SATURDAY, LITTLE TO REPORT. Dreams were truncated, something about trying to assemble a rapid Covid-19 testing kit properly, with some foggy interludes in Finland again with all of those lookalike bearded lumberjack worker types (Finland haunts my psyche), and then being at a country house by a lake where both Brynhildr and the mother of my children were present at the same table. Brynhildr is, as you can imagine, quite set, quite voluptuous, quite strapping, quite terrifying. There was some slight tension there, you know. The women in my orbit make no bones about having the men they like when they like them, and as many of them as they like, but there is always that territorial aspect about who controls whom, or who can make him do her bidding when. That was the tension in that dream. Sometimes I think the whole of my existence is at mercy to the acrobatics of women’s hormonal sunburst cycles and fraught moon tides. The whole ride of life, from bloody birth to the last orgasmic gasp. There is no escaping this cruel and desperate fate. Like the Beatles, I run from crowds of screaming fan girls wetting themselves, fist fighting and crying, crushing in the roofs of getaway cars, trying to cut off a lock of my hair. I hide myself in the venue basement, or around the corner, but there is just no escaping the sturm und drang of the feminine mystique. Which begs the question, do I bring anything myself to the equation, or am I just an innocent bystander? Is there give and take or just pull, pull, and more pull? There is a really splendid sun-kissed euphoria to the act of lovemaking, as it’s called, to be taken in, and then … well, and then what? Memories, memories. In the summer, I dreamt of this feat in the forests with Brynhildr and some kind of spider or other insect took a few bites out of me. My undercarriage was swollen for days. Everything was double the usual size. How do I get myself into these things? Why can’t I say no? November light outside now. There is often so little light on these days that there is no way to qualify the days or the time or the night. It’s just one long tapestry of gray. You can do anything in November, sleep until 2 pm, work until 2 am. It’s part of the general disorientation. Dark inky octopus black. The black is thick and all around you. You can’t see your own hands. That’s how thick the November dark is. It makes one dream of summer lake swimming and lovemaking in the forests. Even if you have to suffer through a few insect bites.

I DON’T KNOW much about my grandfathers. Or rather, I know probably a lot of things about them, but I don’t know much about the experience of being around my grandfathers, especially when they were younger because all of the people who were around them when they were young are dead. My father’s father was born in 1916. That was during the First World War. And my mother’s father was born in 1923. That was during Prohibition. Their children have varying memories of them, and like most things, people don’t bother to talk about the dead. There is no great circle around the fires where memories are fondly recalled, perhaps with some teachable moment baked in. In the case of my maternal grandfather, Frank, there is a good reason for this: he died tragically at the age of 44 of a heart attack, creating a hole or wound in the family. In the case of my paternal grandfather, Jerry, the reason is just that we don’t gather, period, except maybe at funerals, and so there are few moments to share or impart any memories. But I do know that circa 1960, my father’s father, Jerry, that sly rascal, would bring home a pizza and watch Sea Hunt starring Lloyd Bridges as retired Navy diver Mike Nelson, with my father. I can imagine those rainy nights, the music on the car radio, the hot pizza lifted from the box, the black-and-white television. I say Jerry was a sly rascal, because when I was a boy Jerry, now an old man who walked with a cane, would hide bags of coins in his office and then tell me to find them. If I found the money stash, I was allowed to keep it and Jerry would give me one of those heavy grandpa hugs, where they slap you on the back several times as if you are choking. That Jerry, he had tricks up his sleeves. I know that Jerry would take my youngest uncle to see Jimmy the Cricket sometimes, a local bookie, who had a lawn ornament store as a front for his betting business. I’m rather fond of these tales of my grandfather, stealing around in his car, heading to the bookie to bet on the ponies and then checking the paper the next morning to see what his winnings might be. I did also find a newspaper clipping years ago from 1947 regarding my maternal grandfather Frank’s older brother, Vinny, who was arrested for racketeering with three other Long Island men. This filled me with strange pride. See, the men of my family had no respect for law and order. My mother’s father doesn’t seem to have been the gambling type. He had an artistic inclination and worked for a company that sold print machines. To make some extra money, he would help clients with their print orders. On the weekend, he would make a visit to the stationary store to pick up the Sunday paper. Then he would pop into the bakery for donuts or rolls. At night, he would be up late while everyone slept, doing paperwork on his typewriter, listening to West Side Story or the Everly Brothers on his record player. These kinds of details I love: what music people were listening to. Supposedly my grandfather Jerry used to love James Brown. I can imagine them simultaneously, one listening to “Maria” from West Side Story and tinkering with a typewriter at night, and the other listening to “Night Train” and navigating the back streets in his car, pizza on the passenger side seat, wondering if that big bet would pay off. Maybe it would. Maybe his pick would be the big winner in tomorrow’s race. And that’s really how those stories end for now, with the sound of typing and “Night Train.” “Miami, Florida. Atlanta, Georgia. Raleigh, North Carolina.” The horns blaring. That’s how those stories end.

• 

• 

• 

THERE IS A SMALL CHURCH in Viljandi painted white and blue. It has a glinting gold cross that one can see from far away. For me, this sacred place has always provided a taste of the Orient, with walls engulfed in hefty boughs of red-orange pihlakad or mountain ash in autumn. I imagine that on a hot summer day, one might find peacocks and other exotic birds of the East behind its gates. The gates protect the church from outsiders, as does a sturdy wood door. I know this because I went there on Sunday to attend mass. When I arrived at the door, I could hear them praying inside.

The reason I returned was because I saw two old friends one morning at the café. These are long-time converts to the Orthodox faith. Our youngest is their goddaughter. I was taken into the church when she was Christened years ago, which was a special time for me, because I got to choose my given name as my church name, after the revered 2nd century Greek saint, Ioustinos. As such, I am one of a few people who can be said to have chosen their own name.

These pilgrims had just attended an Orthodox Christian wedding at the church, they said, where the bride had the crown placed on her head and was serenaded with song. I have been to a church wedding before and I have enjoyed it. Of course they appeared at the moment that I happened to be denouncing Christianity to a friend. “Because if you translate these words literally,” I was saying, “Christianity starts to sound like some sort of vampire cult. Drink my blood, eat my body? This is like cannibalism!” My friend mostly agreed. “And what about these angels? Who thought that up, and who thought that was more believable than Poseidon ruling the seas or Zeus taking the form of a swan?” 

Obviously, I had plummeted out of the faith. What did we even believe in before Christianity? I wondered aloud that day. That was a good question. I had read that the Baltic Finns, for example, believed that the world was attached to the heavens through the branches of a tree of life, and that the constellations were leaves on this tree. There was also the erotic fresco unearthed recently at Pompeii, the one that depicted Leda, the Queen of Sparta, who had intercourse with Zeus, who had taken the form of a swan and produced triplets. Something about the archaeologists’ brush dusting away volcanic ash from the fresco resonated. That buried under all these centuries of Christian ash was another set of beliefs, one with stories just as compelling. But these are not the kinds of thoughts you impart to good Christian friends, who are kind and who believe. Their saintly appearance let me know that Christianity was not going to let me off so easily with my tree of life and Greek gods. They told me of the wedding at the church and I told them how I liked that church.

“But this church, do you ever go inside of it?” one of my friends asked me.

“I did go in,” I said. “Once.”

“How was it?”

“It was cold. The church is heated by a wood furnace. And there the priest stood in his black robe, his beard flowing, tending to the furnace, with the sounds of the firewood crackling.” 

My friends liked this story, but it left me feeling cold indeed. Was it time to go back? The question began to haunt me.

Then one day soon after, I decided to go for a walk. It happened to be the autumn equinox, a weird, hazy day, and I was walking by that same church when two young women came down the street. I immediately noticed one of the women was very beautiful. She had eastern blue eyes, what the Estonians call piilusilm, and hair that dangled around her like lush branches. 

I only looked at her for a second, and then, when she passed, she looked back at me. As I said, it was a strange day, and I noticed then that she was all dressed in blue, the same blue of the church. She was dressed in the church colors and was standing in front of the church! Who was this woman? I hoped that she was not a high school student. That would be depressing. No, she seemed too mature. Who really knew? These occurrences happened every day now, and it made no sense to hang on to them one way or the other. Still, I liked that moment. I liked the way she looked at me. I felt that I could lie with her for all eternity in some kind of paradise full of gold crosses, peacocks, and that strong church incense from the East. Some kind of new life seemed to rise up and out of that moment, fresh buds blooming into yellow flowers blossoming into the wildest tree of life. Was it God’s love? Or had the mighty Zeus felt especially charitable that day?

Whatever it was, it felt wonderful.

LAST NIGHT, I had something like a panic attack. I was on the couch when it overwhelmed me. It’s a mix of anxiety and dread. I am not sure why the mind likes to replay a greatest hits of the most difficult moments of one’s life. All of those wounds, wounds I can never openly discuss with anyone, really. The tendency of well-wishing listeners is to brush away the concerns of others. People like to say, “That is the past,” as if that means something. If you are still troubled by something that happened in the past, a terse statement like, “That’s all history” doesn’t really help much. The fact is, some people are traumatized. Be it by a real, physical accident, or, let’s say, uncontrollable changes wrought by the merciless gods, some things just don’t sit right inside of us, some things haunt us, some things fill us with dread, despair, anxiety, and panic. So the key here is not to ignore the panic or trauma, but to accept that it is now part of your life, and to live with it and live through it. The same way a knee or shoulder injured years ago in a game can still ache from time to time, one’s traumas or anxieties or pains can lurk and manifest themselves, sometimes sharply, painfully, for a small amount of time. Maybe it’s an evening, or a couple of days. Usually they subside, but you can’t just write it off as “but that all happened so long ago.” It’s a white-gray day here in Viljandi. Lots of late October mist and fog. I think I lived through yesterday’s panic though. My ship righted itself and sailed on. What a nightmare, for sure. For those of you who have never felt this, I never want you to know how it feels. Stay secure under your warmest blankets. Tell yourself there’s no need for worry. It was all just yesterday.

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.

MORNING LIGHT, SUNLIGHT. Sunlight comes through my window. I slept so deeply and so soundly that I was certain that I had slept half the day. But when I summoned the strength to grasp my phone and read the time, it said it was still just 8.51. Our homes here are still heated by wood furnaces. There is no turning of knobs, pushing of buttons. Fortunately, last night, I discovered a whole stash of dry firewood in a chest next to the fireplace, filled with old newspapers too. This meant that I did not have to go outside. It was very damp at night. In the morning, it dropped below freezing, and turned all the moisture to frost. In the morning, I did go outside. The light and air felt good on my face. The town felt somehow reassuring. It reminds me of a maritime ferry town. Unfortunately though there is just a lake here, and there is no reassuring blast of ferry horn to announce departures and arrivals, or especially thick fog. There is something liberating about living seaside, and something arresting about being landlocked. I shouldn’t despair. In my dream, I went back to my university with my friend Raoul and his mother, who looked like the actress Sally Field. I developed some kind of crush on Sally Field in the dream, which I suppressed, because one is not supposed to be attracted to his friend’s grandmotherly mother. Nii ei tohi. We wandered the halls of the university, but everything had changed, and only the basic layout of the place remained. “It must have been nice to go here,” Sally Field said, and I agreed, except that it didn’t really look like the place I had attended, and none of the people who were once here remained. All of that had been reupholstered, as it were. There was more dreamblur. Trying to escape from a woman who kept pursuing me, and a Japanese psychologist who was waiting for me in his office, but I never managed to get there. Instead, on the way to the office, someone asked me about a classmate of mine, called Buddy (really, in real life) and I commenced to tell the tale of prom night, and how we all went out to the Hamptons and got furiously drunk, and that the last time I had seen Buddy, he was sitting beside a swimming pool the following morning, drinking some bottled water, cool and hungover. That really was the last time I saw him, or heard of him. Like many classmates, other than some postgraduate sightings, Buddy vanished. And that is the way it should be.

AFTER THE ILLNESS, the mind sputters back to life like a greasy old engine. You are not your thoughts, but your thoughts try to make themselves you. Little geysers, little cascades of ideas, fragments, obligations, ejaculating into the air. Your mind tells you to get out of bed and make coffee, when your body wants no such thing. I don’t think it’s a wise thing to trust the mind. Don’t trust your mind. Don’t let it tell you that tomorrow is Sunday, and the day after Sunday is Monday, which is a working day. The body is wiser, let it direct you. The body has no use for days. As my little eyes, my tiny windows reopen on the world, all I see is incomprehensible. A mass demonstration today against vaccinations and masks and other restrictions in Tallinn, Estonia. With the amount of Estonian flags on display, you would think that Konstantin Päts himself had risen from the safety of his mossy plot out in the Forest Cemetery and proclaimed again independence. After that, some health official assuaging the public that if you are vaccinated, and you get ill, your illness will be mild. “For a vaccinated person, the disease does not quite qualify as a common cold, but it is significantly safer and does not cause severe illness.” I guess this all boils down to how you rank severe. Watching these arguments, I begin to think about what an argument even is. An argument is a string of connected thoughts in your waking, functional mind. But when you are occupied by the sickness, the ability to process these kinds of linked thoughts crumbles. You can’t have an argument when you do not know who you are. Your life, your consciousness — because they are more or less the same thing — they exist outside of thoughts and arguments. Just as a virus is a biological entity, we too are rather curious biological entities. Thanks to a cozy relationship between my mother and father some cold winter night in the middle years of the Carter Administration, my own entity was launched, shot straight across the moonscape of existence. It’s hard for me to communicate in words at this point, but after waking up from a blurry tiring mess, watching people shout at each other about masks while waving national flags, or having an official tell me how my sickness is, just seems irrelevant. I am going to watch the rest of Casino Royale. It’s a good film. Wish me luck.

DAY NUMBER UNKNOWN, second day in isolation. According to the health authority, who was kind enough to call me personally yesterday, upon receipt of my positive test, I probably became infected on or about the 15th of October, as my symptoms presented on the 17th. This could have been at the viewing of No Time to Die, but I really don’t know. People think they can game this thing with unlimited booster shots, rubber gloves, masks, sprays, supplements. Distancing, perhaps, is the only measure that can keep it away, as it travels from person to person. But, as Ian Malcolm says in Jurassic Park, “life will find a way.” This is another reason why I don’t necessarily want to discuss the situation with friends and acquaintances. It invites second guessing. “But did you wear two pairs of socks, instead of one pair?” At the beginning of this pandemic, I did think that the populist right, combined with the eco-left, were the most out to lunch, but at some moment in the summer, I started to realize how reprogrammed much of the mainstream center had become, as many people became walking infomercials for vaccination efforts. These are educated, experienced people. It was not that they were wrong per se, it was how they were interacting with information. We have lived through the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, not to mention the War on Terror. One might think that we would have retained some independent reasoning, some natural skepticism, survival tools for navigating confusing times, but, alas, not really. At some point, it became increasingly easy not to think, and to buy into popular narratives. As such, I will probably be told that my symptoms are mild, even though they are not mild at all. Because the symptoms should be mild. It’s rather frightening terrain. Zombies of the Living Dead. “But the man on TV said …” Oh well, into my second hot cup of instant coffee. I was lying in bed thinking about a concept I had conjured, throwing love. The other day in the café, I had encountered a really beautiful female soul, sitting there all in pink, and rather than do the usual “man on the hunt” thing (“Hey, can I add you on social media?”) I just decided to let the love feeling grow in me and walk by her slowly, without even looking at her. My belief is that people are sensitive, and they will sense this kind of energy, so that when I walked by, “I threw my love.” And that was all. No words needed to be shared, or awkward interruptions made. I kind of liked this woman. She struck a nice balance between being understated, delicate, but also interesting, and a touch võimas, or powerful. I like powerful women. If you are going to bask in the rays of the sun, then give me the brightest, hottest, most terrible sun. That is the kind of man I am. At night, during a storm, I dreamt I was in a movie theater with my first-year college girlfriend, and we were both nude beneath a blanket. Her roommate was there too. Then we kissed and she asked me to go get a coffee. I wandered the halls of that building, but the coffee machine was broken, and while a fully catered buffet was being set up in an adjacent ballroom, the coffee hadn’t been boiled yet. Which is why this hot cup of instant coffee tastes so well on this sunny second day in isolation. At last, I have it. Behold the cup!

LAST NIGHT, I watched Quantum of Solace. This is a 2008 film, the second to star Daniel Craig as James Bond. I had seen it once before. With a running time of 107 minutes, it runs tightly, and yet it is a perfect film. I can see no problem with it. Ian Fleming actually left future scriptwriters with loads of material, and “Quantum of Solace” was a short story of his, but for some reason, nobody wants to make film versions of these stories like “The Hildebrand Rarity,” “Risico,” or “007 in New York.” From what I understand, the only aspect from the short story that was borrowed for the film was the title. This time the villain is a very believable nefarious businessman named Dominic Greene, played by Matthieu Amalric, who schemes to take over Bolivia’s water supply. (One thing I rather enjoy is how many actors who turn up in Wes Anderson’s films also appear in the Bond world. Both Amalric and Lea Seydoux appear in The Grand Budapest Hotel. This begs the question, now that Craig is done with Bond, will he turn up in future Anderson movies?). One aspect of the film that was nice to see was the technology, what smartphones looked like back in 2008. I don’t think I had a smartphone capable of transmitting emails until about 2009 or 2010. Back then, life was more “Did you get my email?” Rather than, “Why didn’t you reply to my email?” One thing I learned from this film is how short, well-written dialogue, or well-blocked scenes, can provide ample back story without slowing the pace of the narrative. This is actually one reason why I watch these kinds of action films: to become a more engaging writer. Yesterday I went and got my PCR test done for Covid-19. I walked up to the market and stood in line in the rain with my umbrella. This morning the result was positiivne. I have not disclosed my vaccination status, because of how ugly that issue has become. I do not trust either vaccine advocates or so-called antivaxxers because they have no respect for people’s personal boundaries. Just because you got a shot doesn’t give you the right to stick your nose in someone else’s face and lecture them about “science.” And just because you have watched a night’s full of YouTube conspiracies doesn’t make you a better authority. It’s been disgusting, the whole thing. But, let’s just say, I have been fully able to access public events, restaurants, and cafes here in Estonia, where people are checked at the door, and there is the illusion of health safety, and here I am sprawled out on the couch for days, watching my consciousness dissolve into the air and imagining my blanket is an Aston Martin DB5. This has been a full-fledged flu, and there has been nothing so mild about it. That being said, having to lie around and watch Bond movies isn’t the worst fate, now is it? I might try Casino Royale. I don’t know if I can bring myself to watch Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) drown again at the end, but, as I said, if you leave the film dry eyed, you’re just not satisfied.