Noticed in my communications lately that some people have difficulties understanding me. It could be that my speech is still impaired after stroke that I had some 17 years ago, I really dont “hear” that myself. I also dont have much 1:1 human contact, so I actually dont speak much. And the funny thing is, when I do speak that would be mostly in three totally different (from each other, that is) languages – my mothertongue, Russian and English. So that mixup can have even the brightest mind confused the words and languages every now and then, not to mention stoke “survivor”. That could add to the speech being muffeled or mumbling of sort. Really cannot put the finger on, but nevertheless have received notes claiming I am difficult to understand. So when on phone or in public, I decided to stand straight, try not to laugh (because I do laugh all the time, could be remaining side-effect of stroke!) and open my mouth wide and talk SLOWLY. However when writing there must be either typos or just plain gramma errors – thats because I never had formal English language education. So again, pardon me, and ignore the tiny errors which I am sure are hiding someplace even now!

For anyone finding my texts now and / or skipping some chapters where I might have been explaining myself, my skills or my past – I would like to announce English is not my mothertongue, nor second language, nor third, nor fourth, but fifth language and, I was selftaught and just went to uni to do the exams. Also, I graduated with honours, but that was not English studies in deeper level. That being said, I apologise in advance for all grammatical errors that might ocurr aswell as the ever so common typos. As my thought flies faster than my fingers and sometimes you can proofread all you want 😉 but you just dont see IT.

I am not religious person. Because whenever, where-ever I collided with even the faintest of ideas of religion, say, someone saying the name of Jesus – it always had bad taste to it. Let me explain in more details some of the situations and thoughts. Initial experience at home was religion free totally, 100%. My real home was against all oppression, all forced “junk” including all religion, Lenin and Russkii Mir. My elders were not religious, never went to church when I was around (though we had one barely standing, and barely standing because most of the people in our country are non-religious, hence the congregation of 23 people can not really keep up the maintenence with handful of pennies). My mother however, was babtised some time around 1950. But that was mostly because that time it was part of education, something you could not escape. And that!, being religious or having any contact with any church!, did not come in handy when II WW ended. Everyone vaguely suspicious of being religious, no matter jew or not, was either harrassed, shot or sent to Siberia. For more than 50 years we were not allowed to celebrate Xmas, or as we knew it – winter solstice or Juletide. Again, nothing to do with religion but the change of season or duration of sunshine if you will. The solctice celebrations were hijacked from nordic pagan people by christians when they came conquering and occupying. So after IIWW when caught with tree and ornaments and celebrations on wrong time you were harassed. So generously russians “allowed” to celebrate their understanding of this – Ded Moroz in troika (the three horses carriage with blue-coated Father of Frost) – and the timing was slightly later than “proper Xmas”, usually after new years eve. We as pagans were celebrating wintersolstice with so-called Juletide tree that could be translated as you wish, but most people simply said word to word “spruce-tree” or tannenbaum (sometimes some words were of German heritance for the oldest people who were taught German in school). Partly a wannabe show-off, thats for sure. There were wannabes in our family too. Furcoats, red lipstick, drinking tea with pinky poking out. Next moment cleaning stables from shite pretending that to be just temporary ;). Forty years gone by. Still cleaning and pretending.

I heard the word “lord” or “god” or “good good” only when people were doing hard physical work, and their bodies threatened to give up – aches, exhaustion. Hard physical work as that times we did not have fancy machinery as today. Every task was done by hand, exception being ploughing snow (sometimes) and prepping field for potatoes (both seeding and picking). So the old bones bending over the potatoes obviously got worned out fast, and in order to keep going one has to stretch. So when the grownups stretched they usually, some 90% of time, said: “Good Lord” or “Oh, Lord” or some equivalent of this. That means it was used as conjunction. Its not indicating that the person is religious. Because they are not.

Jumping to a different topic for a moment and for closure today. One of the worlds favourite magician – musician has passed away. I am speechless. Speechless because I saw it coming some time at Xmas. Had terrible dreams for several days and I saw white rooms and silver metal tubes, masks, drips. We have at least his music, the biggest there is in life. I got to hear in live concert in Helsinki. Precious. Music. Rest in peace Jeff Beck.   

Dreaming of freedom or freedom of dreaming. 

Even though not religious. 

I pray for Ukraine

I pray for Iran

The pain is unbearable

Its annoying

The inability to decide

Cowards