Empty Days

2005-11-27T13:14:00.000-05:00

2005-11-13T13:42:00.000-05:00

To live inside reality and be able to bear it, one needs to constantly fill one's head with unreal imaginings.

Andrei Platonov, Diaries

2005-10-19T14:49:00.000-04:00

wtf

The question is particularly urgent because the Web 2.0 meme has become so widespread that companies are now pasting it on as a marketing buzzword, with no real understanding of just what it means. [...]

2005-10-04T07:29:00.000-04:00

Why is it that everybody sells out? Always - forever - over and over again. The whole 60's generation sold out.

What is it that's so great out there everyone needs to sell out to it? :-/

Stupid PBS bullshit.

2005-09-30T20:00:00.000-04:00

Whatever.

To lay off a bit of the whole religious discourse - which still means finding a direction in life and not just joggle around with ideas and fears - in any case it won't get solved just sitting in front of a computer day and night for weeks on end in a kind of unending dead-end stupor - for there is simply nothing better to do as ever and ever - and it's the same place all over again.

I might do bike-messenging again if this latest bike-from-garbage doesn't die on me but the fact that i even have a functioning bike now to start from is already a gift from an unknown direction. Which is uncanny because I would have been way too passive to get myself a bike - if it didn't just fall into my lap right away.
And the reason I am thinking of messenging again is simply because that's one job I actually liked doing. Hasn't happened to me in years. It's hard and it's not even a real job because it doesn't provide insurance and not nearly enough money to survive - and perhaps this is the attraction to me, that it's not about money at all. And the weather is nice.

Another idea is to find some sort of a job in a small town way up north. Canada is a huge place. It's wild. I should finally realize how immensely lucky I am that I ended up in this country and not somewhere small, crowded and hopelessly sophisticated (could that be Europe?). I should make use of this fact before I die.
Welfare is announcing a series of reforms, they want to help people find jobs across the province and not just in big cities. Perhaps this will coincide with my personal drive to escape the city. I certainly hope so.

*

When I think of the only two things that touched me recently as opposed to the so very many that only skimmed the surface and didn't even leave a mark - the similarity of feeling is uncanny. There were my two voyages: one to the wilds of nature, another to russia - and in both cases it was the same type of experience, unexpected in every way, because i didn't know what it was.

First there was the experience of humanless nature in all its splendor - being alone in the face of such immense beauty and utter LIFE - it was shattering and I cried both from joy and pain, and clearly much more from pain because mixed with it was the consciousness that I was so hopelessly removed and prevented from it - and unworthy of it by my own lack of life and cowardice.
I still don't know what it was exactly and how to express this huge impression and how it struck me.

Then - for pete's sake - how was I to know that this same huge pain and regret for life would meet me at the lithurgical communion in the russian churches? There too I felt that same mysterious breath of LIFE and it shattered me into tears every single time, so very much beyond my consciousness and whatever I was thinking - it was the same source and the same feeling.
And here too I don't know what it was really. I just don't know. As all trees and grass and animals and skies stood united together in nature - the face of life - so did these people stand together in union and something was among them - the breath of life. But I don't know what it was in either case. These are poor explanations.

That's what I should look for - but I obviously don't quite know where to look for it - since every time I am faced with LIFE it comes unexpected and I didn't know it would be there.

All I can say is that it was the same experience in both cases - despite the seeming extreme dissimilarity of setting. And this is obviously the one most important thing to me because nothing else - absolutely nothing else in the world - touches me that much or that deeply.

Yet, at the very same time, I don't even know for sure what it is I am talking about here.

*

My life is a wreck, it's quite obvious now once you start descending from mid-30's into the 40's and so on - there are no second chances inside physical or/and social time. However - perhaps it's a good thing that it has been such a waste. I have far less to lose now since I already lost almost everything one can lose, including dignity and ambitions. If today I decided to leave behind all material possessions, all security, all fear - perhaps I stand a chance of actually doing it - and not look back.

2005-09-21T22:50:00.000-04:00

Drrr-dddrrr-drrdrr...

>>> I am in a chattering mood as I finally feel some relief from this hellish frustration I've been caught up in for some time now. I guess there is a breaking point for everything.

>>> Instead of praying at all times, I installed anti-virus NOD32 software on my puter and it immediately found trojans, worms and damaged archives and it's been checking everything downloaded from the net ever since - which slows down my connection but it's better than to have issues with such shit. I saw the effects of a violently active trojan on an unprotected PC in Russia, it was ugly - and fairly impossible to clean out when it's already in full swing.

>>> Discovered some cockroaches in the kitchen. Never used to have any. The last preventive extermination was at least 5 years ago - so - I wasn't terribly surprised.

>>> Went surfing other people's blogs. For some reason I like everything I read even when it's frankly silly. What pains me though are cancer-blogs - from people who are down with this deadly desease and are acting like it's a glitch in a perfectly fine picture and soon all will be well again. Is death so unimportant? Or maybe there is no language left to express its meaning - because it doesn't fit with the rest of the fine picture. But don't I know this when I simply ignore other people dying - by accepting their death in indifferent submission and forgetfulness? I saw my oldest aunt this summer, she died a month later, it never mattered.

>>> I found one bike in the last few weeks and my father found two. There are currently 5 garbage bikes in the storage, 2 bikes at my place, and 1 is being used by my brother. But they all need work and I am way too lazy and uninspired at the moment to do anything.

>>> There is nowhere to go - except mingle with this world as it exists and assume its talk and gestures. But I am so utterly narrow-minded, I can't see any form that would suit me or that I might be suited for. There is not enough force and inner reasons to escape completely - or really go looking for something else out there. I am made in this way. Perhaps I will need to go completely undone before I get to see some light.

>>> I let my cat out a lot as it has been locked up in an appartment all summer long - now it wants to go out even at 3am in the morning or when it rains. I feel I owe some freedom to my cat. It looks much happier and more energetic ever since it moved back to my place. But this has its dangers: recently I found it stuck on a neighbour's balcony and I have no clue how he got there - he's so fat and clumsy! Perhaps the neighbour put it there? I don't like that idea.

>>> Many are called and few are chosen. Granted. But what about those who are not even called?

>>> What I like in the stories about various holy men and suchlike is their unfaltering good cheer and humour. Loads of seriousness and pompous words won't cut it - that's not the material true wisdom is made of. In fact, all signs of arrogance and conceit speak against whatever "goodness" is being preached. In Russia I saw plenty of folks go around dressed "humbly" (head-scarfs and long skirts for women, old-prophet beards for men) and talking churchy language ("brother", "sister" etc) but it all seemed a tad overdone. To say the least. Perhaps this can help some in their efforts to achieve whatever measure of inner perfection but for the most part it's just theatrics taken too seriously. Language is a worse culprit than dress however - it replaces and covers-up both feeling and thought.

>>> To be taken seriously one needs to assume airs of self-importance.

>>> I met no new people in Russia and made no new friends. In fact I even lost some - like the relationship I had with my cousin went all to pieces. Some people tried to make a connection and were very generous about it but it didn't stick with me. Nothing sticks with me. This is very telling of my general condition and standing in life - or the complete absence thereof.

2005-09-21T14:31:00.000-04:00

To all things their time:

I have an old french pocket edition of St.Augustine's Confessions - it has pencil marks in it which by all appearances are by myself when I was in my late teens. Tellingly enough I don't even remember ever reading this book - most likely because in those days I devoured literally tones and tones of books but for all the wrong reasons most of the time. In fact I simply wanted to appear well-read and knowledgeable in order to impress everyone around me. In this I succeeded. But all this assumed wisdom proved of no use to me whatsoever.

I wonder if this sort of early-life pitfall can really be avoided - or whether it should be even. To each his own road with its own potholes.

In light of which this passage by Augustin hits close to home:

Of all this I was convinced, yet I was too weak to enjoy thee. I chattered away as if I were an expert; but if I had not sought thy Way in Christ our Saviour, my knowledge would have turned out to be not instruction but destruction.[222] For now full of what was in fact my punishment, I had begun to desire to seem wise. I did not mourn my ignorance, but rather was puffed up with knowledge. For where was that love which builds upon the foundation of humility, which is Jesus Christ?[223] Or, when would these books teach me this? I now believe that it was thy pleasure that I should fall upon these books before I studied thy Scriptures, that it might be impressed on my memory how I was affected by them; and then afterward, when I was subdued by thy Scriptures and when my wounds were touched by thy healing fingers, I might discern and distinguish what a difference there is between presumption and confession -- between those who saw where they were to go even if they did not see the way, and the Way which leads, not only to the observing, but also the inhabiting of the blessed country. For had I first been molded in thy Holy Scriptures, and if thou hadst grown sweet to me through my familiar use of them, and if then I had afterward fallen on those volumes, they might have pushed me off the solid ground of godliness -- or if I had stood firm in that wholesome disposition which I had there acquired, I might have thought that wisdom could be attained by the study of those [Platonist] books alone.

***

When I think that these very candid and true Confessions have been endlessly used by ignorant and arrogant fanatics of the outer church as some sort of glorified *proof* of the superiority/infaillibility of the christian faith - I mourn for Augustine and his heart. There are and can be no proofs-for-all - this is what this book is about!

Outside of which this is indeed a powerful testimony to the unfathomable ways of living God (whose reality does not become any clearer from reading this book alone) - and how these ways cannot be forced on those yet unwilling to listen.

Holy Christ :-/

***

Funny detail: the french and english editions talk of the "Catholic Church" while the russian translation (which is actually better done in terms of precision) translates everything as "the Orthodox Church". Now, this really doesn't matter much since in Augustine's time the christian tradition was still in one piece. But I must wonder what other devious interpretations there occured in the course of such biased translations.

2005-09-21T11:37:00.000-04:00

What really happened:

And being admonished by these books to return into myself, I entered into my inward soul, guided by thee. This I could do because thou wast my helper. And I entered, and with the eye of my soul -- such as it was -- saw above the same eye of my soul and above my mind the Immutable Light. It was not the common light, which all flesh can see; nor was it simply a greater one of the same sort, as if the light of day were to grow brighter and brighter, and flood all space. It was not like that light, but different, yea, very different from all earthly light whatever. Nor was it above my mind in the same way as oil is above water, or heaven above earth, but it was higher, because it made me, and I was below it, because I was made by it. He who knows the Truth knows that Light, and he who knows it knows eternity. Love knows it, O Eternal Truth and True Love and Beloved Eternity! Thou art my God, to whom I sigh both night and day. When I first knew thee, thou didst lift me up, that I might see that there was something to be seen, though I was not yet fit to see it. And thou didst beat back the weakness of my sight, shining forth upon me thy dazzling beams of light, and I trembled with love and fear. I realized that I was far away from thee in the land of unlikeness, as if I heard thy voice from on high: "I am the food of strong men; grow and you shall feed on me; nor shall you change me, like the food of your flesh into yourself, but you shall be changed into my likeness." And I understood that thou chastenest man for his iniquity, and makest my soul to be eaten away as though by a spider.[204] And I said, "Is Truth, therefore, nothing, because it is not diffused through space -- neither finite nor infinite?" And thou didst cry to me from afar, "I am that I am."[205] And I heard this, as things are heard in the heart, and there was no room for doubt. I should have more readily doubted that I am alive than that the Truth exists -- the Truth which is "clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made."[206]
[St.Augustine - Confessions]

The books that finally lead to this were by Plotinus. Augustine who was trying to find truth/God in books and written doctrines with the effort of his admittedly quite powerful intellect - never got to anything until finally he was given to see a glimpse of something real - within himself - and above that very same intellect.

What a chatterbox was he ever otherwise :-/

2005-09-15T14:35:00.000-04:00

On orderly life when left to oneself:

Once, amidst terrible infighting with his thoughts, St.Antony cried out: "Lord, I want salvation, but my thoughts prevent me." Suddenly he saw a vision: somebody looking very much like himself is sitting at work, then he gets up and starts praying, and then goes back to work. "Do like this and you will be saved", - said an angel to Antonius.

2005-09-15T13:02:00.000-04:00

On reading:

"You're worried that in reading spiritual writings without guidance you might conceive false opinion and devious thoughts. You're quite right to be so worried. Therefore, if you care to avoid such a harmful eventuality, do not read without discrimination any of those new writings of supposedly spiritual content but by such authors who did not acertain their teachings by a saintly life. Rather read whatever written by the fathers of the church who are well known to the Church and were found without doubt to be helpful to the soul."

This advice dates from XIXc and has lost yet some more of its grounding ever since the new russian church canonized the whole family of the last russian tzar who was shot by the bolsheviks. One can say whatever about the poor tzar and his family but certainly not that they had anything to do with any sort of personal saintliness.

However the whole idea of aligning words with deeds is timeless and doubtlessly true.

2005-09-13T00:38:00.000-04:00

Meditations on that camel and a needle's ear.

I keep wondering what it is that I found in those churches. Perhaps it means something that Russia remained communist for such a long time: religion was literally wiped out from people's minds - all spiritual discourse was banned, along with places of worship which were basically turned either into museums or warehouses. What it means is that saving religion as a spiritual tradition despite this bannishment required real sacrifice and a true inner purpose. All the stale wordly residue that accumulated previously through historic merging of state and church was washed out from the face of russian orthodoxy - today it is being rediscovered as a true refuge from the raging emptiness of free-market values: while the West keeps distributing across the globe its wonder-recipies for economic paradises, ordinary russians are trying to find something else to munch on beside banknotes.

Well, to say the least: it does something to one's mind when in a crowded church people go down on their knees in throngs and with complete willingness and sorrow. And it is probably not without consequence that those who come to church do so because they want and need to for real - and not out of empty observance (as does happen on big traditional holidays however). People are in a bad situation in Russia nowdays and those sorrows they drag about are not minor, they're major, and they're shared by many. All this suffering is brought to church and it becomes a place of communion for a whole nation.

I can't say I've seen that happening everywhere else I've been to. But this is because I've only been to western europe and north america - the richest parts of the world. I am pretty sure that the situation is very different and much more alive in poorer lands where people are by necessity less neurotic about wordly competition and wealth - and thus far less arrogant and self-centered.

To put it plainly: there are almost no places in the West anymore (except some very wild nature perhaps) where one can find spirit and be touched by it - while there are still many more such places in less favored lands. Reason doesn't understand this because reason doesn't feel - to a rational thinking all places and nations are basically the same and spirit is understood as a sort of universal abstraction without anything tangible about it. But it's not like that - it's a living thing much more than a concept and it relates to things.

To be continued.

2005-09-12T21:19:00.000-04:00

St. Augustine - Confessions.

Time never lapses, nor does it glide at leisure through our sense perceptions. It does strange things in the mind. Lo, time came and went from day to day, and by coming and going it brought to my mind other ideas and remembrances, and little by little they patched me up again with earlier kinds of pleasure and my sorrow yielded a bit to them. But yet there followed after this sorrow, not other sorrows just like it, but the causes of other sorrows. For why had that first sorrow so easily penetrated to the quick except that I had poured out my soul onto the dust, by loving a man as if he would never die who nevertheless had to die?

What revived and refreshed me, more than anything else, was the consolation of other friends, with whom I went on loving the things I loved instead of thee. This was a monstrous fable and a tedious lie which was corrupting my soul with its "itching ears"[99] by its adulterous rubbing. And that fable would not die to me as often as one of my friends died. And there were other things in our companionship that took strong hold of my mind: to discourse and jest with him; to indulge in courteous exchanges; to read pleasant books together; to trifle together; to be earnest together; to differ at times without ill-humor, as a man might do with himself, and even through these infrequent dissensions to find zest in our more frequent agreements; sometimes teaching, sometimes being taught; longing for someone absent with impatience and welcoming the homecomer with joy. These and similar tokens of friendship, which spring spontaneously from the hearts of those who love and are loved in return -- in countenance, tongue, eyes, and a thousand ingratiating gestures -- were all so much fuel to melt our souls together, and out of the many made us one.
[Book 4, ch.8]

It's not so much a book of Confessions as a book on Conversion. It's about emptiness underlying a seeming fullness of life and how one was led out of this desert - from within and not from without. But why and how really remains unknown.

Let the proud laugh at me, and those who have not yet been savingly cast down and stricken by thee, O my God.(...) For what am I to myself without thee but a guide to my own downfall? Or what am I, even at the best, but one suckled on thy milk and feeding on thee, O Food that never perishes?
[Book 4, ch.1]

For a good many years I meant to read this book as I heard good things of it - but it is only now that this finally seems very much to the point.

2005-09-11T14:14:00.000-04:00

Virtual hermetics.

In the last few days I've been a lot on the web (having been deprived of such luxurious internet-usage while in Russia of course) looking to see what's available in terms of eastern orthodox hermetics. Predictably lots is available auf Russisch. And actually - way too much is available. So that a lot of ponderous crap has to be separated from some tangible good. The problem with traditional religion is that so much energy is usually spent loudly defending its rightness against all other religions, while real questions of inner life are taken for granted. One needs a lot of good will and a clear spirit in order to be able to bypass such violent manifestations - literally to forgive the outer visage of church and not get bogged down by it - and look for the little gold hidden inside so many quarrelous words.

The desert fathers were mostly preoccupied with hermetics rather than theological disputes and are thus a better and more valuable read. Also they all have very personal experience of what they're talking about. One saying I liked a lot: "to those pure of heart everything is pure". That's because of the ability to forgive and yet keep to the right way inside oneself.

*

And then I was thinking about those strange hermits of old who chose to go to lonely places in order to pray for years and years and years an unknown entity which they called God. Today it does seem like a very strange thing to do - how can it make sense if there is no one to address, nothing but one's own mind out there? Isn't that the general belief?

And if one tried today and went to a solitary place in the woods - where would one find such faith inside one's own mind not to go completely mad out there, knocking one's head against the wall of inner emptiness - who will one call out to?

And why would one do that in the first place?

There is no tradition and no support for such endeavors anymore. It is public anathema to even envisage such madness. Therefore one needs to hide - and pretend that one doesn't believe - in order to keep a little faith.
It's a pretty drastic situation. Very hard to be left alone and not be sought out with dogs and police by worried relatives.

The other danger of getting so much at odds with the world about these things is that one can set out on false grounds: wishing to affirm oneself against the rest of humanity, instead of demolishing one's self in order to find the way out.

But people who went into the desert, went with heart and not with thought. And maybe that's why they survived out there for so long. The motivation must be pure and strong.

And the question remains: how does one get such motivation today and from what live sources, when literally the whole world around you is hostile to such thinking?

2005-09-10T20:27:00.000-04:00

It's the same story as after my bike-trip last summer: I can't import any impressions or anything that might be of value from "there" to "here" - because as soon as I find myself "here", I start feeling like I am about to die and I need to fight a sort of huge snake that wants to suffocate me.

I honestly had no inkling whatsoever that it would happen again - I was in perfect mental shape for exactly 3 months and the snake manifested only on arrival.

And by the way: what if this is how it happens when we die? The soul leaves the body, crosses from a well-known "here" to a totally unknown "there", and it turns out to be something completely unexpected and terribly suffocating? And since you're dead you can't do a thing about it...
There are zero garantees against that happening.

In other words, we modern-people share the same cheer and good mood as the astronauts of the shuttle Columbia upon entering the atmosphere on their way home... they clearly had no idea they would burn to death in only a minute. No one did in fact.

Perhaps it doesn't matter? Perhaps indeed it matters not.

2005-09-09T11:43:00.000-04:00

On being alone.

I don't know the first thing about faith and I don't know the first thing about prayer.

Also, I could never understand how one could possibly ask forgiveness of God if - firstly - one knew nothing of God except a bunch of grand words, and - secondly - felt no inclination for such asking or understanding as to what effect it could have.

Well, I guess I was right in not understanding.

And the many sermons I kept hearing regarding one's duty to get rid of pride and thus make yourself available for such forgiveness from this completely unknown entity - well, these sermons were infuriatingly useless and ennoying - not of any help in despair.

If you're dumb like this - and I suspect the vast majority of people are about as dumb and worse - the only way you gonna get a glimpse of light on this whole subject is by getting it directly from above inside your mind and your heart. No other admonitions will do any good.

Yes, you're helpless in these things - you can't possibly want what you don't even know exists. And we hardly even believe that an invisible world exists, and even when we have such beliefs we still have pretty much no idea - or very strange and vague ideas - as to what it consists of. We are perpetual fools of the invisible world and everything that comes from it usually comes as a complete surprise. "Oh really?' - and we thought we were alone out here.

So how can you ask for anything in an empty room - from whom will you ask? - unless you finally feel that there is a door somewhere, and somebody is there who bids you...

Wordly despair is the first step to helplessness - the next step is the revelation of these unfathomable realms. I don't know what comes after that. Helplessness seems to be the key.

***

When I just started reading the desert fathers I was impressed by what I read - and I wanted to know how to pray. But I couldn't really pray and I felt no inclination to ask for forgiveness. One night I suddenly woke up before dawn and before my mind started thinking I felt some sort of praying exude from my heart and words and feeling of regret came out of their own, like a sort of tiny brook spurting out from hard rock.
But when my mind cleared, it started thinking, and this thinking supressed both the feeling and the prayer.

And I don't know how to make myself pray that way again.

2005-09-09T10:23:00.000-04:00

It's a scary business, this inner doing.

*

One of the desert fathers tells his listeners: "try to spend a few days and nights locked up in a small place - in total darkness - and see how you fare if you don't resort to prayer".

I wonder - that's how I spent the last 10 years at least :-/

2005-09-08T10:42:00.000-04:00

Conundrum.

In Russia I was especially attracted by the many churches - not because of their beautiful design, but because of what I found inside everytime. Really, this was an unexpected discovery - I rather expected to go to museums.

There may be a reason to this. The congregation has much less bearing on each parish than in the protestant countries, and every church is open to all and sundry - you can enter it like a temple and there is a service being performed even when there is not one person in the chruch except the priest. The result of this is that everyone is welcome to come and attend. It's really like the house of God and not the house of the congregation only.

They have that in France too as in most catholic countries, I think - great parisian cathedrals may stand nearly empty most of the time but they are open to all and doing service.

It is said that the Holy Spirit manifests in the church during lithurgy (communion) - this can't be verified to say the least, but it would be a very good explanation as to what came over me during those services. I don't know what touched me so much that I started sobbing uncontrollably whenever the service reached up to communion, and only then, and not at any other time - there is truly no rational explanation that I can think of. I have heard of priests nearly collapsing from that same effect while holding the cup and calling for the Holy Spirit - but I can only guess what they felt or how deeply.

I certainly would never have believed any of this would happen to me. And I can't draw any rational conclusions or say that I know more now than I knew before.

What I know is that I can't feel this by my own effort.

And now that I am back to this land of futility and abandonment, where there are no such churches to go to freely, what can I do except resume the usual despair and lie down into the coffin of my solitude?

***

It is true that there is also the church of wild nature, remote from all human futility, where the only worshipping priest is one's own soul - but to reach to it one has to leave everything behind - and I am not sure I have enough spirit to do this yet.

It is difficult to express just how much I detest all the stuff of the modern world with its hopelessly material thinking and its system of useless values. The more riches and comforts I see, the more despair I feel. After the poor rusty sights of a provincial town in eastern Ukraine, the airport of Munich seemed like some sort of crystal-palace full of golden things - but what I saw was a wasteland of comfortable egotism and utter futility envelopping every one of those supposedly superior people.

I know by experience what's inside all this rationally enhanced luxury - just rot and emptiness - and it's inside me too because I live here.

***

There is no worse way to talk of spritual things than to talk about them without true experience but from what others have said. I do that often and most of those who write on such subjects do that too - because we all want to imagine we know and understand more than we really do.

It'd be probably safe to say that almost every mention of God in human talk is done in vain and is a stupid offense to something much greater than we can imagine. The more intellectually loaded the talk, the greater and stupider the offense.

I do believe it doesn't stick though.

Most of the New Age "spiritual talk" is such blathering - done by people who know nothing yet imagine otherwise. The desire to achieve more comfort is paramount in New Age thinking - which is why it always smacks of rot.
A desert fathers remarks: one will never overcome one's passions and one's ego if one only wants to escape the suffering they bring. What he means is this: you can't do it alone, you must seek not your own inner comfort but to know God and let him enter you and transform you. Another desert father says: salvation or fall happen not in a minute but in a second and less.

***

In Saint-Petersburg I met a guy who came back from his fourth trip to India. He was exceedingly thin and hardly said a word. Apparently he went to rural India to achieve complete silence and overcome his ego (he went without money but later wrote to friends in Russia asking for some donations). It was impossible to communicate with him because he never answered. However at one point there was the tv on and I asked him how it was in India - he didn't answer, but at that moment the tv started talking about India and it was said that some people there spend so much energy in spiritual effort that they sometimes lose a few pounds per hour from pure inner burning.

An interesting way of answering questions without interrupting one's silence. I guess his trips weren't completely useless.

2005-09-06T13:44:00.000-04:00

I may be completely wrong about all of this though.

But at the moment I don't know it.

2005-09-06T13:38:00.000-04:00

What can be said.

All fathers of the desert repeat the same thing in various ways: life of the spirit cannot be perceived or acquired through reason, it is revealed to us and is given beyond and outside of rational argument.

In other words, it is useless to try and convince people of the existence of God and the invisible world beyond the visible if they have not had at least some kind of inner experience that would give them at least an insight into the very possibility of such things. Which is why all pious sermons that aim at proving the existence of God or whatever such thing are fundamentally and utterly useless and misleading. And ENNOYING.

The domain of the Spirit is not egaliterian - it is not given to all, and it is never known who will or might get to it and in what manner or by which means. The one thing that can be said however is that it can be given. And what is given can be also asked for.

Likewise, such writings as the Gospels are fairly incomprehensible to rational mind and require something more to be heard. Even if people are inclined to believe in such things as resurrection, it is still impossible to understand. Or what is this whole thing about Sin and Communion and overcoming Death...

There is no need to argue pro or contra - it's incomprehensible and it's not there to be "understood". God knows what it's there for, I guess.

***

At the same time, I guess I have to be greatful to various fanatics of past and present for having preserved the Church to us - so that we may still have a place where we can attend something as absurd in our eyes as a service to God. If we all had our own brigth way, there wouldn't be one church left standing, as it appears so useless to the rational mind.

What a paradox indeed - that the Inquisition had a better insight than some of the humane crowd.

2005-09-06T11:21:00.000-04:00

Dead by day.

Predictably, I did not find the meaning of life in the course of my latest travels. Nevertheless, it was not a stupid touristy trip. I had some experiences that put me on to something new - the kind of thing you can never invent on your own, it has to happen for you to know it actually can happen.

That's what a new perspective is all about, I guess.

I have great news for you, lost peoples of the modern world - there is still some actual Living Spirit visiting upon the churches of Russia. To my immense surprise, the first time I set foot into a small russian church during lithurgical service, I was suddenly overcome by tears - and I only opened the door to take a peek! My touristy bus was leaving in 5 minutes, but it so happened that I went in right during the holy communion, the church was full of old women, the priest just raised the cup with a strange remote look on his face... I can't describe what there was in that church, but it completely blasted me right then and there.

What happened next is that almost every time I went to church after that, I had that same overwhelming emotion but only during lithurgical service - inability to contain tears - which was kinda embarassing in the beginning. I can't really say anything specific about all this except that through these and concurrent happenings I was given a very small but tangible insight into what may be called life of the Spirit.

***

It would serve us well to remember that, as things go in this world, we simply have no notion left (except in stale words of some religious pamphlet) that any such life may even exist. As things stand, it's enough for me to have had an unthinking experience of its very possibility - even though I still have no clue about the wider context or where it may and may not lead. I don't know what Holy Communion is really about - I am not even sure I believe in Christ - perhaps it doesn't even matter - at this stage it's enough to have a clear idea that there is something out there, a great unknown depth that may or may not want to reveal itself.

Because of the religious rebirth in Russia, they publish a lot of writings of the byzantian and russian monks who try to explain their inner doing - I bought as many books as I could cary. It's a kind of psychology - but as opposed to modern psychology, it actually has meaning.

2005-09-06T09:09:00.000-04:00

Return from life.

On landing in Montreal I felt a great heavy stone fall down on me - so I may never rise again. This place is obviously cursed for me, or I am cursed for this place, but I do wish I never had to go back here (same feeling, only ten-times heavier, when returning from bike-trip last summer).

Checking in

2005-07-09T03:07:00.000-04:00

I am in Saint-Petersburg - nice looking town but I am having problems with some of the people here so the after-taste is gonna be sour at best.

In general I am getting tired of Russia and of being dependent on various people whom I barely know after all.

Also I've got a flu - nevermind July and wonderfully sunny weather...

Later.

Russia - ich bin hier

2005-06-16T04:24:00.000-04:00

Hey, I am in Moscow.

It's been a rough ride so far - the whole country (or maybe the whole city) is booming in a sense - in another sense it's a picture of complete collapse. I mean the poverty of some and the outrageous riches of others. I've never seen such a complete contrast anywhere else (perhaps I should have looked closer?).

Another impression: people. Lots of communication. People start talking to you in the street (it's advisable to know the language!), I am not used to this but it's fun.

Anyway - more later. I am in an internet-cafe.

P.S. It's was a good idea to come here even though it will cost me a buck, to say the least (Moscow is pretty expensive).

2005-06-06T20:18:00.000-04:00

Too hot to think. Everything is packed and ready to go. Nothing else but to wait.

Tomorrow.

It's a truly historic trip for me.

2005-06-06T09:54:00.000-04:00

The usual before the unusual.

Another major scene at my parents' last night. This time it was my father who decided to grab the occasion and fuck everybody up just for the sake of it. Too long to explain and not really worth it.

Tomorrow I am gone from here and I am already starting to feel some relief. Must be premature - the day is still young.

My hemorroids problem seems to be getting worse, which is to say the tumor in the ass is growing instead of shrinking. Not exactly surprising but at some point this progression will certainly interfere with my life in a spectacular way. It's less of a problem when I am biking than when I am walking. I guess I will miss my bike a lot in Russia. I just hope I won't have to sit home at my cousin's and not be able to go anywhere.

*

It's really nice to go somewhere where people want you and expect you. Which is one reason friends and relatives are important. Outside of these few sympathies and various blood ties the whole world could care less about one's existence. It's an empty place. When one is full of energy and zest, it seems easy to fill the desert with one's own vitality. Which is why young people are usually so optimistic about taking on the world. Things change gradually - there is less and less energy and more and more wounds from life. And that's when one realizes how important those human ties are and how not so easy it is to find real sympathy amongst countless strangers.

2005-06-05T09:30:00.000-04:00

I am sitting here writing down various thoughts because I am plagued by a paralyzing worry and I don't know how to shake it off. I can't do anything in this nervous state - things fall out from my hands, I can't think straight.

Fucking shit!!! What IS this??

2005-06-05T09:21:00.000-04:00

I can very well decide tomorrow that there is no god or anything beyond the visible and it's all a pile of crap and all I need to do is bravely to follow my intellect. This decision has been made by quite a lot of people already. Are they better off or wiser for it? Perhaps they have less to worry about on the whole.

2005-06-05T08:39:00.000-04:00

I took out an old telephone notebook I used to have in my early twenties - to bring with me to Russia. It's full of names and addresses so utterly *past* and forgotten that I almost feel I am using the notebook of some grandmother of mine. It's an antique and a relic of times bygone.

2005-06-05T08:32:00.000-04:00

I am very busy with being myself.

There is just nothing else. Other people are occupied with business, craft, family - their thoughts and energy run past themselves towards some outter object. I used to be like that a very-very long time ago. Nowdays I am so completely idle - nothing can warrant my full interest - all I do and all I want to do is to look within myself.

I don't know why really. It's just the way things developped and now it's an overpowering habit.

This blog is of course a powerful tool of self-gazing.
It's almost a temple I go to pray to whenever I have a moment.
It's like a monastery even and I am the only nun on premises.

Outside of that there is just nothing much at all.
There is no me outside of that.

It's a very reduced life but I know of no other. And more importantly still - I don't know the reason for any other life.

2005-06-05T08:14:00.000-04:00

One's inequity never goes without consequence.

As I got closer to active life and more involved with strangers, it turned out that my egotism could be deadly. A person died from coming in contact with me. It was not my intention, it was only a natural effect of my inequity. "The way I am" turned lethal.

Being alive in the world is never without consequence.
It's a burden to all - and sometimes a sin.

2005-06-05T07:53:00.000-04:00

This is too much.

Woke up at 4am with a properly raging anxiety, pain and worry throbbing in my heart. Totally out of control, disproportionate. It doesn't come from me or my thoughts - completely unexplainable by anything within my own life - it's something else. Given my father's extreme anger and likely suicidal suffering against me last night (such was his reaction in the past) I attribute this inner storm to his "vibes". The only thing that is entirely beyond me is why I am suddenly catching his stuff to such an extent.

I may be wrong, of course. Maybe it's something or somebody else. However there is just no way this outrageous anxiety could be a result of my own feelings or thought-processes. This mega-worry is being put inside me - either by the premonition of future events or from disturbances in those oriented towards me emotionally.

Maybe my father will kill himself this summer and is telling me in this secret way - and I am actually hearing him. Maybe he will die naturally and the God and Master of our lives and deaths is sending warnings to both of us... I have to guess and poke at random and I might be completely wrong and fabulating.

Wacky me.
I'd rather be called wacky than find out later on that I was right :-/

*

Or maybe this: if it does come from me after all, then I am seriously disturbed and neurotic and maybe even schizophrenic. Because there is no trace of connection I can detect in my mind and this is a plain case of a madman not aware of his madness.

I'd rather be wacky, by far.

*

Ok, maybe it's the sense of approaching departure - every day gets me closer. If it gets worse in the next couple of days then it's my own stuff - and I am indeed mad and unconscious of some serious shit withing myself.

2005-06-05T00:57:00.000-04:00

"Forgive those who have sinned against you."

Well, I am trying.
But what if I can't forgive those I've sinned against?
The possibility was deemed too unnatural and was not conscribed.

2005-06-05T00:48:00.000-04:00

Familiar shit.

Another crisis at my parents' - and my brother once again reversed his decision and announced he will move to my place after all (that after the ad for sublet appeared in the local paper and people started to call). Reason unstated: he really can't stand my father. Reason stated: I asked a lower rent in the ad than I took from him.

My father has been trying to get back at me by launching his usual "I am the righteous judge" attacks in the middle of my pseudo-quarrels with my brother or my mom. What a bad idea - he just doesn't understand how much hate this provokes - not from me, paradoxically, but from my brother. And how much sorrow this causes to my mom. Yet he thinks that he's in the right and everybody else is just blind and sinful. Very familiar shit unfortunately. He thinks it's about our morals and thus his anger is holy, while it's actually about his place in the family and his utter humiliation (self-provoked).

I've always been at the center of all this shit, as long as I can remember myself even. The reason is that I am made to play a pivotal role - all those conflicting hostile currents are thrown at me and I am supposed to absorb everyone's anger and distribute energy amongst non-communicating family members. Holy shit - I've been playing that part for so long it's become the most familiar thing. I can't be relieved of that ugly duty, it seems. Fortunately I am not the only child and my brother has born some of that burden as well, but he always knew he was essentially free to walk away at any moment and he certainly always used that right. He's unconcerned by the so-called "love of the family" - which means that he can hate freely and ignore whoever he pleases.

Clearly the only escape from all this would be a fully independent life with one's own circle of friends and relationships. Sadly, I never had the guts to break away from this family morass and I drag this chain along like some perennial curse. I am perpetually on family-duty - the walking garbage-bin of everbody's inner shit.

But I bear this burden lightly - I was raised for it.

2005-06-04T13:56:00.000-04:00

I am trying to pack... But there are people calling for cat/sublet and in any case it's too hot and I feel lazy, and packing is too time-consumming: too much of the stuff doesn't get in, I need to think what to leave and what to take with me, boring shit. And I will likely forget something important and then regret it for three months in a row. Rather not pack at all or do it in earnest.

What a beautiful day. Nothing is important on such a day.

2005-06-03T07:58:00.000-04:00

Shifting sands.

Every day something changes. Small unavoidable steps towards departure. Yet I still keep waking up with a huge pang of anxiety ripping through my body - I still don't know what it is. It's clearly some sort of fear I have. I've been waking up very early, between 5-6am, all this time because of this full-body anxiety. It leaves me alone during the day and when my mind is busy with something, but it never fails to gather again while I am sleeping. Can't get more subconscious than that, I say.

*

This is why a sense of security is so important to most people - because it prevents this kind of pretty much physical suffering. Psychological and mental suffering is in fact a form of physical torture because it is felt in the whole body rather than simply "in thoughts" - except that it is effected from the inside of one's own body instead of from outside. Admittedly it's not as bloody and violent. However, when it's strong enough and has been going on for a while, you can very well get a heart attack from it or develop cancer or be otherwise somatically damaged in a bad way.

Emotions and unconscious thoughts are very physical. It is "rational thoughts" that are not. Curiously enough however: the less physical an inner phenomenon, the less real importance it carries for one's psyche. By which I obviously mean that all those aetherial "rational thoughts" are really of very little value - whilst we necessarily imagine it to be otherwise.

This permanent delusion is at the heart of our culture and cannot be uprooted.

2005-05-30T21:57:00.000-04:00

My conflicting feelings regarding this trip to Russia - after such a long absence and oblivion - most likely come from a strong sense that I will inevitably experience a very close encounter with my former life and former self - and I am deathly afraid of it.

2005-05-30T21:03:00.000-04:00

Family feuds.

Again! - a huge huge quarrel at my parents' - this time with my father jumping at my throat from overhearing something I was discussing with my mom after viewing old photographs of my father's family - then I turning back on him in a highly uncharacteristic scathing tone - even my usually mild subdued voice changed to a high-priestess pitch of utter contempt and anger (to my own surprise) - all in all I completely put him down this time which is a rare achievement as my father is one of the biggest and shrilliest bigots on the planet.

I've been quarrelling with my father all year long pretty much despite myself - it just keeps happening for no reason at all almost every time I go there. I think I am really fed up with some of his attitudes and it's just time I put him in his place once and for all. Otherwise I don't know what's going on. But it does look very much like some sort of underground power-struggle in the family that is happening despite everyone's reason or rational desire.

Tectonic plaques are moving.

*

And btw - my brother categorically refused to move to my flat and said I can keep the cheque. Reason given: after having seen my flat several times he now hates it almost as much as he hates my cat. But the real reason is: he suddenly decided he can very well live in the same place as my father and ignore him completely without my mother to serve as a buffer-zone between these two- so there is no more need to move.

This leaves me with the very bad and awful prospect of leaving my cat utterly alone for 3 MONTHS - with both my father and brother going there once a day to feed him and change litter... The cat will go crazy from loneliness, there is just no question about that. So now I am frantically looking for somebody to fill the void and take the flat for a fraction of a price but to keep company to the cat... I leave in a WEEK - I will never have time to find anyone unless I am exceptionally lucky.

My father said he might have to move to my place in the end to spare the cat. Which comes down to my brother effectively pushing my father out of the family flat - it's like a psychological chess-combination in a way, a sly move, pretty ugly and ruthless in the end.

All this is so NOT a new scenario...

*

Oh, and I should mention my mother who often cries from witnessing all this going on - but she's a bitch too in her own way. Even though it's a great sin to so talk of one's genetrix... But I'll take the blame and there is still some clear thruth in this sin.

I love my family folk - I also hate them in a way - and I forgive, myself included.

2005-05-29T11:27:00.000-04:00

Nietzsche was absolutely right about good digestion - it does make a huge difference in the tenor of one's philosophy :-/

I feel like my cat - he loves to run around like crazy after a satisfying visit to the bathroom.

2005-05-29T08:51:00.000-04:00

It is possible that the struggle for personal maturity is in fact a struggle for a sense of dignity. I have little and don't know how to convince myself of trying for more.

2005-05-29T08:46:00.000-04:00

The end of times - mine simply.

Summer is finally here - it seems. The early ride to the clinic for that very last blood sample was really very pleasant: I passed through lush green neighbourhoods of rich people with their wonderful blossoming gardens and flower-beds. I suppose one can buy oneself a pretty cushy existence even in this rabid urban world - if only one knows how to earn lots and lots of cash (which, to my mind, takes out all the sense from such an achievement).

*

My brother sent me a panicked e-mail, saying he doesn't want to sublet my flat anymore. This has already happened several time so that I finally requested that he writes me a cheque for 3-month rent - which he did. So I guess it's too late for worries. Or rather it shows how extremely infantile he still is, especially when confronted with family relations.

On the other hand, I pretty much knew it would be like that and should have looked for an independent subleter despite my mother pushing for this whole arrangement: she always defends my brother even though it clearly goes against the very evidence of his behavior. But I gave in and thought it would be easier that way - so it's my fault too in a sense, that I let myself be persuaded and tempted by something so flimsy and unreliable.

I've always had a bit of a hard time giving any consideration to my bro - perhaps because I am not very affectionate or maternal or because he simply does not command respect in any way. I think he believes I always try to put him down intellectually - and if this is true, then I am doing it unconsciously - or maybe it's just the way forces have been arranged in our family and nothing can unlodge me or any of us in relation to each other from the mythical places we came to occupy in the family quadrangle.

*

Since my suicidal crisis last spring and especially after my bike-trip came to such an end of shocking desillusionment, it is as if I've lost all bearings in my own self - I don't know where to turn anymore and the world does feel like a such an utterly small and hopeless place - this is to the measure of how much my soul has shrinken. As a result I've been spending increasingly more time with my family, simply because I have nowhere else to turn anymore inside myself.

The emptiness has gained still more ground. What will it be later on...

2005-05-28T17:09:00.000-04:00

Moscow blackout.

Holy shit... It turns out the whole city of Moscow and nearby towns experienced a complete blackout this Wednesday - I had no idea. That would be upwards 15 million people. Hospitals lost electricity, people were blocked in elevators, freezers stopped working in supermarkets. traffic lights went off. trolley cars stopped in their tracks. 43 subway trains were paralized underground and 20,000 passengers had to be evacuated from the tunnels. the whole immense subway went dark... It's scary - because the subway is very deep and spacious, and walking up to the surface without the escalators must have been a huge effort.

Apparently this was resolved quickly enough and the whole thing was due to a fire at one of the hydro stations.

*

The newsource from which I got this information also offered a time-line of other major electric blackouts throughout history. What I found strange is that it mainly included the history of such blackouts in North America. Knowing Russia and how self-centered it's always been (no less than USA), this struck me as unnatural and highly inconsiderate - yet it simply means that those who compiled this article simply searched through the internet and of course found a lot of US sources and none for their own country. Such is everything "new and modern" in Russia these days - highly expedient and utterly careless.

This does explain the wave of nationalism I've been witnessing lately on the russian internet. It's clearly reactionary yet there are plenty enough monstruosities in this new-russia to be reactionary against. I can't say I don't understand where it all comes from.

2005-05-27T21:21:00.000-04:00

Well, perhaps I should mention that I spent about three days at a friend's home in Toronto. It was "nice" but we had little to say to each other. Her kid is in its 4th year, a very lively spoilt little creature, her husband is growing preposterously old and cranky, her home is expensive and situated in a pretty upscale neighbourhood, she brought me to her yoga class, we had burgers and fries.... She's a very good friend in terms of loyalty and generosity, but we really can't talk at all anymore. This is due to her changing social status (and mine too, I guess - in the opposite direction) - she has to be very protective of her intellectual claims, what with being a university professor - there is no more place for easy peer-to-peer discussion - or maybe she thinks I shouldn't be authorized to challenge her. But it's been like that for ages anyhow and I don't mind anymore. Whatever. We haven't seen each other in two years and somehow it just doesn't matter - whether we see each other or not. Which is sort of strange but also natural in the present situation. In fact, it is perhaps best that we meet rarely - at least there is a chance of safekeeping an illusion of friendship if not much else besides :-/

2005-05-27T21:06:00.000-04:00

Yes, I am still going to Russia - but for the moment I feel a strong urge to forget all about it and enjoy the purely literary moment that has suddenly descended upon me. I couldn't really read at the clinic - even though there was nothing better to do - mostly because of close proximity of other people and mental constriction resulting from this. Maybe if I had more practice with being in a crowded place I'd be able to abstract myself completely. But I am too well used to being alone.

2005-05-27T20:45:00.000-04:00

De Quincey is especially good at such observations as this:

The reception one meets with from the women of a family generally determines the tenor of one's whole entertainment.

Here he talks of small facts of social life; but the same keen eye is applied to facts of inner life and suddenly we find ourselves in the presence of a great psychologist.

Btw, this portrait of his somehow corresponds exactly to the impression I got from reading him.

2005-05-27T19:18:00.000-04:00

The value of literature.

A long while ago it occured to me that when it is impossible to live life in the moment and to the fullest of possible emotion - as animals do - the only other way of filling the void of passing time would be "literature" - or the ability to record as precisely and as fully as possible whatever juice and gravy one is still able to muster from such emotionless futile existence.

Literature does not substitute life - it records and recreates tenfold something that was barely worth living when it happened. It is a powerful weapon against the flight of time which is like water sinking through one's frantically clawed fingers. The ability to write down the sum of one's experience is the last recourse against the lack of any fullness of experience - it is a way of combatting that hunger for life which is never satisfied in all of us.

All in all, literature is a very perverse and unnatural thing - but it is also the best thing that ever happened to such a perverse and unnatural being as man.

*

John Updike has a wonderfully rich writing style. One could only guess how low on calories his life had been. But he was able to supplement himself from writing.

Literature is very unlike music in that sense - though both are classified as "art".

(in response to Rozanov)

*

Or think of that moment when Montaigne sat down to write his Essays.

2005-05-27T18:38:00.000-04:00

To my critics.

Or should I say - my readers. It's amazing that I have any but apparently I do. In fact I am so nonplussed at this profusion of readership that I am almost inclined to see it as one person mimicking a crowd of many (not at all rare in the virtual realms, as a matter of fact). On the other hand, I lay my guts so very open for everyone to see that anyone would be naturally inclined to valuate, pass judgment, and give advice - at the sight of this endlessly sinking boat which is my life as I paint it.

So what do they say in such cases... "Oh gentle reader" etc. "do not begrudge" and some such other. In fact, I am not very good at taking advice even when it is plain and obvious to everyone but me that I should finally try something else than my own paltry wits and use other people's experience and expertise by proxy - just to see what happens, at the very least. But my attempts at this have shown conclusively and many times over that following advice ends badly for me - and I think I even know why. It's simple: my actions and non-actions, my line of thought, the whole sum of my behavior - no matter how counter-productive - constitute an intricate whole based on my past history and my current values which I hold sacred quite despite myself. Whenever I try to follow another's man advice, I fall out of this fullsome circle of causes and effects, and act blindly without understanding where it comes from and what sum of experience it is based on. As a rule, even when such advice appears at fist as very sensible, I end up screwing it up big time - and only redress the situation by reversing to my previous ways and means, which usually contributes to completely annihilate all the possible beneficial effects of the said sensible-advice. I guess people who are very good and skillful at following advice are those who are able to "act externally to themselves" - or act according to their reason alone, without all the muddled rest of the human organization. This is something I can't do at all - I can't just trust my reason as if it were a perfect calculating machine and all I had to do was to first devise and then apply to a T a certain complicated mathematical formula of behavior. I've seen people do it but I am always amazed at their trustfulness: how can they surrender to perfectly exterior rules with such abandon? Yet they usually succeed and I usually fail - so I guess in a certain sense their approach is more effective and generally more sensible than mine. On the other hand, I can never help wondering if this success is not simply due to most other people being that way and thus most of the human world being rigged towards such behavior - so that it naturally finds favor and resonance with the human universe and turns things their way. There may be something to that: it is also true that people who are able to make small talk fare better in the social world than those who can't.

So in the end I certainly I do listen to advice but I never follow it anymore. Or rather - I wait and see how it might apply in some future circumstances, when it would naturally evolve from the course of my own life - and then I sometimes recognize in these new actions of mine an advice I've been given a long time ago by somebody who had already lived through similar combinations and trials and was able to understand something I had yet to arrive at on my own.

The moral of all of which would probably sum up as something like: let the boat sink til it hits firm ground.

(P.S. I've been reading some De Quincey at the clinic - which explains the funny style - and where else and why else would I practice! :)

2005-05-21T08:13:00.000-04:00

Leaving for Toronto shortly. The cat will be left alone a lot this week - I will be back only for a day and then will enter the last portion of the clinical trial. Poor beast. He has no clue what's going on or why I am disappearing so often. My brother will probably hate him out of fear or immaturity or both - however I still expect that he will treat the cat decently if not lovingly.

*

Couldn't sleep much these past two nights. Unexplained anxiety, wake up around 2am, can't go back to sleep until 5-6am, don't know why.

The only remotely probable cause seems to be the upcoming trip and some deeply unconscious worry I have about it - rationally speaking I am not at all worried, but my own mind is hiding from me, it seems.

*

The atmosphere in the family is unpleasant. My mother is too openly disgusted with me and uncontrollably terrified of the impression I will make in her presence "once we're there" - it's really hard to take. The curious thing is that she both tries to humiliate me over this and yet expects compassion for her resulting fears and worries. She obviously imagines I am the problem and her attitude is justified. My mother is not too intelligent in these things, kinda narrow-minded. She's the regular bourgeois of the family (my brother takes after her for lack of better).
I think she vaguely understands that this may not be all my fault, that maybe there is room for some tolerance here, but she can't change her outlook and keeps re-acting as above.

I have to overcome all this psycho-pressure and be tolerant of her intolerance. This is only possible with some aloofness. Yet this aloofness itself causes my mother to wince at me as if I were betraying her friendship or something.

One thing I've noticed: parents are so rabidly and uncontrollably judgeamental of their children, it's a miracle the children still go on loving such ruthless judges :-/
I am not nearly as judgeamental of my parents for all their failures and many shortcomings in life, not to mention the many ways they screwed up my own existence by extension. I take them as they are and I don't expect them to change for the better - and when I criticize them to their face out of various upsets, at least I understand that I am causing some needless pain. But parents criticize their children without this understanding: they're actually convinced they're doing it for their children's own good. What strange unconsciousness.

2005-05-19T11:26:00.000-04:00

The root of life.

And here's a passage that could easily be called "the essence of Rozanov's philosophy" - the corner-stone and the bottom-line. I don't know if I'll manage to give a meaningful translation but after that I won't need to quote anything else, I think. It's more important and fundamental than his talk of God or whatever such other subjects.

All in all it was love especially that never failed me. I was disillusioned in religious belief, in civilization, in literature. In people in general. But those two human beings who loved me - never was I disillusioned in them. And it's not that their love made me comfortable, not even that: but the desire to see something ideal, something true is eternal in man. In these two people who were attached to me (my "friend" and Julia) I saw truth that had none of the "defects of the moon" - on their luminous faces I could not detect a single moral "wrinkle".

If only I myself were a human being of that sort - my life would have been full and I would have been perfectly happy, without constitution, literature or a handsome face.

To be able to see perfection, the most beautiful, and to know that it's attached to you - this is the lot of gods. Twice in my life - and the second time it lasted a full 20 years - I had access to this "semblance of god-like life".

When I think of Florensky, I bless him and his wife as they pass before me - and with pain in my heart for my own inability, I think: "this one will know how not to lose [what he has]."

Rozanov called his wife "my friend" - partly because they were not legally married. She was very ill for most of their life together and died much earlier than her husband - because her real desease was not detected early enough. Rozanov blamed himself for having allowed this to happen (careless, full of fear).
By "defects of the moon" he refers to his theories about the development of sexual symbolics in world religions; cults of the moon actually adored a god hostile to all natural life - monks and sexless priests, celebacy, rejection of procreation, adoration of death, everything cerebral and "ideal", are a feature of the moon-worship. By contrast sexuality and all natural characteristics of man are life-affirming and belong to the cult of the sun and procreation. For example, Rozanov saw judaism as a religion almost entirely devoted to affirmation and sanctification of natural life - procreation, sex, race, physical life. It is thus the most life-affirming of all religions - while christianity as it developped is something quite different and essentially hostile to life. When Rozanov talks of love he absolutely means sexuality, having children, being physical - and yet he also means the oneness of this love with everything emotional and spiritual that is found in loving. Real morality is based on such real love - all this is part of the tree of life and being blessed and "being with God". Of course it's not a very accurate or exhaustive outline of Rozanov's philosophy but I think it's about enough to make this excerpt more or less understandable.

2005-05-19T10:19:00.000-04:00

Or how about these quips by Rozanov (my awkward translation):

Russian life is dirty and weak, but it's still lovable somehow.
And it's this latter quality that one is afraid to lose, even though the rest deserves to be "flushed down". One is afraid to lose this uniqueness and the one quality that will never occur again.

Something good and better will occur again perhaps, but not this. And I want "this"...

(at the Volkovo cemetery)

---

"Modernity" badly bothers only those who are of no consequence. Which is why all complaints against modernity are of no consequence.

"Of no consequence" in russian is actually "empty" - but in english the double-meaning would not carry - existentially speaking :-/

2005-05-19T09:55:00.000-04:00

I really like Rozanov it turns out. A while ago I tried to read some of his other writings but they didn't seem pertinent - he's only good (and very good) at diary-like notes, of which he published a few collections. Or maybe it's not that he's "good" at it, but simply that it's the most personal and "modern" of his writings - they don't feel outdated like the rest.

Fight for your love with your nails, fight for your love with your teeth. Fight for it against your reason, fight for it against all authority.

Be true to love - and God will bless you.

For love is the root of life. And God is life.

(at Volkovo cemetery)

This is what I call true philosophy. Though others will say that Kant and Hegel are philosophy and this is just unclear shit. I wonder...

2005-05-19T09:30:00.000-04:00

Meantime canadian dollar continues its rapid fall due to extremely hectic political situation in Ottawa. Today they will try to vote the gov out of office - if this succeeds, the dollar will drop like a dead duck. This means that whilst last week I could get US$400 for our 500, next week I will be lucky to get $380 or less. I need at least 2000 US for my three months in russia/ukraine, which makes at least 2500 canadian or more. I already went through the roof with these rushed visa/passport expenses. On May 29 I will get the check for the clinical trial (if I don't die or something before that), at which stage I would have something like 2600 at the bank. If the dollar drops another cent, I won't have anything left for pre-travel expenses. Which sucks big time - because I still will have those expenses, how else.

So basically this fall of the currency is causing palpable problems to me. And anyway - I don't want to see this liberal gov voted out of office because some conservatives want to grab their chance. Fuck them - I don't want conservatives ruling this country, no way. Even if liberals have been there too long which caused some corruption especially in Quebec - it's still better than some narrow-minded libertarian pioneer from the prairies whose outlook on life has been formed by watching too much tv from his immediate neighbours south of the border. No thanks. These guys talk a lot about canadian values but what they want for real is a system modelled after the US - minimal taxes, minimal gov programs including medicare and education, free-market for all and no or little protection for those who can't fly with the flock. That's what conservatives are about - they're all for the rich enterpreneur guy and the rest is not their problem.
They also have zero idea at the moment how to deal with Quebec. If they come to power Quebec will end up separating - through natural disgust with these US drones :-/

It's ironic that I am already made to lose money (!) because of these conservative intrigues - what will it be when they come to power?

2005-05-19T08:39:00.000-04:00

Worries.

I stayed up until 4am trying to call ukranian consulate in Moscow (to make sure I can make a visa from there) - no dice, it's always either busy or no one picks up the phone. Very typical of all post-soviet bureaucracies. And typically enough - I will not know what awaits me until I am there and they tell me at the consulate that I have to go back to canada to get a private ukranian visa. In which case I will probably travel to one of the three baltic republics - they're as good as western-europe at this stage and foreign consulates on their soil are supposed to behave less nasty as a rule.

*

The tumor in the ass continues its glorious progress. I hope it will slow down somewhat during my three-month vacation abroad. It would be presumptious of a lowly tumor to overgrow and completely block my ass causing an emergency and unforseen expenses. Maybe I should talk to it in private - but will it listen?

2005-05-18T18:14:00.000-04:00

Fears.

I am feeling paranoid about my trip to Russia - or more specifically about my cousin who will have to endure my presence for two months. The problem is: we haven't seen each other since 1994 and communication has remained sketchy at best. All the nice memories and actual friendship go back to my early teenhood and her youth - they're really very much out of date. And things have changed. Life in Russia changed terrifically, it became savage and merciless, and people had to adapt so as to survive. People have become brittle and their nervous systems are fragile and unpredictable. My own life has gone so very much downwards that I wonder whether my sight will be a shock or a mere disagreement. I am full of asocial habits and behaviors that I am not even aware of until I find myself in close quarters with others.

And so on and so forth. I have valid grounds to feel paranoid.

The only solution I can think of to stave off a possible disaster, is to keep faith and an unfalteringly loving and forgiving attitude even if insuperable circumstances present themselves. It is easier said than done - those we trust most are the ones who can wound the deepest.

*

Another possibility is that my cousin's 17-year old son might hate my guts once I am there, which will be our first meeting since he was a small kid. These things can't be controlled and I'll be hogging some of his living-space - I hope he's more tolerant than I myself was at that age :-/

*

I am also scared of meeting other people from my deep past. Shit - I've changed a lot, and for the worst. But I am not expecting much welcome in any case, so I guess I'll survive any impression I might produce out there.

Of course my biggest weakness is my lack of practice at social life - it means that I lack manners on one hand and that I am fairly constrained and awkward in social interaction, for example in all the flirty sexual situations. I avoid asserting myself in front of people because that would be an imposture given the kind of avoiding-life I actually live out here. It's a very special life, a life of social-and-sexual failure - an anomaly by most standards. Therefore in my case there are only two ways of presenting myself: self-effacing, remote, and toning down, or eccentric and defiantly theatrical. I think I'll naturally go with the first.
And I'll need to be very humble to deflect contempt which is the very natural social reaction to preceived failure.

Already my mother is suffering agonies at the very thought that she might witness other people reacting to me in that way, with uncontrolled social arrogance that is - which is why I decided to avoid her in Moscow as much as possible, but I won't be able to be on my own in Ukraine where her sisters live, so I guess I can't alleviate her shame of me after all. That's what one might call "reverse moral support" (it's when you need it and yet end up providing it to the expected supporter :).

I will probably need to buy a brand new pair of jeans just to spare my mother's nerves out there - and perhaps my own nerves too. Russia is a very judgeamental country.

*

And finally there is the physical health aspect that's starting to worry me for real. It's not very noble as a topic but I might actually die from it at some point, so I guess anything life-threatening should be ennobled on the spot and cleared of its dubious mundane status in ordinary conversation. In short, I am now aware that my ongoing piles problem is being caused by a pretty tremendous tumor growth in the rectum that has occured roughly after I quit smoking in late february. It was also a time of severe stress for me from upstairs neighbours with their noise. I figure that smoking served as an anti-stress agent on the body level, so once I got deprived of nicotine, all my existing tumors (and I know for a fact that I have a few) went amock and now I am in danger of developping both colon and breast cancer unless I have it already and just don't know those cysts and growths are malignant. I just hope that it will not catch with me while I am travelling. That's how cancer finally announces itself: one fine day you just feel your energy is gone and you can't do anything. "Hello world", you say, and you die a few months or a few years later. But before that happens I still don't know how I'll manage this horrid hemorroids problem - the tumor won't grow smaller, that's for sure. Eat only light highly digestible food and never cause any build-up in the colon so as not to supplement the effect of the tumor? That would be the only non-medical solution and I am not sure I can count on it because of a fairly bad digestion due to stress and anxiety. But I can't walk very far nowdays unless my stomach with its many kilometers of intestines is as good as empty - so yeah, this sounds like the only way out.

Fast and pray and be light of heart and body. Right - that might be my last trip anywhere in any case.

2005-05-18T07:24:00.000-04:00

Some snippets of Rozanov-in-english.

From that blog:

The pain of life is much more powerful than the interest of life. That is why religion will always conquer philosophy.

---

Always dreaming and always about one idea: how to avoid work. (About Russians)

---

All literature is babbling... Or nearly all.
Exceptions are killingly few.

---

I should like a few people to remember me, but by no means may they praise me, and only on condition that when they remember me, they also remember those close to me. Unless they, their goodness and their honor, are remembered, I do not want to be remembered.

---

Where does this feeling come from? From the sense of guilt, but also from the deep and true knowledge that I have not been a good man. God gave me talent, but that is something else. The more terrible question is - was I a good man? - and the answer is No.

---

Two angels sit on my shoulders: the angel of laughter and the angel of tears. Their eternal quarrel is my life.

---

Then a longer bit from that same source (though perhaps it is easier to just go and read through the blog, but I want to keep it on file here too):

Remove prayer from the very substance of the world— remove it so that my tongue, my mind shall unlearn the words of prayer, the work of prayer, its essential nature; so that I shall not be able to pray and people will be unable to pray—then with protruding eyes and a terrible scream I will run out of my house, running, running, running, till I fall down. Without prayer it is utterly impossible to live… Without prayer all is madness and horror.

You can understand all this when you are weeping… But how do you explain this to someone who does not weep, who has not wept? He can never understand it. And surely there are many people who never weep.

A husband does not love his wife; a father does not love his children; his wife is unfaithful to him, and he “shrugs his shoulders”; his son is expelled from school. So he blames the school and sends the boy to another school. Tell me, what can religion say to such a “positivist”? He will shrug his shoulders and smile.

“Yes, but he is not everybody.”

Positivism is true, necessary, and even eternal, but only for a certain group of people. Positivism is necessary for the “positivists”; the essential thing is not in positivism, but in the positivist. In this case, as in everything else, man comes before theory.

Yes…

A religious man comes before all religion, and the “positive” man was born long before Auguste Comte.

More here:

I am happy when I am alone and also with people. I am neither solitary nor sociable. When I am by myself I am complete, and when I am with others, I am incomplete. I am, after all, happier when I am alone.

Alone I am happier because I am alone with God.

I could surrender my talents, literature, the future of my “I,” fame, popularity—I could do all this rather too readily; but happiness, well-being… I wonder. But I could never give up God. To me God is “the warmest.” With God I am warmest. With God I am never bored or cold.

After all, God is my life.

I only live for Him, through Him. Apart from God I am nothing.

What is God to me? Am I afraid of Him? Not at all. Will He punish me? No. Will He grant me a future life? No. Does He feed me? No. Do I exist through Him, and was I created by Him? No.

Then what is He to me?

My perpetual sadness and joy. A special mood related to nothing.

Is not God then “my mood”?

I love the being who makes me grieve and rejoice, who speaks to me, reproves me, comforts me.

My God is special to me. He is mine and no one else’s. If he is also “someone else’s” I do not know it and am not interested in knowing.

“My God” is infinite intimacy, infinite individuality. This intimacy resembles a little funnel, or even two funnels. From my “social I” goes out a funnel, narrowing down to a point. Through that point only one ray passes: from God. Beyond that point exists another funnel, which does not narrow down but widens to infinity: this is God. Here is God. Thus God is
1) my intimacy, and also
2) infinity, of which the universe itself is but a part.

Rozanov is very blog-like. And very modern by the sole virtue of that form: publicly talking to oneself for lack of better company :-/

2005-05-18T07:10:00.000-04:00

Yesterday in the passports office I looked at a couple of small children frolicking uninhibitedly among stone-dead adults, and I wondered closely: "how can one kill children?" And yet in war and in genocides killing very small children is the most mundane thing. But how is it possible?

I just don't know - or am too afraid to imagine.

2005-05-18T07:02:00.000-04:00

Escape from USA.

Oh, here's some real-life dynamics I found while looking for stuff on Rozanov. An american blogger's autobiography:

My Introduction:

My name is Erich Lippman (spelled that way because my father wanted to name me after the convicted German war criminal Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, famous for his innovative plan to defeat France quickly). Condemned to question my identity and meaning from the getgo. Strangely enough, considering the dubious nature of my first name, my family was probably Jewish (emigrating relative named Jacob Lippman). They came from the German city of Koenigsberg (now Kaliningrad) in 1849. Probably a good time to leave. Anyway, I grew up in rural Centralia, Illinois, 70 miles dead east of St. Louis, MO. I grew up in an Evangelical Christian family and went on as the 25th member of my family to attend Asbury College, a theologically Wesleyan, Evangelical school. It was at Asbury that I first encountered the Russian writer Fedor Dostoevsky when, following Professor Mike Peterson's advice, I read The Brothers Karamazov. Ironically, this aspect of my collegiate experience led me to an obsession with Eastern Orthodoxy and Russia. As a result, coming away from Asbury with a double major in history and philosophy, I headed to Minnesota to study Russian Orthodox history and culture with the guru of such studies -- Professor Theofanis Stavrou. That's what I've been doing for the last 5 years, and still am doing, hoping to come away with a Ph.D. eventually. However, as for now, I continue to float in that elusive limbo known as ABD (all but dissertation) status. While doing so, I teach and TA classes, the current one being on European History, 1945- Present.

This is my "professional" background (it has to be in quotes until I actually have a profession). On a more personal note, I also met my beautiful wife, then Dawn Tevis, at Asbury (her blog is linked). After dating for a few years, we were engaged for my first year in grad school. She stayed in Kentucky working while I was in Minnesota taking classes. This allowed me the privilege of letting her do the wedding planning, shortly after which I headed for Greece and Cyprus on a research trip, leaving her to get acquainted with Minnesota on her own. I won't be doing that again any time soon. After she had been up here for about a year, we both converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. I still take research trips, only nowadays to Russia instead of Greece. Hopefully, Dawn will get to go on the next one for a while.

I do wish I were hungarian! :-/

2005-05-18T06:46:00.000-04:00

I thought of "Sacrifice" because I sense a strong need to pray and yet I can't find a place inside myself for any such action. I forgot how one may pray - I don't know what it is anymore or what to do or how.

At the same time I can feel that prayer is only possible if one loves somebody or something - it can't happen without such an opening in the heart. Maybe that's why I can't find a way to pray inside myself - that this opening is lacking.

I want an insider's connection to life, that's why.

2005-05-18T06:38:00.000-04:00

Some people regret they're not russian and can't really access the culture. I in turn regret I am not hungarian.

And so on.

2005-05-18T06:21:00.000-04:00

Found a very neat site about the russian film-director Andrej Tarkovsky. He is part of the russian intellectual tradition of the 70's and is often seen/quoted/referenced as if he were a writer or a philosopher rather than film-maker. Which he was indeed.

I used to like his films a lot and went to watch them in run-down repertory cinemas over and over again. It was too long ago but I guess I learned his language too thoroughly then to really ever forget.

One of his last films that is fairly hard to find nowdays is called "Sacrifice". He was dying of cancer at the time and probably had a hard time controlling the production - the film is way too long. It's actually boring (cinematically speaking), but it does have some striking ideas in it. I wouldn't mind seeing it again. Maybe it is easily accessible in Russia? I'll find out soon.

*

Very good site. About the film in question:

In true Tarkovsky subtle narrative style, during dinner preparations, the glasses clink, the room shakes, then the sound of a concussive wave is heard. Is it an earthquake? We find out from fragments of news broadcasts that World War III has begun. In a desperate attempt to save his family, he decides to offer himself as a sacrifice - to relinquish all of his worldly possessions and part with his loved ones if they can be spared from the horror. But how does one make such a covenant? He prays to God, he pleads with a housemaid whom he suspects is a witch, he suffers in silence. He appears melancholy, despondent, even delusional. The beauty of Alexander's sacrifice is that no one realizes what he is trying to do (and the lengths that he will go to) in order to save his family... and isn't that what a sacrifice truly is? The Sacrifice is a devastating, but powerfully reaffirming film on love, humanity, and faith.

2005-05-18T05:49:00.000-04:00

V.V.Rozanov.

I already mentioned that turn-of-the-century philosopher Vasilii Rozanov was extremely popular in Russia these days. So are such un-russian thinkers as GK Chesterton, Mark Twain, and George Orwell.

People are craving "some sound words without much ado".

*

I tried looking for Rozanov's works on the english internet but instead of translations found a bunch of academic papers with titles such as: "The scandal of Vasilii Rozanov", "The case of an amoral procreationist", "Vasilii Rozanov's Erotic Mythology", "Is There Pleasure in Suffering?" - and such.

One of his collections of aphorisms and "reclusive notes" is called Ephemeral.

Really.

Or his most well-known book - Solitaria.
It's so very much out-of-print on Amazon.com that it sells for nearly US$200.
Product Details:
Unknown Binding: 188 pages
Publisher: Boni & Liveright (1927)

OUCH.

Yeah - he was a slavophile, an out-spoken antisemite, and he married Dostoevsky's former lover who was an insufferable bitch and his 20-years elder. Partly because he admired Dostoevsky.

*

Lev Shestov, a russian-jewish philosopher of the same period, tried to describe Rozanov thusly in 1930:

"I shall attempt, so far as it is possible to do this briefly, to "evaluate" the literary legacy of this great writer - more correctly, of this tireless battler. I say of this battler, for Rozanov was, like almost all great Russian writers, first of all a battler. His matchless literary talent was for him only a weapon in the struggle against an eternal and terrible enemy - an enemy, moreover, with whom reconciliation, a compromise, even only a temporary armistice is impossible. Whoever is not with him is against him. Whoever is not against him is with him. This enemy Rozanov saw in Christianity. Or more correctly: this enemy Rozanov called Christianity.

But, strangely, Rozanov, who always attacked Christianity so unrestrainedly and passionately, once said about himself, using the words of Feodor Karamazov: "Even though I am a piglet, God still loves me." As coarse and cynical as this may sound - in his writings Rozanov reached the extreme of coarseness and cynicism, and precisely when he was so coarse and cynical he revealed himself most of all - as coarse and cynical as this may sound, in these words there is a great truth about Rozanov. It is true that he was a "piglet," but it is also true that God loved him. Beyond this, although he did not express it, still another truth is hidden in these words: Rozanov himself loved God, loved Him with his whole heart and his whole soul, as the first commandment requires. And if all things do not deceive me, in this lies the key to the solution of his animosity toward Christianity. He could also have repeated the words of another hero of The Brothers Karamazov, the words of Mitya that he addressed to his younger brother: "I am sorry for God, Alyosha."

Rozanov went to church a lot, fasted, and variously cherished practical religion - russian orthodoxy more specifically. This didn't prevent him from calling the popes the "iron army" of Christ: a bunch of metal figurines surrounding a living figure so nobody might touch or see it. Pretty neat, hmm?

2005-05-18T05:03:00.000-04:00

Can't sleep. Or rather - I just had an extremely violent-sadistic dream where I casually ground a miniature human body in the juice blender and then looked in the mirror to see whether I had satisfaction in my eyes. Oh boy. Indeed I've been very high-strung and nervous lately :-/

*

I am having some last-minute problems with getting a new passport and I still don't have a russian visa. It's true that these things can get fixed rapidly for a fee, but such fees would make a bad hole in my finances. So I am trying to avoid these easy-options and go about being stressed/rushed instead. Money can indeed buy peace of mind if not always freedom as such - and that's plenty enough already.

*

I can't remember a time when I lived without computer or internet and didn't even know what they were about exactly. Yet those were my most generous and promising years: end of high-school, university, friends, sex, social life...

Things have changed drastically.

2005-05-17T23:28:00.000-04:00

Today in the passport office a grown woman sat waiting for her turn with a pretty sizable teddy-bear clasped in her arms. She looked entirely normal - and all the more fierce for it.

2005-05-17T09:04:00.000-04:00

Unusual art :-/

(it's all wood btw)

2005-05-15T08:34:00.000-04:00

"There is a great sadness in being guided by reason."

I found a draft of a blog entry that I wrote in december 2003 but never got around to develop. I still think that way. So - here goes.

There is a great sadness in being guided by reason.

Something that struck me while reading Ray Monk on L.W. - that ethics and logic are one. When we talk of reason we think of logic (rational thinking) and the word "ethics" evokes a set of rules of conduct that are reasonable. "Reason" implies both logic and ethics. But there is something frightening in this view.

Are our morals really reasonable? That's an old question but the *preferred* (though by no means the only) answer is always the same: yes. And we are convinced (and keep on convincing ourselves through arguments) that ethical choices are made by reason, and this is our idea of free will - that it is predicated on reason.

I have to think of people who are born or become reason-less - crazy or mentally handicapped or something of that sort. Are they still human then, do they have free will, or they are not part of humanity anymore?
If free-will is nothing but reasonable choices, then they are not human - not quite people, just beings, creatures of sorts: logic and ethics have nothing to do with them.

But what if ethics were not really a matter of reason? What if free-will had nothing to do with reason? What if good and evil were not quite the concepts we believe them to be? It is an old point that you can't really argue a reasonable foundation for Good and Evil (Nietzsche, who tried to see "beyond", and buddhists who say that there is no duality here at all in the absolute, and more still). But whichever way you try to explain this, you can't very well rule out the overwhelming experience of badness and goodness, you walk knee-deep in it every day of your life - relative or absolute, it is there, it reaps you open before you get a chance of making a theory of it.

What I meant here is simple: I never forgive some offense, for example, because it's reasonable or more useful to do so - I am only able to forgive when something inside my angry heart is let go and I can fully forget the offense. Arguments do not convince me to let go - but other unsaid things happen on the inside that are entirely non-rational yet have a profound moral effect. Etc and so on - nobody really lives from the head (though some people perhaps do, more than others).

2005-05-14T20:22:00.000-04:00

Far away in the past.

Today many russians regret that perestroika ever happened and USSR was made to collapse - they want past glory back and prefer to blame the whole debacle on american intrigues. But it is helpful to remember (as few of the younger generation do) that in the early 80's Moscow the capital was actually on ration cards - yes, just like in WWII - because of a near-dead state of the soviet economy that has been mismanaged practically to extinction. This is why party bosses initiated perestroika - because there was no other way out, and the usual lethargy was not going to help while it away either.

USSR went bankrupt - economically as much as ideologically. "American intrigues" must have helped but it can hardly count as the primary cause of death.

But few of the american-dreams materialized in that new post-soviet world - so today russians hate everything american almost as much as they used to long for it only a generation ago. And of course they tend to idealize the now safely gone and burried USSR - oh what a wonderful fair idealistic society it has been!

Yes of course. There is always a paradise lurking somewhere in the misty past. But USSR up to its last days actually closely resembled the USA of the 1950's - self-conglaturatory, officially optimistic, and thoroughly rotten on the inside. It carried on almost solely on the force of its propaganda and public mythology - but it also tried to keep up appearances, even despite those embarassing ration-cards... The 1950's ended in a cultural revolution in the USA for a reason - the myth got too far removed from reality, nobody could keep up with the goddam american-dream anymore. Just like nobody in USSR could keep up anymore with the soviet myth of fast approaching communist dream of happiness.

Of course there was another solution beside perestroika - just pretend that nothing is happening and slowly starve the whole country until it collapses of its own - which is the solution adopted by North Korea at the moment. But for this a truly dictatorial regime is needed, with enough fear of purges inside the ruling party to eliminate all sensible protests. Russia didn't have a dictatorial regime in the mid-80's - it had a senile group of men at the helm and a lot of people in power who believed in nothing due to a life-time of personal experience in corruption. So it's really very unfair to blame the collapse of USSR on extremely clever american intrigues imagined by the sly mind of the polish-catholic Brezinzski - rather it should be blamed on those people who believed in nothing, which would be about 99% of russian population including those in the upper crust who actually tried to reform the system.

The big problem with post-soviet russians is that they think themselves superior to all other nations just because they're so desillusioned with their past-future-present that they can't put any faith in anything - yet for some reason they tend to believe that this utter moral shoddiness is somehow a sign of intelligence and even wisdom. But the depth of their pessimism is examplified by almost universal desire in Russia to see "a strong leader" come to power that would bend them all over with an iron hand and straighten out all their national woes - no matter at what cost. Which is an admission of helplessness and hopelessness. Russians are a weak people by nature - but they have a big idea of themselves and are able to create pretty impressive mythologies and seem very strong and powerful as a result. Which is about enough as far as international relations are concerned. So right now they're badly in need of some such mythology and they naturally regret the passing of USSR - it was a huge scarecrow indeed.

Interestingly enough younger people are particularly big on these ideas - going so far as to claim resurrection of Stalin and his time - and I am going to meet some manifestations of that on my trip to Russia. Revising history in the anti-democratic anti-liberal vein is all the rage at this point. I hope I won't get into arguments over these things - self-righteous pessimism is not something one can argue against.

2005-05-14T19:21:00.000-04:00

And finally some pre-revolution russian-life snapshot - very archaic this one :)

2005-05-14T18:52:00.000-04:00

Some more russian female pilots from WWII:

2005-05-14T14:54:00.000-04:00

Actually I am going to suffer on my trip to Russia because I will be perpetually confronted to a cultural and genetic type that is so very different from anything in the West - and these archaic faces and bodies will be so poignant and will tear so much at my softest childhood spots that... I might want to stay in Russia with all the poverty and hectic madness of that place instead of going back to Canada which I reluctantly call home to continue my surrogate existence within the reach of our small family - and nothing else.

Two more "dangerous" pictures from that site:http://heritage.sai.msu.ru/history/sai_history/pic/mirolubova.jpg
http://heritage.sai.msu.ru/history/sai_history/pic/smirnova.jpg

I am afraid of something touching my heart too directly - after all I will be going a bit "too close to home".

2005-05-14T14:43:00.000-04:00

While browsing on russian internet found this picture of a sort of Russian Female Kamikaze - but actually she was a war pilot and died on her 645th mission (seems like she's done a lot of killing) and got a hero's medal for it - this bully of a girl was only 24 years old and I find her features scary and fascinating and animal.

Eugenia Rudneva 1920-1944

2005-05-14T13:06:00.000-04:00

Anxiety has returned today - I had none in the clinic for some reason. But today it is back again in full force and this seems to have to do with the upcoming trip to Russia to which I am not preparing in any real way - not on the inside, that is.

I don't know what eats at me. My father said yesterday that he's been experiencing some similarly pointless anxiety lately - and he does look tired and ravaged from it. Given the fact that both I and my father are on the telepathic side (especially my father, actually) - there is a possibility that we are both made to feel some upcoming disaster, not yet knowing what it will be. Sounds wacky as ever, but this family here is made of weirdoes.
However I do hope this is nothing so significant - but I just can't tell.

Perhaps I should try to adopt a pro-active attitude and start buying things for the trip - then I'll see if the anxiety is at all related to the preparations or not.

Oh Lord - take my bikes but don't take people from me...

2005-05-14T08:14:00.000-04:00

Beauty and the beast.

Grey hushed morning - early rain. I had to go give a blood sample before 7am and used my garbage bike to do so. The ride was not unpleasant on account of this being saturday and large streets being deserted at such an early hour. It's a bit too cold though for this time of the year.

*

I am like a kodak film gone bad: can't record the rich colors of the world, everything gets mangled and loses depth. In other words, I can't see - I am perpetually looking at a painted screen, suffering from its shallow senselessness, losing all hope to ever see through again or even to taste any of life.

This is what I mean by "losing a sense of perspective", emotional and imagined before all things.

*

It's not mysterious but it is one of those things really hard to express and describe - but it's very real and I still remember the time when it was not so. I think what made the difference is that I still saw myself as an ascending member of humanity, with some potential and thus some power to open up the world. I was "connected" - behind every given landscape I saw (or sensed) a wooing succession of other landscapes to which I had access through my connections among people and their affection and esteem of me - both past and present - the warm blood of childhood still circulated in my veins unempeached. I never thought I might lose that depth of power in the world. But I did. And with it the world became a very small place to which I suddenly had barely any access (or right) at all.

The reason I can't see any life or beauty in all the bloom and color and zest around me is because there's nothing behind - it's completely flat and foreign and I can't enter - I am not welcome.

*

Maybe I should re-read Nietzsche - it was he who said that all of Nature is nothing but the reflection of the onlooker - a romantically existential variation of the "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" quip.

2005-05-13T21:53:00.000-04:00

Post-clinical.

So I am back from the first half of that clinical study. The stay was thoroughly uneventful except for the pretty predictable disaster of having my bike stolen right from under the 6th floor windows of the goddam clinic. It happened on the second night so I didn't witness the deed but watching the empty spot for hours thereafter was unpleasant.

I decided to take this "lightly" because I actually expected this would happen - there were various tell-tale signs. First of all the day started badly: I was called up on courier duty and agreed to go along despite a strong sense that I shouldn't. It turned out the day was not nearly busy enough for my presence to be really necessary, so I felt my time was being wasted and I got extremely upset and angry. I know from experience that when I get in those nasty bitchy moods, something bad always happens to me in the material world - it's not that I am less careful or am taking more risks, it's just that there's "a cloud of evil" around me and it really fucks up my environment. Sounds wacky - perhaps. But once again it's observation and if no shit had ever befallen me in such states I'd say as much.

Because this whole courier thing is related to biking, it's obviously related to bikes too - to me these are not only practical but somehow sacred objects because a lot of my life depends on them - a bit like horses used to be viewed by hussards, knights and cavalry men. And because of this privileged relationship to bikes, whatever happens to my bikes has a special symbolic significance for me.
For example in an old Russian saga a prince meets his doom when he happens upon the bones of his beloved horse long dead and gone; stepping in sorrow on the skull of the dead horse he sees a poisonous snake come out of its empty eye - it bits him, he falls dead, but not without having understood the deadly connection between his horse and his fate. This is a perfect example of my relationship with bikes and what happens to me through these.

There were other tell-tale signs but they were smaller and thus harder to make clear in here. Like the fact that I had to buy another cheap bike-lock because I left the one I've been using at my parents' place (I made some quick repairs on a garbage bike still lingering in the locker downstairs, as either my father or brother would have to go feed my cat in my absence). Changing locks is always hazardous because no locks are ever really safe in any case, so there is some element of good/bad luck present - quite beside caution and good sense.

To top it all I didn't even plan to take the bike to the clinic, I feared to leave it in an unknown place for so long - because of bad experiences in the past. But things conspired against me. Just when I was preparing to set out for the clinic and looking for bus tickets, I got a call from ukranian ambassy who were supposed to be doing my visa - with the news that I had to renew my passport or no visa would be delivered. So I got all entangled in this new shit, had to make emergency phone calls, and finally left much later than planned and in a hurry, without those goddam bus tickets - and I took the bike instead.

And to hell with it.

I'll be using the garbage bike instead though it still needs more work. All my newer bikes got stolen.

The problem is not that I don't have enough locks for all my bikes - it's that I really can't face a world full of thieves - I lack goddam realism - I still can't get it through my head that there is so much shit walking on two legs out there - and that I need to protect myself from this ambulant crap.

Or maybe I am just too cheap to buy three u-locks in a row.

What this means however is that I can't do courier work anymore - which fulfills the wish I expressed in my nasty anger on Tuesday.

*

I read a lot of Quentin Crisp at the clinic. Almost too much in fact. I found the book a bit too high-pitched for its subject and often incomprehensible in its desire to sound allusive in a witty kind of way. Hopefully the Opium Eater will be better. But Crisp is a pretty memorable character in any case, even though he has hardly any idea how to write what he means :-/

*

Another thing I have to mention: the feeling that associates with the place where something has been lost for me - the moment I saw the bike was gone (6am) has a flavor now, I only need to think of or encounter this flavor again to remember the event. It's the force of impressions: they leave an imprint.

2005-05-09T09:24:00.000-04:00

I am taking these few days "off" - in the sense that I am not thinking about anything and not worrying about anything and not trying to make money or planning the trip - I am just trying to get back to myself, find some inner dimension that seems to have evaporated lately.

This is one way of combatting anxiety.

There is silence in the flat because there are no upstairs neighbours and those next-door are always away these days. I love silence, it's a gift from gods in my opinion. I will never forgive the landlord for cutting down the big tree over my balcony - even when I move out of here, I will not forgive because the next best thing after silence in my opinion is nature and everything it produces in its wild state. Those who destroy and "rearrange" nature should go to hell: this includes nanotechnologists as well as those narrow-minded assholes who never stop mowing their lawns. Maybe it's the same people - I wouldn't be surprised.

2005-05-09T08:54:00.000-04:00

Courier dreams.

I had a strange dream tonight - some athletic-looking woman was walking around in the streets looking for me with a very strange bike: apparently she wanted to sell it to me specifically and to no one else. I saw her but for a while ignored her, since I couldn't imagine what this strange gal could possibly want with me. Finally our paths crossed and she told me that she had this fixed-gear bike for sale, and that she was told that I would be interested in acquiring it for my courier work. Well - this bike was very spare and had no breaks, you had to break with pedals as in the old times, and it's front fork was extremely agile, a bit too much even. Basically it looked like nothing but I knew it was a very special courier bike and that this gal used it as such herself. So I asked her how much she wanted for it and she said $300 - which was of course way too much for me. So I refused - and by doing so also refused any future in the courier trade as well.

2005-05-08T21:10:00.000-04:00

Q.C.

Today I read some stuff about Quentin Crisp on the internet and I especially liked one story about him: that he supposedly left his name and address in the NYC telephone book for all to see and felt it his duty to welcome anyone who cared to contact him. Not a small challenge even for such a notorious socialite.

Three years ago I received a tentative post-card from an old classmate of mine who used to admire me for my culture and I don't know what else. I didn't have the guts to respond, partly because I was really depressed at the time, but mostly because I was afraid she might be disappointed at how I've changed. And of course that was a very wrong reaction - I should take up whatever opportunity the winds of life bring about, it's not up to me to judge how it might turn out or why people want me around. Quentin obviously was brave enough to realize that it was never up to him to judge these things.

But I am not known for my courage, to say the least.

And another thing: hospitality is a form of humility.

2005-05-08T20:57:00.000-04:00

All this anxiety feels a bit like stage fright: what play am I meant to perform in?

2005-05-08T20:54:00.000-04:00

I changed the email contact for this blog because those blasted hotmail and yahoo accounts keep expiring as I forget about them for months on end. And this blog will stay around for a while - it's a good place to come unwind in from time to time.

2005-05-08T20:48:00.000-04:00

At 9pm I am supposed to stop drinking tea because it has caffeine and I need to be caffeine-free for the clinical trial and I will have to desist from tea or coffee until next sunday. This is going to be hard because I am really hooked on this stuff.

Goodbye, dear Earl-Grey tea... :-/

2005-05-08T16:49:00.000-04:00

Wacky mysteries.

I think I know where my mysterious anxiety really comes from: it's not about money for the trip to Russia, it's the fact that I am going there with my mother... I told her from the start that I won't be seeing much of her there, but she's been acting up about this ever since.

I wish she wasn't in my way on this occasion, with her judgeamental attitudes and little tricks to control me - in fact ever since my infancy she's always been a real bully towards me without ever realizing what she was doing - she thinks it's just the way things should be between mother and daughter - and up to this day I have to deal with all this unsaid oppression, and I can't just shake it all off and ignore the damn thing. It's really too deeply engrained in my psyche, all these reflexes and reactions to my mother's unconscious power-games - I am like her marionette emotionally, all she needs to do is to pull a string and I am shot with some mysterious reflexive pain and I can't stop it even in my sleep.

It's all completely subconscious and thus unmentionable. I even have had repeated evidence that my mother's mood directly affects my nervous state - telepathically, without our meeting even (I know it sounds wacky, but it's an actual observation I made). It is said that people and other living creatures when they live together in the same place impact on each other symbiotically in the most physical ways - dogs start to resemble their masters and vice-versa. But the same must be true of people who are kept entangled in a life-long relationship. In other words, I don't have enough of a life of my own to shield me from my mother's intense influence and thinking about me - it gets at me on the subconscious side, outside of space/time limitations. Karl Jung would be damn happy to hear this: it'd prove his theories once more.

What it means is that my mother's irrational will is more effective and stronger than mine, and she bends me just by the force of her thoughts about me - I don't even need to talk to her or see her to feel her influence inside my body.

Is this wacky enough yet? But it's true and real - and I don't know why it is this way and what I am supposed to do about this mess. It's all unconcious. Maybe my mother is a witch or has the powers of a witch or something similar - and doesn't know about it - so I can't really blame her. But how am I to protect myself? The reason I am so vulnerable to her regarding this trip to Russia is because this directly concerns my childhood there - it's a common ground of contention between my mother and me - and there's is no question that she's long won the battle on that ground and that my childhood has been under her control entirely. The unconscious struggle here is that my parents effectively block my relationship towards the russian-world and my past as a whole - they're like monstruous dogs guarding the gates of a forbidden kingdom - and I can't enter this land without breaking their rule and doing symbolic violence to them as figures of control.

I am anxious because I have to "kill" my mother over this. I have to overpower her inside my mind - and put her in her place. But she's bending me and I can't lift a finger.

It's all completely insane.

*

Today I biked all over town at high speeds like crazy - because I had so much anxiety boiling in my body I didn't know what to do with myself. I feel a little less nervous now but not by much - still very tense, unable to concentrate, out of control, scared of something (I wish I knew what *exactly*).

Perhaps it's just my imagination re my mother - maybe it's about something else, I just can't tell for sure.

I didn't bike aimlessly - I went to used bookshops looking for something to read in the clinic during the week. My first choice was Quentin Crisp's "The Naked Civil Servant" (suggested by a reader of this blog) but I couldn't find it at first and bought DeQuincy's "Confessions of an Opium Eater" which has long been on my mental list of books to read. I hope I will calm down enough to be able to read these two books before I leave.

*

No, I think the fabulation about my mother is just an explanatory trick - the source of this painful anxiety is more global. It is the same anxiety I started feeling early this year - and it has something to do with a sense of dead-end in life and having no future and no power to turn things around. Perhaps I am just terrifically depressed and don't even know it - as with all deeper things, it comes in strange unclear forms but it comes right from the bottom.

All I know is that it hurts and makes me pretty ineffectual. I wake up many times a night and can't go back to sleep. I can't pull myself together. I am being agressive with people and disproportionate in my reactions to things. What the fuck is going on??

*

Last attempt at explanation: maybe I am made to prefigure some bad things that will happen and that I don't know about yet. The fear can be due to my worrying about being caught as a fraud by social security - then I won't be having any security at all, so I am worried for a reason. Or perhaps I am sensing that my father will die while I am away in another country or something of the sort.

I just don't know. What on earth am I so terribly anxious about? My whole body hurts and I can't do anything - what the fuck is that.... :-0

2005-05-07T14:00:00.000-04:00

Still here.

And still nervous and stressed :-/

I didn't make the big clinical trial, so I am entering a smaller one that will only pay a thousand bucks. In the meantime I've been trying to sublet my appartment-with-cat to my brother who is very unreliable but he's still family etc. I cleaned up a bit and it's all very empty and shining at the moment, totally disgusting to be in, but I hate this appartment in any case and now that the weather is starting to feel like summer I realized that I can't use the balcony: in the absence of the tree, the place is just way too ugly and barren. So the sooner I am out here the better. Departure in the first week of June ticket in pocket, return in early September.

*

I hope this trip will really clear my mind for once - I do need to forget a lot of crap I've been living with here. In fact, ever since I first became intensely suicidal in early 2004, I've been experiencing something like a complete loss of ideals and perspective - and all my thoughts and actions since that time were meant to break that trend one way or another. I tried violence and acting against my fears, which is also a manner of violence against oneself. I tried acting out my will no matter how illogical so as to free myself from whatever mental trap. But in the end nothing worked. I am still on the same track to nowhere and losing pressure in the cabin, so to speak. So now I am going to Russia and that too is just one more desperate gesture: seeking something to start me up from the outside or something to cling to and start rebuilding some inner order.

*

I am so terrifically stressed (or is it anxious?) for no specific reason that I developped a pretty bad hemorroids problem - which is one bitch of an ennoying pain-in-the-ass (now we know what the term refers to!). I don't know what is more/less unmentionable: this or veneral deseases, which I am blessed not to have. One fine day I might have to meditate on colon cancer too, but for now it's just lowly anal-tension phenomenon and I am all with Freud on that subject: I have to discover the source of anxiety first, and then relieve nervousness associated with it. Then the ass will resolve itself as well. That's how it works - who needs a proctologist :-/

But that's the whole damn point: I can't get rid of nervousness as long as I am here trying to collect some moneys for that trip to Russia. It is my learned opinion that I won't see any relief until I finally cross the Atlantic and forget all about Canada for three months. Until then I will have to wake up every damn morning with a knife under my neck (at least that's how this anxiety feels) and endure the pain-in-the-ass that comes as a bonus.

Oh shit.

*

I feel a strong desire for friendship and acceptance. At the same time I know full well that it can't happen unless I stop hating myself and my life/the world. The whole suffering of my life consists in this struggle between self-hate and a need for simple affection - that I might both accept and provide. Holy shit! I wish I were a warm generous person, happy to welcome people and give them hospitality. Fucking crap - this is so not me!

*

A russian under-the-rock philosopher and a dubious human being, Vasili Rozanov, wrote something true:

"We are born for love.
And in as much as we do not accomplish love, we languish in the world.
And in as much as we have not accomplished love, we shall be punished in the other world."

Fucking true, no? The alternative is something like money-making - which is dead shit for all I know. Sounds familiar, right. That's what our whole world is built around: making money.

Dead shit.

2005-04-25T13:07:00.000-04:00

Bits and pieces.

Extremely hectic lately. Still doing some courier work - they call me in the morning, I jump up and go biking. Which is just fine, because I can always refuse as well. But mostly trying to enter a clinical trial since this is my only chance to at least get enough cash for the plane ticket.

Been offered a chance for a monster of a clinical trial which will pay $4000 for about three weeks of stay in the clinic with a tube down my noise - so they may measure acidity in my stomach. If I make this horrid trial, I know for sure that it will be something very close to mental and physical torture - but where else and how would I get that much money in so little time? In a way I hope that I don't make it, and at the same time I will probably tough it out if I have to.

I called my cousin in Moscow the other day, she said it was like talking to someone from the other side of the grave. That's pretty much how I feel about this whole trip to Russia too - it's like going to some parallel world in another dimension and the purely financial and practical difficulty of actually getting there only confirms this impression. What adds to it, is that I have a lot of affinity with my cousin, a sort of instant mutual understanding, and maybe that's how people feel when they die: finally reaching some place where all questions and incomprehensions of life disappear.

I feel very nervous. Because I will be defrauding the welfare system for months on end by being absent from the country and still getting my check. Ouch. I am already defrauding it by working as a bike courier - not to mention those blasted clinical trials. Perhaps I should be ashamed of myself and feel guilty, but I am not because I've been miserable for too many years already - and if welfare is there to make people survive in misery, then I was certainly an examplary welfare-recepient for most of the time so far. I leave it in the hands of God to decide whether I get caught or not over this.

But mostly I am nervous because things are starting to move around and inside me, and I won't be able to continue in my little half-dead routine after that. That's what I am nervous about - the unknown and the necessity to move and act inside the unknown.

2005-04-17T14:35:00.000-04:00

The force of events.

I finally realized that it is entirely futile to hope to move out of this flat by July, so I will rather renew the lease and continue my tedious combat against upstairs neighbours (noise) and the landlord (who's supposed to do something about it but doesn't). What forced me to surrender to the obvious was the fact that I just received permission to go to Russia - and this has to happen between May and July, so I really don't have time to look for appartments all of a sudden - I need to find enough money to go on the trip instead. This means entering a clinical-trial. We'll see how this works out.

2005-04-12T23:09:00.000-04:00

Television.

It is hard to underestimate the stupefying effect that continuous tv-watching necessarily has on one's mind, soul, and imagination. The problem is that only a very conventional and generally narrow-minded outlook is permitted on tv - so that everything that is shown is actually all part of the same rather simplistic paradigm (philosophy/vision of life).

To get an idea: compare a book of fairy-tales from around the world to whatever you ever heard or saw on tv, and you might discover that there is more space for thought and discovery in those ancient tales than in all of the seemingly diverse stuff that they presented as "well-understood" in those programs.

TV presents life as if it were well-known and understood in advance - but it is not.

The best example of this are those national-geographic kind of programs where distant and exotic places are shown. From watching these images you get the false impression that you get to know the far-away place that is being shown and "explored by the camera". But in reality this is all bogus: you've never been to that place and you just can't know how it is - you can only get a schematized idea of it that will replace reality for you. And after watching a few of these programs you will start thinking that the world is a very small place - because you know all the corners of it already, without having gone and explored anything yourself.

But the world is not small - it is the image and imagination of it that is small and narrow-minded. And this is what tv does to one's view of life.

2005-04-12T22:50:00.000-04:00

Remarks on love and affection.

There is a bad tendency out there to collect people like trophees. In the blog-world it is represented by the mechanical invention of being linked to by as many people as possible. But what is mindless social game in cyberspace becomes only too personal elsewhere.

Sometimes people want to stay in touch because they require your presence on their mental list of collectibles. This can be mistaken for loyalty or friendship: beware.

2005-04-10T22:13:00.000-04:00

I saw a man practice Tai-Chi in the park. Then I saw a bit of the same movements in some tv program. For some reason I feel a strong desire to learn these graceful movements and practice them - I suspect it might have some effect on my state of mind too.

2005-04-10T22:01:00.000-04:00

Effecting.

Hate is probably an instinctual attempt at psychic defense against aggression. One becomes irritated and then fosters raging against the cause while physical means of defense are not available. A very strong emotion like hate can have a psychic effect that is as good as a physical impact.

A psychic effect is when outside and unknown events are influenced and directed by intense emotional relation towards some object. It's impossible to prove or even observe a connection here, but effects can be surprisingly devastating.

2005-04-10T21:52:00.000-04:00

No blame.

The symbolic nature of reality is hard to perceive if everything is seen as a giant game of random effects. But one cannot apprehend all of the game at once and is thus reduced to observe effects towards oneself or one's own sphere. It may not be the complete picture, but it gives enough of a view. The problem of course is that one is always tempted to explain too many things by one's own sphere of influence when in fact most events are not personal despite the very personal impact they produce.

Basically the idea here is that if there is war and a carpet-bombing and a bomb falls nearby and wounds and maims you, it was not intended as a personal harm - despite the kind of havoc it causes in your life.

Most events in life are like this - even effects from some people who cause harm around them due to their bad character which is a calamity to them no less than to others. You may be just such a person on occasion too.

However the other trenchant of this view is that even if the cause of the event that affects you is not personal or intended, you should be well advised to take all the cues from it and take the effect as directly personal - because it is. The bomb that maimed you was random and did not aim at you specifically - but your life will never be the same after that - which is the most personal consequence there is.

It is not forbidden to rage against the bomb - but it's useless. Nature is like that too - your own body may harbor desease and will one day become your worst enemy and torture you like the worst executioner.

So I am trying to wave all sorts of events into a thread of meaning.

2005-04-07T23:43:00.000-04:00

Today was so different from yesterday it seems like a month has gone by. Sunny, warm, spring-like, future-oriented yesterday - and cold, grey, rainy, mushy-meditative today. Not only my mood but all my plans and feelings seem to have changed in just one day :-/

*

I also realized I just missed the best period for finding cheap appartments - again! Now all the expensive over-priced crap is showing up in the listings, and this has something to do with the fact that most leases start in July and when people leave/move landlords hike prices en mass and without restraint. Why is it that July prices are so much higher than those starting April or May? I have no other explanations, but it's an observable fact-of-life.

I am not sure I will be able to move out of this flat and get rid of the lease - what a fucking trap...

*

I got my cheque for 9 days of messenger work - $400. An average of $40 per day. It certainly is a ridiculous job. The effort is entirely disproportionate to pay.

2005-04-07T23:28:00.000-04:00

More death.

People keep dying - some familiar names, my parents' generation. I suppose that's what it is, a matter of generations, it's just their time to die off.

There is something distinctly vegetative-like about human life - even though animals are different from plants, still the cycles of life are most striking and obvious in vegetation.

Dead leafs and that's that.

2005-04-06T11:01:00.000-04:00

Gorgeous spring day.

I am looking for another appartment, not knowing whether I will find anything at all, or where I would end up with this. Most of life is a gamble anyway, entirely outside of one's control or comprehension.
It's like in fairy-tales: things occur and there are strange and portentious meetings and events.

The tree-of-life was cut down, there is an emptiness inside and outside, and even if I see this as some sort of carmic punishment for my own destructive actions against this environment - still, what is one supposed to do with punishment, carmic or otherwise? enjoy it? pretend it's supposed to be that way? hardly. So it is a punishment and a retribution and what not. And I want to get out of this mess.

I feel completely trapped inside some dead-end and I am trying to get out - but my attempts are blind and if I am attempting anything at all, it's only because I really have no choice. Such inner blindness is a sine-qua-non condition of being trapped.

2005-04-02T19:35:00.000-05:00

The Pope has passed away.

I liked this man - and I envy his death in a way.

2005-04-02T19:34:00.000-05:00

After-effect.

I can't describe how tired I am from yesterday (Friday) - all the muscles in my body hurt and I stayed in bed until 5pm today because I pretty much was too sore to move :-/

Also today it's raining buckets and it's cold as hell, so I am really very glad that this atmospheric awfulness was reserved for the weekend and not for my most grueling day on the job - which was gray and cold enough but without any rain. Basically it was biking and running-around non-stop from 8am to 4pm with barely 15 min for eating a sandwich on a bench somewhere. I was hungry, cold, and generally exhausted all day long, on top of which the dispatcher was in a totally sour mood and didn't want to talk to anybody.

One good thing though: it was my last day on that job!

*

So what would I say about bike-messenging?

Well, it's really like some weird cross between construction-worker and fisherman: very physical, grueling, exposed to atmospheric conditions, and also constantly controlled and pressured by a boss.

What are the very worst things about messenging? No, not taxis and jay-walkers or low-pay - but bossy control-freak maniacal dispatchers and bad weather!

What are the best things then? No, not the famed bikers' "scene" :) But smooth riding in good physical rhyrthm, perfect harmony with the world and yourself, control of the bike and environment, meeting interesting people and situations. And good weather!

All in all, to be able to enjoy being a messenger one absolutely needs two things: a dispatcher that communicates and reacts well, and all-weather gear so as to face any shit out there. A good bike is also important. I think after about a month or two of this one would get into sufficient physical shape not to be too tired all the time.
It's insane to do this for money - because the money is definitely not anywhere near the effort required (how about being paid $1 for a super-exhausting long ride, just as well as for a turn and walk around the corner? it's just too absurd to mention).

I think that this job probably resembles waitressing - I could never understand where these poor waitresses find the strength and energy to run around all day long with heavy trays, facing clients' moods all the while.
What justifies messenging for me is the opportunity to be alone on my bike and do as I please more or less.

Ouf - still too tired to type though :-/

2005-04-01T00:53:00.000-05:00

Urbi et orbi: I hate 9 to 5 full-time week - never again.

*

Pope Jean-Paul II is dying. I liked his personality though I could care less about Vatican etc. There can't be too many Popes in one's lifetime, I guess :-0

2005-04-01T00:38:00.000-05:00

Fool's day.

It's April first and a Friday - the last day of a work-week. A perfect setting for all sorts of stupid pranks from pissed-off co-workers.

*

I must admit though that I feel relieved I am going to be free from this particular work-place. I didn't like the main dispatcher and I don't think we could have cooperated well together if I tried to stay at this job. From the go I had a strong intuition about this guy, that he would try to play power-games with me - and he did, no mistake there. I can't tolerate such people and I also know that they don't do it rationally - it's their personality that forces them to behave in this way and they can't stop doing all sorts of nasty little moves to subdue those in their field of control. If this doesn't work, they freak out - since they do it out of personal weakness and all sorts of paranoid fears. Psychology 101. Consequently I don't bear this guy any grudges - I just know I could never have tolerated this sort of thing for very long, and certainly could never trust or rely on him (which is bad - there should be good communication with the dispatcher).

So all in all I feel like I've just escaped from an accidental trap, self-created in some ways but also suggested by chance-circumstances. There was some bad-luck mixed in from the start - but also some great good-luck in other aspects (like the way I managed to avoid any bad weather - even the rain that was announced for tomorrow happened tonight instead, and the only previous rainy day was a holiday for us - that's pure luck here). The bad-luck was announced by the coincidence in time of the onset of another attack of bad-situation with upstairs neighbours and my finding this job on the very same day - as a result I had all the stress in the world at home and very little sleep when I began work. And instead of escape I found even more stress at the job. Thus it was a trap.

In the days leading to my finding this job I had a dream about it - how I would bike from one courier-company to another across downtown looking for work, from the fancier upper streets to the ones below, in the more run-down industrial area, and how I would get hired by a small seedy company with a tyrannical boss and all the difficulties I would have from his attitude etc etc etc. It was a pretty interesting dream - it described entrappement in a bad situation. And that's just what happened. I did go from fancier upper companies down to the lower area ones and I did get caught in a small-minded environment with too much over-head, too much personal pressure, and too few bikers to find any outlook. But the dream was not really a nightmare and this job was not a nightmare either.

And I am glad I am done with it - I am glad I had the experience just as is.

2005-04-01T00:03:00.000-05:00

Silence.

It's uncanny how much my mood improves when the upstairs neighbours are not home and I can have some peace and quiet in my flat. It's important to have a home that provides a sense of security - that's probably what it's about for me, as I am constantly aware of my solitude and being unprotected from the world outside. No sense of whatever community or companionship protects me - I only have the four walls of my imaginary flat and my mental perception of it to fight off whatever pressures (however the fact that I know I can find refuge with my parents is very important - the mere knowledge is enough to make me feel less helpless).

My home - my castle. That's the idea. I can only have a dim shadow of such a place, but I must have somewhere to hide in. Where do I go after high-stress work and all the shit I take during the day? I don't go to see friends and I don't go to a bar or whatever - I go back to my flat. And if it's mental hell there, then it's very much as if I had nowhere to go and I feel like I am nearly homeless.

This is why I value silence so much - it protects my mind.

2005-03-31T22:06:00.000-05:00

I have no idea how much money I made so far - but probably way too much to stay on welfare if I declare it (which I won't).

2005-03-31T22:00:00.000-05:00

Last days.

Wednesday was grueling - I did twice as many calls as usual and was basically flat dead by the end of the day. Today I was even more dead and was super-slow as a result - which caused huge hysterics from the dispatcher. He threw a tantrum at me over the radio (scene: I am coasted at some sidewalk full of university students, in my radio a loud voice is yelling all sorts of insane things, I am listening peacefully as a fire-truck is passing by with deafening sirens, etc etc etc). This dispatch-insanity obviously ruined the day for me in terms of work (the rhythm was all wrong and bad, and I ran over some jay-walker because of this - but at low speed:), I had to clear this whole thing out by going down to the office and talking this shit out with the bunch of them.

But I was rewarded by things that happened outside of work. For instance I certainly liked the not-so-coincidental coincidence of finding myself alone in the elevator with the general-manager of the Canadiens hockey-team - the great Bob Gainey. I remember the guy from watching hockey in my teen years in the 80's - he's been the captain of the team most of his life. In any case, it was a pleasant surprise and we had a brief chat. A bit surreal on the whole - it's always awkward to meet famous people because you feel like you know more about them than you ought to, while they know nothing of you - so you're at some sort of unfair advantage in terms of personal mystery. In any case I tried to be as polite and unintrusive as possible: I was happy to see the guy and showed as much, but I didn't attempt to make too much of this meeting. A brief chit-chat and off I went to my delivery duties.

Another pleasant experience was finally finding a moment of peace and sitting down at some terrasse in the hot spring sun with a cup of coffee (very good and very cheap - a rare and lucky combination these days).

Either way, I definitely like being a messenger. But not 5 days a week and not with a neurotic dispatcher. I will have to see if it's possible to find a good work environment or if it's always stressed-out and screwed-up by nature. So far 99% of my problems came from inside the main-office rather than from traffic on the street or clients. It's unpleasant to work in a place where all the problems come from inside and as if behind one's back. By the way, I could care less about nasty clients - they should worry what might happen to their packages if they try to act up - ho ho ho :)

Another advantage of working at this job - it gets me out of my isolation and provides an opportunity to mix in with the world without giving in to it. Meeting people fleetingly is pleasant enough (it certainly reminded me of my bike-trip last summer). It's also pleasant to glide along in sping breeze and take in whatever passes by. Either way, it was never really about money - and never should be, really.

*

Another thing I definitely find pretty funny and slightly ridiculous about bike-couriers is their snobbishness. I can't believe these guys - they're so conceited! It's unclear to me what this attitude thing is based on but when I read some things on the internet coming from just such types I can see how they may imagine themselves as terribly special etc. I guess there is a bit of the "lone-cowboy" syndrom here. Either way, the romantic aspect is not what catches my fancy - it's the outdoors aspect and biking for me. I don't like those office-towers, those secretaries, those envelops - it's all bullshit. I like seeing people though and I like the riding. But I don't think I have the natural energy to be a high-performance bike-courier (those guys and gals do push-pedal a lot) and getting in top-shape can hardly become a priority for me. In fact, I just love seeing those older homeless-type guys doing their courier bit - there's something wonderful about them, a resilience that is fully devoid of arrogance of the young "marginal" athletes out there. That's more in my line - even though I certainly don't look anything like that.

My motto: destitution and independence. (in heraldics this would read as "destitutio et libertas":)

*

I am already sorry I'll be out of this job next week. I'll start looking for another opportunity soon I think. Although I should start looking for another appartment first? Indeed...

2005-03-28T12:49:00.000-05:00

Also, it's official - I've got chronic bronchitis. Whenever I leave the window open at night or whatever, I wake up with some sort of unexplained cough and chest-congestion. The one unmistakable sign of the inflammation of the airways is that I can't yawn :-/

I mean, if I let myself yawn my upper-airways get all irritated and I get a rush of blood towards the head that practically gets me to faint. So I avoid yawning.

And yet I am doing all this biking... It's like two separate things: yawning and breathing. But something is definitely fucked up. I think cat's hair everywhere and all the dust in my flat must be serving as an irritant, quite aside from smoking that is now gone for good.

2005-03-28T12:36:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, while looking for some clothes to wear in rainy weather, I found a pack of cigarettes in the pocket of an old jacket - with one very dry cigarette inside. I smoked half of it yesterday and the other half today - with no good result. Either the nicotine got all dried out from it, or my brain got misadapted from nicotine-intake, but there was no pleasant (nasty!) heavy-feeling in the head or whatever effect at all.

So much for smoking.

I've been feeling like I want to cry all the time for the last few weeks. It's a sort of slow nervous-breakdown/burn-out that I am having, I think - not the kind when everything gets flushed and you get to cry uncontrollably. But it's like a preliminary stage for just such a state: "on the verge of collapse".

*

While in downtown the other day I visited the place where I tried to buy cyanide last spring. I can still buy it there if I really want to - it's available.

2005-03-28T12:21:00.000-05:00

Boot-camp stuff.

After two weeks of full-time biking/running-around - I decided it was no use trying to fool myself. The fact is - I don't want to take so much shit for so little cash. The shit comes from the main dispatcher who is a control freak and thinks I am too slow so he tries to make me go faster by loading me with long-distance calls. In any case, I got so tired after a full week of this nightmarish marathon, that I decided not to go to work today - because it rains and I have no equipment to keep myself dry.

Actually, I tried my best: I put on whatever clothes seemed convenient for rainy weather and set out for work but it immediately proved inadequate - I got all wet and cold after 10 min of riding, and this made me so uncomfortable I nearly got into an accident. So I turned back, went home, and called at work to tell them I am not coming in today. They were cool about it, saying that it's kinda quiet today. I also told them that I decided I didn't want to work full-time at this job - so the understanding is that I will work three days this week and this should give them the time to find somebody to replace me. Basically, I'll be pretty much done with this company by next week when I get my pay.

Basically I feel like I've been through a boot-camp in those two weeks. I was dead-tired every evening and on weekends, falling asleep around 8pm from sheer exhaustion - no kidding. My knees and feet hurt so bad I thought I was never going to walk again. Basically, every time the dispatcher tried to push me over my limits, I'd get too tired in the evening to recuperate and the next day I was without gas altogether. So the natural conclusion from all this is that if I want to continue doing messenging, I should not bike more than 3 days per week and get a proper rest to be in good shape for every 3-day marathon.
But this company only wants full-time bikers - so I guess they will have to disappear from my life.

*

On top of which I am being tortured and martyrized by a violent and desperate desire to move out from this appartment - because there's some sort of house-devil here that obviously wants my death - or something very similar to that description. It's a fucking House of Usher at this point. What tortures me really is that I feel so totally powerless to find any other place in this goddam town I might want to live in. This is because my financial resources are terribly limited and the kind of appartments that are currently available in my price-range are nothing but awful stinking holes, many times worse than the the flat I currently occupy. The very thought of it makes me go up the wall quite literally - it's a sort of unending humiliation. My vision of the situation is so hopeless and repugnant, that I get to cry and rave just from the thought of it.

Basically it's the typical western torture-by-powerlessness - a sort of prison-like situation created by certain social-conditions.

This, by the way, only serves to amplify my general perception of unredeemed solitude and personal powerlessness from which I have no hope of ever breaking out. The image that comes to mind is of a small animal caught in a bag, terrorized and pushing endlessly inside without any chance of escape. Normally this should end with the bag being lowered into a depth of water so that the animal might drown.

When?

*

I think I took this biker job as a way of trying to improve my personal status in my own eyes. So it was just a blind attempt at acquiring some sense of power and capability. But instead it turned out to be yet another grueling run through a thorny row - I don't really need the money that comes with it, it wasn't for money that I got into this in the first place.

Zodiac sign for this period: Desperation.

*

The mental depression I am experiencing is so physical I don't know if it's caused by my situation or just by something being wrong with me body - maybe quitting smoking left too much of a void. Because it wasn't just smoking that I quit, I quit a way of thinking/acting too, I broke some appeasing habits and false-hopes/illusions/mannierisms by letting go of smoking AND internet at the same time.

I broke something, some mould i've been in - the edges are jagged and cutting.

What I can say is that I've been suffering unremittingly for the last month and a half and all my violent gestures and actions are simply a way of trying to shake off this suffering - to run away, to turn away, to get out of this deadly hole I am in.

FUCK - I NEED DRUGS SO BAD!!!!

This is why people are on drugs all over the place - because how else would you relieve such a state of desperation?