A Beginning

          I have begun to record these events because I have become convinced that they are to occur only so that I may record them. I feel that I must give some notion of the motivation for this manuscript at the outset, though it will, in time, be made evident, as it has been to myself. A change has begun in my soul, a change that is clear in origin, but unclear in meaning. This account will only be valuable insofar as it is free of self-deceit, of fibs or half-truths for sake of appearances. Am I capable of it? If the honesty is to begin here I must admit a certain habit, a certain inclination of mine, to see only my better half… or at least a little less of my worse… At moments of extreme temptation, I convince myself that my sin is not really a sin, that no harm will really come of my actions, and that I am not really compromising my integrity. If I snatch just one of those twenty dollar bills from my friends wallet, he will surely not notice. And it would make things easier on me, me a virtuous man. In fact, really I am owed this ten dollars, and much more beyond that, but I will settle for this twenty dollars because such is my virtue. I suffer so that another may prosper. No, but really that is what I myself, out of pride, come to believe in my mind, even though I do admire that kind of noble and humble character, and even though I believe it to be the only life able to redeem man’s sins. That is the beauty of the impermanence of each moment, the sin is not irreparable; life is transient so that I can atone for my sins, my own and others’.
          What is my sin? Above all else, my sin is pride, a pride that convinces me how wonderful I am and how much the whole world owes me for my wonderfulness, even though in my heart I know this is a lie. And from my pride come all my other sins, for a proud man does not see himself as committing any sin at all. Rather, to a proud man, all others are committing wrongs against him, and therefore any wrongs committed on the part of the proud man are justified.
          Like all men of our epoch, my sin is also indifference. Simply put, in a world inhabited by a figure approaching seven billion, how significant can my little sin, committed far from the movers and motivators of our precious civilization, certainly harming not one other soul, be? My little sin would not account for one blade of grass in a field of ten thousand acres, and already that field has grown wild and out of control, for it has not been tended to for centuries, so what would it matter to plant my little sin in that field, too? Surely my sin cannot even constitute a single blade of grass next to giant oaks and redwoods, which show their age and magnitude in the endless rings of their trunks. This, too, is how I and every other man regard our own sins, such is the consuming power of indifference.
          And so, as is my entire being, my story is born of sin.

Individualism and Christianity in Crime and Punishment

           Crime and Punishment, written in 1866 by Fyodor Dostoevsky, was an allegory of the times in which it was published through its examination into the psychology, spirituality, and social customs of his fellow Russians. Russia, a country in the grips of great poverty and suffering, was recovering from a recent war and the freeing of the serfs. Many Russians’ ideologies had evolved to revolutionary ideas of bringing down the entire social order, including the church. A Christian Existentialist, Dostoevsky always had a soft spot for the lowest economic classes, spending much of his own life in poverty and debt. He was critical of Individualist ideologies, which valued the wellbeing of the individual over that of the nation, and believed that his homeland would find salvation through Christianity. In Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky uses his protagonist Raskolnikov as a conduit in an attempt to enlighten his readers of the consequences that Individualism bestows on the individual and society, as well as the redeeming powers of Christianity.
           At the onset of the novel, Raskolnikov, an impoverished atheistic ex-student living in the slums of St. Petersburg, Russia, conspires a plot to murder an old moneylender for what he believes to be a higher purpose. If a great man, a Napoleon, had to commit one murder, or even 100 murders in pursuit of a great cause, Raskolnikov reflects, he is permitted, perhaps even obliged to do so. He believes himself to be one of these great men, a Nietzschean “superman,” and therefore permitted to commit this horrendous crime. Raskolnikov’s once sharp mind now harbors many such oppositional views. However, after the murder, the catalyst to his transformation, his egotistical views are shattered when he begins to suffer from devastating physical and mental illnesses; he is not the extraordinary man he thought himself to be. His mind turns to a violent, tumultuous state of delirium; “His reason had grown feeble, broken apart . . . his mind grown darkened” (Dostoevsky, 111). Raskolnikov’s personal suffering, a result of the guilt he experiences, relates directly to the growing societal corruption, spawned by Individualistic ideologies, that Dostoevsky foresaw his country headed toward.
           The parallel that Dostoevsky has drawn is this: Individualism in a man results in personal ruin; Individualism in a nation results in a similar national disorder. Radical social ideals that sought to bring down the entire social order were not uncommon throughout Russia at the time Crime and Punishment was written. The protagonist’s physical and mental health continue to deteriorate steadily as he struggles with his guilt. This is the direction Dostoevsky saw his country headed in. It is no mere coincidence that Alyona Ivanova, the old woman who is the target of Raskolnikov’s murder, is a moneylender. Dostoevsky was critical of the capitalist tendencies that were making its way into the contemporary Russian society. The lower classes of Russian society, many of whom lacked even the most essential rights, were continually being oppressed by greedy businessmen looking to expand their vast wealth. A commonality among all the wealthy characters in Crime and Punishment, such as Svidrigailov, a suspected murderer and pursuer of Raskolnikov’s sister Dunya, and Pyotr Luzhin, the businessman who also intends to marry Dunya, is their moral depravity, an obvious attempt by Dostoevsky to reveal the nature of the capitalist. For instance, Svidrigailov, after overhearing Raskolnikov confess his crime to Sonya, tries to blackmail Dunya into marrying him by threatening to turn Raskolnikov in to the police. Likewise, Luzhin, after he is humiliated by Raskolnikov and turned down by Dunya, attempts to frame Sonya of thievery in order to feel superior once again. These characters are shown to be greedy, and lack any compassion for their indigent contemporaries.
           As Dostoevsky exposed the crisis among Russians, he also proposed a solution. If Individualism destroys man, Christianity redeems him. In Russian, “Raskolnik” is a word for a religious dissenter. These Raskolniks, like Raskolnikov himself, generally sought to oppose society, authority, and civil laws. Raskolnikov’s lack of faith in God has led him astray, led him to develop Individualist ideas about himself. Only from his dreams of happiness, eminence, and renown can he draw meaning from life. “Existence on its own had never been enough for him; he had always wanted more than that” (Dostoevsky, 648). However, as he comes to understand Sonya, the daughter of the civil servant Marmeladov, whose drinking has driven her into prostitution to support her family, Raskolnikov learns that God makes life inherently meaningful. This is why, standing at the mouth of a river, Raskolnikov decides not to jump in to his death, but instead to turn himself in. Like a martyr, he goes boldly to receive his punishment and his confession thereby acts to purge his conscience of any sin. “Go immediately, this very moment, go and stand at the crossroads, bow down, first kiss the whole ground that you’ve desecrated, and then bow to the whole world, to all four points of the compass and tell everyone, out loud: ‘I have killed!’ Then God will send you life again” (Dostoevsky, 501). Learning from Sonya’s example, Raskolnikov commits himself to suffering and, though he is sentenced to eight years of penal servitude in exile, redeems himself. He acknowledges his sins, and accepts a Christ-like suffering in an attempt to atone for them. As he embraces God, Raskolnikov’s mind is assuaged, and, Dostoevsky implies, Christianity would have a similar healing effect on Russia as a whole. Both Sonya and Raskolnikov recognize the purpose of Raskolnikov turning himself in. It is, as Raskolnikov says when Sonya hangs a crucifix around his neck, “to symbolize my taking up the cross” (Dostoevsky, 623).
           This journey resulting in spiritual rebirth was not altogether a fictional idea of Dostoevsky’s. In many ways, Crime and Punishment is written from Dostoevsky’s own experiences, and the transformation that Raskolnikov experiences reflects a similar renewal in religious faith that Dostoevsky himself endured. Like Raskolnikov, he too harbored radical ideals and was even condemned to death for his participation in anti-government activities. However, after being pardoned moments before his execution, his sentence was commuted to penal servitude for eight years. He emerged from exile humbled, and with a new set of conservative and extremely religious values. Much as he saw this as his own salvation, he also thought this to be the remedy for his disgruntled nation. In Raskolnikov Dostoevsky showed his new uncompromising faith, because to Raskolnikov he offers absolute proof. If Raskolnikov had been right in his Individualistic assumptions, after the crime he would have been happy; but instead he is in anguish, and to Raskolnikov, that is proof of God’s existence. The closing line of the book, in effect, summarizes the theme of the novel: “the story of a man’s gradual renewal, his gradual rebirth, his gradual transition from one world to another, of his growing acquaintance with a new, hitherto completely unknown reality” (Dostoevsky, 656).
           Based on his own personal struggles, Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment as an admonition to the rest of Russia. He warned of the path that Individualism would lead to, and advocated the benefits Christianity would have on the individual and the nation as a collective whole. Through Raskolnikov he showed the way to redemption. He warned of the corrupting effects of radical ideologies and capitalism. All this he had learned firsthand as he sat in a prison Siberia, where he contemplated his life and set aside his aspirations of personal success and renown, for the betterment of his nation.

Reason vs. Instinct

           In Friedrich Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, the author gives a thorough judgment of two figures that have significantly shaped all subsequent philosophical thought: Socrates and Jesus Christ, respectively. Although Nietzsche feels that both thinkers introduced a diseased perspective, one that denies the instincts, he still betrays a certain respect for each. One must also bear in mind that Nietzsche’s own thought was inevitably influenced by theirs. In fact, Nietzsche, in his polarizing fashion, occasionally seems resentful of each thinker’s ideas, characterizing his own thoughts as negations of theirs and completely condemning their beliefs. Ultimately, however, Nietzsche expresses more disdain for the Christian Church than Jesus himself, and he praises the philosophy of Jesus, with its absence of resentment, above Socrates’s dialectical reason.
           In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche, who believed that a full account of a thing’s origin provided much insight into the nature of the thing itself, gives a historical examination of Socrates. Nietzsche puts Socrates in the context of Athens, a decadent, and thus declining, society. The degeneration of Athens was the result of their becoming slave to their desires, their bad instincts. Socrates, seeking to “devise a counter-tyrant who is stronger”, attracts fascination as the embodiment of reason (43). Dialectics and extreme rationality are taken to be the apparent cures for decadence; only through them could they, like Socrates, become master of their instincts. Here, Nietzsche criticizes dialectics as “a pitiless instrument; with its aid one can play the tyrant; one compromises by conquering. The dialectician leaves it to his opponent to demonstrate he is not an idiot” (42). In other words, dialectics is purely linguistic, and language, in Nietzsche’s view, is naturally flawed. A successful argument proves only that one’s sophistry outdid another’s, and not that it expressed reality more accurately. Socrates argued that reason=virtue=happiness, that our reason must counter our bad instincts and project an absolute, *static optimism*, but in this he merely substitutes one tyrant for another; they do not abolish decadence, but merely alter its expression.
           Nietzsche blames Socrates for introducing reason into western thought, which has since spawned a host of other “idiosyncrasies of philosophers” (45). One idea reason is opposed to is becoming, or change, but “in so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie” (46). The philosopher concludes that the senses depict a false world that is only a shadow of the ‘real’ world, which is made up of the highest, most abstract, ‘absolute’ concepts. In this one can see that the philosopher’s aversion to impermanence causes him to trick himself into believing that that which the senses perceive derives from the supreme concepts, which are causes in themselves, personified by God. Reason also projects everything into categories, which is a kind of fetishism, a taking of the parts for a whole. This same fetishism is in itself language. From language we conceptualize a subject and an object, a cause and an effect, something willing an effect, all in a linear fashion. Nietzsche expounds a view in which effects are linked back to a vast interweaving causal web, but even that is inevitably an anthropomorphic perception. Thus Nietzsche undermines Socrates’s entire dialectical method. This is what Nietzsche calls ‘philosophizing with a hammer’. By recalling Zarathustra in Twilight of the Idols’s final chapter, Nietzsche links the hammer and hardness to instinct, strength, and power.
           With The Anti-Christ, Nietzsche returns to one of his favorite subjects, Christianity. Of all religions that he discusses, Nietzsche likely values Christianity least of all. In Christianity, he sees the most blatant case of a morality based on resentment. It is a religion that seeks preservation of the weak, the poor, and the sick over the strong. It is centered around the concept ‘sin’, which is a condemnation of the self rather than an affirmation of it. Nietzsche also expresses particular disdain for the Christian priest, epitomized by the disciple Paul, a figure he holds responsible for the falsification of the Judeo-Christian history and the creation of what Nietzsche calls a ‘moral world-order’. Both of these actions were perpetrated because the priest can use “only those concepts, teachings, symbols with which one tyrannizes over masses, forms herds” (167). The priestly order believed they were doing good by making Jesus’s teachings more accessible, but their actions resulted in a false interpretation of the Bible that portrays the life of Jesus as the necessary and prophetic result of the Old Testament. They thus fabricated a history out of which Christianity came, altering the context, and thus the perceived meaning, of Christianity and the life of the redeemer.
           As Socrates and his influence were the product of a decadent society, Nietzsche distinguishes Jesus from the ambiguous history from which he came and the Church that followed. To begin with, Nietzsche characterizes Jesus as an ‘idiot’, in the Dostoyevskian sense of one who is morally alien from the society from which he comes, but only because he instinctively must be so (“his proofs are inner ‘lights’, inner feelings of pleasure and self-affirmations”), not due to any reason or rationale (157). In this, Jesus is fundamentally different from any of the Greeks, who were slaves to their bad instincts, and more akin to the Buddha; Jesus was at one with his good instincts, with what was in his heart, and what corresponded to his will.
           While Nietzsche admires Jesus for the self-affirmation of behaving instinctively, he criticizes him for denying all that is physical and creating a world “undisturbed by reality of any kind, a merely ‘inner’ world, a ‘real’ world, an ‘eternal world’” (153). In essence, Nietzsche claims that Jesus advocated a solipsistic philosophy, but this is because he speaks only of the soul or the self, and takes all of nature to be merely metaphor. Jesus could discern nothing but the self; he never revolted against or denied order or culture because he was unable to acknowledge either. He had no ill-will toward any being, and that is what makes him the only true Christian: he does not resist evil in not only his words, but his heart also. His instinct was to love and forgive even those who do evil to him, even his executors, and he allows no one to prevent him from willing so. Jesus recognized that it is through living one’s life that one senses the divine, that the Kingdom of God is a condition of the heart that exists eternally, not something that comes into existence.
           Nietzsche returns to a historical account of the Church, and further divides Christ from Christianity. Jesus remained a Christian even in his death by resisting not his executors, while his disciples became resentful of the ruling class. “From this moment one felt oneself in mutiny against the social order, one subsequently understood Jesus as having been in mutiny against the social order” (164). The Disciples once again create a fabricated historical account of Jesus’s origins. This is an example of the kind of “Egyptianism” that Nietzsche describes: 2000 years of ecclesiastical writings and interpretations, led by Paul, who took Jesus’s death and wove out of it a fable for sin and redemption, have mummified Christianity and stripped it of its history.
           After restoring Socrates and Jesus their proper origins, Nietzsche is able to lay bare the shortcomings of each, as well as their admirable characteristics. Ultimately, Nietzsche recognizes Socrates for exposing to Athens its decadence, but this is a limited acknowledgment, as he merely substituted one tyrant for another. He also criticizes Socrates for denying the instinct and promoting dialectical reasoning. Of Jesus, however, Nietzsche has a more favorable view. While Nietzsche does criticize Jesus for fleeing from the external senses into an acknowledgement of only an inner world, he holds Jesus to be fundamentally sound in his instincts. Indeed, The Anti-Christ may have been more aptly titled Anti-Christian, so far does Nietzsche draw the divide between Jesus and the Church that sprung up in response to him.

Works Cited:
Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Penguin Books. England, 1990.            Tr. Hollingdale, R.J.

Nietzsche on Truth

           In “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” Nietzsche sets out to define the concept “truth,” and all that it implies, in terms of how man perceives his understanding of it, and how his understanding really functions. Nietzsche’s explanation for the nature of things does not follow a direct linear causal chain, but instead resembles a complex and interrelated web of reasons, causes, and effects. For this reason, coupled with his eccentricity, Nietzsche’s writing sometimes seems erratic and unorganized, though a complete reading allows the reader to glean a description of how the concept of truth first arose in human consciousness, how its meaning has evolved in the designated collective perception, and the effects of those changes.
           Nietzsche notes that humans are by nature social creatures that gather in communities. The essence of living in a community lies in the act of relying on another person and thereby deriving some benefit, so to facilitate the communication of concepts men adopt a “regularly valid and obligatory designation of things,” or a commonly understood definition of nature. This constitutes the origin of man’s first impulse toward the concept of truth. The designation of things takes the form of words that come to represent concepts. Here Nietzsche makes a distinction: “between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and object… there is at most an aesthetic relation… for which there is required a freely inventive intermediate sphere and mediating force” (Truth and Lie, 7). In other words, there is no necessary relation between man and a thing, only a relation in which man must have a partly creative role. This emphasizes the difference between a word and the thing it represents. Man takes the nerve stimuli as the first metaphor for a thing, and creates a word as a metaphor that can be commonly understood for the conception of the thing. Man simplifies things even further: he uses a single word to represent not just one particular thing, but many things on the basis of their similar qualities. To take Nietzsche’s own example, man gives the designation “leaf” to an entire class of objects, actively forgetting that each leaf is particular and unequal. In this way, each word is also a concept into which all individual “leaves” are assimilated. Nietzsche does not regard this process as wholly a negative one, even stating, “precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth” (On Truth and Lie, 5). In fact, Nietzsche describes this drive for metaphors as indispensable to man in any social environment. Though he doesn’t realize it, man in society is not concerned by deception itself, but only the harmful consequences of deception. So, even though man is taking a lie for a truth, once the community’s impression of a metaphor takes on a common form, “it acquires at last the same meaning for men it would have if it were the sole necessary image and if the relationship of the original nerve stimulus to the generated image were a strictly causal one,” that is, derived from the essence of the thing, and man thereby derives the benefit of clearer communication. Ultimately, Nietzsche views man’s customary understanding of truth as in no way directly connected to the actual essence of things, yet a useful simplification that facilitates communication.
           At this point, Nietzsche points out that man’s view of truth is an anthropomorphic one, which “contains not a single point which would be ‘true in itself” or really and universally valid apart from man” (On Truth and Lie, 6). As previously stated, he is not concerned with the actual truth, but only life-preserving truths, avoiding potentially damaging truths. Thus, man only seeks to understand nature in its relation to man, and consequently he acquaints himself only with the effects of nature and how he is affected by them. To elucidate Nietzsche’s own example, consider the concept “mammal”; this concept does not exist divorced from mankind, only particular individual organisms with similar genetic structures exist, yet man applies this concept to a variety of organisms and calls it truth. Though man can perceive nature in a way such that, “only its owner and producer gives it such importance,” he assumes that his way of viewing nature, though a totally separate way than, say, a mosquito, or any other creature views nature, is the perception against which all others should be valuated.
           Nietzsche elaborates on this subject in his third essay in On the Genealogy of Morals. He refutes the notion of an all-seeing, God’s eye form of objectivity, which transcends all perspectivism; “There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective ‘knowing’; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our ‘concept’ of this thing, our ‘objectivity,’ be” (Genealogy of Morals, 119). In other words, one perspective can’t be said to have more “truth,” because that would presuppose the existence such a transcendent, timeless God’s eye, but by suspending judgment of perspectives and utilizing a multitude of interpretations we can achieve a fuller and richer understanding of nature.
           Nietzsche’s own definition of truth necessitates that we apply his reasoning to the definition itself in order to assess its validity. Naturally one must make the observation that he uses words themselves to construct a criticism of language. While this seems to be a contradiction of terms, so to speak, Nietzsche himself admits, and one must agree, that such an inconsistency is unavoidable. Although he uses metaphors (words) to state that all words are metaphors and not the things they represent, and despite the fact that, by his own definition, each word he uses is merely a commonly understood designation that does not account for inequalities of particulars, language remains the most efficient way to communicate.
           After bearing this issue of language in mind, one must also recognize the inherent anthropomorphism of human perception, which every human fundamentally cannot avoid. Thus, even Nietzsche’s explanation of the anthropomorphism of human thought, is a thought that is itself anthropomorphic in nature. While Nietzsche himself certainly recognizes this as well, he is right in pointing out the benefit of acknowledging this fatalism. After regarding this as true, man can view his own thoughts with the insight that they inevitably assess nature only in its relation to man.
           Finally, Nietzsche himself would acknowledge that his definition of truth, even while attempting to show that each perspective is just that, a perspective and not the actual essence of nature, is itself just another such perspective. Although this is the case, however, it does not detract from the value of recognizing the limitations of perspectivism. While doing so does not change the essential qualities of our way of perceiving, it retracts the veil of ignorance that covers man’s understanding of his own view of truth, and thus brings forth a kind of truth that is previously ignored.
           Ultimately, Nietzsche outlines a definition of truth for man which inherently contains all-too-human limitations that is naturally bound by the separation between a perceiving organism and the object of its perception. With these limitations regarding the achievability of “truth” in mind, one can still say, and Nietzsche would say so himself, that hiss interpretation holds significant value in that it elucidates many ambiguities points of human ignorance in relation to the actual functioning of our perceptions.

Works Cited:
“On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense.” Friedrich Nietzsche. Nachlass, 1873. Tr. Walter            Kaufmann, Daniel Breazele.
On the Genealogy of Morals. Friedrich Nietzsche. Random House, Inc. New York, 1967.
           Tr. Walter Kaufmann, R. J. Hollingdale.

The Diary of Nina Mikhailovna Zarechnaya

           My life has changed dramatically since my last summer on the country estate where I grew up. I have never returned to that place that was once my home. There is nothing left for me there; my father has not spoken to me since I left to pursue my dream of fame as an actress, and the lake by which I spent so much time in my youth alternately reminds me of Trigorin, for whom my spurned love will always haunt me, and Treplyov, who ought to be alive and I dead in his place, if justice were truly served.
           Though my thoughts return there often, I have instead spent my time mostly in provincial theatres, where years of acting have allowed me to heal from those pains which will haunt me all my life. I no longer seek the fame and glory of which I once dreamt. Rather, acting helps me to endure, which is all I have sought since. I have realized that life is no dream; not even famous actors and writers live in the fairytale world I once imagined they did, but in the same world of struggle and sorrow as the rest of us.
           I remained in the provinces for some time while my soul regained some of its former vitality, and my strength as an actress steadied itself. Someone who carries the burdens that I carry can never be worshipped as a leading lady, who must glow with youth and carefreeness. That is what audiences want to believe in: the immortality of youth. My burdens, however, have aged my heart prematurely, and so I will always fit perfectly as the support to the lead.
           In the year 1909, I married a school-teacher for the sake of beginning a new chapter in my life, in order to achieve some semblance of redemption for myself. There was no romantic ideal of love existing between us, though the match itself made sense, if not romantically then practically.
           Eventually, my hard work in the provinces paid off, and in early 1912 my modest fortunes took me to Moscow where I maintained my status as a reliable supporting actress in the theatres there. My life in Moscow was mostly quiet, as I was never slated for the limelight. I accumulated the means to sustain myself, though my talents never earned me much more than that. My husband and I took up our residence in a not-large, but comfortable apartment, where my husband began to take up writing to supplement our income.
           In 1917, all of Moscow was swept up by the revolutionary fervor that had taken hold of Russia. I have always been interested in the arts, not politics, but an instinctual sense of foreboding came over me throughout the early part of the year. I was never a supporter of autocracy, and I had hopes after Tsar Nicholas II was deposed that Russia would be led to a glorious new future. However, the newly formed Provisional Government seemed to be the seat of even more conflict, as those from all sides of the political spectrum scrambled for power. Workers continued to demonstrate in the streets, although everyone could sense the destructive forces in the country beginning to overflow. My fears proved true when the Bolsheviks took power in October under the slogan “Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” With their obsessive drive to emancipate the industrial workers and to create a new culture centered around the proletariat, their vision seemed to betray the rest of us. Suddenly those of us with a different kind of culture, a culture of the true arts and knowledge, were anachronisms in a strange city that was becoming more and more inhabited by crude workers and soldiers returned from the Great War, who yelled obscenities and led riots in the streets. And what would become of my father and all the others who succeeded in accumulating wealth under the old structure? Were they now the enemy? Only time would tell, but things did not look good for those of us who did not believe wholly in the absoluteness of the Soviets.
           Shortly after the new year, the Bolsheviks in charge dissolved the Constituent Assembly, while simultaneously the Civil War intensified. As the Red and White armies began to slaughter each other, thousands of peasants began to flood the cities, seeking new jobs. Food was scarce, and to make matters worse, our apartment building became packed with more and more tenants. As the year made its way toward April, we could not even call our small apartment our own anymore; my husband and I were forced to make room for another family. Partitioning off the rooms certainly did not create much privacy, and conditions were cramped, damp, and dirty. We did all we could to secure as many food rations as we were able, but the same was true of everyone else, and we, a former teacher and an actress were not particularly priveleged under the new order.
           We spent the better part of the Civil War in these conditions, struggling for work as the culture of the old intelligentsia was in less demand. Our culture was replaced with Communist propaganda. The new morality according to Lenin was simply that which advanced the Bolshevik aims. The cruelty that existed during this time seemed even more brutal than under the Tsar. Everywhere one heard tales of peasants, rising up to protect their grain, being slaughtered by Bolshevik forces in order that they may take the food to feed the Red Army. Even members of the old intelligentsia became caught up in this destructive mood. I recall reading an article by the poet Aleksandr Blok, in which he called on the intelligentsia to devote itself to the revolution, and thereby guide its course. In the article, not only did he encourage that the revolution “make everything over”, he also stated that “’Peace and the brotherhood of nations’ is the sign under which the Russian Revolution runs its course” (Blok, Intelligentsia and the Revolution, pp. 366-7). I could not understand this attitude, not then or ever since. If one destroys all that is old, what guarantee is there that the new will be better? How can “Peace and the brotherhood of nations” be our slogan when there is so much chaos and violence, when Russia has been at war for nearly a decade? Everyone is having the ground pulled out from beneath them, the landscape of the whole nation is changing, when will we be able to put our feet back on solid ground?
           In November of that year, 1921, I received word from a distant relation that my father and his wife were able to flee abroad with as many of their assets as possible. Good for them. Nothing awaited them here in Russia but the swift anger of the revolution. It did not kindly forgive those supporters of the old order.
           When the Bolsheviks finally secured sole power as the Civil War ended shortly thereafter, it produced in me mixed feelings. I feared the blunt hand of the Bolsheviks, but Russia desperately needed the cessation of conflict to heal from its war wounds. Everywhere throughout the country, including Moscow where I lived, was suffering badly from food shortages. As the Red Armies tried to requisition all food from the masses of peasants in rural areas, the peasants tried to cling to what was their own, and rather than give up their livestock, they often slaughtered it themselves. What could our great country have been coming to when all these stratums of our people were cutting off their noses to spite their faces?
           The Bolsheviks in power were faced with this great question when they began to finally focus on issues other than the survival of their rule. Thankfully, the NEP period which followed the war provided a short glimpse of relative freedom. While still scarce, food was becoming more available as the peasants had incentive to produce more grain. The cultural landscape was undergoing a dramatic transformation as well. Communist ideologies, not even agreed upon by the Communists themselves, were the subject of much attention everywhere in Russia, but in Moscow in particular, as it had become the capital of the new Soviet Union. Everyone read or heard about the new roles of the family that were to come to be. Women had never been so active in the political sphere, as new women’s Communist organizations were created to deal with the mass of new questions about sex and gender. While certainly not involved in their activities, I was interested in how they would influence the young generations, whose attitudes at the time were often promiscuous and unrestrained. Even some women felt that traditional monogamy was a relic of our old “bourgeois” society. The messages about ‘winged-eros’ espoused by Aleksandra Kollontai, were some of the few Communist ideals I agreed with. But would they be enough to right the course of our country’s mores?
           When Stalin introduced the first of his five-year plans in place of the NEP in 1928, the whole country seemed to be obsessed with modernization. The drive for industrialization brought a new wave of rural peasants seeking jobs into ever-growing urban areas. Moscow was now more than ever a dense mass of people, where children wandered the streets hungrily, and alcoholism and prostitution were rampant. At least the Communists attempted to address these issues as well. By this time, I was forced by necessity to alter my vision of the arts, at least on the outside. As the Communists debated the role of theatre, the freedom to write and perform as one would like was diminishing. Even our plays were becoming infected with Communist propaganda. Eventually, in the early ‘30s, the Communists made their views on art law, and no show that did not extoll the virtues of the Socialist state could go up. But how real could this “Socialist Realism” be, if we were not free to express our views of reality? Our stratum, the “new” intelligentsia, was being groomed (and by this I mean all who did not direct the progress of culture toward the future socialist state found themselves in a great deal of trouble) to create a new working-class culture that would raise the Communist consciousness of the proletariat. In order to prepare all members of society for the new modes of living, the Communists rightly believe that the cultural level of every individual must be raised. But how is this to be done? Is it necessary to educate everyone and encourage them to speak well? Certainly it is. And what about proper personal hygeine? None will deny the benefit of this, as well. But when we must also teach about fashion trends, read classic works of world literature, and purchase the correct lampshades and tablecloths, how is this culture different from the former, apparently “petty-bourgeois” culture? Of this I am not sure.
           The changes in our daily lives after the revolution came swiftly and relentlessly. But the question in my mind will always remain: have the benefits outweighed the costs? So much widespread struggle has taken place on a daily basis, I have felt it and seen it myself. As things have settled into place since the turbulence of the Civil War period, life has calmed some, much of the revolutionary fervor has subsided. The jury is still out regarding where we are headed, but time is irrevocably leading us into new territory.

Gender Roles After the Russian Revolution

           Throughout the 1920s, the Bolsheviks had a vision of women’s emancipation from housework and oppression, which would allow for sexual relationships to be based on mutual love and respect. The general consensus among Bolsheviks, except for a few who spoke about the immediate attention it was necessary to give to gender issues, was that this vision of gender equality would come into existence only when the socialist state became wealthy enough to collectively take over the domestic chores that had previously been left to wives and mothers. However, it is important to consider this vision within the context of the conditions current to the time and place. The Bolsheviks secured power after a very tumultuous series of events. World War I, in which Russia suffered more casualties than any other nation, was followed by the revolutions of 1917, which in turn were followed by a civil war that was taxing, both physically and psychologically, on the entire population. Because of these events, which both aroused the population’s consciousness and affected many facets of byt, there was an influx of attitudes among Russians about what should be the values of the new life, regarding gender roles as well as other issues. Ultimately, the Bolsheviks’ vision of gender equality never became a reality because of their stubborn belief that the ideal material and economic conditions, in and of themselves, would emancipate women from oppression, without taking into account the development of many conflicting attitudes toward sex from this tumultuous time period.
            By the 1920s, Russians’ family life and their attitudes toward sex and gender were shaped by several factors. On the one hand, the Bolshevik party leaders sought to curb prostitution, the spread of venereal disease, and promiscuity, all of which they felt detracted from the collective effort. However, many young men were still caught up in the revolutionary fervor which sought to destroy all structures and traditions of the old life. They looked down on monogamy, and desired sexual liberation and free love. Those who fell into this category criticized anything that resembled the old, “bourgeois” family of meshchanstvo, or petty bourgeois values. They thought that the legalization of divorce and abortion signaled a total loosening of sexual mores. In addition to this, soldiers returning from the civil war brought back with them a machismo and lack of sexual restraint. The Bolsheviks in turn criticized these sexual libertines of meshchanstvo for their detrimental rebellion against all values inherited from the pre-revolution era merely on principle, without understanding how their actions fit into the scope of future tasks. Added to all of these new attitudes, was the inescapable fact that everyone had values and habits that were at least partially drawn from the pre-revolutionary way of life, and their disintegration would take many years, perhaps generations, to occur.
           The Bolsheviks had in mind two types of families that existed at the time. One was the destitute worker’s family, in which both parents often worked in factories, rarely seeing each other or their children. The change in economic conditions and the increased effort to industrialize caused a flood of rural peasant families to move into large urban industrial areas, where the children were often hungry and left to roam the streets. The other was the bourgeois patriarchal family, often arranged with material calculations in mind, and bound together by the Orthodox Church. From the socialist viewpoint, capitalism oppressed women because it forced them into the workplace to supplement their husbands’ paychecks without relieving them of the load of domestic chores they faced, such as cooking, cleaning, and raising children. Only the socialization of domestic chores in collective cafeterias, laundromats, kindergartens, etc., the Bolsheviks believed, could emancipate women from their state of oppression, and allow them to remain productive citizens in the workplace. Unfortunately, it was acknowledged that the economy and industry were far from being able to implement a complete socialization of domestic chores.
           Some Bolsheviks, such as Aleksandra Kollontai, and L.A. and L.M. Vasilevsky, were not content to wait for material conditions to dictate sexual relations, and attempted to communicate the pressing need to address the attitudes of the population toward sex. Kollontai believed that in the new society, women should not be dependent on a man, but should look to the collective for support. She reproached sexual unions involving “unwinged eros”—sex without a spiritual component, advocating instead “winged eros”, in which “in the person experiencing love for another person, there are aroused and there appear simultaneously those qualities of the spirit which are necessary for the builders of the new culture: directness, sympathy, a wish to help others” (91). The Vasilevsky’s believed that youths must be socially educated about sex from a young age, rather than forcing them to learn about sex on the street or from other uneducated sources: “Our sexual life can be made healthy only when our younger generation is raised with new, more worthy views on the role and desirable character of sexual life” (96).
           These attempts to draw attention to the reform of sexual habits and attitudes, however, were combated by a more predominant Bolshevik viewpoint, as reflected in the writings of P. Vinogradskaya: “in the future society, where the successes of production will make it possible to fully develop all sides of the human personality [my italics], each person will have enough freedom in life and in action to allow that forms of mutual relations between the sexes be determined people’s personal inclinations” (118). Most Bolsheviks saw issues of sex and gender as superfluous and not worthy of any thought, at least until the socialist state became wealthy enough to free people from all forms of oppression. Vinogradskaya emphasizes that “the possibility of a wide realization of such personal tastes [on sex] depends first of all on the economy, on how far ahead the construction of socialism has marched, on how great the surplus product of society is” (Visions, 118). From this it is clear that many Bolsheviks did not see sex or gender roles as pressing issues. One of the most important Bolshevik voices, that of Leon Trotsky, while sharing the popular Bolshevik belief that material conditions would ultimately dictate gender equality, also recognized the importance of raising the standard of culture and education for individuals of the working class in altering gender attitudes. Even with Trotsky, however, the bottom line remains that “the physical preparations for the conditions of the new life and the new family, again, cannot fundamentally be separated from the general work of socialist construction” (82). Trotsky saw the two processes of raising the standard of culture among the working class and raising the wealth of the socialist state as intimately connected, but ultimately, like the majority of Bolsheviks, was reluctant to focus on sexual equality as an end in itself, instead believing it would occur once the proper economic conditions were realized.
           The atmosphere surrounding gender roles during the 1920s was a very convoluted one, consisting of a variety of conflicting beliefs from a number of sources, varying in their degree of reliability. Even within the vanguard Bolshevik party, which espoused gender equality, women were often derided and rarely given positions of leadership or prominence. For all of these reasons, it is understandable why the population was unsure of where to draw their values on gender and sex from. While it was thought by most that gender equality would occur, few Bolsheviks believed that it was an objective that needed special and individual attention. Rather, it was seen as a secondary issue that would resolve itself once other issues, namely economic ones, were resolved. It was this reluctance to view gender equality as an end in itself that led to a stagnation of gender advancement and a reinforcement of the double standards of sexual behavior and oppression of women.

Works Cited:
Trotsky, Leon; Kollontai, Aleksandra; Vasilevsky, L.M. and L.A.; Vinogradskaya, P. Bolshevik            Visions. Ed. William G. Rosenberg. Ann Arbor Paperback. Ann Arbor, MI, 2002.

The Grand Inquisitor

          In The Brothers Karamazov, the poem of “The Grand Inquisitor” helps illustrate both Ivan’s philosophy in the first half of the novel, and also one of Dostoevsky’s greatest fears about the direction of the Russian people and mankind as a whole. For most of the novel, Ivan promotes a philosophy in which he believes in God’s existence, but rejects his creation: the earth and mankind. His main reason for this is the suffering of innocent children, which he feels no just God would allow to exist. “The Grand Inquisitor” also demonstrates Ivan’s views on the nature of freedom. He claims that Christ betrayed mankind by resisting Satan’s three temptations. These temptations, Ivan says, would have provided man with food and security, but instead Christ resisted, giving man freedom, which he does not desire as much as comfort and security. Indeed, Dmitri echoes these words, saying, “man is broad, even too broad, I would narrow him down” (108).
           Instead of freedom, Ivan and the Grand Inquisitor wish to rid the idea of God from mankind, in order that Ivan’s conception of the man-god may arise. During the devil’s meeting with the delirious Ivan, he voices Ivan’s former thoughts: “Once mankind has renounced God, one and all… Man will be exalted with the spirit of divine, titanic pride, and the man-god will appear” (648-9). This view is in complete opposition of Dostoevsky’s own vision of man and his future, but he proposes it through Ivan in order to strengthen his own beliefs by revealing the catastrophic consequences of such a worldview. Dostoevsky saw the idea of a man-god as a result of socialism and atheism, which to him went hand in hand. To him, socialism was a rejection of immortality, and an attempt to create Heaven on earth. Dostoevsky saw all of these ideas coming out of the west, whose science he thought had attempted to rationally analyze everything heavenly and reduce it to its material (earthly) components.
           Dostoevsky’s response to Ivan’s Grand Inquisitor is the life of Father Zosima, which is told in the book directly after Ivan’s conversation with Alyosha. Dostoevsky offers no direct refutation of Ivan’s claims, but refutes it in an indirect, but equally convincing, way through his presentation of the life of the elder monk. A characteristic of the Russian faith is the belief that somewhere in the world a completely good and holy man exists. Even Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov recognizes this, as he exclaims, “So you still suppose that those two, the kind that can move mountains [with their faith], really exist? Ivan, cut a notch, write it down: here you have the whole Russian man!” (130-1). Father Zosima serves as Dostoevsky’s proof that a truly holy man can exist on earth. Father Zosima spreads messages of the value and power of human love to do good in this life. Although Zosima certainly believed in the afterlife, he often spoke of the effects of Christ-like love for mankind here on earth, as when he states, “Fathers and teachers, I ask myself: ‘what is hell?’ And I answer thus: ‘The suffering of being no longer able to love’” (322). Zosima describes hell as existing here on earth among unfortunate souls who are unable to love.
           Though here in the west, surrounded by science and technology, Ivan’s worldview may be an attractive one, Dostoevsky’s novel ultimately rejects it. Ivan’s teaching of the principle that ‘everything is lawful’ to Smerdyakov leads him to commit murder. When Ivan realizes that it was his philosophy that resulted in this death, he feels as guilty as though the blood were on his hands. His moral pangs cause him to save a freezing peasant that he had pushed down into the snow, confess in court to the guilt he feels, and eventually drive him to brain fever. Although he is unconscious at the novel’s close, one gets the feeling that in Dostoevsky’s next volume, Ivan would be unable to see the world like the Grand Inquisitor did.

A Man Apart: Part 3

          The morning is dawning, but I am so tired that I can barely keep my eyes open. All of a sudden the muscles in my eyelids seem to have taken on a great load, one under which they cannot hold out for much longer, and they gradually begin to oscillate up and down, though more steadily pulling down, like the lowering of the oceanic tides, caused by the lunar orbit…
          Andy doesn’t know it right now, but we know that the rest of the world is obviously not also sweetly slumbering as he is. As far as Andy knows, he is being carried by a formless being to another earth whose inhabitants know no sin, but he is a ridiculous and a fantastic dreamer, certain to corrupt these pure and innocent creatures. His neighbor, on the other hand, doesn’t know that Andy lies horizontal right now, drowned in oblivion, in a state which no earthquake below 5.0 on the Richter scale could even make him flinch. And it’s a good thing too, for if he did, he would probably be more interested in filching any number of Andy’s things than rousing him. In another room down the hall, students are silently gathered around books, cramming for exams, preparing themselves to take over for the dying generations of doctors, scientists, politicians, and businessmen—any avenue in which they can wedge their way for a while to justify their existence. In the hallway, some athelets jocularly make a vulgar joke about a girl as they head to the gym. Outside a high school dropout is delivering pizzas to inebriated students. Back at the pizza shop, a housewife is picking up a pizza pie for her three adolescent kids. Back at home, her daughter is talking about current pop culture phenomena unknowingly with middle-aged men from Tokyo, who live near an international corporation owned by multi-billionaires who have ties to the use of employing exploited Africans living in squalor to extract valuable natural resources. These African peoples are also facing genocide. In the middle East, greedy capitalist western governmens make swift decisions to commit murder on a mass scale, as if murder executed on such a large scale somehow separates it from murder. Soldiers are getting shot and tortured over millenia-old imaginary differences. People are fucking, others are making love. White men are smugly chatting in board meetings. People are stuck in traffic. Bums are begging for money. Babies are being born. Nearly half of the world is asleep on couches, beds, or floors, grass, gravel, sand, or dirt. In some places the sun is setting. In others, it’s rising. A satellite is orbiting the outer planets of our solar system before it returns home, to earth, several decades from now with samples of planetary debris. The space around it is freezing and silent. And outside Andy’s room, the sun’s rays are just beginning to illuminate the earth.
          But inside, Andy is just sleeping.

A Man Apart: Part 2

          Outside on the street I am still alone. As I begin to walk, without noticing where my legs are taking me, I wonder what it means to not be alone in the first place. I look up and see people gathered, smoking or talking. They are not alone. If I slyly sidled up beside them, without their noticing me as someone different and unknown, perhaps even joined in their discussion, laughed at the appropriate moment, would I then cease to be alone as well? Occasionally I stand near a friend or aquaintance, not talking, for extended periods of time, each of us having diverged on opposite trains of thought, traveled past many stops, serving as both conductor and passenger on this one-way train, though at times our tracks cross and we exchange a word or nod or glance. But when I ride the bus, I am surrounded by complete and total strangers, where close quarters does not do the proximity justice, but close eighths is much more precise. I am then so close that a myriad of sights and sounds and smells overwhelm my outraged senses. Certainly I can’t be said to be alone then. Though, I sometimes get the impression that one must sleep in bed with a woman; only after that do you cease to be alone. No, I am alone because my mind is trapped in this skull of mine, over which is placed this face, which often seems to have no relation to me, other than allowing others to identify me as myself. If only my skull were wide enough for two minds, mine and someone else’s in the same body—perhaps then we could communicate effectively. But alas, nature did not want us that way. She wanted us isolated, without the ability to communicate our brain signals themselves, only their effects. Instead we must hide the ineffability of human identity underneath an ephemeral physical veneer, fated never to be satisfactorally elucidated.
          My body is still carrying my mind through town. It cares not about my state of mind, it simply goes on pumping blood and breathing, involuntarily, regardless of my consent. It is now carrying me past the groups of strangers and on down the street. I come to a point where the roads intersect. To my left is the busy part of town, where only the bars are still open at this point. There are many people I could meet in that direction, but little actual companionship. These people seem inanimate, like they are devoid of any human spirit. They lack the necessary passion, as if they were misplaced on this earth, and are merely biding their time, shattering their consciousness through any means possible until their hourglass is drained of its last pebble. If that way leads away from consciousness, I decide I’d rather head right, and hopefully toward it. In this direction is wilderness and open space. Yes, it is more barren, but in my mind less desolate than what I’m leaving behind.
          My eyes are cast down at my feet as the ground underneath changes from concrete and gravel to dirt and grass. I had long ago decided that mine would be a personal journey, and probably a lifelong one. Those that know me often reproach me for my mental solitude, but I know that no one else can satisfy my mind for me, I must atleast do that on my own. It would be made easier if I knew what I am looking for, but the mystery and infinity of this life is what enchants me. It is not just life that is infinite, but the human mind as well, and that is what I want to explore far beyond the territories that have been charted so far. Those others, the strangers I left behind, they too once sensed, albeit very subconsciously, the infinity and intangibility of the mind, but they recoiled in fright, turning their backs on the magic of the discovery, embracing instead a path of comfort and complacency. The mind’s potential depth is frightening indeed, because one knows that there is no ending point, no conclusion. But they are attempting to avoid the inevitable, for life itself has no ending point or conclusion. Death is no conclusion to life, because life has no limit to the meaning it contains. Death is merely an end to our consciousness, as abrupt and involuntary as the birth with which it began.

A Man Apart: Part 1

          I am sitting alone in my room. The atmosphere in here is thick and hazy because the cigarette smoke refuses to dissipate in the stale air. It is dark outside, but I keep the shades drawn anyway. I decide to get up—why I couldn’t say. I have nothing to do, so I begin to walk around the room; I often have nothing to do. The room begins to feel cramped. I can see all of my thoughts swirling about above me, causing the walls to swell and the windows to bulge, though they evaporate as soon as I try to reach up and elucidate them. I have to escape. On my way to the door, I pause at the head-level mirror that hangs adjacent to it, and am struck by a strange face in the room. I jerk my head around, who is in my room? Alarmed, I see no one. Turning back to the mirror, I see the strange face turn in time with mine, and it hits me then: Is that face mine? Still alarmed, I move my face closer to the mirror, and its reflection comes forward to meet it. The face in the mirror is unremarkable, but the brow furrows and the eyes squint, blinking, as I try to understand what I am seeing. It is certainly a face, and those are my thoughts floating around the room, butting heads with one another, contradicting themselves, and evaporating through the ceiling as I realize that they hold no weight, but can those thoughts come from within that physiognomy in the mirror, and is there any way to tell? There are no distinguishing marks on my face or body, they are utterly indistinct. Have I a name? Well, I must. I must have a mother, and I must have a father, but I haven’t the faintest what traces they left in me; am I me, something totally new and unique, or am I them, my parents? If I am not made of them, of what am I made? The laws of the universe dictate that matter cannot be created, so I must be made of my mother, or my father, or both. How much of me is new, then, and how much is recycled characteristics of my forefathers? Am I that same recycled material from my progenitors? and the only things that define me are the particular circumstances that I suffer through?
          Questions of immense gravity and certain immediacy paralyze my mind with an endless series of vollies. I am unable to complete my normal daily activities; I cannot even recall what concerned me yesterday or six months ago. The only thought that presses my mind is to find out who I am, from what I came, both myself and my species. Only then will any actions which I may execute have even the slightest meaning to me, and then only if I set my entire body toward creating the greatest amount of meaning possible…
          At this point, I realize that my mind has wandered off, left my body so to speak, and my body is still standing in front of the mirror, face-to-unknown-face, not staring at the reflection, but turning my gaze around into my own skull to see what is inside. Unfortunately, my conscious mind reigns supreme in here, and though it may nod off for brief moments, allowing an unbridled unconscious reverie, it will inevitably snap back to attention and I am unable to flee from it no matter how I try. I can only flee from this room.

Misgivings Among Graves

          I'm going for a bike ride. No, I'm going to ride my bike, but only in order to go somewhere. The destination is what's important, not the means. In the hallway to the door I pull the bike behind me, trying not to bang the walls. I swing the wood door open toward me and the glass one open away from me, guiding the bike through. In the sunlight now, I squint as I rest the bike against the porch railing in order to pull the key out of my pocket and lock the door behind.
          Down the steps and I finally mount the bike and begin gliding past houses, trees, and parked cars. Off my quiet street, I pass empty baseball diamonds and a crowded water park. Once the playful cries of children fade out of earshot I stop at a busy traffic light. Its tricky crossing these four-laned freeways. It never ceases to amaze me, the nonstop stream of cars in all directions at all times in all places of the city. All going off on their own separate ways. That's what reminds me of how many people are living around me. And we're all strangers.
          I cross the freeway only to have to traverse a stripmall parking lot with people and cars filing in and out, and then cross another highway. Couldn't there be a scenic route? But the worst part of my trip is over for now. I've made it to the bike path that leads me away from the worst of the noise and air pollution. Now I'm only riding along a county road. On the other side of the bike path is a six-foot fence, and on the other side of that is, well, that's what I've come for. First I have to get to the gate.
          The cemetery is a bit more crowded than I expected. I'm surprised so many people besides myself wanted to spend a nice day among the dead. Though, I bet the rest all know at least one of these old souls. Not that it really bothers me, I just wanted some privacy. The wind really blows on the face of this hillside. Does it mean anything? Am I upsetting some basic code here that I don't understand? Am I sitting on someone's face? I don't mean to offend anyone here. Quite the opposite, in fact. 

          Every one of my companions here is old, much older than anyone still on Earth. Even those who died in infancy. Everyone here has gone through something that only happens once, and at that instant, there must be some instant, where the brain sees all. In a single instant, everything becomes clear. It must. Even those infant minds, even that baby beating its breast with its fist, who did for all but nothing, souls that are barely even conscious of their own existence, at that one instant, even they comprehend what it was all for, suddenly, in an instant. Those infant minds certainly comprehend it, them most of all. Their minds aren't yet bogged down with the nonsense that yours and mine are.
          The church bells signal the hour and the wind refuses to relent. Its odd being on the face of this hill, looking out over the big city, just a few miles away. The creation of many generations' hard work, where they lived out their lives, only to end up here just the same. To many that city embodies life, activity. And yet, on the face of this Earth, it is just a tiny anthill. Are we all just tiny ants, meaningless, ignorant of anything beyond us? And here I sit surrounded by graves, on top of buried people.
          The wind just blew my hat off, who is telling me to leave? Maybe someone is jealous that I am only a visitor here, while everyone else is a permanent resident? I keep asking myself that, I must be feeling self-conscious today. No, I don't mean to offend anyone by visiting here. I simply needed to connect with life, with friends, and I get along much better with the people here, where there's no time left for talking or distractions. Only reflection. I like that.
          Does the wind blow this hard in the city? I see so many people there, in the distance, so many cars, so many homes. They all seem so disconnected, unaware of each other. Tiny ants laboring independently for some instinctual purpose, yet unwittingly slaves to the anthill. Don't they know they are all seeking the same thing, independently, when a collective mind would remind us all of our relatedness?