A million dreams 🕊️

Temperature: will depend on the Föhn winds on their way from Norway. Winter, you had your shot. Spring, take the reins.

Drinking: Would that help matters, what do think? A stiff drink to calm that brain on fire? Should we look for more healthy outlets? Oh, after we have that drink, okay. Desperate times, desperate jigger measurements.

Eating: What would go well with Friday? And don’t say frozen pizza.

Watching: I have Encanto waiting for a weekend viewing. Couldn’t catch it on the big screen, but I hope it loses none of its magic on a smaller one.

Listening: to the downpipes trying to deal with all that melting snow.

Reading: Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa.

Thinking: Who the hell can think straight these days? Everyone I’ve talked to this week has complained they’re finding it difficult to concentrate. We agreed we should at least try, and we should also try not to let our outrage morph into fear because that is what autocrats want. Fear leads to paralysis and a paralyzed individual is hardly a threat, but anger, pure anger is fuel for action, sweetie darlings, so let the autocrats fear us instead.

Feeling: some Depeche Mode coming my way…
Metropolis has nothing on this /
You're breathing in fumes, I taste when we kiss /
Take my hand, come back to the land /
Where everything's ours for a few hours…
Off for a walk. What a luxury to step out without having to fear being shot at. Have a good weekend, dearest denizens, or a tolerable one, wherever you are.

A word after a word after a word is power*

It’s day 16 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and all of Scandinavia is regrouping and reconsidering its stance on a neighbor gone cuckoo. Finland shares a 1,300+ -kilometer (800+ -mile) border with Russia, so naturally they’re perturbed. Sweden likes to think they’re Switzerland but now realizes they need to up their military game chop-chop. Joining NATO is once again on the table and since that is exactly what Voldemort Putin wants off the table and out the window you have to ask: how did you think this would go? And if starting Cold War 2 is all the same to you, again, how do you think this will go? Go ahead and hate us so long as you fear us, is that what you’re saying? Again, how do you think that will go in the long run? Putin doesn’t seem to care about how this will affect Russia and its citizens, so how do you solve a problem like Putin’s Russia?

What do you do when your neighbor starts disturbing the peace and engaging in disorderly conduct? You lay down the law, of course. But what if they don’t care about rules or regulations? What if they’re playing a totally different game on a totally different field or board? You need to defend and protect yourself, of course, and you need to isolate that bully of a landlord in question. How do you do that? You assign blame where blame is due. You separate the landlord from the tenants. When speaking of the invasion of and attack on Ukraine say Putin instead of Russia. Putin (and his cabinet) is the aggressor, not all of Russia since there was no referendum. Russians can’t even call the war a war or the assault an assault, using those words in this context is now a criminal offense. So, Putin’s war, Putin’s attack, Putin’s army, Putin’s doing. Demonizing and ostracizing all of Russia and all Russians, any type of Russophobia directed toward the people and the country at large only serves Putin’s narrative. "Look! It is as I keep saying, it is true, look at how they hate us!"

What Putin is doing in Ukraine and to Ukrainians is evil and monstrous and it has to stop. The sanctions imposed will hurt all of Russia but that is on him, on Putin. And change can only come from within. Putin is finished. Maybe not today or next week, but he is toast. If he manages to hang on to power, if the Iron Curtain falls, every Russian will be trapped in there with him. That would be yet another tragedy in the too long reign of Vladimir the Terrible. We should stand with Ukraine, no doubt or two ways about it. On that other field and board, we should stand with every Russian suffering under the yoke of an ever more brutal regime.

We are not powerless. You are not powerless. When you want to speak up, do as Scandinavians are trying to do and choose your words with care. Do not give Putin ammunition by engaging in Russophobia. Assign blame where blame is due. Countless Russians still root for Putin because they have been on a steady diet of lies and state propaganda for years, and the machinery is hard at work as we speak. You can help combat that too. Swedish Dagens Nyheter, Finnish Helsingin Sanomat and Danish Politiken are now translating news articles “to provide Russians with impartial and trustworthy news and coverage.” Feel free to spread the word. Putin controls state media but has no control over us or Russians living abroad. The longer the war drags on the more questions it will raise at home and the harder it will be for him to keep an airtight lid on what is going on.

It will get worse, so much worse before it gets better, on both boards. Scandinavians will always have Russia as a neighbor, there is no escaping that fact. But as much as Putin would like to rewrite history he will only be remembered not as the strong man he thinks he is but yet another heavy-handed totalitarian who could not rule without being cruel. One day there will be no more Putin, but there will always be our Russian neighbor. Believe me when I say to you that Scandinavians would really, truly, absolutely rather wave than shoot across that border.

*Margaret Atwood

Dear friend

How are you? I thought I’d send you this note now that I’m away. Do people still do that, send letters and postcards from their travels? It’s a pity if they don’t, I have always loved the writing and receiving of cards and letters, it’s so much more personal than those photos and messages you suspect your friend has sent out indiscriminately, isn’t it?

Where am I? I’m sorry, yes, Omicronia, dear friend! A rather impromptu trip, you know the kind, but here we are, or rather I am, wondering how I got here. Not a secret, really, I know how I got here, no good deed goes unpunished, just one of those unfortunate coincidences. I had to leave the family behind and I’m quite pleased I did, there is not much to do around here. I have read a great deal and that has been wonderful.

They say every visitor experiences it a bit differently and I’m sure that is true. What have I experienced so far? Something akin to that last visit by Lady Influenza: nasal congestion, a sore throat, headaches, and a seesawing fever. The highest peak I’ve climbed: 40.3/104.5 degrees. I’m not ashamed to admit that made me a bit dizzy, but at least my body is putting up a fight, I’ll give her that.

I did have my jabs in order, so I do believe I’ll make a comeback. Like any responsible traveller, I would never leave home without making sure my vaccines were up to date. Of course one hopes one won’t need them, but one can never know, so why risk something so easily avoided? You can’t ring the insurer and ask for fire insurance once the house is on fire any more than you can ask the doctor to administer a Covid jab once you’re hospitalised. “I’m sorry, but it is too late.” That is what they’ll tell you. And then how will you feel? Like a proper pillock, that’s how.

And just like during Lady Influenza’s visit, I’ve had the strangest dreams. One was particularly horrendous and keeps recurring: war. A war was being waged in Europe. But it wasn’t a dream, was it? It is real. It is Cold War 2 but not World War 3, at least not yet. Dear friend, please tell me you agree that this, all of it, is inhumane insanity. Dear friend, if you happen to pop by the Kremlin or the FSB or know someone at Wagner, do tell them that Putin is an affront to humanity. Oh, I’m sure that after Grozny, Georgia, Crimea and Syria they have no illusions, but a reminder won’t hurt anything.

And dear friend, please tell any and all Russians you know the truth about what is going on, if they don’t know already. Dear friend, please tell them that “The West” doesn’t have a problem with Russians but with Putin, his regime and minions, and if Putin keeps insisting that “The West” indeed does then he obviously thinks that Putin equals Russia and doesn’t that just say it all. Tell them we are not threatening anyone with nuclear war, we don’t want another Hiroshima or Nagasaki, not in our home, not in yours, not anywhere on the planet. (I heard Dmitry Kiselyov has boasted how Russia, by which he means Putin, can turn America into radioactive ash. Now that is nothing to boast or joke about. We are a human error, a misunderstanding or misinterpretation away from nuclear war, so not funny.) Tell them we are in awe of anyone who dares to defy a government squeezing the life out of its citizens and civil society. We know it has become difficult and dangerous and that makes state terror even more immoral because governments should serve the people and not the other way around.

Tell them we are not out to wipe out your history, culture, language or traditions, Europeans are steeped in a cornucopia of our own, so we do understand and respect what they mean to a nation and its people. We are not and do not want to be Americans, we want to be Swedish and German and Portuguese and French and Greek and Maltese and so on, we want to live in peace and prosper and work together to solve the problems of today and of the future and we would dearly love to see you help us do it. Dear friend, tell them we feel sorry for the boys sent out to die in battles Putin’s army may win but in a war Putin himself has already lost. Too many banks, businesses, cities and governments turned a blind eye for too long; so long as the money flowed, Putin could act with impunity, and now Ukrainians are paying the price. I do hope this ends now; this type of corruption and hypocrisy has lined the pockets of a chosen few and breadcrumbed the many, and that does not bode well for the planet any more than Putin’s reign benefits the Russian people at large.

Dear friend, I hope you agree that you can be a patriot and a conservative without being a dodgy nationalist; it’s not a competition and it’s certainly not a zero-sum game. I do know a great many devout conservatives who love their children as much as I love mine, and I don’t think they’re pretending either! But values, words and sentiments such as patriotism, spirituality, family, integrity and unity are not the sole property of people and nations who identify as conservatives, they are universal values and aspirations. Claiming to be a defender of these values against the degenerate and queer X (X being whoever your leader claims is the threat), mixing business finances and interests with national finances and interests while being a head of state who expects a cult-like following are not hallmarks of a man serving his country but the trademarks of fascism, and that never ends well for anyone.

Yes, I’m calling Putin a fascist, it’s certainly a more accurate description than calling Zelenskyy a Nazi. A Jewish Nazi, imagine that, dear friend. That's like calling the Pope an atheist. Inconceivable! And someone has to speak up, we all do, for all the Russians who face two choices: silence or prison. There is no mocking or criticising Putin at home but we are not obliged to do his bidding, follow his rules, or listen to his lies. So fire away, a genuinely strong and confident man would take it in his stride. Words would be had, insults traded perhaps, but you would not end up in prison for having and voicing an opinion, eh?

There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours. Thus spoke Jean-Paul Sartre. Dear friend, it is a cruel and crazy and beautiful world. Not perfect, but the only one we have. We seem to be going from problem to problem, from catastrophe to catastrophe, and you will hear claims that these are signs of the end of times. A conglomeration of disease, war, economic and environmental upheavals snowball and keep rolling until there is no stopping the downward spiral and the end of civilization as we know it. This same type of perfect (shit)storm destroyed ancient Rome, Egypt, Chinese dynasties and the kingdoms of Mesoamerica. Nothing, not a single empire, has lasted forever.

But. I do hope we have evolved along the way. And yet. I do fear we lean too heavily on gurus and technology and a shiny future innovation that will come and save us from ourselves when the problem is the way we live, the scarcity and inequality that has followed our progress and success as a species. That 19th century vision of progress and success does not serve humanity in 2022. We have to let go of those beliefs and models and come up with something new and we have to do it now and we have to do it together. The Putins and Trumps and Modis and Johnsons and Bolsonaros of the world will try to convince you otherwise. The fossil fuel industry will fight back. That only proves that they don’t care about us or the planet, they are milking it for all it is worth for as long as they’re allowed to. Are we going to go down with them, dear friend?

Oh but my fingers are tiring, and so must your eyes be. I didn’t mean to write such a long and rambling letter, I only wanted to ask how you were doing. I do hope this finds you safe and well, but one never knows for sure, that is why I’m asking. I need to go and put the kettle on now. I know I’ve recovered when I fancy a coffee, a cider, and a shag. Not quite there yet, I’m afraid, but hope springs eternal. Hope springs eternal, dear friend.

Love,

Dita

P.S.  Happy International Women’s Day!

P.P.S. What is this letter Z I see taped and painted here and there and everywhere? Are they all rooting for Zelenskyy? Are they all waiting for Zorro? 🤔😉 Enquiring minds want to know! Inquiring minds? You say potato, I say mango and lime. As I said, not a competition, live and let live.