Joy riding (Jag kör.. god kväll, Sverige!)..

So we're hitting up Selver (the local Estonian-origin supermarket) and stocking up on choice alcoholic beverages for - that's right - taking a trip across the Baltic. Estonians really only buy alcohol for travel or birthdays; it seems like more because someone knows someone who has a birthday on literally every day of the year. Don't be fooled - it remains for such wave-riding activities or drinking one into forgetting that they're drinking away more years of the lives they are celebreating. Ah, tradition.

I've had the deep-centered drive to really travel for a good time now. It's closing up on the one-year anniversary of the last time I was in the States, and it'll hit another halfway before I sate that desire. Still, I've been more than wanting.. anticipating, really, travel. The experience, the rushing by of everything around, unfamiliarity and distance. Everything around you stays the same only for the people who are rooted into the shifting present. Your 'present' stretches ahead, around, flutters and takes random new directions as the seconds turn. Time itself allows itself out of its accepted bonds. I've been looking towards the horizon, pursuing this for a while. Now we finally locked down extremely cheap round-trip tickets to Rootsi (Sweden). It'll be an unfortunately quick Stockholm day trip and a two-night Tallink ship trip, though still exactly .. that. It'll be difficult not to just flash a card at a bus station and take transport north, to forego that which is the norm; crystallized plans and obligations and whatnot, and to just focus on the greater, more encompassing migration that is life.

Edasi, вперёд..

Over the border (ülepiirile)..

I think a topic that I'd like to write/blog/Twitter/moan on about more often is that of immigration. Alright, I do have a bit of a weak spot for it given two factors - A) It was a central facet in my senior thesis at the University of Minnesota, and B) I am an immigrant (i.e. I have a weak spot because it doesn't empower me or even sight me up as indifferent). One can quickly and easily read where my prejudice lies in the matter.

I've recently been involved in a spate of media coverage (spate in my world means a total of two, which is more than any other coverage I've had at a single time): a quite extended article (with extensive commentary resulting) was written for Eesti Päevaleht, which is a main Estonian daily (well, mine came up on the internet in the middle of a work day). The other stemmed off from this article and was a television interview, aired as the first story on TV3's 19:00 news programme. I've raged on here and there about the ridiculousness of the Estonian Citizenship and Migration Board and will spare any unfortunate reader from another tirade here. To also give a rest to my fingers and your eyes if you so choose, here are links to the original article, my translation, and the TV 3 programme (if it's still posted, which I doubt.. look for "16/09/2009 Uudised") .

Right, so that's the motivation. Well, the sparks for motivation. I'm confident that somehow, after much grinding of the teeth and shaking of heads and soft carressing sounds of the escaping of air from lifted beer caps.. I'll get an extension of my residency permit or, even more likely, an altogether new one. The reason for a new permit and not an extension will be changing the circumstances on which the permit is founded - naturally, I don't earn 24 percent more than the average Estonian salary in 2008 (which includes pre-recession figures) as the Migration Board demands, so it'll have to come by other means. Like I said, I'll find a way through friends or sham companies or board appointments or loans or - if it really, really came down to it - signing certain papers (with the approval of a second party, of course.. again: not a light decision for anyone and not a first choice or thing to be trifled with. No trifling here or there, none of that now.). There is some way, and it'll come clear soon.

What does interest me is the overall struggle which I and so many other foreigners who feel unbound by their location of birth must endure. Freedom of movement is a concept which has fluttered in and out of acceptance with time - those who have felt it worse than I ever could here include the Sámi in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and those alcohol-and-Stalin-ravaged few left in Russia. At one time they followed the reindeer, then lines appeared on paper without taking the concept of nomadism into account, and now finally it has returned to the ease with which it once was for them.. again, excluding Russian policies. Similar lines have been drawn all over in Africa, the Caucuses, Latin America, North America and so forth.. with similar results for those on the 'border'. The case which I have personally encountered is of course nothing like this - mine is of choice and graciously granted by international agreements on movement of people. However, the conditions which restrict and, at times, attempt to eliminate these re-fought freedoms are something of which I have become increasingly critical. Enough to, say, write more articles, refocus my interest in a master's degree or currently set more water to boil for tea and drone on within the realm of this blog. All of the above options remain brilliant and another way to exercise my right to free speech, fuckers.

A suspicion concerning the terms of Estonia's new immigation 'provision' (as if it really 'provides' anything) dawned upon me today while recanting the entire residency permit debacle to a friend. Small detail, yes. Just a number, yes. All numbers still come from something. I want to believe and would love to find out proof of the origin of this specific set of arabic numerals, however. The legal addition states that foreigners living in Estonia on the basis of work must earn at least the average national salary as determined by the Statistics Board from the year previous times a coefficient of 1.24 - basically, nearly 1/4 more than the "average" salary (which does not make amends for the lack of breadth in the middle class). Alright - horrible law, yes.. if Sweden and Finland both enacted such laws (yes, illegal by EU standards but bear with the example), some 60-70 thousand Estonian nationals would find themselves in my situation. Bon-fucking-jour. All the same .. 1.24; almost 1/4, or 25%. Almost. Why almost? What is this, a national version of Nescafe? Almost coffee but disgustingly still not in any interpretation of the word? Why 24 percent more? The number rang a bell, though.. it's dangerously close to the percentage of Russian-ethnicity people living in Estonia. According to the Statistics Bureau, this figure has actually come out to .256 percent of the total population in the last two years. So as for preciseness, it would be ridiculous to claim that the government would use such a snub. However the main problem remains - I and many others believe that the immigration policy is openly hostile to Russian speakers. Given, there are serious problems associated with this. No less, it doesn't call for or justify spray-firing the general immigrant population in order to pressure a reverse migration towards the East.

Estonians are a bit shaky on the 'Estonian-Russian' issue. Most people who know anything about it are. However, the correct solution is not to use the populist targeting of non-nationals which is so deeply entrenched in current policies. If the population fears a loss and diminishing of the Estonian language, make this a requirement for extension of residency permits. As of current standings, this only applies to citizenship and lightly to applications for permanent residency (which also demands the person to have lived here for at least five years on temporary permits). Universal linguistic standards, however basic, would help to assuage those worried about a 'foreign invasion' (also very unlikely, given that permits are only set aside for those from countries other than the US, Canada or Japan in the number of 0.1 percent of the national population) and at the same time promote interest and motivation for acquiring the skills necessary to productively live long-term in the country. Is that so difficult?

I'll work on cleaning these thoughts up and putting them in some sort of coherent logical order, possibly direct it towards some sort of letter, article or other publication. That is, once I succeed in sorting out and securing my own end in the matter. Bring it on, Migration Board. I should go gather some reindeer just to make a statement.. and save money on bus fares.

Aaaand -- cut.

Edasi, вперёд..

Northern winds (tuuled põhja poolt)

I realized that I need to rejilt my efforts in doing certain things - writing these sorts of accounts being one of them. As fall sets in and winter is flashing signs from across the room, I also need to get out and take full use of the weather allowing one to be in the elements without a head bent down from the biting wind. Time spent not sitting and making my fingers dance all-too familiar jigs with words as the applause is a time spent somewhat more creatively. However, this same sort of creation that flows now is one that is also on my forming list of positive responses. Work is also a form of devising and expressing, though one that pegs me into a specific set of results - not too specific, and actually quite too large at times - though a locking down of efforts is still the general process, and one that I feel the need to resist or break off from for several hours a day. Regardless of in what language(s) this appropriates itself in, it is a still quietly holding a beckoning eye contact.

Abstractions are often too much too-muching. I understand that I also write and phrase this paradox - still - now - in the current. That's one I can deal with. Others start to wear, become all too tiring and endlessly constant. Alright, I only really have one in mind - money. Secondly would probably come (though it should likely be first as well) bureaucracy, relating to the situation with my residency permit (which I think I still have), though that's one I'm comfortable sidelining for now as so abstract in worries and possibilities that mention of it makes my brain want to open a beer and sit by the sea. Something with which I'm happy to follow suit. Money, though, is such an abstraction which is so fundamentally accepted and necessary, washing out the basic root of the situation - I need to eat, be clean, warm and in a good mood. After following thousands of different routes and forms, this comes out to be the same thoughts in unrecognizably variant forms. Starting sometime soon, I have to allocate somewhere near/over EEK 1,000 per month to stock Tallinna Küte (Tallinn Heating)'s coffers - for what? Endlessly cycling water (which I can't control) heated up and baking the air in a small corner of my apartment? Few hours and an axe would take care of that. Likewise, I'm going to have to sign myself up for a monthly bus pass (~EEK 260) soon, replacing how I currently buy the 10-pack (EEK 90) and sit next to the clamper-dealie so that if municipal police come on board to check, I'm golden. Given, I actually stamp or clamp with no firm instigation once or twice a week, just to show my appreciation and support for continuance of the transport system. At the same time; a few hours moving and walking, whatever the weather (also a good Dionysos song), snow or rain or sun or whatever, would also take care of that. Living next to the sea would give me the view, a lake the water and fish, trees the fuel and windcover. Alright, yeah, I've been watching "Кукушка" ("Käki" in Suomi, "The Cuckoo" in worldish) again, and will probably set it up to run again sometime tonight. Not sure if I've gone on about the film here, but, let's go for it now.

It's set in Sámpi (Saamimaa, land where the Sámi people live in northern Finland, Sweden, Norway and a bit of Russia, at least those who have survived Stalin and alcoholism, which go hand in hand), where in 1944 a Finnish sniper (former university student) decides to refuse to fight, after which he is chained to a rock. At the same time as he is working on freeing himself (big spoiler: he does), a Russian (Soviet) soldier is court martialed and being driven to get shot - Russian planes mistaking the convoy for an enemy take care of that and leave him wounded on the side of the road. A Sámi woman finds the Russian soldier and drags him back to her camp, where she lives alone.. her husband was taken years earlier and she's faced with the basics of sustaining herself and the reindeer in the northern lands. The Finn finds the camp, searching for tools to get the rest of the chain off his leg. Thus the crux of the story, where none of the three speak the language of the other, but find a common realization in their humanity and the basic, constant need to survive and -live-. At one point, the Sámi woman looks at the Finn's hands and says "Your hands are soft, they're not used to men's work. Killing people isn't work." Maybe it's over-simplified, but sometimes I re-realize that I want to do work - the kind that matters and is sustainable. Alright, I also realize that the pillars of capitalism and trade are in one light or another good and provide a lot which me putting myself to the fringes of I would miss. Long-distance travel to see friends and other lands, much of what the internet offers and reading and film and music and news and beer and bread and.. yeah, lots of things that being on the edge of the world would be difficult without that recurring issue of money and earning it. At least I can say I've always 'earned' it and not just 'gotten' or 'made' it. Still, in the interest of preserving the capitalist system (which is the best anyone has found, despite the constant need to improve and develop it), I'd simply like to acknowledge this and have more. Ironic that if I had loads of money, I'd most likely use it to live a somewhat variated life - lots of elements of living basic and sustainably, and a few of the benefits of a life doused in the other mode of living.

Circles and circles and circles and circles..

Edasi, вперёд..