on, with some health regained, can I see things as they truly happened. Happened. This is all past tense. This blog is past tense. But that's not the real reason I don't write here anymore. The real reason I don't write here is because the blogger format is restrictive and frustrating. It's stuck in 2005 and it's 2015. I would import this blog into my new blog North!, but I don't think that's necessary. I think it's necessary that it continues to live here in Internet world in perpetuity. Enjoy it.

north!

For a long time now, I have written here in this place. You've seen me come and go and develop and devolve. Now, at last, I know where I need to go. North! It's my newer blog and I will be writing there.

peppermint tea

In a recent business-related discussion, I happened upon an interesting question. It had to do with food production, and to brand something made in Estonia for the regional market with an N or a B. That's right: Nordic or Baltic. Just thinking about it was absorbing, because all of those prejudices floated right up to the top. Let's take something harmless like peppermint tea. I love peppermint tea. Now, would you rather drink Nordic Peppermint Tea, or Baltic Peppermint Tea? Hmm. Nordic brings to mind cleanliness. It smacks of Ikea and so there is a flavor of overproduction in the term, as in these tea leaves were handpicked and produced in line with 700 pages worth of government regulations. Still, they are Nordic, which means they come with a Sami folk pattern on the box and are of high quality. Baltic Peppermint Tea didn't sound as savory to my ears, though, nor to the ears of my Estonian colleagues. And nobody could say why. Or maybe we all really knew why we didn't want to drink Baltic Peppermint Tea, and lacked the courage to admit it.

54-46

Estonia has a new minister of culture, and her name is Urve Tiidus. That's right, her name. The former mayor of Kuressaare is a woman. Estonia's cabinet now has its second female minister. While this is certainly cause for celebration, let's not forget that women are the majority in Estonia. There are 689,000 women. There are 598,000 men. That's a 54 percent to 46 percent split. Which, I guess, would mean that there should be seven female ministers and six male ministers, if you do the math, in an ideal world, in an ideal world...

why no western ukraine

In third grade, I was very proud, because I was one of the few students who could pronounce "Czechoslovakia." Other kids would prod me -- "Say it! Say it!" "Say what?" "You know what, just say it!" "Oh, {an eyebrow raised}, do you mean, CZECHOSLOVAKIA?" "See! I told you that he could say it! Pay up, boys!"

It was a talent that perhaps could have earned me a future slot as a diplomat in Prague {"The Secretary of State informed me that you are capable of saying it..."}, but, alas, there was that pesky Velvet Divorce. It happened {snap!} like that. Czechoslovakia dissected, cut into more easily pronounced halves. Nobody blinked, nobody twiddled nervous thumbs, the anxiety level was nonexistent, it was all calm and fine, at least from the vantage point of a New York junior high school student. Now that I read more about it, I can see that many people even opposed it! Still, it was bloodless, soft as velvet, and who doesn't like velvet?

What I don't understand, is why there is opposition to a Ukrainian "Velvet Divorce"? It's apparent that Western Ukraine, those parts of current Ukraine that were once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is/are not happy with Kiev. They aren't happy with Donetsk. Western Ukraine! Doesn't it sound grand? {"Don't worry, mother, she's from Western Ukraine."} And yet, when somebody brings up a partitioning of Western Ukraine from the rest of it, all you hear is no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. To which, I must respond, Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?...

                                                                         ...{Why?}

ukraine/brain

Very pleased to hear of the demonstrations in Kiev. One thing that always impressed me about former Communist/Eastern/New Europe {as opposed to glazed over, apathetic ABBA- and Boney M-listening Western/Old} is the belief in "people power" -- that change from the bottom up is still possible. Count me among those Western Europeans {or Westerners in general} who remain convinced that there is no such thing, and that our systems will remain mired in lethargy for eternity. We {or some of those among us} were not surprised by what has happened in Ukraine over the past month at all. But what is surprising is the tenacity of these EU-friendly parts of Ukraine, these demonstrators who simply do not give up. I do not know what their great ambition is -- the common currency, Schengen? -- but they are banging at the gates, crying to be let out of post-Soviet limbo land. They want a future. Don't we all?

koosolek

The meeting took place in an abandoned barn on the western most tip of Hiiumaa. Outside it was raining, and the sea was stewing up with caps of white, and the pines were shimmying, and even the savage gulls were huddling under the eaves of the deserted summertime lodgings and wishing they had gone south like everybody else

The Candidate entered the barn and made his way past the fishing nets and dinghies to the very back. Then he pulled on the rusty sickle, just as he was instructed. The secret door creaked open, and he followed the steps down, kicking up the sand and hay that had accumulated in the corners of the steps. At the bottom, the Candidate crouched under a heavy beam and came into the light. It was a bare room, with walls cut from  salt-air-dried logs and sandy ground for a floor. In the center of the room, he saw a small wooden table. There was a man seated at it.

"Good afternoon, Minister," said the Candidate to the man.

The Minister said nothing. He was reading through some paperwork. When he was done, he looked up at the Candidate through his glasses and gestured for him to sit. The Candidate took his chair opposite the Minister. Then the Minister folded the papers up in a folder and tossed the folder across the table.

The Candidate took it in his hands. He felt its weight. Then he scanned the text on its cover. It read, in Estonian, "Government's Top Secret Plan to Remove Anti-Ruling Party Elements Who Write for State-Sponsored Publications."

The Candidate glanced up at the Minister. The Minister nodded but said nothing. Then the Candidate opened the folder. On the first page, he saw there was a list of names. It was written in black. Some of the names were very well known. When he read the names, he winced, because they belonged to famous people. In fact, the Candidate suspected that some of the persons named on the list might have even been to the secret Hiiumaa barn cellar before.

Then the Candidate turned the page over and saw an image of a white stone building overlooking a beach. There were palm trees around it, and there was a young brown-haired woman in a polka dot bikini sitting on its veranda. The Candidate studied the lady. She held an umbrella drink in one hand and was smiling. The Candidate smiled too, because the woman in the photo had very nicely tanned legs. Beneath the image was a single line of text. It said, in Estonian, "Your Future Timeshare in Maspalomas."

The Minister chuckled a bit when he noticed that the Candidate was smiling. Then he snorted and pretended that he was clearing his throat and resumed his stone-like pose. The Candidate shut the folder, but the images of the white house and the tan legs were still hot in his mind.

There was a pause.

The Minister looked up at the Candidate again through his glasses, as if he was awaiting a response. The Candidate bit his lip. He looked around the room, at the sandy floor, the wooden boards, the gray-haired man seated at the table. He thought of the names on the list, the white house, the smiling dish with the umbrella drink. Then he shrugged his shoulders and dipped his head as a sign of assent.

the cyclops

One can look at Tallinn in different ways. Some see a city that has been multicultural and market-oriented since at least the 13th century. Others see it as the capital of Estonia. The incumbent ran his campaign with this first perspective. The challenger ran his with the second. And I don't think the opposition's campaign was ever about winning. It was about doing what the conservative party enjoys doing -- sticking it to Savisaar. Maybe a few of them were disappointed that Eerik-Niiles Kross lost, but most knew that bringing down the Cyclops of Lindanisse was a political impossibility, yet delighted in watching Aeneas storm his beaches and fling rocks at him anyway. It's a shame, because Tallinn needs new management. Any person who has scaled the ruins of the Linnahall at the foot of Old Town, stepped over its rubble and weeds and graffiti to greet a friend coming off the boat from tidy Helsinki on the other side, has felt those familiar pangs of shame. Too much of the city looks like that. Neglect, poor planning, asshole capitalist architecture. The city suffers from its leader's myopia. The Cyclops wins an election and he thinks that it's because he is doing such a swell job. But it doesn't feel that way. Savisaar's city feels slower and lethargic. Its free transportation leads nowhere. And yet a challenger who can match his rhetoric of inclusiveness and optimism is nowhere in sight.

solidaarsus puudub

Solidarność was the message of the red letters scrawled across the pin pinned against my chest in college by a Polish girl with a Bible-thick collection of indie rock band compact discs. I had never given much thought to Gdańsk trade unionists, but I had already been marked as one of them. These days you never hear the term, either in Polish or English, and if you do hear it in Estonian, solidaarsus, it sounds hollow, because anything tangentially connected to altruistic impulses was thoroughly discredited by the Fall of the Soviet Union. But the hyper-individualistic "investors' state" of tech-savvy marketing and start-up worship that was grafted onto the bones of the ESSR is still heavy on the skin and light on the meat. We are told that it is natural and Estonian to derive sinister pleasure from the failures of one's neighbor, and if he should succeed, we are told that it is natural and Estonian to envy him, and to surpass him, if only to delight in his come down.

It eats away from the inside, turns the warmhearted cold. While no narcissistic writer could be expected to produce white papers of concise, pithy, logical thought and policy suggestions, we might expect a sort of temperature-reading of the national mood. The thatcherite-reaganite posturings of the middle aged have acquired a musty, dangerous smell. They sit lit up under fresh slogans like week-old tuna fish sandwiches beneath electric lights on ferry cafeteria shelves. The cheesy populism of the Edgar-led side moves clumsily, like an unfrozen woolly mammoth feeling its way across the ice for the first time in ages, accompanied by an orchestra of younger people's derision and snark. Political life sleepwalks through elections and, "Did you hear what he said? Did you see what she did?" Every somnolent step is one closer to no holds barred parody.

In the freshly assembled honeycomb bee-colony towers of the northern cities, the young man is tossing screens back and forth with his thumbs and deciding on the cultural origins of the night's savory meal. Japanese, Hungarian, Azerbaijani? Fling! He flings a screen aside and Skype chats with his friends and then his phone buzzes and his doorbell buzzes, too. He must now decide on a vacation destination for the coming dreary doldrums. Lanzarote? Limassol? 

In the towns along the less traveled highways of the south, the red paint is peeling, the window glass broken, the ancient curtains dance within the cracks. An old man sits on a crumbling cement stoop, helping himself to his morning juice. Bear Beer, black label, 7 percent alcohol, 2 liter bottle. He undoes the cap, places the plastic to his dry-skinned lips. The wind picks up some more and the curtains dance, just like the ghosts do, all across the parish.

mihkelsonspeak

Some new vocabulary words

Vastandumine -- Antagonism. Ex:... pole ka maailmapoliitikas juba pikka aega olnud sellist vastandumist nagu me näeme täna näiteks Venemaa ja Ameerika Ühendriikide suhete puhul. {For some time in world politics, we haven't seen such antagonism as we see today in Russian and American relations}

Vaibumine -- Abatement. Ex: Enam kui kaks aastat ning kümneid tuhandeid inimelusid nõudnud kodusõda ei näita vähimatki vaibumismärki. {A more than two year and tens of thousands of lives-taking civil war shows not even half a chance of abatement}

Taandumine -- Receding. Ex: Eeldada, et diktaatorite taandumine looks kiire võimaluse demokraatlikeks protsessideks, oleks väga naiivne. {To presuppose that the receding of dictatorships would create a quick opportunity for democratic processes would be very naive}

Ohjeldada -- To curb. Ex: Kindlasti peegeldub siin Külma sõja aegne liitlassuhe, aga samuti soov ohjeldada USA ja lääneriikide mõjuvõimu Lähis-Idas. {Certainly this reflects a Cold War era relationship, but also a desire to curb the US and Western countries' influence in the Middle East}

Forgive the crude translations.