Let’s make another dichotomy. There are ones who spend their lives delving deep into a subject. Then there are ones who stay the drug of knowledge and instead go broadly into many subjects. The former are the celebrated. The latter are the ones who can communicate with all, but are easily forgotten.

Then there are those who attempt to do both at once. They die in a mire of quicksand which envelops like a predator.

Discussion now centres around how the Uralic culture always wants their children to grow up around reindeer. You cannot be a human without reindeer around you. And the transfer of values to children because of this let them grow up in a ethically rich way and pass the same values on to their own culture.

If this were me, the world would be a desert. Desolation. Nothing. My childhood should not be passed on.

Is quality of life the freedom to be your own boss and to have freedom from the chains of country and culture? Or is quality of life accumulating material things?

This is another black and white question. Think about it as on axis, or a plane.

The dichotomy of black and white as opposed to living without any kind of conflict because no conflict actually exists. Western Culture creates a sense of good and evil in everyone. Without something to fight against, there is nothing to define ourselves by.

Indigenous people who live in harmony with their own ecosystem accept all around them as it is - they are harmonic, if you will, to use a cliché’d phrase. The mentality of black and white simply doesn’t exist. There is no reason to define oneself because conflict against something else. Rather, humans live in a culture which is at one with its ecosystem.

Discuss.

The indigenous people who live in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug have a tradition where they name a place after the person who is buried there. This means that as generations go by, the names of places change. They are as fluid as the people themselves, overreigned by a immutable tradition.

I am split between the idea of saving a race or group of a species (including humans) who have been overtaken and passed by the remainder of the world and left far behind and letting them die out as most non-adaptive creatures have in the past.

Technology is the main culprit for this rushing onward. Being left behind means inevitable death.

Being a sort of conservation biologist (I should really put that word in quotes), I veer towards the former path. I clearly see that the latter road is the one that nature always takes with every race/group/species that is left behind.

I sit alone in the huge room of the ground floor of the guest house in Viidu. I drove Kairi to the bus station in Kuressaare where she departed at 8.20. I did not wait for her to depart. She took her backpack and bag, told me it was fun for me and walked away. I drove first to fill up the vacant truck with diesel then tagasi Viidusse.

We attempted to guess each others’ ages during the drive. She estimated 33 for me. I, 25 for her. Apparently, we are both older that the guesses, but we did not state our actual ages. I am happy about that. It put a buffer between us which will soften our next meeting.

I make it seem like something passed between us other than friendship, but that is not so. Friendship, however, and a communion in similar ideas, is delightful in itself.

We also spoke of people reaching a point in life when they were essentially dead. Or, as I later put it, sleeping. Resigned may be an even better description. Kairi hoped aloud she would never reach such a state. I told her that from what I had garnered from her personality throughout the past six days, that she would not. I must admit that I was saying that to simply be kind. Oh, and to earn some brownie points. Honestly, during much of the past six days, she exhibited a frightful lack of imagination and disinterest in artistic phenomena. Six days is not long, however. She began to open up beginning Saturday (the day following my evening depression) and proved my initial theory that she had little or no imagination somewhat wrong.

Nüüd temal on viie tunni ja neljakümne viie minuti pikk buss sõit. Ja sajab vihma kuigi ma ootan Tiit.

Kairi is at the table to my left. The wooden dinner table of this guest house in Viidu. She re-entered the room perhaps forty minutes ago and we have not spoken a single word to each other in that time.

Nothing is particularly wrong, however. I categorize us as friends at this point and if friends wish to be silent and self-absorbed, they should be allowed to be. One great problem I faced in the past with relationships is not being able to give the other person space to do their own things - to be self-absorbed. Or just to fucking read a book in peace.

This bit back when I felt crowded later in relationships by the same actions I performed during the initial parts.

Yesterday was most likely our best day. The morning started with laughs and pointed jokes concerning cannibalism (spawned by Christopher Bender, actually). Kairi liked how improvisation worked into the life with my friends - the ability to react and play off one another in the tumult of absurdities. She’s been practicing a bit, herself.

We sat on a porch of an ostensibly abandoned house in Kaali (I believe that is the name and I refuse to look it up at this moment) in dilapidated wicker chairs and ate our lunch. I told her about the things which sparked my depression the night before - detailed in the previous entry. She seemed intrigued. She claimed she’d never thought in that manner before. We considered relationships, but not too deeply. I let the conversation sink soon. I know my weaknesses. I do not want to fall foul of them any longer.

In the evening, we watched The Fellowship of the Ring on this very shittypie. I wondered idly during the day today whether she felt my eyes on her as she tautly focused on the film. Such superstitions are silly.

Now we have our silence. Tomorrow morning, I drive her to Kuressaare to the bus station. She’ll be off to Tartu and her life there. I’m not sure when we’ll next meet.

Yesterday, my thoughts did not have enough granularity. That is, the granularity was too low. Their incipient relations were clipped at their collective buds. They grew singularly and apart from one another.

Lack of concentration and stumbling thinking which accompanies it results in this lumpiness. Separate lumpiness. The thoughts take on egos of their own, becoming much like humans in regarding themselves as unique and free-standing individuals. Given time, one of these thoughts would reign over all other triumphantly. The other thoughts, banished to peasantry, would diminish, possibly die off. A type of fundamentalism is victorious.

The flowing interaction between phenomena had been lost yesterday. Selfishness awakens and manifests itself in the aforementioned fundamentalism. The only way to re-increase the granularity and fluidity of ideas in the mind is introspection, or a better would might be meditation.

I realize I am a part of all thoughts and objects, that is to say, phenomena, around when the granularity is sufficiently high. Then, nothing matters but the flow from moment to moment.

The perpetual goal.

I have found that when I consume too much and my tummy is overly satiated, I become depressed. Though I know this to be true, I continue to exhibit this tendency. I find it a habit overseeing other habits to let the subordinate habits run wild even though I intellectually know they will make me feel unhappy (or alternately replace with another negative emotion).

So, I informed Kairi, as she was coming back down to the expansive ground floor of the guest house in Viidu (our temporary home) that I was feeling badly. She inquired if I had a cold. I told her the truth - that I was a little depressed. Then I said I’d see her in the morning. Of course, I’d rather she knock on my door and awaken me from my lugubriousness. My eyelids hang with lethargy. My brain is numb. Mul on vaja uut aru.

A phrase which will mark this day are:

Varsti tule risttee me peame pöörama vasakule.

I think I am missing a word between risttee and me. I should shamble on down the outside staircase (which is the only way to reach the ground floor) just to ask her this very question. I shall hope to remember tomorrow.

One thing I assume about Kairi is that she is not the sort of girl whom one would have to take care of. She has a very strong individual streak within. Wow. That’d be a change, wouldn’t it?

We traveled many roads full of immense dips full of opaque water, hoping not to be stuck. Hoping not to have to live forever in the beautiful expanse all around us.