on sul hästi hästi?

On sul hästi hästi, or, as the Balinese say it, om-su-hasti-hasti. This is how they greet one another on this Indonesian island. It reminds me of our old friend Vello Vedelik and his various theories on the origins of nations, putting the Estonians at the center of it all, the chosen people, the first Europeans, the fathers and mothers of the Guanche people of the Canary Islands, and now, as my ears suspect, the distant cousins of the Balinese, who greet each other with a broad smile, "On sul hästi hästi?" ("Is everything okay?") Hästi hästi! is the islander's response.

"Bush was right." This is what a guide told me a day ago at Goa Lawah, the Hindu Bat Cave. I thought about asking him, "Right about what?" but said nothing because I have no stomach for conflict. The conservative/liberal think tankers who see Estonian economic policy as a lighthouse to the world's astray darkened lands, certainly miss GWB, because "those were the days," the days when they were more important, when people listened to them, when they had the ears of an administration led by a man who cartoonists portrayed as having very large ears.

Obama meanwhile is a weakling. Why doesn't he just take out Iran? And North Korea? And Russia? And, while he's at it, go back in time and defeat the Viet Cong? Show them we're not to be trifled with! These are the kinds of fantasies that filled the Bush years with Lewis Carroll logic and opaque purple haze. After America crawled out of its post-Vietnam doldrums with some handy invasions of islands and isthmuses and peninsulas,segments of its elite became so lovedrunk on their invincibility and childhood postwar mythos, that they thought they could raze vast and complicated post-colonial territories and rebuild them in their divine image. And the clean-up man Obama isn't resolute enough to see that they were right! I mean, after Boston, isn't it obvious?

On sul hästi hästi, they ask me on Bali, om-su-hasti-hasti. I'd like to say, "Ei ole." But the Balinese don't say that. They are good Hindus. They say, Om-santi-santi.

look homeward, angel

Copley Square, a familiar place. A familiar place for beer drinking and hamburger consumption and overhearing hipsters badmouthing Red State America on a snoozy Sunday afternoon. Named after John Singleton Copley, portraitist to the Boston Brahmin. "But the people in this town ... the people in this town make me feel like Sean Hannity," my Obama-voting friend Eamon once told me there on leafy, liberal Copley Square. I nearly followed Eamon up to B-town after college, was planning on setting up above a cannoli shop in the North End and affecting one of those accents that drops the r and overdoes it on the äääää. I could have been there on the finish line that fated day, had my legs blown off by bolts and other metal bits.

I keep pulling lucky numbers, but I know that sooner or later an unlucky one will come up.

... on the Baltic Queen between Stockholm and Tallinn in late winter waters, March, with the broken window glass ice crumpling and scraping the hull of this un-Titanic, playing video games in the ship's arcade, one has real-looking guns, aiming at real-looking people, my daughter starts to play it. "Aim this way, now squeeze the trigger," instructs adolescent freckly finnic face (an Estonian though). And at the end of this "game," after we've both been wasted by adversaries, he confides in me in the arcade dark, "I love guns." He loves guns?

 ... Violence here and violence, ultraviolence, sex and violence. New York, Bali, Madrid, London, Boston, more unlucky numbers pulled. And who to blame? It's not the pretty Malaysian Muslim girls with their peacock-like headscarves and round faces and scooters and ivorywhite smiles. It's Timothy and Tamerlan and Dzokhar. The social cancer of those who kill and maim and ruin innocents to satisfy a vague political goal and succeed by seeing it never addressed because it is associated with their rotten blood-stained selves.

Some call these murderers "terrorists." You and I know them better as "idiots."

margaret and nelson and jaak

SDE party member Jaak Allik has stepped in some Esto political doo doo by saying that Russia has never attacked Estonia (actually, it was in the context of Russia attacking only Estonia -- he {correctly, I think} points out that most Russian conquests of the windy peninsula took place as part of larger continental wars involving many countries) But it's a great opportunity to ramble on about history because this is an election year [Estonian municipal elections will be held in autumn] and Allik's party SDE is doing well in the polls, and what better way to drag them down, then to Question Their Patriotism? Allik is the son of Olga Lauristin and Hendrik Allik, both of whom were Estonian Communists, so, of course, there are quips about his traitorous genes.

Which brings us to the recently deceased Margaret Thatcher, who is being celebrated and villainized. Thatcher famously called {the now universally beloved} Nelson Mandela a "terrorist" -- one of the charges against her from those who do not remember her leadership fondly. But in the early 1960s, Mandela did co-found a militant organization and led a bombing campaign against government targets. So these are our choices? British conservatism or the South African Communist Party?

Nobody is a hundred-percent pure, nobody is a hundred-percent good, nobody is a hundred-percent honest. As human beings we all bear the sins of our ancestors on our souls. Fingers may be pointed, spin round like weathercocks, but the British people elected Thatcher, and the South African people backed Mandela and later made him their president, and Jaak Allik may be the son of Communists, but there are plenty of people who are the sons and daughters of even less savory elements. We are all Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela and Jaak Allik. They are just individual manifestations of our conflicted and often irrational psyche, the varying consciences of a giant that so desperately wants things in the world to be well and in order, but somehow always manages to screw things up.

of gays and matrimony

Years ago, my well-meaning, liberal arts college-educated friends started taking me aside. I apparently had missed practice, and didn't know all of the new plays by heart, so they decided to enlighten me as to what the new progressive playbook contained, and on page one was the right of men to marry men, and women to marry women. "Really?" I asked without prejudice. "Come on, man, you should be able to marry whoever you want!" I got the opposite play from the campus Republicans, who were taking me aside and putting their [strictly platonic] hands on my shoulders and saying, "But if They get the right to marry, then They can adopt." Jaws drop, horror. Not normal, said they, no way!

These were the Al Gore "civil union" days, and I supported the former vice president, not out of any belief in any virtue or universal truth [oh, hell no], but simply because I grasped the problems that faced same-sex couples [taxes! hospital visitation rights!], and I thought that the civil union Trojan Horse had a better chance of making it past the gates of traditional Christian America than some extended sojourn into the dank depths of rabbit-hole questions like, "But are you born with it?" Well, if [formerly straight] Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon is our poster lesbian, then obviously not! [Which is also why the arguments about gay marriage are so ridiculous: straight woman decides she's actually lesbian, leaves husband for woman, takes kids and - voila! - kids suddenly have two moms]

I am of the two-camps camp, actually, the "born this way" camp and the "chose this way" camp, some born with, some chose, which actually makes me part of the "just don't give a shit" camp. That's right, I don't care how gays got gay, or what makes gay people gay, or, really about gays at all, well, as little as I care about straights. They're just people, all of them, not one more fascinating than the other, at least when sexual orientation is concerned. Which is why I really wish that each one of the United States, and Estonia, too, would legalize same-sex partnerships, so I can stop hearing about it and having my well-meaning, liberal arts college-educated friends go over the playbook with me, again and again and again, and watch people trade Biblical quotes on the Internets and see legally minded pals advocate civil unions for opposite-sex couples, with liberal use of exclamation marks ...

In Estonia, I even signed a petition in support of it, just to keep it moving toward that final relieving destination, where it's SO normal that nobody talks about it anymore. I have been grateful to see the public opinion shift in the last few years toward support for same-sex marriages, because it means that, at last, Praise Be to You, Lord Christ, Western society can move on with its life. Same-sex marriage, your fifteen minutes/years are almost up ...

a little of that, a little of this

Is Estonia a very conservative country or a very liberal country? I cannot tell. Conservative, yes, conservative about language and about eating habits and about not whistling in houses (or else they'll burn!), but also liberal, yes, liberal as in having three children with three different men, none of whom have ever lived with you, none of whom have ever seen their offspring {and may not even be aware they exist, and you may not even know their last names} BUT ... Hush! Do not speak of such things! Because Estonia is a conservative place, where such things are not spoken of. Estonian gender roles are fixed and rigid and permeable and porous, even gaseous ... Consider: Härra Giustino's critique of Estonian men and their "golden hands" is actually a shrouded criticism of bimboland's wannabe Marilyn Monroe wimmin who are just {sigh} so dainty and {sigh} ladylike that they {sigh} can't be bothered with turning a screw three times clockwise ... That's MAN'S work, and besides, I just got my nails done!!! And yet there they are, the Estonian wimmin, stooping down in the dirt with all of those potatoes ... "Hey, pass the, uh, Sovetskoye Shampanskoye ... That's what's so great about talgud, you know ... *hiccup* you get to work in the outdoors [wipes sweat from face with dirty dirt-soiled hand] and get sun on your face and ...gluglugglug ... Hey, give me another sip of that wouldya?" Oh, Estonia, land of contrasts, land of flat taxation and state-run healthcare system, a little of this, a little of that, a little of that, a little of this ...

étienne

Étienne is one of my oldest friends, not that I have known him for so long, but because, literally, at age 74, he is among my oldest friends. I had known this French geneticist for years before I had the courage to ask him the question, "So, if you're about 40 years older than me, does that mean that you remember the war?"

"I do have a few recollections from WWII, not tragic ones, my family and myself didn't go through particularly tragic moments, especially, of course, as seen through a child's eyes..." said  Étienne. "I do remember German soldiers playing with my little sister's pram, sitting in it and launching themselves down an incline," he said. "And I remember, really remember, not because people told me about it, the liberation of Paris, the noise of tanks driving through our street, the hurried cutting of a few flowers in our garden and the rough, unshaven cheek of a solider I was kissing on the tank on which I had been hoisted -- these were French tanks from the "Division Leclerc", as the Allies had gracefully allowed them to come in first. Of course I wasn't aware of all the awful things that were taking place."

I share these stories of Étienne's because they remind me of my wife's grandmother's story about the March 1949 deportations. The Laanemaa (nee Landmann) family was on Stalin's shit list for a number of reasons. One: Martin, the father, had served in the Estonian War of Independence. Two: Martin, the father, had been a member of Omakaitse, the Estonian national guard, both before the war and during the German occupation. Three: the Laanemaa family was wealthier than average. Because of this, Martin had already been deported in 1948. In 1949, they came for his wife and two daughters. The eldest, Salme, was arrested and sent to Siberia. The mother, Anna, and her younger daughter, Laine, hid in the forest and managed to escape deportation. They made an attempt to return to the village (on the west coast of Estonia), but decided against it when they saw other villagers walking around wearing their clothes. Their house had apparently been looted.

That is the kind of detail you can only get from talking to your older relatives. We know so much about what happened in occupied Paris, but who can now forget the image of two young German soldiers stealing a little girl's carriage and taking turns riding it down a hill? Likewise, who can now forget -- for I surely can't -- the image of a woman and her teenage daughter, who had been living in the forests in March, peeking out from behind some bushes only to see a neighbor walk by wearing one of their coats? So, if you get a chance, talk to your older friends and relatives about their memories of certain events. You may be surprised by what you hear.

trotsky berezovsky

winners/losers

One aspect of the Yana Toom affair that I brought out in my talk in Stockholm was a generational dimension, and it's one that's been on my mind in recent weeks. I was thinking about my friends (roughly my age) who travel around the world, and then I thought about two very famous Estonians, Marko Matvere and Jaan Tätte, who also travel around the world. Except when our friends travel around the world, it's just traveling around the world. But when Matvere and Tätte travel around the world, it's a Big Fucking Deal. Oh, look, Tätte sent home a postcard from Hawaii. Let's put it in a museum! Why are they so important? Sure, they write songs. But my friends also write songs. Sure, they appear on TV and in film. But ... so do some of my friends. And yet, whatever Matvere and Tätte do seems to be more imbued with meaning, more relevant. They are, ühesõnaga, culturally significant.

The only real difference between the Tätte and Matveres of Estonia and people my age, is that they are a little older. They are of the so-called "Winner's Generation." (They are both pushing 50). This is pretty hilarious construct for Americans, because in America, the generation born in the 1960s was pretty much seen as getting screwed at every stage of their life [See Reality Bites]. But in Estonia, people born in the 1960s are number one. Think of the first Laar government from 1992. Much has been made of their youth at the time. Laar was 32. Foreign minister Jüri Luik was 27. Defense minister Indrek Kannik was 28 (just checked these by the way, though I recall Laar boasting at a conference about the young members of his first government). Two decades on, not much has changed. The big boys are still running the show. There are younger ministers, some even my age, but they are usually somebody's protege. Who makes the big decisions about Estonia's future? The Winners.

But who is a Winner? I usually think of Savisaar as the first Winner, not because he wins so many elections, but because he thinks he's so important. He may count on some pensioners' votes, but the painstaking/philosophical/academic approaches of say Paul-Eerik Rummo or Jaan Kaplinski are absent. People wonder what Savisaar stands for. That's easy. Savisaar stands for whatever Savisaar happens to think at the time, naturally. End of story. It was this combative nature that earned him the nickname, "Piggy." And what you see down the line after him is a long list of Piggies. They are significant just because ... they are significant.

And, to draw Yana Toom in here a little, all of the issues that molested their psyches during the Brezhnev stagnation continue to plague Estonian politics. Russification is one of those issues. It's not unlike Vietnam in the United States. Remember the 2004 election and the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth"? Somehow, what happened in Southeast Asia at the tail-end of the 1960s became more important than what was happening in Afghanistan and Iraq in the middle of the 00s. And for younger, less diverse generations of Estonians, these questions about language and history are not as important as being able to find a good job. But for the Winners they were, and will continue to be, among the most significant issues we face. A discussion about minority issues in Estonia today does not occur in the context of 2013 but, too often, in the context of 1980. But, as Kaplinski alluded to in his essay (see discussion in previous post) Estonian-Russian interpersonal relations before the war, before the Winners came onto the scene, and in the tsarist era, were actually pretty okay. Not that it matters much what he says. It's got to be frustrating for the Kaplinskis of Estonia. He's now an elder in society, and yet all this wise old man can do is write essays and hope that somebody reads them.

The thing about Yana Toom is that she is a Winner, at least technically. She's the same age as Juhan Pärts, Jüri Luik, a year younger than Matvere, two years younger than Tätte. Except Yana Toom is not a winner. She's a loser. I would not like to see the conditions under which she becomes the foreign minister of the Republic of Estonia. But Estonian Russians of her age have to deal with that. While their EstoEsto peers climbed quickly to hold the top positions in the land, meet with presidents and kings and queens, and generally can count on having things named after them when they are dead, the Yana Tooms of Estonia cannot point to a similar amount of success. These are people who were completely socialized in the Soviet system, who became adults before it fell apart, who looked forward to one future and yet were handed a very different one. That's bound to generate some bitterness.

re: toomsayers

So the talk went well. I reread some of the opinion pieces regarding MP Yana Toom' s {some say misinterpreted} characterization of Estonian as a dying language/culture and came away with two perspectives: she's right and she's wrong. I leaned toward Rikken's retort: that Estonian language/culture was really in danger in the second decade of the 18th century after the Great Northern War when there were about 150,000 people left on the land. Here, I was reminded of my gradeschool study of the other peripheral northern land, Iceland. Their fragile tongue was in even greater peril. There were about 60,000 of them up until the middle of the 19th century. Which is why the idea that Estonian is a dying language seemed so ridiculous to me. If countries could dwindle to sizes one tenth (or even less) of what currently exists in Estonia, then how could we expect the whole language/culture to vanish in a few generations?

When I did my Iceland project in 1991, the population of that country was about 250K. Today it's about 320K. So, they have grown, while Estonia's population has gotten smaller. Why? As I noted in the talk, their climate is just as depressing -- darker, and with no trees. Sure, they don't have Russia {and Germany} in the neighborhood, but they do have volcanos and plagues -- 37 plagues in the past few hundred years which consistently eroded and tested the population base. Icelanders leave the island to find work elsewhere {such as Hallgrímur, the friendly agent we met at the car rental service in Munich} and they have Slavic immigrants too -- 13 percent of the nation is foreign born, the largest minority is Polish. Oh, and they had an even more apocalyptic recession during which Christmas trees were burned. No, any excuse you can come up with to explain away their population growth won't stick. So, what makes people stay in {and make more babies in} Iceland?

The only honest answer I could come up with is a higher standard of living. In any system of rankings, you will find this other economic pirate country at the top of the heap. Estonia is farther down, not as far down as some of its other neighbors, but far enough down to make it a less desirable place to live. Want to keep Estonia healthy? Continue to make raising the standard of living your national goal. Not just wealth, mind you, health, education, blah blah ... I'll stop now before your soc dem radar goes off ...

But the Estonian population is a bit tricky. The 2000 Census shows 930K ethnoEstos, 350K russoEstos. The 2011 Census shows 890K ethnoEstos, 320K russoEstos. So, the number of ethnoEstos is about the same as it was in the 1934 census (888K) at which time the number of russoEstos was about 92K [in case you have been misled to believe in the myth of a purely ethnoEsto prewar Estonia]. Mind you, there was a terrible war, mass deportations (and fleeing) from Estonia after 1934 (and Soviet population transfer) and Estonian is still spoken, at least in my home.

And to bring Yana Toom back in here ... the russoEsto population has declined significantly in this country. If ethnoEsto language/culture appears to be on the way out, then russoEsto lang/cult is one step ahead out that oblivion door. Two more things/thoughts: Soviet population transfer was not an organic means of population growth (birth rate+controlled immigration). And the idea that the Estonian population would continue to grow after 1989 beyond that 1.6M (or whatever it was) is ... well ... not a good idea. So, honestly, I am not sure what the {real, sustainable} population of Estonia should be.

Finally, talked about generational differences -- Winners, Losers. But that's already another post ...

oht on õhus

This weekend - Saturday - I will present/lecture/speak at the Estonian House in Stockholm. It's in honor of emakeelepäev (mother language day, in Estonia, language is feminine, but the country itself is masculine, isamaa, father land, national anthem - mu isamaa, mu õnn ja rõõm, 'my fatherland, my happiness and joy ...') enough of that! The question put to me is "Is the Estonian language (and culture) in danger?" Oh, should I chucklechortle and say, "No, it's not, nothing to see here folks, now move along, Ansip's got it all taken care of ..." Or should I peddle negativity (decreasing population, emigration, naughty girls marrying foreign boys, russians, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!)

I'd argue -- to start -- that the language isn't in trouble, but the culture is, and the threat isn't from the East but the West, as American-style consumerism commands the adoption of America's commercial culture, right down to the fact that holidays never celebrated in this land have become Marketing Opportunities and I can now hear the Everly Brothers sing "Bye Bye Love" when I go shopping at the local home improvement store. And -- most cringeworthy -- I've heard tale of Esto teenagers who speak english to each other because it's like, just so cool, and that's how they speak on Jersey Shore (sort of).

To me, as an American, it's embarrassing. You are so ashamed of your language that you'd rather pretend to be Homo americanus (a nation of other people who abandoned their national identities in the pursuit of "fitting in" and "success")? If you're going to do that, you might as well leave Lasnamäe for Las Vegas ... Get a new more Hollywood last name too -- Sepp won't do, but SMITH! {and it means the same thing!}

Listen, I am as proud of Phil and Don Everly as any other American. Their music was/is great ["Wake up, little Susie, wake up ..."] but Estonia has its own Phil and Don Everlys. Be proud of them. Give them more airplay at the home improvement store ... they deserve it.

like two drops of water

French President François Hollande and Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves

badass e.e.

-Why do you wish to go to Russia?
-Because I’ve never been there.
-(He slumps,recovers). You are interested in economic and sociological problems?
-No.
-Perhaps you are aware that there has been a change of government in recent years?
-yes(I say without being able to suppress a smile).
-And your sympathies are not with socialism?
-may I be perfectly frank?
-Please!
-I know almost nothing about these important matters and care even less.
-(His eyes appreciate my answer). For what do you care?
-my work.
-Which is writing?
-and painting.
-What kind of writing?
-chiefly verse; some prose.
-Then you wish to go to Russia as a writer and painter? Is that it?
-no; I wish to go as myself.
-(An almost smile). Do you realize that to go as what you call yourself will cost a great deal?
-I’ve been told so.
-Let me earnestly warn you(says the sandyhaired spokesman for the Soviet Embassy in Paris)that such is the case. Visiting Russia as you intend would be futile from every point of view. The best way for you to go would be as a member of some organization
-but,so far as I know,I’m not a member of any organization.
-from e.e. cummings' EIMI (1933)

where to?

Ilves: "Today, on the 95th anniversary of Estonia, the thought of independence has, once again, become natural. It neither requires interpretation nor explanation because it is a basic truth. // Standing on this foundation, we compare ourselves to other nations, and no longer to those who used to share our fate, but instead to those whose history and opportunities have, in the meantime, been different. // And this is exactly what it should be like. For we cannot endlessly search the past for the cause of our problems like a former colony that continues to blame it all on some 19th century injustice." Laar: "Right-wing parties have been in power for so long and this is a risk because in politics it is clear that things change because people would like to see new faces. They would like to try something new, new concepts or trends. But this is a luxury that you can afford in a strong democracy. I don’t know if Estonia would survive such experimenting, life will tell." // ERR: "The countrywide survey indicated that 23 percent of decided voters would support the Reform Party if elections were held tomorrow, an increase of three percentage points from last month." // Ilves: "No, I do not consider the current government to be irreplaceable, nor do I consider the way our decisions are made to be the best. Both will inevitably change if only the citizens so wish." // ERR: "The two opposition parties, Center and the Social Democrats continue to lead the polls, each with 26 percent support in February. January's figures were 28 percent for Center and 27 percent for the Soc Dems." // Ilves: "One of the greatest virtues of democracy is the legal transfer of power without the spilling of blood, in which the state continues, and decision-makers change. Democracy teaches us that if one is insensitive or deaf to the murmurings of the people, someone else will soon come to power, already after the next elections." // Laar: "There is a possibility that when people come to power, they will also come to their senses. This is always a possibility and very welcome. But more often than not, it will not happen. Then it will be difficult, especially if you look at promises that have been made in public. When these promises get to be implemented, the consequences will be dire."

no memory

"And did you see, he was born in 1988?" "So what." "I don't know, it's just weird for me still." "What, that they've grown up and become young adults?" "And not even, ____'s daughter was born in '92! Now, she's a young lawyer in Tallinn." "A lawyer?" "Yes." "I wanted to write a column about them once, but I never got around to it. There is this quote in The Shawshank Redemption. He's talking about how he wants to forget about prison and go to Mexico, to the Pacific, because they say the Pacific has no memory. And that's how I feel about them. They have no memory. No Cold War, no Persian Gulf War. On one hand, it's kind of sad, but on the other, it's liberating and fresh. No memory. It's like starting all over." "It's a good movie, especially the last scene." "I know. But think about it. To us, Gorbachev is like an old uncle. He's a huge, I don't know how to say it, kuju, you know." "Uh huh." "But to them, he's just someone in a textbook, some guy who led the Soviet Union for a few years before it fell apart ... Oh, Uncle Gorby, we've missed you, it's been too long" ...

say che

Got to thinking about Ernesto "Che" Guevara at the spa in Pärnu ... him of all people. I think it was the cover of Minu Jamaica that set off the thought, how Bob Marley was one of the 20th century's lowercase jesuses, and then naturally Guevara entered my mind as another ... Or maybe I just looked in the mirror at my red eyes, chlorine-moussed hair and beard and thought, "My God, he's alive!" He's a lightning rod, Che. For some he's a revolutionary Robin Hood, for others a Red Executioner. The lefties love him because he escaped "drawing room Bolshevik" status (that's what August Rei called Johannes Vares) by having the nutsack to resort to violence and think that he could actually win ...  The discussions about his legacy always wind up in, "Oh yeah, that, well ... anyway," territory. "X killed Y, what do you have to say about that?" "Oh yeah, that, well ... anyway."  Ho hum. It seems that blood is on everybody's hands around this table. Which side are you on anyway, huh, the fruit company's or the Marxist guerillas'? The cigar-chomping dictators' or the cigar-chomping rebels'? Are you down with fruit company exploitation or world revolution?! Usually, when I am at a restaurant and given such unsavory choices, I pack up my things and find another restaurant ...

flash fiction

Here comes the judge, here comes the judge ... I am a judge in a new contest for something called flashfiction. What is flashfiction? It comes to you in a flash BOOM! BAM! Shit's written, done, submitted, passed on for judgment to me and Vello Vikerkaar and Mike Collier ... almost as if you wrote it in your sleep, or maybe the other you wrote it, you know, the lightning quick Flash Gordon you. But what the hell am I talking about? What should you be writing in your sleep? Details: "ERR News challenges readers to write short stories of a maximum 750 words that capture a particular aspect of life in northern Europe." More here. And one sentence in Estonian should appear somewhere in the story. Think on that one. Nokk kinni, saba lahti? No. Kel jänu, sel jalad? No. Alguses ei saa pidama, pärast vedama? Wait ...

here's to swimmin'

... with bowlegged women ... This is what the oldtimey fisherman Quint says in Jaws. I've written too much already about Estonian wimmin here on this blog, as if I was an expert, or that anyone desired such insight or expertise. But honesty, honesty ... the honest message is that when I returned to Tallinn a week or so back and was confronted with the gray and the white and the brown and the black, the stale glow of shop lights on the slush of the rutted sidewalks, this soul of mine plummeted to the lowest rungs of "What have I done?" and yet was resurrected by the female kind, hope! ... these local girls know how to dress, they dress well, buttons up, zippers down, they'll take your angst off, knock the foam off your coffees and beers. And it ain't like Elsewhere East Europe, where they'll disgust you with yellow-high-heeled whorewear ... these are Estonians, blue, black, and white, tight-lipped and tidy and taciturn ... that's what the roving foreign fishermen who harbor in these waters don't understand ... they may look pretty pretty on the outside, but behind those fruity bosoms (that just make your mind icemelt over with warmth and champagne bubbliness and harp-playing angels) is just another stoic, stalwart, seafarin' Estonian man ... one may appear more pleasant than the other, but they are still one in the same, flesh from flesh ... incarnate. Imagine me, though, transplanted to this part of the world as a young man, a Walking Hormone set down in a biological Nor'easter.

I never stood a chance.

jõudu / tarvis

One peculiarity among the people of this country is what I call "workguilt" or work-associated or work-related guilt. This is the idea that we must all be working, working very hard, and slackers/shirkers are scorned by the all-seeing village eye [An Estonian's dream is that he dies while working, says my friend Ain].  // When you are walking down the street in Estonia, and you see someone doing some form of manual labor -- the most respected kind! -- you are obligated to bellow out a buoyant "jõudu!" (which means "strength"), to which the sweaty snow shoveler or wood chopper or brush clearer grunts "tarvis!" ("needed") in a bassy, work-worn, air-gasping voice. // The other day the femme and I were walking down the street here in Viljandi and chanced upon several very industrious neighbors who were building a basilica-sized igloo. So taken with the size of their ambition, we forgot to speak up. No big deal. But a geyserburst of workguilt erupted up up a little farther down the road. // "I should have yelled out 'jõudu'," my femme lamented after we passed the iglooists. "Why don't you go back and say it," I offered. "No," she sulked and shook her head and whimpered on. "The moment has already passed."

Read more about workguilt in my column, "Golden Hands," here. It's part of a new collection that will be published this month by AK called Misjonäripoos, or "The Missionary Position."

thinner

Iron lady. Psychopath?

An interesting commentary by Estonian journalist Krister Kivi on a recent media event in Britain, where an actress who played the former British prime minister described her as having "oversights when it came to thousands of people. No, millions," as "not being in touch with herself or anybody else," and as having "psychopathic tendencies." Kivi notes that it was Thatcher who inspired the architects of post-1991 Estonia, who are still in power, and likens some Estonian officials' fetish for a lean state to anorexia. Estonia stands before its mirror, Kivi writes, admiring "how trim is her waistline, how balanced are her budgets." In the pursuit of this perfect body image, "one stops to feel hunger," even as the organism's "hair falls from its head and its stomach shrivels to the size of an apricot."

Grisly.

It's interesting to give Thatcher another look in the rearview mirror. I knew her as a child, when she was just another 1980s cultural icon: Ronald Reagan, Michael Jackson, Mihhail Gorbachev, Prince, Margaret Thatcher, Madonna. It was the era of personality cults. We kids spent perhaps more time thinking about the source of MJ's white glove or Gorby's magnificent birthmark than we ever did trying to figure out what was the difference between glasnost and perestroika. It's interesting to think that a significant number of Estonia's political elite were my age at that time, that is, fully formed adults with careers and children, and I wonder if they still see the Iron Lady the same way. That is, it might be 2013 on the streets of Estonia, but it could still be 1987 in the heads of some of its leadership.

seedless

In the local Maxima supermarket the other day I was asked the question, "Kas need on seemneteta?" by an earnest cashier, who held up the bunches of grapes in a clear plastic bag, across which was written in gigantic letters, S E E D L E S S.

For the uninitiated, a 'ta' ending to a word means 'without,' and a 'ga' ending means 'with.' Läksin poodi Epuga, I went to the shop with Epp, läksin poodi Eputa, I went to the shop without Epp.

Back from the good ol' USofA, it startled me a bit that this poor soul in bumblefuckbogland could hold up a bag that said S E E D L E S S on it, and ask me if the grapes within had seeds or no seeds. But she's a foreigner, or, rather, I am a foreigner, so why should I expect her to understand English?

I did lean a bit over the counter and say, "You know, S E E D L E S S means seemneteta in English." She blushed a bit, those moist apple freckled cheeks. A plump cashier, a young cashier. I peered at her nametag. Her first name was something like, Angela. Her second was too long to be bothered with. Maybe it said Baryshnikov or Rachmaninoff.

Maxima, though Lithuanian owned, is the domain of the Estonian Russians. Maybe it's the cheaper prices (because most Estonian Russians are poor, except for the wealthiest people in Estonia, the transit tsars and restauranteurs and casino magnates, who are also Estonian Russians). Or maybe they feel a big Balto-Slavic affinity with the Lithuanians. Shit, whatever it is, if you want to meet a Russian in some homogeneous town (with some culture) in south Estonia, he or she can be found behind the register at the local Maxima.

Like the gal chatting with the American in Estlandic about S E E D L E S S grapes.

And if you are searching for a point, there is none. But life is entertaining, no?