Chalice Reject (continued)

 Feeling godlost.

Reluctant to read Remarque.

It gives me sick satisfaction to leave nasty skid marks on the landlord’s toilet bowl. 

The iron pills I’ve been taking for months turn my shit a tone between witch green and dark emerald. Unfortunately, the landlord and landlady turned out to be sick bullies who’ve made living in their apartment a pain in the ass. But enough fecal fixation, let’s talk philosophy instead. Perhaps a taste of catharsis in a random piece of poetry?

Reverse Spring

It’s autumn and leaves begin to fall.
Will my worries fall with them?
Be blown away by the wind?
Or be swept away by a broom?
I wept a lot before the rain came.

Old Swiss use branch besoms
to wipe their pathways clean
of leaves, dirt and fallen fruit.
Brooms that look like flying objects in witch cartoons.
Hear the silent whisks of loony tunes.
Because some Alpine Celts forgot their runes.
And Jesus got lost in the capital.
Nay, don’t love, but harass your neighbor.
Behold the two-thousand-twenty-sixth year of the Lord,
when Swiss spring turned
into an abnormally hot summer
and made autumn fatal.
Is bullying natal?
It clearly can’t be ignored.
Thank God for Swiss Law!

Still, I love that fall is a reverse spring.
Nature is a fascinating thing.

* * * * *

My self also turned come fall and I voted NO on the Swiss neutrality initiative. After a Swiss historian taught me, what neutrality actually means, which was not reflected in the conservative party propaganda paper that had arrived by mail into the privacy of our home. I admit that it was painful to realize that I initially fell into the propaganda trap. My intellectual instinct did not turn out to be as sharp as I’d imagined it. But propaganda is naturally cunning, designed to capture innocent minds in sneaky and manipulative ways that prey on emotion and desire. Do you love peace? Of course! Do you want a world without war? Hell yeah! Luckily, the researcher in me let curiosity lead the way once more to explore other points of view, expert points of view, like the one of the Swiss historian Marco Jorio.

In an interview with the NZZ* (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the «New Zürich Newspaper»), Mr. Jorio explained that the proponents of the initiative on Swiss neutrality created a false connection to the notion of war, suggesting something that has never existed as such, because in most cases neutrality does not protect from war, as was the case in the Second World War wherein over twenty neutral states or territories were attacked. Not even Switzerland was spared during WW2, and to think otherwise is but a legend or myth, Mr. Jorio revealed. Swiss neutrality was violated repeatedly and Switzerland suffered even though she was not occupied; there were bombardments, nightly flyovers, 85 dead, 300 injured, millions in damages, a third of the Swiss commercial fleet was sunk, 60 dead seafarers, two and a half thousand dead active soldiers, Switzerland was locked into a double ring blockade. She was spared a lot of suffering and neutrality did play a role, Mr. Jorio reassured, but she didn’t go unscathed. Other neutral states, who had an army and did not want to be conquered, like Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, etc, were conquered indeed. The absolute protection through neutrality that the proponents of the initiative suggest on their posters, is not only a myth but is wrong, Mr. Jorio emphasized.

Indeed, I began to notice with my own eyes, on the way to work and school, the propagandist theatrics on the posters, which increased as the voting deadline approached; John Lennon depicted advocating for peace, for example. It seems that the further politics drifts from policy, the more suspicious it gets. Good politics must explain policy to people, for example, how propositions and laws will affect their lives in reality, not in mere theory or imagination.

Imperialists don’t give a damn about neutrality, the Swiss historian pronounced; how a state carried themself during peace times matters nothing during war. Marco Jorio exposed the neutrality initiative as a sham. He calculated that 85% of the text is harmless constitutional yadda-yadda, whereas the other 15% is critical for two reasons. First, the prohibition of sanctions. Second, the prohibition of cooperation with neighbouring states or defence alliances during peace times.

Former federal councillor Christoph Blocher, who’s not only a conservative party** politician but also a businessman, has made no secret that it’s about the sanctions for him, the interviewer revealed. What triggered the initiative, is that Switzerland took on the European Union’s sanctions against Russia, after it attacked the Ukraine in 2022. The proponents of the initiative claim that these sanctions represent a breach of Swiss neutrality.

I personally saw some posts on social media of people claiming that the Blocher family has business ties to Russia and thus sought to eliminate the sanctions in order to continue with their Russian business ventures unencumbered. But can you know conspiracy theory from truth online?

Anyway, historian Jorio, decidedly denies that Switzerland broke its neutrality, because neutrality is a military principle: a neutral state does not get militarily involved in the war of a third party. Economics exists outside of this context. Thus, the hundreds-of-years-old tradition of neutrality holds, that a neutral state can carry on commerce with a warring party, and equally, that it can interrupt trade with a warring state, particularly when it is in its own interest to do so. Mr. Jorio explained that it is not in the interest of Switzerland to be sanctioned by neighbouring states and trading partners, if it doesn’t go along with their sanctions of another state. The interviewer then asked whether it’s dangerous when a powerful state like Russia accuses Switzerland of being unfriendly and not neutral enough. But the historian laughed this off as politician-babble, because we know from the entire history neutrality, that great imperialist powers will always try to get neutral states on their side, and claim neutral states aren’t neutral enough. “We know this from the First World War and from the Second World War,” Jorio insisted and assured with a smile that statements like that shouldn’t particularly scare us.

“But do you understand when critics claim that you can’t be a little neutral,” the interviewer asked Mr. Jorio, that either you’re entirely neutral or not neutral at all. “Yes, you can!” the historian emphasized with smiling eyes, “that’s what’s funny about it. It’s not a binary system, on-off.” You can be more neutral or less neutral, and that’s what makes this initiative, and the ideology at large of the conservative party, so weak and problematic, that they have such a fixed and limited understanding of neutrality, Jorio explained. However, there are red lines in neutrality of a practical and logical consequences, the historical clarified. Neutrality has existed for three-thousand years and been characterized by four relatively clear red lines. Marco Jorio used his left hand to illustrate a list of four facts, beginning with his thumb, as is usual in Switzerland when counting with the fingers. The thumb is followed by the index, then the middle, and finally the ring finger, on which Jorio was wearing a golden wedding band – he does look like a man who is steeped in lasting love. The pinkie finger, unless you’re making five points, remains tucked in towards the palm of the extended hand, awkwardly so, if you’re not used to this manner of counting.

First, Jorio went on with a thumb-up, a neutral state does not attack – otherwise it’s no longer neutral.
Second – index,  a neutral state does not participate in the war of third parties.
Third – middle finger, a neutral state does not allow that war negotiations of third parties happen on its territory.
And fourth – ring finder, a neutral state, such as Switzerland, is not allowed, during time of peace, to participate in a military allegiance nor enter into defensive or offensive contracts with other states.

And yet, the interviewer remarked, these are fairly few rules, and the proponents of the initiatives wish to create clarity [on the issue of neutrality]. “Is in your view this initiative a step into ambiguity?” she asked Mr. Jorio.

“Yes,” the historian answered confidently, “because the terms themselves are already very unclear,” and he crossed his left over his right arm briefly, so that the white face of his big round shiny metal wristwatch was illuminated with the reflecting light. It made seem illegible for a moment and visible the next. Is the grip on time a historian’s feeble fate? For what is history, but a collection of selected fragments woefully tied together by the strings of reconstruction, speculation, study, self-interest, love and hate?

Marco Jorio uncrossed his arms as went on to explain his point of view to a smiling interviewer. Indeed, Mr. Jorio is the kind of mature Swiss man that you just love: blunt and pragmatic; kind, down-to-earth and direct with a well-meant, reassuring honesty, and an informed intelligence with no patience for bullshit.

The initiative held, for example, that alliances can only be made if an attack is just starting or imminent. But these days, Jorio explained, it’s no longer clear when war begins, such as hybrid warfare*** and all other forms of war that are no longer clear. The initiative failed to solve these ambiguities and left a lot of room for interpretation.

To accept such conditions would cause a lot of turbulence for Switzerland, as she is engaged in 40 sanctions. Furthermore, it’s unclear what would Switzerland be able to do, would she have to leave all the international organisations she is a part of? There would be a phase of great insecurity, which would be the opposite of what the initiative claimed to do.

Neutrality must serve the interests of Switzerland, not the other way around, was the historian’s sobering conclusion.

*Historiker hinterfragt die Neutralitätsinitiative https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzXYAcOcu9k
** SVP – Schweizer Volkspartei, the «Swiss People’s Party». Why do conservatism and faschism like to adorn themselves with the word “people” as if they had a general human interest in mind? While espousing the most exclusive, discriminatory, xenophic and even racist ideologies in order to harbour the specific interests of a select few, often businesspeople. It underlines the deceptive nature of individuals who like to play politics by manipulating people with propaganda.
***Defined by Frank Hoffman in 2007 as the emerging simultaneous use of multiple types of warfare, such as political warfare (non-combat methods including misinformation and propaganda campaigns), cyberwarfare (espionage and sabotage through cyber-attacks) and foreign electoral intervention, to name a few, in addition to conventional warfare (the use of weapons in confrontation and battlefield tactics) and irregular warfare (violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence, as well as defence department activities not involving armed conflict). Wikipedia

* * * * *

All Quiet on the Western Front, as a title interpretation, may capture Remarque’s poetry, but it does not capture his poignancy and the casualness with which he describes in a matter-of-fact manner the absolutely gruesome and horrid realities of war. Like the boy who has his hip blown off, or the kid soldiers seeking survival in the graves next to dead bodies, while being bombarded by flying coffins being ripped out of the ground by bombs.

The truth is that nothing is quiet on the Western Front. Im Westen nichts Neues, the original German title, implies a sarcastic casualness of casualties, too severe to belittle with silence, too real to consider exceptional.

For the generation of young men who fought in the First World War, too young to have known much else, the terrors of war became an all too familiar day-to-day. In the West nothing new. For, who was deployed to the Western Front at in the tender teen-age years before the brain is fully formed, childhood died in a place where adulthood ceased to have meaning.

What novelty can warring bring, when being forced to survive through deliberate destruction is the only measure of meaningful life? Survival is the only measure of meaning in a place of deliberate albeit senseless brutality and murder.

What novelty can evil bring, when it is the most unintelligent, absurd and uninspiring form of existence? In the West nothing new, where war and evil (lack of intelligence and creativity) are exercised with careless impunity, complete cruelty and unfathomable idiocy.

* * * * *

The Western Ayurda Medical Master, in a small town called Lustmühle (Mill of Lust), had a few things to say about my constitution.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m going through perimenopause and I suffer from anxiety,” I answered bluntly.

He asked me a lot of questions about my life and examined my pulse, eyes, tongue and upper body position with arms stretched out. I told him about the therapies and treatments I’ve been through and am still on. Like the iron pills and the bio-estrogen (a gel) and bio-progesterone (more pills), which I think have made my bleeding pattern change*; the homeopathic drops; and the oils and massages and vitamins. He prescribed me Ayurvedic pills and oils, as well.

Basically, I’m pitta with kapha in close second. And my pitta, kapha and vatta are off-balance. On this basis, he had an interesting take on my anxiety attacks.

But he concluded that my perimenopausal symptoms were within the normal range of occurrences that can be expected during this time of change.

*Instead of 48 predictable hours of dramatically intense, non-stop bleeding surrounded by days of brownish spotting and lighter drips of watery blood; the intense bleeding happens sporadically in dramatic waves over the span of about four days, often catching me off-guard and unprepared in public places, leaving my pants blood-stained on several occasions; and the intensive blood-bursts are surrounded by an extended though lighter period of brownish spotting. It has become impossible to calculate when and whether the strong intensive bleeding is going to happen. Overall, symptoms like cramps, irritability and fatigue fluctuate at a different and unpredictable rate as well. I suspect that the hormonal treatment I’ve been on for months now, too, since springtime, is creating another kind of rhythm in this womanly body headed for menopause.

Te extraño mucho, Mamá.
Feliz cumpleaños.
Tuvieras 79 hoy,
1o de Noviembre, 2026.