well, I spoke too soon.

as I no longer live in Iceland, and have not done for about 7 months, I can reflect to a small amount objectively about what happened to me there.

I was led to believe that all my problems would be over by the obtaining of the treasured "residence permit". not so. such is the embedded racism in Iceland that foreigners, even though the aforementioned document was obtained, after a 12 year struggle,  only receive medical benefits of a 10% reduction on medicines. as I was living on what amounts to 65% (and rapidly decreasing due to the inflation of Icelandic currency so that the Government could/can pay back US loans) of the minimum living wage in Iceland, staying there was not an option on this matter alone.

so. what did/could I do?

the building in which I lived was being sold to make yet more "luxury" apartments (approximately 22 m² each...), and even if I could have found a place to live in Reykjavik, it would have been outside my financial reach.

Iceland is dying, or being killed — take your pick. because it is so small, every change is seen intensely. Coca-Colonization has hit the country very hard, and downtown Reykjavik now resembles any average mid-western American town, to a large extent. with the same (lack of) morals and respect for life, "culture", or "inner life". after ~12 years of pushing a very large boulder up a very steep hill, I decided that I should let the thing roll back down. OK. Iceland doesn't want me. but actually, if the real truth were to be known, it doesn't want anyone. but nobody can say that I didn't try, or that I didn't give. that stands as record in many places. but a word to the wise: never, but never expect anything from Icelanders. unless it benefits them. I will give just one example, and you can extrapolate from that: in my 12 years of living in Iceland, I was invited to eat with other people 5 times. 5. and guess what? 3 of those 5 times were from foreigners living there. the last one was from an Icelander that had spent many years living in countries other than Iceland. no, this is not petty: this is an indication of the level of humanity (not) present there. I nearly starved to death while people stepped over me. literally.

and believe me, more than 5 people sampled my cooking.

there are a few (and very few) Icelandic people that I love and value highly. but, it can be no coincidence that these people are without exception people who spend as much time as possible outside the country — and not purely for financial reasons.

as far as I am concerned, Iceland is only a small part of "the problem", but is highly symptomatic of it. much can be learned by studying it. but from a distance. my pathetic commentaries will not help much, I think. but there remains the possibility...oh, stupid, blind hope. what was G*D thinking when "he" invented that?

so I thought, "well, I know Lithuania a little, and I liked it, but I don't know Latvia or Estonia. let's have a look. and fast".

so I went to the latter two countries, and decided that Estonia suited my wished-for-temperament better than Latvia.

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so I put everything I would need for continuing to work at a bare minimum into two big suitcases and left, after having packed in all my possessions, and left them entrusted to the former and new landlord. what a fool I was. what was left of my possessions arrived in March, and ~10 boxes of irreplaceable material were missing, recording equipment, instruments, books, master tapes, personal items...plus the fact that everything was covered in thick layers of building dust, damaging equipment and ruining other items. naturally, no-one will admit responsibility. I shall have to put it down to an exercise in experiencing non-attachment. it also helped to sever my ties to the country quite unequivocally.

so I live in the capital of Estonia, Tallinn, and I love it. but I am very lonely indeed, as I know pretty much next to nobody. as I don't go to bars or clubs or have any work here, I don't meet anyone. I go weeks without speaking to anyone. literally. how on earth do other people do it? I simply have no idea. I am amazed that I ever met anyone at all, ever. I cannot recall a time when I played any of those games. most likely, I never considered them games, and therefore could not take part. having said this, I am aware that wise people know that mention of the word "loneliness" clears a room like nothing else. no other word has the same effect. maybe because it causes thoughts of "the terror of the situation" to arise. yes, maybe this could be you one day. or already is.

as to the medical situation (I am ill with hepatitis B and auto-immune hepatitis), that is a mess. since the fall of the Soviet Regime, the infrastructure has collapsed (the communist system wasn't all bad...), and the only way to actually get help is to go private. which costs the same, more or less, as in the rest of Europe. $DEITY damn the EU. so this means that I am not and have not been receiving any medical attention whatsoever for the last 7 months. at the risk of being melodramatic, I will die without treatment. superficially, I should already be dead. notwithstanding those that would postulate that I am, and cognisant of the fact that Special Pleading always bores people, I am still in need of support. I wish this were otherwise. I still wish for a job. please see CV, and GIVE ME A JOB. this is NOT a joke. I would much, much rather have a job that paid me a minimum wage and then do h3o material when it "needed to come into this world", rather than have to hustle for what amounts to pocket change (for most of the western world), simply to exist. I don't care how boring it is. I don't care how "small" it is. give. me. a. job.

and so, I continue, as best I can, to try to make things that I am not totally ashamed of. pretty much all one can ask of this life, at a certain level. this provides almost no income whatsoever — the standard of packaging h3o does precludes this. even releases in collaboration with people that sell literally millions of copies have been botched by .. what? "stupidity" is the only word I can come up with. selling a thousand copies of something that could sell (potentially) many thousands is not good business practise. "but I digress", as the bride said, as she got up in the middle of the night and baked a cake.

it was suggested to me by a very Nice Person, that one's life is actually best summed up by what one didn't do — "I didn't lie", "I didn't kill", and so on. maybe this is true.

perhaps this is a small fragment of the true search for "the Godhead" — as the supreme I cannot ever be described, one defines it by what it is not. like chipping away at a block of stone to reveal the statue concealed within.

I wish you all you wish yourself.

love and kisses

./a