injunjane

I started this journal today, after having a blog on LiveJournal for 20 years and completely switching from a personal blog to anti-war posting two and a half years ago, when the country where both my parents were born started an unprovoked insane aggression against the country where I was born.

Today I got a system message that one of my postings about Russian war crimes was blocked by Roskomnadzor.
That's what the almost-new LiveJournal owners do to a posting in a platform created by USA programmers for ordinary peaceful people to make their online communication easier and more comfortable.

LiveJournal is long dead. And I still need a good old LJ blog. So I'm here.

I'm going to write here in (very bad) hybrid English and probably in a couple (like 4 or 5) of other European languages I speak, too.

It's going to be a personal blog and a travel blog plus some scientific stuff and home food recipes, nothing more.

In light of recent events I'm reading anxious facebook posts of some colleagues who currently live there.

One of them, who is a Jew and a former Russian citizen who emigrated to Israel at the beginning of the open phase of Russo-Ukrainian war, answered some of my questions and gave permission to cite him (anonymously). I think this is an objective opinion considering that he's a highly educated, politically neutral, empathic man and a good objective scientist.

The questions I asked him were:

- what do you think about Netanyahu government and their policy?
- why no humanitarian aid is allowed to Gaza?
- is it true that Israeli soldiers are raping Palestinians?
- what's going on in general?

That's his rather concise answer.

"...Disclaimer - from an Israeli perspective, I have extreme leftist views, while most Russian-speaking Israelis have rightist views.

(from a perspective of a European, his views are those of centrist, I wouldn't even say left-centrist)
( Read more... )

I have a feeling that the black and white picture painted by media (in particular, politically engaged media in the US and UK) is as far from Middle East reality as Mickey and Minnie Mouse from the real mice. People are paid to do their job well, but the problem is the real situation simply doesn't fit in any pattern currently present in their still sterilized-by-rational-and-mostly-Christian-mind Western bubble.

The problem is, this bubble is surrounded by cultures that do not fit in their paradigm neither mentally nor in terms of religious views. And those cultures number billions of individuals. If you continue to ignore this fact and measure everything by the standards of your small, warm aquarium, the shock of a collision with the ocean depths (which will happen sooner or later) will be very great.

"Until the lion learns to write, all the stories will glorify the hunter"

Internet nowadays is full with videos suggesting how to "find purpose in life". Somehow men in the first place are supposed to have a purpose - apparently because being a purposeless woman is rather hard in our reality, others are constantly trying to find a very meaningful everyday task for her. A task of being man's servant (and also elders' servant and kids' servant) while men are engaged in their high-purpose activities as well as doing nothing - pardon my bitter sarcasm based not on some feminist reading that I don't do, but on real situations in life :)

I'm brooding over purposes often, in particular trying to understand why I always knew what I wanted and what's the meaning and purpose of my life (spoiler: not a husband and kids), but my brother and some quite close people of male sex always had troubles finding it. All of them avid computer gamers, by the way - maybe because games create an illusion of achievement while there is none IRL.

And it seems to me that this lack of purpose is directly connected to the habit of playing a role (required by the society for one's sex, age and position in the hierarchy) instead of being one's true self.

The society always tried to replace individual personalities with social roles, at the beginning for the sake of that society, and now - when the burden of being its member is IMHO much lighter than ever, - by inertia. IMHO again, the current epidemics of "men discovering themselves being a woman in a man's body" at least partly comes from confusing a social role with the biological sex. By the way, living in the void the everyday inner world of real women that does not exactly correspond to their role and thus cannot be directly perceived by someone who is not in their body.

Watched an interview with Scott Galloway and Logan Ury. While I agree with many things they say, it blew my mind how Galloway could not get out of the traditional "real man"'s role when Ury started to talk about changes in women's needs in a partnership. She noted cautiously the fact that modern women earn enough money to be independent and so, they now often look for emotional support from their spouse or partner instead of getting money (even for raising children). He didn't even argue but simply ignored that note, going on and on about some "statistics from dating cites that show"...of course they show that women on the date cites (part of whom are simply bots generated by system to increase the paid time spent in dialogs) prefer men with higher income.

Income, income, income. A role that replaces any kind of purpose for a modern so-called "real man".

Why not to look at our life and see that modern society is a structure that can be duped (unlike say Medieval society) in the way that you give it a portion of your time, then go home and be yourself? Read the books you like, listen to the music you like, wear your favourite clothes, discover the Universe's mysteries and just don't ask the world if you do it right or not...

Yesterday the secondary school in Kyiv I used to attend between 8 and 13 yo was damaged by Russian bombing.
The explosions were quite close to our house where my parents and my brother still live.

They launched a massive attack with drones and ballistics on Saturday night, between 1 and 6 AM.

And this weekend is a great celebration in Kyiv, The City's Day. That's how they congratulated us.

In Poland a cow run away from a village and lived for 3 months with a heard of zubrs

Zubr (Bison bonasus) is smaller than the famous American bison, although these two species belong to the same genus. Both can create hybrids with domestic cattle.

ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΟΚΙΒΩΤΙΟ

Grammatokyvotio. Literally a mailbox (in Greek). Kyvote in our part of the world is a Biblical word, by the way, but in Greek-speaking countries it's...just a box. Nothing so divine.

I adore this language.

I took a short excursion in the surrounding area and a bus brought me to a local church, - one of very many on this island which is said to carry its Chrisianity from Saint Lazarus himself, the famous Jewish man who was supposedly dead and resurrected by Christ.

It is much easier to get peace during the church servise if it's held in a beautiful ancient language you do not exactly understand :) Actually, I do understand the parts which I have heard in Old Slavic Church language (which is closest to Bulgarian), but taken that not everything can be literally translated from Greek - the real meaning seems to be still hidden from non-Greek adepts.

For example, Κύριε ελέησον, ἐλέησόν με κύριε which is traditionally translated as "Lord, have mercy" is actually referred to the ritual where the person is anointed with sacred oil (έλαιο) to both forgive his/her sins and be cured from illnesses. This has probably nothing to do with "mercy" of a warlord to his prisoners, but rather an act of kindness to the fellow kin. Modern adepts are probably generally unaware of such multi-layer meaning of their prayers.

Although I'm quite critical to Abrahamic religions in general (due to their frequent misogyny and obscurantism), when I think about Christianity, I cannot stop wondering how in Continental Europe they managed to make such a depressive, cruel and rigid religion out of rather humanistic faith of Jews and Greeks.

Here, on Cyprus, the quiet and friendly demeanor of religious people indeed says for itself that Ο Θεός είναι αγάπη, God is Love. Not an angry old man with a stick who cleans the most horrible deeds of his fanatics but cruely punishes "unbelievers" for the very fact of being not of the flock, even if they are kind and decent people. But gentle palms of the Universe that hold a lonely person in the middle of a dark night of horror and despair. A friendly hand of a prisoner of hell to another such prisoner.

And this gives me a lot of hope in a hopeless world.

First time since covid I'm going to collect samples in the field.
And in the same time finally take some rest from the war and family matters. I really need to return to my inner self now and renew my contact with the Universe, I was feeling like I'm losing it and falling into the depth of a dull grey depression.

And it's my first time and second day on Cyprus.

With a lot of sun, a lot of sea and frantically singing spring birds everywhere.

Cyprus, an ancient Greek island, is nowadays divided into two parts politically. The difference from the continental Greece here is the palbable presence of Turkish culture - in street names, people's faces and clothes, partially in the mental atmosphere.
In the same time, it's still Greek civilization. Same as during my trip to Greece, I'm feeling like living in some crazy sort of a scientific book where everything is written in the language of formulas, and even on the bus tickets you can see scientifically familiar words - like μεταφορά. Which has nothing to do with literature but simply means "transport".

Still for these people it's just a bunch of everyday words. Τέσσερα, πέντε, έξι, επτά, οκτώ, εννέα, δέκα (four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten). A monumental word ΑΣΤΥΝΟΜΙΑ is written on the police cars, and I guess the policemen are what, "astynomes"? Greece itself is not Greece, but noble Ελλάδα (Elladha), just like in ancient times. Mediterranean sea is Μεσόγειος Θάλασσα (Mesogeios Thalassa).

An old lady is going out into a little garden down the yard, there are some twenty or thirty flower pots of all sizes and colours there.

- Καλημέρα! (Kalimera, "Good morning". My humble effort in learning Greek)
- Καλημέρα! ...(long phrase in Greek that I do not understand)

I'm making a vague wide gesture, because simply saying δεν καταλαβαίνω (I do not understand) to such a nice lady feels awfully impolite. In Czechia and France you must say "dobrý den/bonjour" to everyone, even to strangers, but noone expects any talk after that.

- OK? The lady says.
- OK, OK! (in Greek it would be πολύ καλό, poli kalo, again two words from scientific books to me)
- Me too!
- Do you speak English?
The lady makes a gesture unequivocally meaning "very, very little"
- I'm learning Greek too, ευχαριστώ! (Evkaristo, "thank you" is another monumental word which Greeks use every day, but which I know from the Orthodox church. "Eucharistia" is a ritual of consuming body and blood of Christ during the Sunday mass)
- Παρακαλώ! (Parakalo, "you're welcome")

By the way, reading Greek is so easy to someone who can read Cyrillic. That's the origin of our alphabet, after all.

I've just found out that beavers, who are second largest rodents after capybaras, can weigh up to 50 kg.

On the scale of human weight in beavers, I'm 1 up to 1.08 :)