49. 25 Posts from Facebook

1

I have seen lots of arthouse films and consider myself to be quite adaptive to innovative styles, unconventional narrative structures, minimalisms, and so on. None of these films, however, has baffled me more than the enigmatic "Last Year at Marienbad", a film so sovereign in its form and technique that I have always described it as the best example of how far from traditional norms cinema can possibly develop. 

(28.07.2011)

2

Kirjuta paberile väikestes trükitähtedes sõna "club" selliselt, et c-täht ja b-tähe paun oleksid võimalikult ümarad ning l- ja b-tähe labad nii pikad, et kui nende tippude vahele kirjutada - mida ka tee - number 26, siis jääb u-täheni, mille võid tegelikult ka ära jätta, veel tükk tühja maad. Seejärel ühenda, kui vajalikuks pead, kõik lahtised otsad lähima punkti või joonega naabertähel ning küsi endalt, mida tekkinud kujutis sulle meenutab. Just sellise logoga meelitab kliente üks Lauteri tänava tervisekeskus! 

(29.10.2011)

3

Today on the bus an old man talking to a random passenger could not help wondering that a former KGB officer who had sent his brother to a Czechoslovakian prison for eighteen years and could not write without mistakes had become, after Estonia regained its independence, a priest. For him these two positions were separated from one another, on the axis of moral value, by a distance so remarkable that, in an exalted tone of voice, he emphasised this 'contradiction' more than once. I smiled at his simple-mindedness. 

(16.03.2012)

4

I am looking for books about the history of human sexual behaviour, that is, books about what people actually do when they have sex (and consequently, what acts are considered sexual), how they find their partners, from where, etc. etc, not metaphysical mumblings about sexuality (I hate that word) or overviews of the sexual habits of a particular subculture or of the people of a certain era (always too vague). Porn films are too unreal and are today's phenomenon, brothels are too exclusive (the madam couldn't help me much), the sexual experiences of one person are not comprehensive enough. Does anybody know any of such books? Or am I like Borges, describing books yet unwritten? 

(28.06.2012)

5

kaks paksu lesbit vahetavad minu kõrval pingil õrnusi üks kutsub end alfaemaseks kuigi sõnast alfaisane oleks ta võinud üle võtta pigem teise poole annan talle parema nime röhilesbi 

(03.07.2012)

6

Après avoir traversé toute la ville avec les drapeaux de la France (« À la recherche des Français perdus »), je me suis installé sur l'escalier d'un parc désert juste à côté de l'ancienne enceinte de Tallinn. Avec cette photo-ci je vous envoie, mes amis français, mes salutations les plus chaleureuses. Joyeuse fête du 14 Juillet ! Et vive la France ! 

(14.07.2012)

7

melancholy languor ennui nostalgia fatigue spleen lethargy disquiet tedium nausea malaise anguish angst

interesting that these beautiful-sounding words refer to the most horrible (because vague) psychological states in the world

the idea of sickness is bearable because it is linked with the idea of cure 

(14.08.2012)

8

I like it 

• when people use the subjunctive mood in English, 
• when they use the 'ne' expletif in French, 
• when, in French, they leave a space between the word and the punctuation sign that follows, 
• when Russians speaking Estonian use an adverb of manner right before the verb.

I am often confused

• when, in a French text, I see a verb in subjonctif imparfait (I always need some time to figure out how it is formed, and why this mood and this tense is used), and 
• when, in English adjectives derived from verbs, native speakers stress the third syllable from the end, and not the second (e.g., 'indicative').

I hate it 

• when people use the construction 'to be like + a quote' in English (lack of verbs in their vocabulary),
• when, in Estonian, they use both the conjunction 'et' and the interrogative word to introduce an indirect question ("küsisin, et miks ta..."). 

(11.11.2012)

9

eesti keeles on embus embuse embust aga tähendusega embamine võiks olla ka emme embe emmet huvitav kas sõnal ema emme on sellega mingi etümoloogiline seos 

(7.02.2013)

10

If I had done it in public, this would probably be called a performance. The total number of crisps is 63n+51, where n is the number of heaps. I deliberately did not count the heaps because the idea was to try my patience and clean my mind, not to find out how many crisps there were in the package. Whenever I thought there was a mistake in counting, I began anew. The windows were closed and all possible noises were turned off. I was hungry. It took me two and a half hours to count all the crisps. During that time I also checked the time twice, took these photos and, as it got dark, turned on the light. The next time I will do it with grains of rice. To prevent it from becoming interesting, I won't distribute them in heaps any more but will move them one by one from container to another. This experiment could be useful when you are upset and need to calm your nerves. But I am sure it is more useful when you have no reason to do it. 

(24.05.2013)

11

Sometimes I wish that my enthusiasm for certain things in life would fade away completely, that my desolation would be total, that the things I do to keep this desolation away would be rooted out of the world so that I could be, like the characters of this film, a pure being.

At 10 o'clock in the morning, unemployed middle-aged labourers have just woken up. Some of them are having their first cigarette of the day. I watch them with admiration, with envy even. Where are they going? What are they thinking of? How do they spend their days?

(On Uzak by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 20.06.2013)

12

The greatest jokes are darker than dark, so dark that I am not sure any more if they are jokes at all, that even the teller himself doesn't know if he meant them as jokes or as interesting stories only, jokes at which I may laugh but not because they are funny, or rather, at which I try to skip the laughing part because I feel there is so much more into it than humour.

Yet, with all this, it is with the warmest, almost paternal feelings that I think of this film.

(On The Death of Mr. Lazarescu by Cristi Puiu, 21.06.2013)

13

I was watching this film out in the country at St John's Eve four years ago. My mother came by with one of her friends, who, seeing me in pyjamas on the living room floor, felt sorry for me and invited me to join them. I smiled and thanked her. They left.

This way I have also spent some of my Christmas Eves, New Year's Eves, even birthdays.

(On Russian Ark by Alexander Sokurov, 23.06.2013)

14

It is fashionable to say that one should never watch a film right after having read the novel on which it is based, or to quote Hitchcock, who said that only a mediocre book could be made into a good film. It is even more difficult with screen adaptations of good plays. It seems to me that many of the few directors who have ventured into this difficult undertaking have given up the attempt to translate the play into the cinematic language quite at the beginning. The resulting films remain intendedly theatrical; they can be seen as filmed versions of stage performances; sometimes they are only of mnemonic value, but they can also be real homages.

''Vanya on 42nd Street'' [by Louis Malle] is one the best examples of this kind of filmmaking: even though the less-theatre-more-film direction is clearly visible here, Chekhov remains Chekhov.

(24.06.2013)

15

Actually, ''Satantango'' is more than a film. Watching it is a performance. I want it to be shown at the Sõprus cinema at one night in one of the bleakest months of the year. I would like to film the audience during its entire run. If there would be no audience, I would film the empty cinema.

(On Sátántangó by Béla Tarr, 26.06.2013)

16

Deux bises à chacun de vous, mes chers amis français ! Trois bises à tous les garçons français que j'ai baisé (sauf ceux du sud de la France) ! Que la France vive ! Qu'elle fleurisse ! Vive la femme qui a parlé des passions littéraires de Fabrice Luchini à une conférence à Tallinn il y a quelques mois ! Vive la chanteuse qui a récité (« en français, bien sûr ») un poème de Victor Hugo pendant un concert nocturne au Rooftop Cinéma ! La fille corpulente avec un sourire timide dans la réception du Musée Marcel Proust à Illiers-Combray, je t'adore ! Benjamin, Baudelaire, tous les flâneurs parisiens et l'Ennui, c'est avec vous que je vais passer ce jour de grande solennité ( à la place d'agiter mes drapeaux de la France dans la rue ). Une pensée pour vous qui habitez dans un petit appartement à Saint-Germain-des-Prés et qui n'avez jamais de l'argent ! Et toi, mon bouquiniste fâcheux... 

(14.07.2013)

17

augustus died in 14 ad

this is almost two millennia ago

a long time

yet to form a continuous chain from that time to today less than thirty 70-year-old men are needed

try to picture thirty people forming a chain on a field

(10.08.2013)

18

4:35 pm binge sleeping

(15.01.2014)

19

In Dushanbe, 

• construction sites are everywhere, 
• Stalinist architecture flourishes, 
• most streets have no name (driving on them is called Tajik massage), 
• machines that look like ATMs are actually for cell phones, 
• pictures on walls are always slanting, 
• slim cigarettes are popular, 
• you're allowed to smoke indoors but can get fined if you do it out on the street, 
• bread tastes perfect, 
• instant coffee is preferred and people slurp it,
• hosts at restaurants shake your hand, 
• men, when dancing, move around women and constantly bend down as if trying to fix their dress, 
• there are only five or six guys on Grindr and Hornet (almost all the rest are in China), 
• people are very polite and, instead of ''mhmh'', ''OK'' or silence, verbally respond to everything I say, 
• I can have a long discussion on Rumi, Nizami and Omar Khayyam, and, if spent more time here, could even meet people who can recite the whole ''Masnavi'' by heart.

(23.02.2014)

20

There are many antique shops in my neighborhood. Lots of middle-aged middle-class couples from Northern Europe and the US; not so bored husbands. Lots of small coffee shops, with façades and interiors like those my Western friends like to photograph. My favourite restaurant only 30 meters away; the menu is oral, for 13 liras I get the most delicious chicken with coriander ever, and much more. Orhan Pamuk and the Museum of Innocence. Lots of fashionable people. Beards and strong calves. A terrace with a view on Hagia Sophia, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque and Gülhane Park. I have figured out where I can buy bread in the morning and fruit at night, where the closest tantuni place is, where I can get sunscreen (it is around 30°C every day, and I discovered I have sun allergy). Börek with meat; somebody said it is very Turkish to eat it at your front door in the morning. I have a doorman; he is always there somewhere, but I never see him. A local guy (probably a drug addict) who asks foreigners for one lira and when they say they don't have it accuses them of trying to trick on him. A transsexual bar next street. The loud music from the street that up to three million people pass every day occupies my room at nights, but when I go out there is more or less peace and quiet. Every day at around 11AM and 11PM a pss-pss-pss: a woman whose window opposites mine calls a cat. Construction workers interacting loudly, even now, at midnight. Phones ringing on the street; I often mistake them for a doorbell. Laughters and quarrels. A guy singing a melancholic song in vibrato. Three days ago, not far away, I saw a sheep on a small side street.

(In Çukurcuma, 15.07.2014)

21

You have arranged a meeting with someone for the first time. You have seen their photos but you don't know how they look like in real life. You are at the meeting place. You think you see them but you are not sure if it is them (at least you think you are not sure). You pretend that you haven't recognised them while hoping they will come to you first. They won't. You will need a few minutes to gather yourself. Then, more confident, you will go to them. After that, if it's them, things will be easy.

Should these few minutes of pretense be seen as a problem?

(Let's forget, for a moment, that they are just as responsible for the outcome of this situation as you are. This is about YOUR behaviour.)

They should, because, first, even if you're not sure if it's them, you are lying or inhibiting yourself, and, secondly, they might start thinking that you don't like them, that you're trying to win time to get out of this situation. Your behaviour could strike their pride. They would take these few minutes of inaction as a personal offense, or at least as a lack of interest, and they would probably not forgive you.

They should not, because timidity and nervousness are very common when meeting new people, even if you meet new people all the time. Yes, there is something disturbing about your temporary indecisiveness, but they should forgive you because addressing a stranger is never easy.

Is it a problem when

1. they see your behaviour as a problem (they are too soft, too proud, insecure)?
2. they don't see your behaviour as a problem (they are too indifferent to defend their honour)?
3. you see your behaviour as a problem (you have inner conflicts)?
4. you don't see your behaviour as a problem (you are cold, egoistic, with bad manners)?

Which is the biggest sin?

(04.08.2014)

22

Today I went to Bostancı not because I wanted to see or do something there but because I always thought that the name Bostancı sounded beautiful

Proust, «Noms de pays : le nom»

Nâzım Hikmet Ran, the greatest Turkish poet of the 20th century, spent the 1961/1962 New Year's Eve in Tallinn and wrote a poem about the New Year tree there and about a woman called Marina dying in Moscow

Ma ei tea, kuidas on näärid inglise keeles.

Eesti keelde tõlkinud Ain Kaalep, kogumikus "See punane õun" (1965), "Yılbaşı Ağacı" in Turkish

(01.09.2014)

23

In this beautiful Sufi-influenced poem by the 16th-century Spanish Catholic mystic St John of the Cross, the soul/the lover goes out on a dark night to find union with God/the beloved. This poem (or at least its English translation in the musical adaptation by Loreena McKennitt) could also be interpreted, from the first to the last line, as a night-time cruising adventure of someone.

• "Upon a darkened night / The flame of love was burning in my breast" = appetite for sex
• "Shrouded by the night / And by the secret stair I quickly fled / The veil concealed my eyes" // "In secrecy, beyond such mortal sight" // "Oh night thou was my guide / Of night more loving than the rising sun" = what should be kept in secret offers more pleasure
• "Without a guide or light / Than that which burned so deeply in my heart" = a hungry body knows where to go
• "That fire t'was led me on /.../ To where he waited still / It was a place where no one else could come" = a club, a park, or a place where someone's always waiting
• "Oh night that joined the lover / To the beloved one / Transforming each of them into the other" // "Beneath the cedars all my love I gave" = the act
• "I lost myself to him / And laid my face upon my lover's breast" = orgasm
• "And care and grief grew dim / As in the morning's mist became the light / There they dimmed amongst the lilies fair (3x)" = post-orgasm

(On ''Dark Night of the Soul'', 04.12.2014)

24

There is always a tint of displeasure when I listen to music.

Many years ago you didn't listen to music at all, you even said that you didn't like music, and I thought that you were senseless, literally, that you lived your life with a vital organ having been amputated.

I have the same organ of mine in my hands now. I don't want to throw it away, but I don't know where to put it.

They often say that music is the most sublime of the arts, that its non-existence would be a bigger loss for us than that of literature, theatre or sculpture.

I always think for some seconds when I enter the name of a performer in YouTube search. I usually search for the one that I listened to a day or week before. And the same few songs.

Songs. I cannot listen to most of them – irrespective of their genre or quality – for more than three times. They are short. They may contain the whole world in three minutes, but what are they next to the love that slowly builds itself on an active long-time commitment? (The advantage of thousand-page novels and three-hour films!)

I can only listen to classical or experimental music on a daily basis when I do it systematically, when I learn about a composer, a period or a style. Pleasure from learning rather than from listening. (Again, the time factor.)

Music as a social form of art. I like the type of performing musicians the least and the type of novelists, translators and philosophers the most. I don't go to concerts very often because there the whole room is full of people that like the same music as I do.

I prefer natural and technological sounds to composed music. Wearing earphones out on the street equals imprisonment.

Sometimes I listen to films.

When you ask what kind of music I like, I answer, silence. When I really have to specify a genre, I answer, folk music.

Folk music is not world music. The latter is a rather uniform and thus boring popular genre. A genre for tourists, not for travellers.

The biggest commonality for the different types of music that I listen to: the places and the times where they bring me. Personal memories and collective psyche. Geography and history were my favourite subjects at school in my formative years.

I like music for what it is not.

(06.05.2015)

25

I am at a café where a lot of university people are having their breakfast. A man comes, greets in English a girl he seems to know, and then, either because their level of acquaintance is poor or because her Estonianness becomes apparent - she responds politely but then shuts off and goes on writing something -, sits at a table next to hers.

I wonder how he will leave the café. What will he say to her? Will he say anything at all? What gestures will he use? Will she reciprocate as before? Will she show any initiative as well? Will I witness his leaving? A shudder runs through me when I think of his leaving. Where should I go to not witness his leaving?

I know that it will be to no avail. All these questions are meaningless, because even though I don't know what he will say and how she will respond (althought it is not difficult to guess), he will leave anyway. His future act of leaving cancels all the details, all the motivations for it. I am paralyzed by this imminence, and this paralysis is total, making everything even remotely probable seem unavoidable, underlining the absolute unavoidability of my own death and the end of all things.

He leaves the way I thought he would. I am alive.

(It appears to me that she, too, could have left first. The consequences of that leaving would have been cosmic.)

(03.08.2015)

48. Circle of Love

He lets the number of unopened messages on Grindr reach hundreds because it makes him feel good about himself.

He feels annoyed when someone sends him a message because experience has thought him that, even when the message is from a guy that is to his taste and the attraction seems to be mutual, the interaction usually leads to nothing. (That doesn't stop him from checking Grindr tens of times a day, even when he is in the countryside and there is no one around, or when he is abroad, has to use roaming and pay.)

He never shows any initiative. He is always looking to be noticed.

He likes to suck anonymous dicks in the darkrooms of saunas and sex clubs of strange towns. When he is burning, faces don't matter much. He knows the heavenly pleasure of putting his dick into a random guy's ass without thinking of protection. He is chem-friendly.

He is often a big go in the darkrooms because he looks more innocent than other guys there. They want to corrupt him, but when they discover that he is already much more corrupt than he looks, they want his number.

He also knows how to derive pleasure from being dismissed.

New partners never introduce him to new types of games because he has tried almost everything in sex. He is often disappointed when he cannot play the full repertoire. On the other hand, something terrible gnaws in him when he discovers that there are guys who do more than he does. Sex is a major competition in his life. In his competition who is dirtier wins.

Sometimes he feels tired of the competition because he knows that it is easy to win. Then he detests all kinds of fetishisms and decides to take a bigger challenge: to learn the art of seduction, to enjoy the hard work of winning someone over. He decides to stop going to the ''dens of vices'', delete Grindr, pick up some of his old hobbies and spend more time with his girlfriends (he has had sex with almost all his male friends). But then again he feels he deserves some more fun...

He gets tested regularly. He thinks that it is tests that protect him from contracting STDs. He announces of the negative results of the tests with the same confidence and ease as the people who have never had sex and cannot possibly be sick.

He was diagnosed with syphilis. When the doctor told him to notify all his regular partners, he laughed at their naïveté because for him the partners are the past, not the continuous present.

He knows how easy it is, when he is horny, to omit information about his diseases, to deny, to lie.

He deleted his Grindr when the doctor told him that it is quite probable that he has also HIV. But then he remembered that HIV is no longer a deadly disease, that he could live as long as everyone else or even longer, that he could have sex just like before or even more. 

Just when the syphilis treatment started to go well, he learnt that he had infected one of his partners from months ago, one who had noticed him in the darkroom of a sex club in a strange town, who took great pleasure in putting his dick into his ass without thinking of protection, who wanted his number when he learnt that he was much more corrupt than he looked.

His own disease was not such a big deal for him, but the thought of having infected somebody disturbed him.

The message he wrote him on Whatsapp took half an hour to write and served as a brotherly pat on the shoulder. He analysed the forces that he thought determine his sexual behaviour, and because it was all about forces and not decisions – forces which could be everyone's, not just his –, he didn't justify himself. He said things he hadn't shared with anyone before – that on Saturday nights he has no one to call to, that he feels bored with people when there is no sex involved, that sex with strangers is the only source of thrill for him – hoping that his honesty saves him from having to say sorry.

When he read the response, he learnt that his honesty had opened the door for another confession. The solitude and the desperate yearning for love – even for a faulty one – that echoed through it made him feel that he hadn't opened the door, that the other had long been looking for the doorknob in the darkness behind the wall and pulled the door open once it was unlocked.

He pulled back. That was too much.

During the following months he had no sex; he didn't even masturbate very often. Instead, he spent more time in his garden, went to cinema twice a week, took care of the children of his girlfriends when they were away, got in touch with his friends living abroad and had regular Skype calls with them. He felt more happy with what he had.

But he was also bored more often. Because he was bored, he reinstalled Grindr. Just to check who's around, he said. The longer the boredom lasted, the clearer became the thought that this new life of his was only temporary.

At that time, there were many manifestations taking place in support of the plans of the government to legalise same-sex marriage in his country. He expressed his support for the cause when someone asked his opinion, but he really didn't care much. ''What for, that marriage? Do the guys that I've blown and fucked in the clubs and saunas really want that marriage?''

He remembered the one that he had infected, his confession, his yearning...

He hesitated for twenty minutes before he sent him his message. He saw that the other had read the message. Still no reply.

He feels rejected. He doesn't know how to derive pleasure from that rejection. The blue number on Grindr makes him feel slightly better.