Путевые заметки

Не столько о постгуманизме, сколько о том ЧТО он научил меня замечать. А главным образом, это сводится к отношениям в мире. Все написанное ниже – из последней поездки в Россию. Так получилось, что Россия будоражит и вдохновляет на заметки: хоть на каждом шагу записывай.

Под раскидистой березой прикорнули 3 коровы. Прямо за березой возвышается ресторан “Дело в мясе”.

“В Тасеево тайгу повырубали, так теперь жители деревни ходят в противомоскитных сетках, так как мошка заедает”. Мошка ищет жертв.. 2018 год, июль.

Баклажаны по-сафроновски. Порезать кружками. Обмакнуть в муке с крахмалом. Обжарить. Отдельно приготовить смесь чеснока и майонеза. Обмакнуть жареные баклажаны в этой смеси и подавать.

“Не ходи пустопорожняя. Возьми ссальню.”

“Токает?” (О повязке хлебной с солью. )

“Что делаешь, деда?” “Минкую.”

“Негде жопу притулить.”

“Хватит кобениться.”

“А ваша “шуплятка” совсем отличается от нашей” (о различных значениях слова “шуплятка”).

“Уааа уааа, к нам пришла ворона – кума!”

“Сорока-ворона по берегу скакала, коренья копала. Придут ли гости, съедят ли кашку и насрут ли полную чашку? Пришли гости, съели кашку и насрали полную чашку”.

Дети -это не ограниченные маленькие люди, как пишет Розанов, а, наоборот, недосягаемые. Детям присуще видеть в мире то, что давным-давно ‘отсохло и отвалилось’ за некой непонятной ненадобностью у взрослых. Дети умеют видеть прекрасное в мире, и оттого счастливы за обладанием малым. Как пишет Делёз в своей книге о Спинозе: “речь идет о том, чтобы действовать так, чтобы неадекватные идеи и страсти занимали лишь самую малую часть нас самих”. (с.266). Таких идей и страстей у детей в наименьшем количестве, при условии, что они растут в любви и мире. Взрослые могут только лишь у них учиться.

Солнце не встает на востоке. Как, впрочем, никуда и не садится. И даже не присаживается. Так придумали люди. Факт развенчан.

Времени нет. Есть продолжительность. А, возможно, и она – иллюзия.

Нужно больше писать на русском и о России. Россия – кладезь открытий, возможностей и невозможностей привить некие идеи.

Люди любят страдать в России, оттого и рефлексия по страданиям и, как следствие, невозможность заполнить свою жизнь активными аффективными состояниями. Действие сведено к минимуму, а остается лишь пассивность и грустные страсти.

Надпись на стене ГАИ: “Не пристегиваешься? Да и не надо! Тебе решать – жить или не жить.” Вот это “да и не надо” – прекрасно. В нем вся пассивность общества по отношению к индивидууму. Помрешь – ну и ладно! Твоим же родственникам горевать.

gai

Россия – удивительная. Непостижимая, и, хочется надеяться, вечная.

Часто слышу от русских женщин о рождении ребенка: ребенок сам выбирает родителей, вернее его душа. Душа видит если мама рядом с папой и папа ‘точно’ рядом с мамой, то туда и надо попадать в такую семью. Откуда берет начало эта идея, интересно?

Люди на трассе обгоняют безбожно. Лезут, втискиваются нахально, торопятся.

В 2018 много надежд. Я увидела другую Россию. Часто cлышу другой, уважительный тон, дружественный. Искренне. Сервис поднялся на другой качественный уровень. Даже в забытых богом местах, как говорится. (Я об общежитиях и поликлиниках).

В с. Дзержинское на здании написано Телеграф, внутри Почта России.

Идут по пляжу мужики. Впереди девушка в купальнике. Они оценивающе на нее смотрят. Вдруг, она оборачивается и один из мужчин громко так: “Ооо, Кемска волост” другой вторит ему: “я-я, Кемска волост”.

the remnants of the inefficient mapping

blue_wren_singing_by_whimsical_dreams-d9qsu85

the layers of lifefuls remind us of

us ktreeee ktreeee ktreeee

being caught in the moment of now

chuchuchu—chuk—chuchuchu—-chuk—chuchuchu—-chuk

that is never now, but an endless caravan of potentialities

brrrrrrrru brrrrrrrru brrrru

the lines of flights that could have never been possible

without the birth of an ant.

”

the very many pasts, the seeming presents and the futures exist on the same plane

and us taking turns to breathe in unison with our life partners

spaaaaaaaaaarkkkkkssssssssss spaaaaaaarkkksssssssss

travel to that little Anna

and ask what worlds make worlds

when she is sitting in her secret garden

heeewwwwssshhhh heeewwwwshhhhh

she would have told you, but she knows you are a rushing adult

□□□□

□□□

□□

she hopes, though, you can notice her speaking in your future

through the blue wren awaiting you on the beach….

Is Chaos God?

This dream was so powerful that I woke up breathless in the middle of the night and I was afraid to check the time, because if it was 3am, I would be terrified even more (check out the movie “Exorcism of Emily Rose”). It wasn’t a nightmare, rather it was one of the most beautiful dreams I have even seen. Yet, it made me lose my breath in anticipation of chaos.

I found my Finnish relatives in a dream – probably, the descendants of of my great-great-great-grandfather. One woman’s name was Sinikka and she had a 5 year old son. There also was another relative – a man, but I couldn’t remember his name.

In order to find them I wrote the following message in some kind of social media: “(NAME) when are you going to join us?” All of a sudden, I noticed that an avatar of my message recipient turned from the question mark to a very beautiful picture in color. It was a woman, Sinikka and in a matter of seconds she was seeping her tea by the table in a hospital cafeteria. Well, it looked like the hospital to me. I approached her and she behaved as if we know each other for ages. She started showing me her photos from the youth. Those photos were very old, from the 19th century and she smiled in some of them (while usually people were not wearing a smile for the photos back then). I remember her face and her dress. Nowadays most of the people do not wear anything like that: it was something like a well-made sackcloth dress and a square-looking head wear on her head with her hair gathered behind. And a subtle smile. I was amazed that this girl on photo is now here sitting next to me, but in the body of a modern woman: with her red hair undone, in jeans and some kind of a top, probably smoking. She was free and independent. I was also calculating that her son was born exactly the year when I moved to Finland. I saw his chubby face and blond hair.

The man, on the other hand, wasn’t very friendly. He appeared by the table simultaneously with Sinikka, but I only knew that he is some kind of my relative. I later saw him lying down into the boat, which was fastened to a big liner that headed towards Australia. He then woke up upon arrival and ran to a big skyscraper, where he found his uncle.

Later all this disappeared and I found myself in my apartment, probably in Russia. There was somebody with me: my children and the husband I far as I remember. And then I saw IT….

I looked out of the window, it was winter, but the whole world was in a way upside down and not. Some places in front of me were upside-down and when I looked behind, they were in a position I used to see them. I saw snow-made symbols outside and rushed to get my phone in order to make picture. I have never seen anything like that. It was divine, magnificent. Those symbols looked like huge snowflakes, but in non-traditional shape. They were hanging in the air forming a hexagon structure (see image below).

snowflakes

(Can the Knights Templar Cross (pic) have the connection to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? 🙂 )

By the time I reached there with my phone, this structure was falling apart and slowly each snowflake (in Russian it would be proper to say snezhinischa (снежинища) as they were enormous) moved away from the centre of the structure. In a way this structure was decentralizing, was a part of worldly destructurization. I opened the balcony and went outside to make a picture of what is left from the structure. The balcony itself was without any barrier and against my anticipation that it must have been a rather high floor level I realized that I am standing on the ice. In front of me lied endless space with no horizon in a place I used to call horizon. The Sun was shining from below, as if it raised somewhere on the West of the underground world. I saw its bright rays and reflections in the snowflakes but I couldn’t see the Sun itself.

Suddenly, my wish to come closer was interrupted by the fact that the ice block, I was standing on, detached from the mainland shore, in which my house stood and started to slowly move away. I started to panic, because I saw the ice was shell and it was melting. If I started running I would sink. Then I woke up……

I was trembling breathless as I saw the coming end of my current life. Yet I tried to sleep back and what I saw later might have been either my imagination or the dream continued….But the power of the seen was unbelievable.

First I tried to think constructively and looked for a thing I can hold at. There was a huge iceberg next to me. It was also unusual as its surface was perfectly smooth. Yet I found one brow. I held it but to no avail. Exactly at this moment, the whole world in front of me fell down creating a sort of dystopian abyss with no end and no light, probably lifeless. The iceblock moved further towards it. And then I felt something divine, something which is hard to explain. The CHAOS, which raised panic and fear, but also was so perfect I exulted. I was still holding my phone, thinking of a picture, but then I just jumped into and fell for the CHAOS. I was endless as it is, I was a part of it. It was horrible but so immense that you forget yourself, you are lost, but in the ocean of love.

I fell but suddenly some power raised me up. I was among glinting drops of water raising up further from the structured world.

The end. 1000

Chalk and Ashes

Love, unknown and forbidden, but accessible

We sit by the fire surrounded by a gloomy grey landscape….as if a global catastrophe has just happened

Ashes everywhere…I see them falling from the sky and their substance structure (as if they appear already zoomed by the scanning electron microscope…)

пепел

A structure of one of the ash particles I saw as if they were falling already enlarged

One of us offers to bite the white chalk assuming that we can enter the other reality. Not a drug thing, but in the absolute sobriety and unenslaved mind we now have a chance to see someone beyond…

It is a very intimate moment. My skeptic grandmother is having a bite of chalk and she doesn’t believe until the very last moment that she can talk to someone from the other reality and space just by having this bite.

She grips her head in fear as if she felt something. After a few seconds she starts talking to my brother, who appeared in her head as a phantom, but he exists in flesh and blood in the other place and space.

She is immensely happy that she can talk to her relative without using Skype or doing much effort.

Each of us tries to bite this chalk and talk to someone he/she wishes. The feeling from talking with this phantom is something one can’t explain with words. It is both possible and impossible.

It is like someone very real enters your brain and you feel it physically (for example my grandmom gripping her head) or I felt as if I dived underwater. And then you kind of see a person and his very transcendent figure and he talks to you. You are having a very normal ‘skype-type’ conversation. Of course it is more than skype, because you feel the moment distinctively sublime and you don’t need to verbalize your words for you speak in mind.

I don’t remember, however, what one needs to do to get this ‘conversation’ over. I guess mutual agreement of both ‘speakers’ 🙂

The end..

thinking from a hill

luv and beer me – that’s all I need. some random sociolect words in my head

I talked to my friend a couple of days ago and she said that the way IT people see the world is a way TOOO different from people who do not deal with programming or coding. They see it in cubes (squares, systematized boxlike structures) that are fluctuating and being transformed in the timespace with a speed of 100 terabit per second.

I realized that I usually see the world from a hill as if I want to embrace everything and nothing from a global perspective. If I ever want to imagine any type of a situation I find myself sitting on a mountain-like something that helps me see only what’s important yet being highly-sensitive to the smallest details. In what way the world is emerging in you?

value of partial knowledge

I don’t usually like going through what I’ve written. Even this blog. Sometimes I think I write a lame stuff… But then, I’m also of the opinion that every single perspective has its value. I will just leave this one here.

Sun, finally some sort of spring has arrived.

I walk from the bus stop.

Sun is quite high and I see lots of seagulls wheeling above me.

I hear them. For the first time in my life I realized I hear birds.

It’s not the same when you hear them tweeting something and then you continue going, neglecting what you’ve just heard

It was so strange I can’t find words to explain.

It’s like as if a mother is surrounded by a crowd of babies, among which one is crying and she knows exactly that this is her own baby.

A piercing sound that goes right to the heart. Ears serve only as mediators

And then at some point you realise you know what they are talking about, but you are not sure. This ‘knowledge’ is so fleeting, you can’t grasp. But you don’t feel bad, because you were a part of this knowledge even for a second and that’s precious.

After a long day, I walk towards the bus stop.

I see lots of seagulls swimming in the warm air and in the beams of sun.

their cry is like a song to my ears. I feel them so much. and then you are happy they are happy. After a long snowy winter…

I’m at the bus stop.

I see wind. Yes. I see its dance: those withered leaves were swirled round by the wind

But then obviously wind became delineated. It has got a shape and form.

It is a part of the form, a pattern. The one Eduardo Kohn (2013) talks about.

I smile, because I see. and know. but never know.

References

Kohn, E. (2013). How forests think: Toward an anthropology beyond the human. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Why do you write about this?

guardsmen-march-past-buckingham-palace

Photo: REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth

This very emotional (apologies) post is to prove that researchers shall not always prove something to an audience.

I am often asked such questions as: “How come you are writing about forest?”, “Are you a nature-lover as you are writing about nature?”, “Do you ski or hike as you are writing about forest?” etc.

Why on Earth I shall be writing about forest because of something? Do you eat because you are a food-lover? Do you, I am sorry, pee because you are a pee-lover? How come that you are a pee-lover but you don’t regularly pee on various pots as well as in the pants for everyone to see how much you love to pee? It does and doesn’t make sense to me, really.

I have to prove myriads of times to many different people that I have a need to write about forest as it is flowing from me, and NOT only because I:

Grew up in the middle of forest (‘Since childhood’ mode)
Was surrounded by trees since my childhood (‘Since childhood’ mode #2)
Have a tree, who is my friend
Like walking in the forest
Can’t ski, hike, but I like walking in the forest and talk to trees
Think that forest is beautiful

I can go on and on, but the main point is that you don’t always have to find explanation to something you have no explanation for. Why there is always a demand of legends of how your writing has begun, what motivated you, how you changed your topic, why, what for, where will it bring you? It is just it, nothing more and nothing to explain.

And one more question that evolves in me all modes of irritation: “Are you truly attached to nature so that you chose this topic?”

giphy

Sometimes I want to reply: “Yes, I love myself”. By being a part of nature and not just being attached to it, one normally loves nature as oneself. And I can’t always be proving to people (but I have to, I guess) that:

There is NO universal definition of nature
If you think that nature is the bird outside your window, then you don’t always have to regularly have lunch with this bird to be considered as a bird-lover.
I would rather think that a person who is sitting at home, doesn’t know how to ski, have no idea what photosynthesis is, but is badly grieving over a killed by chance spider is a better nature-lover than a hiker wearing an authentic fur hat.
Even if you are wearing a fur hat does not mean that you don’t care about nature. Probably, you got this hat from your grandmother who had to kill a bear in fear he would kill her, but after killing mourned him deeply and commemorated his whole life in this hat, which became a precious heirloom-a living legend about the brave fight of the bear and the grandmother.

And lastly, I am writing about forest, because I can’t define what forest is, but I know for sure that I am a forest that is extending its roots and feathers, decay and decompose and throwing its stones, leaves and branches straight onto the keyboard equally as it piteously groans from passing into oblivion of worldly extinction.

Middlemarch

When we can’t either ‘see’ or feel, when we are “astralized right out of the muddle of thinking into the practice of business as usual no matter what” (Haraway, 2016, p.36) – we can’t cope with this our cognitive ‘impairment’ on our own. We all have to ask to be allowed into a conversation based on the collective thinking.

This summer I have been introduced to the ongoing event of “the all-too-ordinary urgencies of onrushing multispecies exterminations” (Haraway, 2016, p.37), when I found out that along the forest edge in a peaceful summer suburban settlement a massive wastedump was stretching over a 3 km distance. The depth of this dump is unknown. I only know that people were throwing their rubbish there for over 30 years under a slogan “We have no idea where else to throw”.

This forest is home to multiple species of animals and plants, it is a place where my family and other families gratefully pick up mushrooms and berries during the summer-autumn period. I learnt about this dumpsite by chance and partly because I curiously look around patiently trying to hear the heart beat of a squirrel.

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

George Eliot, Middlemarch

You cannot easily notice this ordinarily-horrible place just because for 30 years the fungi has grown into the waste, it being mixed with soil and grass and moss covering the human shame. My grief and hope were born when I saw a Mudworm – Lumbricus terrestris skillfully navigating through the bits and pieces of broken glass. He learnt how to survive in “blasted landscapes”, in “the ruins that have become our collective home” (Haraway, 2016, p.37).

And as Haraway, I invite all responsible for this thought-to-be-unthinkable happening to learn to stay with the trouble, spiced up with an ability to mourn and appreciate this ability towards remembering mistakes and renewing our relationships with both humans and nonhumans around us.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

References

Eliot, G. (1873). Middlemarch: a study of provincial life. New York: Harper and Brothers.
Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham.

Water as a friend

I never thought that one day I would look at the event of playing with water from a very different perspective. Water was always a precious ‘object’, which we could drink, play in, water the plants/wash/boil with or use for the cleaning purposes. Nothing more nothing less.

Yet, by following the path of posthumanism, new animism and new materialism, I re-evaluated my relations with water, and relations of others with water at some deep ontological level. I caught this very moment of re-evaluation simply by noticing that I stopped, looked at the event, thought about it as a real event rather than something one shouldn’t pay attention to, didn’t rush…and then it happened: as if I was shown a new angle of a daily routine.

We were going to the summer house with my children. Upon arrival we saw many kids-our neighbors – outside playing and riding bicycles. I offered to my elder son to stay with them and also play. Yet, he refused and said sadly that they abuse him, calling him names. I proposed him a few solutions to this situation, but he decided to stay at home and I was at first a bit saddened by his decision. Not for very long, though.

I went somewhere for 15 minutes before I heard my son’s happy laughter. I wondered what it could be, because when I was leaving the house, he was not in the mood at all. I thought immediately that a girl, his friend, visited us. It appeared so that a grandfather was throwing water at him in the yard (it especially was nice due to a hot day). I smiled and almost passed them to go inside the house. Yet, I stopped. I saw MY SON PLAYING WITH WATER AND HE WAS AS HAPPY AS IF HE WAS PLAYING WITH A HUMAN FRIEND. He kicked water and water splashes hit his skin playfully. He was jumping and turning around surrounded by flying drops of water. He was rejoicing simultaneously with water glinting in the beams of a sun. It was clear to me: my son was not feeling lonely – he can always count on his friend water.

All this was such a pleasant revelation that I couldn’t stop smiling. The posthumanists researchers will understand.

Why should humans be reminded of our special relations with more-than-human Others and why is it so important to feel kinship, sense of belonging and indivisibility from the rest of nonhuman species? First of all, any disintegration is doomed. Secondly, I tend to think that an ability to befriend water or tree is as natural as to befriend a human. It is a symptom of a healthy mind. Finally, being a team in a system, learning from the seniors and each other is much more efficient and supportive for everyone.

Also, I was in total agreement with Andrew Pickering (2010) theorizing about events existing prior we can dissect them into elements. According to this, the event I saw in the yard consisted of the grandfather, his desire to offer a shower, a haze, warm water, its splashes, my son, his desire to play, the sun going to the West and the space in the yard. The sum of these components never equals to the event itself, because if we bring all these elements together, there is no guarantee, that the same event will take place. Every event is a unique entity, the elements of which, on the other hand, can be taken apart.

To avoid my story to sound too romanticized or naive, I have to say that I do acknowledge all the potential danger of water. I do recognize that in the stormy weather you can’t simply talk to the ocean as to your buddy and beg him to calm down 🙂 Rather I stand for respect and in most of the times treating nonhumans as persons. We can’t expect that every single tree on this Earth will be personified and thus be saved from logging. It is just impossible. The task of the humans is to stop feeling themselves exceptional and objectifying/commodifying everything/everybody around, yet aiming at supporting ‘humanity’ with the sufficient as opposed to the perpetual amount of resources. Enough is enough.

References

Pickering, A. (2010). Material Culture and the Dance of Agency. In D. Hicks and M. Beaudry (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp.191-208.

Tunneling through life spaces

Once Anna Tsing in her tandem talk with Donna Haraway noted that ground is often considered as a place occupied by death. Yet, it is so lively and life-giving. A space for life, a nonhuman life. It is such an obvious fact often faded into oblivion, though.

This short post is a tribute to a life I had been noticing in different levels and spaces surrounding me. Places, which many more-than-human Others are calling “Home, sweet home”.