YESTERDAY WAS independence day, but a mix or combination of the two. Estonia’s takes place in dreary doldrum winter, the 24th of February, America’s in hot and humid July, the 4th, but this one was the Estonian celebration but in the hot summer. There was an old white house, with many floors and rooms, and there was a crowd of people there. Miss Cloud and the Designer were there, but they ignored me, and I eventually stumbled into a bedroom with a rather lean, classical beauty, tanned from head to toe, who was reading some kind of artbook, perhaps a Matisse or Modigliani collection. She was completely nude, with a towel wrapped around her head, and I attempted coitus but no dice, she just yawned and kept on reading about Matisse, and I dismounted and withered away. Later, I found myself in a nearby house when a tornado swept across the land. I could see its plumes of wind, and the sky lit up white as the house vibrated. I locked myself in a bathroom with another woman, and we dislodged the large wooden door and turned it into a sled. We used this door-sled to escape from the house in the midst of the white whirlwind. July had turned back to February and there was snow on the landscape. We rode that sled all the way back to the first house, like Timothy Dalton and that cellist in The Living Daylights, where the long, lean, and ultra-bored Matisse lady lied sprawled in her bed, gently turning those pages, as if nothing was amiss. We debated returning the stolen door-sled, but decided against it. There had been so much devastation because of the great tornado. Nobody would even notice that it was gone.

WE USED TO BE, by some metric, people. Or individuals. Or whatever term we once used to refer back to ourselves. These days though, we are increasingly droids, profile images, blocks of text, focused on achievement and efficiency. We all partake, we all want to work. We need money. We do it. Yet at some point there is the great crossover, where you leave your body and soul behind. The internet of things shapes all things, rewires, reframes, recomputes. You are no longer you exactly. We once took photos to see how they might come out. Or to commemorate a family event. Now we even go places to take photos so that we have something new to share on social media. Things are crooked, ühesõnaga, in a word. Things are not as they should be, or at least there is that lingering feeling of 0s and 1s, of digital fuzz, detached, divorced from blood and biology. A weird dream last night, a big sea, and lots of people, circumstances. Nothing I can recall now, many hours after waking. No sex though this time. Hate to disappoint.

YNOFB, why no Facebook? It is rotting my brain, seriously, and I just can’t even stand to look at it anymore. I have become like that writer in Bag of Bones who gets physically ill each time he stares at a computer monitor. And so I yanked the plug and set my self free. Account deactivated. Gone! What is interesting is how married people are to it, and how they come out of the woodwork to try and drag you back in. It’s puzzling for them, that someone might not do what they do. I don’t know. I’m just not feeling it anymore. Will I be back? Probably. But not happily.

I MET JAAK JOHANSON few times, and several times during Viljandi Folk. I recorded some notes while I was working on a chapter for My Viljandi about the festival. These are from July 2019. // I was seated at a table when he just happened to appear across from me. “But Jaak. You’re so much older than me, but you look so young,” I said. “How do you do it?” “Simple,” he answered. “I breathe very slowly.” Jaak’s people are from Viljandi area. He has deep roots in the soil here, but they were actually gypsy traders. “They came here with the Swedish king in the 1700s,” he says. “And they liked it so much that they stayed behind!” One can see why they liked it. Behind his brushy bush of dark hair, one can see the light on the rooftops from that almost Islamic crescent of moon in a light blue night sky, crossed with the spire of St. John’s Church. Later, during a concert on Kaevumägi, Johanson comes out on stage with a bag over his head. It turns out that he is the guest of honor. // In memory of Jaak Johanson (1959-2021).

SITTING AROUND watching winter sport on TV the other day, I couldn’t help but be captivated by the skiers, and especially the women cross country skiers, and especially the youthful one from Sweden with the gems of eyes and tuffs of hair (and freckles and charisma). What a striking beauty. You know, when she reaches the finish line, pulls off the hat, sweat all over, glistens in the sun. It’s like the raw sugar juice off a maple. Then I thought, there are so many other women in this world. Not just the ones across the street, or the ones down the lane, or the ones up around the bend. There are so many of them, and they are all so different, and they are all so interesting. I redoubled my own efforts to ski cross country in the meantime, because I was never instructed as to how. At the ski shop, I learned my own were the wrong length. I had almost no idea what I was doing, but have done it anyhow. I had them waxed. It was time to become more real about it. I probably owe a small part of that edge over the edge to seeing others devote themselves. A lot of clarity comes from rote physical exertion. It burns off the worries, thoughts, trauma. There is peace in it. The peace of the winter. I am grateful to her now that I think of it. I’m grateful to that svensk athlete. She gave me a piece of my life back.

I’VE BEEN DOWN SO MANY of these streets before, though it’s easy to get lost back here in this new part of town. Light falling snow drifts down in thick wet white chunks at 1 in the morning on a Monday, officially, the start of the work week. A world or life of excommunication in a cold place that doesn’t even know the meaning of the word. Snow drifting, snow wind rustling the house lights, some Christmas lights still up, lanterns on the street corners, lanterns in the windows, all covered in wind, night, and snow. So quiet in the black of the winter, so silent, not even dogs barking. Just nothing, just deathly silence, the silence of the windows, the silence of the people you thought were your friends. When she moved here, she did something wrong, and when she did something wrong, her friends dropped her. They refuse to even speak to her, and everything she did to unwrong her wrong only made it wronger, trapped like an animal. There must be another way forward than this kind of village small-town hell-bound mindset. What you did. What you said. How you said it. How you did it. That thing you said, that thing you did, that way in which you did and said it. Village codes violated, a grotesque breaching of all normal customs, a disgrace. Nightmare lanes. Walking and walking. The harrowing voices ringing like swampland birds of prey. “It’s not normal. It’s just not normal.” The Christians killed pagans, burned witches, pressed men to death, severed heads, hands, alighted political enemies at the stake, and sent many thousands to die in pointless wars in the Holy Land. They were a violent rueful lot. The pagans did mostly the same. But if there is any base, põhi, grounding of empathy, altruism, charity, goodwill, humility, it can’t be found here. This is the land of E, E is for ego. That thing you said. That thing you did. That way you did it. A turn of the corner. All still silent and peaceful. The public is sleeping in its beds. The snow is still drifting. There shall be peace in town again, at least until daybreak.

“Well, I think Presley, he got a whole thing going. I’m not very interested in Elvis Presley. He made some very good records early on, when he was still interested in his profession. But he lost interest in his career a long time ago. It’s a very impersonal sort of thing. Presley’s records are very impersonal and he has no feeling behind them. I wouldn’t bother to listen to Elvis Presley these days. I just wouldn’t bother. As far as I’m concerned, he’s of no importance in the pop music world whatsoever.”

— Rolling Stones’ guitarist Brian Jones on Swedish National Radio, 1 April 1965

ARGUING WITH SOME STRANGERS about when exactly Russia slipped into illiberalism, when was it, was it with the tanks sent against parliament (’93), or when Yeltsin danced on stage and defeated what’s his name, that revanchist Communist (’96), or that strange day when some unassuming weasel named Putin was appointed president while everyone was waiting for Y2K to melt reality as we knew it? Lurking in the corners, the cartoon villain, ready to spring forth. Maybe it never was free to begin with? Stanley Tucci was there too, visiting other actors at Ugala Theatre in Viljandi. He wished them all a successful hooaeg or season. “May the odds be ever in your favor.” Later, he enjoyed some apple-marzipan truffles at the Green House Café, my treat. Quite tasty, he agreed.