A tool shed, said to be the site where in past years two men made their exit from this world,

November 22, 2111

As per blog of November 20, the ultra-nationalist Latvians have failed, because they have failed to understand the profound difficulties of maintaining the Latvian language as a projection of a Latvian religion, and because they have failed to extend the period of time available for a purely nationalist solution by failing to facilitate Latvia’s economic development and prosperity.

The failure of Latvian ultra-nationalists is their failure to understand Latvia’s geopolitical potential. They fail to see that their geopolitical potential is not for them alone to solve, but that they must perceive the geopolitical advantages of their given territory and of the territories of surrounding nations and be able to facilitate and mature the geopolitics of all.

The geopolitics of Latvia is not about the RIX of Riga or Riga as a shipping port. While these may be important elements in the picture puzzle, a more important element may be the Riga stock exchange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riga_Stock_Exchange . The latter is a Riga institution that receives hardly any attention. Why?

The reason for the failure of the Riga stock exchange (NASDAX OMX Riga) is, for one, that it is part of the NASDAQ network. Centered in New York, USA, NASDAQ is a trough and through a Western oriented imperial institution. Its Riga exchange is extension to the edge of the world.

NASDAQ and other western institutions are working toward absorbing the Rest of the World into the Western World some time in the future. The “some time”-clock when on Western time is actually on Catholic Time, a camouflaged Crusade led by market interests, may strike noon tomorrow or a hundred years from now, but the clock does not know the word “never”. For Latvia this is a crucial presumption, one that it ought not ever have accepted as a matter of principle, not even if a Western world were to eventually become the world of tomorrow.

The uncertainty of whether the world is to become “Western” is paralyzing to anyone on whom falls the burden. The uncertainty of whether the burden is a weight for a day or a hundred years is as paralyzing on all of the days. Being defined as being a border town on the Eastern border of a presumed Western Empire and finding acquiescence to that role in the Foreign Ministry of Latvia, makes NASDAQ OMX Riga a lesser exchange. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1jhF7KlESE .

As sharp an eye Latvians may have for an investment, when transferred to Latvia, said eye is prone to make misjudgements, because hunger for money soon spells “rapshi” which are beans to make diesel oil from.  The Lithuanians still have the cattle and the nuclear energy plant. While the latter is a risk that will never find insurance for the year 101, for the moment deludes the mind and keeps its focus off reality. This brings Riga and Latvia to a stand still. 

Another reason why the West blocks the way of Latvia developing in the geopolitical direction best suited for it is NATO. The military alliance--at one time a useful tool in opposing the Soviet Union--endeavours to become a tool of Western expansion today. When in agreement with such a policy, Riga cannot fail remain but a border town. Even more, Riga cannot pretend to achievement in the lifetime of any Latvian living today if the Latvian Foreign Ministry keeps cracking empty nuts.

I have already noted the failure of the Latvian ultra nationalists to recognize the endearing word—so essential to and such a major part of the Latvian language—to re-engrain itself in the language after the ultras have had their ways with it. So far, one must conclude that the “Latvian language” of Latvian public media is not capable of projecting the language as it was created by the proto-Latvian people's populist sentiment (subjective agreement among all of the users-imitators of the language) does not re-absorb Latvian as the language was understood by their forebears, but goes its own “ultra” liberal path. I call this the zionationalist or post-proto-Latvian path.

The failure of post-proto-Latvians to further the cause of the development of their language [ultimately a mental kind of seizure with regard to the faculty of mimesis] is the result of isolationism. By presuming to extract the Latvian language from the hardships it would face and would have to endure if it was to survive on its own—at the same time redefining Latvian as an language that agrees to exclude all endearing words—is “ingenious”, a word that spells the ultimate of disasters.

What will survive of Latvians as they conceived themselves in earlier times is a cancerous cell, because as it attempts to restore itself to preeminence, it necessarily faces becoming an isolated and vulnerable cell. There are cases of government supported languages before the Latvian language takes this course. The Latin of the Catholic Church is one such language that can be restored with the help of a dictionary. Moreover, the endearing word casts its psychic spell over many languages, not least Russian and German.

This is why this writer is for a Latvia out of NATO (unless it includes Russia), all the languages competing for dominant positions necessarily conceiving of themselves as instruments of the middle ground (between the East and West)—of which the bet on the one most suitable for bringing economic development to Latvia and Latvians is English.

However, if  the isolationists prevail, there is the “Rent Out Riga to the Highest Bidder Program”; the one plan that will move The Capital of Latvia to Jelgava.

Besides paying off monies Latvia owes the IMF and ECB, and offering a percentage of Riga’s income to Latvian pensioners, Riga (rented for a hundred years to Germany or China) could as additional incentive offer to dig a navigable canal for ships (as the water level is sure to rise as the end of this century comes closer) from Jelgava to the Baltic sea.

If such a geopolitical program were to appear on the world stage, it is likely to become an attractive way to mime (and mine by way of mimetic activity) success. Such an alternative is surely more interesting than the sterile ultra nationalist mime that only pretends to it

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A tool shed, said to be the site where in past years two men made their exit from this world,

November 25, 2111

A major tragedy of the post proto-Latvian Latvia is the failure of mimetic transference of customs, behavior, and above all a sense of community between generations. There are a number of ways of measuring this failure among Latvians http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/mimesis.htm . The failure of the presaent to grasp the past, it is a common experience among Latvians living in Latvia and Latvians coming to visit Latvia from abroad.

There are a number of ways to explain the failure of the mimesis among Latvians.

For this writer, the a ‘small’ way this takes place became manifest, when in 1940 at the age of seven, he was forced to move by Soviet occupation of Latvia to a countryside farmstead of a relative. Having up to that time lived only in Riga and familiar with the the beach suburb of Riga, known as Jurmala http://sanatorij.lv/mce/uploads/tmceimages/More.jpg , the life in the Latvian countryside was a totally new experience. Above all, it was a sentient experience, what with the  farm animals, of which above all the horses http://www.missvelvet.com/bimages/farm.jpg were the ones which put one in touch with what  even today we call “horse power” or for that matter “horse smell http://www.smellshorsey.com/2007/11/does-anything-s.html ”.

While Latvians claim to be great fans of the theatre, which is a mimetic art par excellence, one wonders where mimesis has disappeared to in the every day life among Latvians today. One may safely say that until the occupation of Latvia by the Soviets, Latvian writers, playwrights, and artists projected their sense of identity in mimetic works of art.. Though there were plenty of differences that separated the works of Rainis, from Skalbe, Virza, Blaumanis, Peksena http://www.biblioteka.valmiera.lv/lat/piedavajam/literati/151 , to my own grandfather’s play that centered on instructing society of the dangers of alcoholism and lack of motivation it resulted in, the works were embraced by similar concerns that allowed the public to identify with the artists and their work as having something to do with their community and society. One of the connecting ties of mimesis in the late 19^th  and early part of the 20^th was agrarian populism, which was based on life in a more or less stable commune (saime), something akin to, but not quite as intangible as a household http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household  of a nuclear family of our day.

The art of mimesis became untied from the Latvian agrarian environment and became  bound to the city in the course of the Soviet occupation of Latvia. While this writer does not claim any great familiarity with the Latvian theatre of today, the latter has, indubitably, removed itself to the urban environment, where influenced by globalization, Latvia's own government acts to denationalize Latvia through subscribing to (copying) a globalized market economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_economy .

To a Latvian returning from abroad in the 2010s upon first reacquaintance with Latvia [Riga actually, because its environs are where the airplane lands] the most impressive thing (though not necessarily immediately apparent to the critical faculties) is the absence of anything particularly reminiscent of or identifiable as being Latvian in the nature of the site. In short, Latvia does not project itself as a place where a Latvian born in the 1930s (suffienciently far back to see Latvia in perspective) would identify with.

There are  a number of reasons why mimesis has failed  Latvians so thoroughly and completely.

The first reason that comes to mind is the Soviet economy, which was if not a market economy, certainly a money economy. If money was still in somewhat short supply during the Ulmanis regime (what with silver 5 lati Laima monikers), the Soviet regime, given its socialist ideology, was sufficiently large to flood the pockets of every Latvian with money. It was this flood of money—money being a tool of mimesis to the degree that money, paper money especially, can be mechanically copied and printed, ad infinitum.

As money made every agrarian populist feel himself ever less distinct from  a citizen in Riga (or Moscow for that matter), the human instinct for mimesis succumbed to the lassitude in attitude common to a modern society’s impersonal, robotized and virtualist ways. The Latvians easily persuaded themselves to cease calling any portrayal of the figure of the Goddess Laima “Milda” instead. This is singularly notable with respect to the figure standing with three stars in her hands on top of the Monument of Freedom in Riga. The name of secularized “Milda” echoes to the popular song “Matilda”. It is here that we can see the proto-Latvian agrarian past  become an urban post-Latvian populist past.

The genie in the bottle of Latvian ultra nationalists secretly wishes to return to calling “Milda” as “Laima” the Goddess. While such an attempt is not taking place overtly, it is implicit in the ultra nationalist insistence that the Latvian language as currently used be  given an immortal existence (as defined by the Latvian Constitution). As every Latvian ought to instinctively know, the mimetic value of the Latvian language is imbedded in the “endearing word”, the word that turns a leaf through an inflection [njsh; akmens <akmentnjsh] into a leaflet.

The ability of language to directly engage itself in an act of mimesis is not unique to the Latvian language alone. Russian and German languages, too, have this facility.

However, since the language that is on the mind of the Latvian ultra nationlists is in not a facilitator of mimesis, one wonders over the presumption that overtakes those who do not know their language as a mimetic language, but whose Latvian is a carbon copy of the language spoken among bankers and in business circles. If the latter is a true reflection of the “culture” mirrored  back at the urban secularist mindset, it is a cold moon that mirrors the Sun back to Earth. While moonlight http://www.pureanimegallery.com/d/2102-2/the-sif-moonlight.jpg may be the light of romance for two sexually shy individuals, for a community of lovers meeting at all stages of its members’ lives, it may be a cold and icy light.

This blog necessarily ends with a question: may any language with little or no mimetic function (given that such a function was given it by its originators), be accepted for a legalistic quick-freeze? As demanded by those belonging to social circles whose aim it is to impose themselves on shoulders of Latvia by secular (albeit legalistically enunciated) force?

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November 26, 2111

One may argue that a language that fails to display mimetic activity is a “dead language”. Why then does the ultra nationalist Latvian party by the name of “Everything For Latvia” (Visu Latvijai) presents the proposition that being in possession of a “dead language” [secured a place in society by legalistic means (by legalistically excluding Russian) is better for Latvians than living with realities as a competing language?

Exclusionism is a tendency among most groups that feel themselves threatened or ultimately facing a minority role. One may add that this tendency is enlarged when it flies on the wings of previously successful jingoist tactics, which reduced the mimetic capacity of Latvians.

In Latvia—as this writer has pointed out in a series of blogs at http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/  exclusionism has manifested its regressive influence several times in history.

1.     was about the 13^th century (1209), when the Roman Church led two successful Crusades against arch-Christians. The pincer of one Crusade was against the Cathars in French Languedoc region. The other pincer was thrust in 1209 against the Arch-Christians in Jersika, in then of Livonia. Jersika, a colloquialism for Jerusalem, was the likely headquarters for the Johns of  Children of Johns as the Latvians still call themselves on Midsummer Day or the Johns Eve Festival

2.     took place with the arrival in Latvia of the Herrnhuters in the 18^th century (1732). A Christian Reform Movement The Brethren came to Latvia to reconstruct by living example. The Herrnhuters came to Livonia to stay and mix with the agrarian populists in the countryside, the very ones who carried on whatever was left of the Children of Johns movement untouched by the Inquisition led by the zealots from and of Rome. The Herrnhuters, the writer’s own ancestors among them, reconstituted some of the moral fibre of the proto-Latvian people; however, beginning the second half of the 19^th century, when the Lutheran Church began to feel threatened by the successes of the Herrnhuters, the arch-Christian Children of Johns among Latvians were further repressed.

3.     In 1873 as this http://www2.la.lv/lat/arhivs/vesture/latvijai_90/images/Foto200712/Karogs_LV1.jpg picture confirms, the flag of the 1^st Latvian Folk Festival shows its leader as John, a native arch-Christian priest, in those days likely an orthodox (Russian) priest among the agrarian populists. Known as the “Ligo Flag” or Ligo Karogs, the image first appeared in a book called by that name, re “Līgo”. The book was rapidly repressed, said on the orders of Russian authorities, but most likely egged on by the Germanic ‘Catsholic’ Lutheran Church. While Latvian historians do not cover this period in any detail, the ‘repression’ ascribed to the Russian tsar would have been among those curiosities, when a central authority acts against its own interests. According to Matthew Raphael Johnaon, an authority on the Russian Orthodox Church http://www.amazon.com/Third-Rome-Russia-Tsarism-Orthodoxy/dp/0974230308 , this was the time when the Russian tsar Nicholas I attempted to regain from the German oligarchs in Livonia some of the influence lost to them in earlier centuries. While Nicholas I failed in his effort, the Latvians through the loss of their agrarian priests (due to the actions of Nicholas I successor Alexander II) lost all connection to their ancient arch-Christian roots. Today the role of the priests of the Latvian language is presumed for themselves by ultra nationalists  with no in-depth understanding of their own language.

If there was not a little doubt about the wisdom of Latvian ultra rightists, one might suspect their attack on (concealed as defense of) the Latvian language hints at preceeding from and leading to a ‘deep event ending’ as recent events in Norway a la Breivik http://japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3590 , who, too, was concerned over the drift of the youth of Norway away from rigid adherence to nationalist orientation.

What is left over from a barn for pigs of Soviet times.

Garden path in what used to be a hospital.

November 19, 2111

Yesterday, besides writing my blog “November 18”, I also looked at a number of internet sites, one of which was http://www.apollo.lv/zinas/

An article that drew my attention was by Anda Rozukalne called “Mediju eksperte uzteic….” http://www.apollo.lv/portal/printit/256245

Translated into English, it means that “An expert on media praises the format of a new discussion program”. Ms Rozukalne http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nslce7NVKRE  is a professor of journalism at the Latvian University in Riga.

Professor Rozukalne praises a new program on LTV1. The program is called “Sastregumstunda” (rough translation: TrafficJamHour) is to replace a discussion program that was taken off the air a half a year ago. Called “Kas notiek Latvijā?” (What is happening in Latvia?) the predecessor to “Sastregumstunda” was led by Janis Domburs, a self-confident, sometimes brash and presumptuous, television correspondent. I missed the opening broadcast, because I was at the Valmiera Theatre watching Tennessee Williams’ “Orpheus Descending” (see blog “November 17” above).

Professor Rozukalne judges the first program (led by Gundars Reders) successful, “because it breaks away from the hereto accustomed format of interviewing a closed circle of politicians and experts.” (My transl.)

Unfortunately, in this bloggers view, the as if wider circle of participants draws questions only from an audience of invited guests, these guests consisting for the most part of young students and an unknown quantity of people off the street. In other words, the television viewer at home has no idea whether the audience is a turkey for real or merely stuffed.

I posted a response to the Apollo article, arguing that a positive judgment for the program is premature. I also criticized the interview formats of Janis Domburs (show no longer), Karlis Streips (show no longer), and Egils Zarins (my apologies, I misspelled as “Zagars” what ought to have been “Zarins”), whose show “The Week” is still on.

After I posted my letter, the article soon disappeared. Not only did the article disappear from the head, but was never placed in the sidebar. The side bar is where older news is customarily placed. When I looked for the article in the Archives, it was there, but could not be opened. This morning it opened, but the article appeared without the letters column attached which customarily is.

Yesterday, the following correspondence between an editor at Apollo, Janis Krevics, and myself:

On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:55:55 +0200 "Eso" wrote:
Labdien Olina kungs! Ari Buntes kundze.
(My translation follows. Here writes Antons Benjamins.

I read with interest the article by Anda Rozukalne, re “A Media Expert Praises a New LTV Discussion Program”. The article can be found at
www.apollo.lv/portal/printit_v2256245/0

I wrote a response to the Letters column. My thoughts were argumentative, because I write about the shortcomings of Latvian journalists. I mentioned the names of several journalists, some of who still work, some who no longer work in the Latvian media. I wrote under the pseudonym “zxzxs”’.
Shortly after my letter appeared in the Letters column, the article was removed from its headline position and could no longer be found in the side bar. When I discovered it in the Archives section, I could not open it, because apparently the editors had blocked access.

I would like to know why the article was blocked. Was it because of my letter? The article is noteworthy, unless of course criticism of any kind is interpreted as objectionable.

Thanking you in advance, Antons Benjamins
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The response from Mr. Krevics. My translation:

Good day! The article you mention has neither been removed, nor is it lost, nor has it been censured… it continues at the site. Yes, it is now in the Archive, because the site uses current news, but older news, such as are not especially noteworthy, can be found in the archives. http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/256245 Wishing you success in your endeavours (Veiksmi darbos!), Apollo news editor Janis Krevics

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To which I responded. My translation:

On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:23:59 +0200 "Eso" wrote:

Thank you, Mr. Krevics, for your response. Naturally, I do not know what you mean when you write “news not especially noteworthy”, because it is a subjective evaluation. It is generally accepted that all information that appears in public media is treated in the same routine fashion in order that there do not arise misunderstandings. Does a routine evaluation in fact show that Anda Rozukalne’s article is “news not especially noteworthy?” I will [therefore] continue to believe and say that the editors of Apollo treat their subjective judgements as objective in order to avoid the fact that censorship has occurred all the same. Have a nice evening.

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The response from Mr. Krevics. My translation:

Hello once more! My explanation—all news cannot be highlighted—some are more essential, some less. Those (news) which are less essential, logically are replaced with newer news. If in your view the choice by the editor is censorship, it is your interpretation. In the name of the editors, I categorically deny your assumption that censorship has occurred. In any case, also your view is important to us! Thank you once more! Success! Janis Krevics

……………………………………
This morning, I looked for the article in Apollo’s Archives once more. It is there, and it was no longer blocked. However, the Letters column has been removed though it is custom to keep them attached with the article that they are in response to. Since the Letters contain my letter, I necessarily conclude that all editors of Apollo (Mr. Krevics speaks in their name) are engaged in censorship.

Former hospital in Aloja.

Original at Clone Village Notes, re http://clonevillagenotes.blogspot.com/

Spiderman appears as if out of nowhere.

November 17, 2111

Story of Orpheus here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus  

The traditional version of the story of Orpheus has him fall in love with Eurydice, who is bitten by a serpent and dies. Orpheus descends to the Netherworld and is able to persuade the Gods to return her to him. The Gods agree on the condition that as Eurydice follows him back to the upper world, he will not once look back.

Just before exiting the Netherworld (in the very doorway between the two worlds), Orpheus forgets the condition and looks back. Eurydice vanishes for ever. My interpretation (among many no doubt) is that Orpheus’ descent is part of the act of mimesis.

No young lover’s dead partner is dead right off, but is living remainder, in this case, the musician Orpheus, continues forward on momentum, and the song of love he sings does not yet believe what has been witnessed. This is why the act of love, or being in love, and attachment continues on as imitation (as if real)—as mimesis—even though it is dead.

The trick of an act of mimesis is to do mimesis as if it is real, because if you imitate and do not “get into the skin” of the act, the act falls apart. One begins to doubt the reality of what one is doing and dies. If an actor or actress does not believe in the role they are playing, they do not make a good actor or actress.

In the days, when mimesis was yet more direct, egalitarianism (the mimesis of it) could not be expressed any other than tearing a piece of red cloth among twenty people in twenty pieces. The members of the team of Inca ball players who lost the game also lost their lives, something they know when they start the ball game.

This is another way of saying that if one does not get into the act and believes that Jesus has risen from the dead, one never rises for him- or  herself either. One  always remain unborn—at least for the Second time.

In Tennessee Williams play “Orpheus Descending”, an Italian immigrant who settles in the American South, buys a grape orchard and makes from the grapes wine. This identifies the Italian with Dionysus, the Greek God of merriment and sensual license. Dionysus gives the wine to a black man to drink, and he goes wild. When the people of the racist South hear of it, they burn the Italian’s house and vineyard. Dyonysus, dies in the fire.

Dyonysus is survived by his eighteen year old daughter, Lady, who for practical reasons is forced (bought) into a marriage with the leader of the arsonist gang, Jabe (?  Jove). The marriage to the murderer of her father, something Lady is not aware of, is predestined to end badly by the playwrights joice of circumstance. Years later, when elderly Jabe is dying from cancer, Lady is visited by a young musician looking for a job for a day or two. Val (? Valentino, Orpheus, Dyonysus) and Lady fall in love.

One reads into the love affair an attempt by Lady to recover something of what she has missed and has perhaps already lost for ever. However, the loss becomes irreversible, when the dying killer discovers the affair between Lady and Val and shoots his wife while she is in Val’s arms, but is not—strikingly—off with Va in a hurry to New Orleans.

Spiderman and his children.

In Williams’ version of the story of Orpheus, the musician, Orpheus, too is shot and dies. This because when all is said and done, he and Lady fail to believe in themselves and therefore fail to run with life and not hesitate about risks.

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November 18, 2111

This is Independence Day of Latvia. Seeing that I live some 140 kilometers from Riga, I am as usual sitting at home. Since the road goes by my house some hundred yards away, I display my flag at home.

If the Latvians have anything that comes close to being called “violent foundation” day, this is it. It is certainly “legitimization” day.

Yet Latvians emerged from out of this birth a much divided people. They were so profoundly divided that the socialists went East, while the capitalists went West. The capitalists won the government and kept the socialists out, if not de jure, then certainly de facto. The Latvian government is to this day a right wing government. Socialists as if do not exist.

Yet the socialists got their share and more, when Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union. The right wing government and all those oriented to its way of thinking (my family including) were brutally repressed.

After nearly half a century at the helm of the nation, preaching socialism as communism with as absolute a power as once the Bible was passed down from above to us mortals, the torch reverted back into the hands of the right wing. It has run with the torch (or call it flag) for twenty years and has run it into the ground.

Today the torch is out and the flag is muddied. Of course, only those who have eyes to see see it. For others it continues to be presented with rockets and with what Al Gore called “political gore”. The government always makes sure that it appears well sanitized and a new coat of paint. In reality, it is a government that is all knotted up in the stomach.

The reason is that the government lives on lies. Lies will gunk up the stomach as good as eating salmonella marinated fish.

So, Latvia has a right wing oriented government since its inception. Perhaps this is one reason why the one and only photograph of all those present at the act of the “foundational act of Latvia”, the To Be President of Latvia is not present.

All kinds of excuses have been written why Janis Chakste http://www.historia.lv/alfabets/C_/c_a/cakste_janis/cakste_janis.htm was not present at the inauguration. My godfather Mintauts Chakste http://nekropole.lv/lv/Mintauts-CAKSTE , the eldest of Chakste’s sons, never talked about it. Apparently it was a tabu subject in the extended family, too. Jānis Chakste, a successful lawyer, had missed out on the Inauguration Ceremonies on the 18^th of November, 1918. No one wanted to know why.

I really do not pretend to know President Janis Chakste’s reasons for being absent, except not to be so naïve as to believe that if he had wanted to be there, he would not have been.

I also know that Latvian historians, politologues, politicians, writers of all kinds have all fudged this “legitimating” and “foundation” day of Latvia with as many strokes of crayons as a messy child paints a sheet of paper.

It is a shame that ninety-three years after the foundation of Latvia no one speaks of the possibility that one of the reasons why Jānis Chakste was not present at the 18^th of November Founding Act was that it occurred under the Dom Mayor of the Allies, where German interests (in spite of the fact that Germany had lost the war) kept the tilt of the government to the right, and had the left excluded, unless as a decoration.

Another reason could have been because Jānis Chaste was a Jelgava  http://lv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelgava city loyalist and may have wanted the capital of Latvija to be in Jelgava not Riga, the latter which was still largely populated by Germans.

I believe that this non-event that gives the first President of Latvia a major, albeit silent, role and voice in the founding of Latvia, needs to be examined more thoroughly and that the official story is critically deconstructed. The deconstruction must be in the public eye.

I surely would like to know why my stomach knots up on the 18^th of November, and as the day progresses becomes painful, and what comes to the fore of my mind are pictures of departing Latvians, a million of them, so says a folk wisdom accurate in every way but fact. Nonetheless the Latvian people know it.


On the way to the Spiderman's cabin.

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Aloja, Latvia. Abandoned railroad platform. Railway dismantled.

November 12, 2111

I slept well, but woke up at 5 a.m. with a start, all tense and thinking about money. This has happened before. It gets worse with age, because then you no longer can go and do, but must do on a pension.

I lay in bed not wishing to rise, to either know my problems or think of them. For a brief moment, I felt happy that I am getting old and my worries are not for the long term. However, my greatest concern remains--what am I to do with my temple?

With Agnese abroad, I fear that I will have to leave the temple stand as is (just like the photo of the abandoned railroad platform at the head of this blog). It means that instead of someone paying taxes on the land until better times, the temple will simply fall apart. The countryside is too far away for today's urban dwellers. Soon thieves will break the temple’s indoor spaces, its windows, and that will be that.

At best--and it is no small best--the trees, which I have planted on the bare plots of grass. are immature and, therefore, have a long time to grow. Better still, this side of the road has not been ameliorized, which is why some of my land is on swampland. Tractors do not like to drive over such land.

I mentioned my temple in one of the blogs just a day or two ago. If one makes a temple with one’s own hands, it is or becomes part of one’s own self. It is like an extension of one’s own body. In my temple, it is mostly trees that are its visitors.

Right now, I am thinking about Kubla Khan, a king, who my mind associates with temples. I must have read Coleridge's poem over fifty years ago now.

Kubla Khan is an interesting name. If I break the words that spell “Kubla Khan” in a freely associative way, they come back to me with the echo: “King John!” That is what is known as a pareidolia effect.

What is pareidolia?

The internet generally refers to pareidolia as “an erroneous or fanciful perception”. Such a prejudicial statement is a customary preface to the actual (unprejudiced) part of the definition: pareidolia is the ability to spontaneously see patterns or meanings in ambiguous or random sounds or shapes. It is a kind of body English one practices when playing the pinball mashine.

In other words, pareidolia is a way of mimesis. The mind of the listener spontaneously sees (for example, in a cloud) a running elephant. Most of the time, I am unlikely to mention the “elephant” to my traveling companion(s), but if I do and point my finger to where I see it, you may see it as well.

In any event, when I call up the name of Kubla Khan, I associate with the name other exotica as well. For example, words such as ‘katls’ come to mind. It means a kettle in Latvian. Also, the word ‘kupla’, which means full—like in a full head of hair. I see these words become so saturated with meaning and significance (for mine and your ancestors) that the words ‘koning’ amd ‘king’ emerge from them next. In the same way, I associate chan = han = yan = John. Chan to John, what with ch = y is a safe bet. This is why John Kubla is more likely to be called John King in America.

Enough said about pareidolia, except to ad that it can be a good thing.

When it comes to my temple, I hear in my ear the first lines of "Kubla Khan" , a poem by Samuel Taylor Cooleridge.

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

a stately pleasure-dome decree:

where Alph, the sacred river, ran

through caverns measureless to man

down to a sunless sea....”

I actually I take greater delight in such natural temples as form under a low bridge when the sun is shining. The water that reflects back upon the bottom of the bridge is like a cloud, like a current, and quite something other. Such temple spaces are seen by just about by everyone who has ever been in a boat, and the boat passes under a bridge. Tourists in Venice and Amsterdam know such temples to appear as if out of nowhere.

I imagine that Coleridge’s Alph runs through as sunless a cavern as sunless is the sea that it disappears into. There is no light. There is only a roar. Death!

On the other hand, my temple, whom (or which) I call “Temple Black John in memory of destroyed forests”, stands on a concrete platform. The temple is both a he and it. He is a large—with limbs severed at a short distance from his body—oak stump painted black. It stands on a paved platform that was once part of the foundation of a country barn and hayloft.

The way of life that built haylofts has been overtaken by humongous tractors pulling a dozen steel knives across our planet. Mega farmers call it “plowing”.

“Temple Black John” is where I am at. As Coleridge goes on to say: “And here were forests ancient as the hills, enfolding sunny spots of greenery…. ” once stood, but stand no more, today stand I.

The forests about me are being cut down.

The private lots of forest, once and still owned by local farmers, are losing their trees to pay the banks. The government keeps silent over the fast pace that the forests are disappearing, because the government created such conditions in the first place. It did not look out for the long-term welfare of the nation's people.

Interestingly, the trees appear to have been tightly bound up with the people, the countryside dwellers who were once known as “the salt of the earth”. Now it is the extra skin that they can slough off. They have to slaugh it, because the government did not caution them to be careful when borrowing money. “Push the gas pedal to the floor” was a widely heard motto in Latvia. One politician rose rather high with that motto on his lips.

So, the Latvian's car suffered a catastrophe before it was paid for. The banks however insist on being paid, and the salt of the earth are in a hurry to sell while there is still a chance to grab a ticket for England or Ireland and go pick mushrooms there in a Quonset hut.

This is where my interest in wild boars comes to fore again. The boar has a will and power that I do not have, but then I do not have to have it in a direct manner. I can have it by outlawing wild boar hunting, and the wild boar will do the rest.

However, for all of that to happen, I have to become king.

Aloja, Latvia. Abandoned railroad platform. Railway dismantled.

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November 13, 2111

Four men interested in the preservation of Latvia’s forests are coming to visit next Monday, November 21. It will be another chance for me to explain that it is no longer preserving forests, but humankind itself. My sense is that we have to move back into the forest taking with us, of course, our computers.

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I am taken by the idea that there was a day when all of the men of Selk’nam tribe got together (in the mythological story only of course) and decided to kill all the women.

The men made that decision, because the women had become unhappy with the men’s laziness, with men’s belief that one’s cock is the greatest, and that he can persuade almost any woman to see his way all things that are important to him.

Some women had gone as far as to say that that it was too bad they had stopped sacrificing male babies and their bodies were not placed under the whorehouse floor before that of their daughters. After all, the practice had kept the numbers of men under control.

True, the women admitted, they had built whorehouses themselves, but they had done so to keep men under control and serve the Sun. At that time in history a woman could still drive a nail through a man’s head if he was a violent one. The community of women excused her for that—as Jael had been excused for driving a tent peg into the head of  Sisera.

Even so, apparently Jael’s act was an exception. Perhaps it happened when women had lost or were already near losing their power.

According to the etymologist Martin Gusinde, the myth of the Selk’nam men does not hide that the tribe’s first women were killed. Indeed, when one thinks about it, the event did not only happen on Tierra del Fuego, but occurred in many places.

The slaughter of women (poetically referred to as “daughters of the Sun”) also happened in proto-Latvia. Not that it was always necessary to do it in a physical way. Men simply renamed Saule (the Sun, feminine Gender) for Dievs (God, male gender). In our day, we do not remember that ‘dievs’ was once a common word for day, ‘diena’, and that ‘’diena’ is a word at the root of ‘daina’. Daina today means a short poem. In other words (to take advantage of the pareidolic license), proto-Latvians used to think of their days as poems, while the Gods were many.

Is it not obvious that “day” is related to the Sun? Yet, though the changes did not happen that long ago (perhaps as recently as two three hundred years), the Sun Goddess is barely remembered today.

The same fate as befell the Sun Goddess befell the Moon Goddess also, the Latvian Mehnesnica (moonlight). While no story of the death of Menesnica survives, we can borrow from the Aztecs, who, too, killed their Moon Goddess, Coyolxouhqui.  Indeed, after Coyolxauhqui was killed, she was dismembered, and an image of the dismembered Goddess was placed at the foot of Templo Mayor, Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City. On top of Templo Mayor sat, of course, a male God, Huitzilopotchtli, who in subsequent years officiated there by sacrificing human beings. After the victims had been sacrificed, the priests of Huitzilopotchtli threw their bodies down the temple staircase as unceremoniously as Huitzilopotchtli had done with the body of the Moon Goddess.

After the Selk’nam men kill their women (mothers, daughters, lovers, all women above ten or maybe younger), they go find for themselves other women. They go as far as the tribe that speaks a little funny, a different language, which makes it strangers, and rob it of its women. They rape the kidnapped women either on the spot or after they bring them home. The women get pregnant.

Pregnancy is said to be endorsed by God. So says the Pope. Life goes on. Alas, violence now must be squared to keep the peace.

The Sun smileth no longer. The feminine gender is forced to forget its former power, and the women become birthing machines for liberal capitalism. In my lifetime alone the population of the world has gone from two to seven billion people. Nevertheless, only yesterday I again heard some government lackey say that the only way that countryside people can break out of their poverty is by moving to an urban area.

Is this because banks can then go out in the countryside, impoverish the Earth as well as humankind, and urban folks, more familiar with the virtual than real, will live and die for ever after happy?

Hello?

Rubbish of a former and present civilization.

Now we see what happens when the Bible does not start with the story of Adam and Eve, but the ancestors of a tribe of men in Tierra del Fuego, Latvia, Rome, China, Mexico, just about anywhere. Men learn the art of violence and start using violence to rule.

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