I WAS STARTING TO get used to solitary confinement. I saw very few people: only my daughter and some people walking by the windows. Watching people walk by was of interest, because I wondered where are they walking to, and why do they even bother doing anything? What propels people forward? Are their minds like little magnets, radiating the next destination or coordinates, telling them that there is a reason they have to go there. “I must throw out the trash.” “I must take the car for inspection.” “Someone needs to give me a book.” This sort of mosaic of self-perpetuating behavior is then lumped under an umbrella called “life.” I have this kind of skewed perspective, because my life was more or less a bed, and a shower, a toilet, a plate with some food on it. My thought processes didn’t really exist, or were not happening on a continuum. I made the most of an online app to have food delivered to me through this. But I was glad to go to the shop. Sadly, my friend Gunna was not in the apteek as I passed by. I like Gunna. She only has to smile to me and I feel better. I keep little people around in my own trajectories like these, people I hang onto in a way, safe people, people who lift my spirits and Gunna is one of them. They were doing an inventory in there, and the apothecary was closed for the day. At the shopping center, all went well, except that I had to listen to really bad pop songs. One of them I have heard many times. There is a repetitive piano figure and some man sort of whines over it. I can’t remember one lyric from the song. There are a lot of rough characters in Viljandi. I don’t understand how people can drink and smoke and fight themselves to infinity and back and still manage to make it through a day. I saw some of these characters in a parking lot. Thanks to doctor’s orders, I kept a very safe distance. When I came out of the shop, I saw a local folk musician was advertising a performance called “accordion meditation.” I thought, of all the weird ideas I had during my illness, I would have never linked accordion music and meditation. There was something unique about that. Damp, gray weather here, reminding me of Cork, Ireland, many years ago. The pool halls and the beer halls and the broken faces in the toilets. It’s a tough life in Ireland and it’s a tough life in Estonia. It’s just a tough life.
north! 