run while you still are a lion who runs

NIGHT SHIP - cinematic part from Mox Mäkelä on Vimeo.

Not drowning but waving

I love my studies.

I love my university, I love my institute, I love my major subject, I love my professor (don't tell him, he'll get big-headed), I love my uni friends, I love my work.

You know, after a good few miserable or, worse, tight-lipped and Mary-Whitehousean posts, it's about time I turned my attention to something else, don't you think? And I do love my studies and that stuff mentioned up there.

I have worked so hard for five years now, and it's almost done (consummatum almost est, yes?). It was pretty much exactly five years ago when I had an epiphanous moment on my way to work, walking from the bus stop to the school: "lo, but verily, I am good at what I do, and so perhaps I could contribute to the world by giving this education thing what I might have to give" (yes, that was the word my epiphanous moment brought me: "contribute". Had I picked a word myself, I might not have chosen something as pompous as that, but who's to argue against epiphany? Go ahead, if you think you're hard enough. I'm not).

And it's four years almost to the day when I broke a seam in my mind's eye (you know what I mean) and had a bit of a burn-out and had to stay home from school (=work) for four-weeks-and-then-some. I started those weeks as a quivering wreck, unable to stomach the horror of actually having admitted it out loud that I was too unhappy and exhausted to go on. By about week two-and-a-half, I had recovered enough to decide I'd – purely on speck, you understand – sit the uni entrance exam, so that in a year's time, when I would have to apply again, you see, I would have the experience of having sat the entrance exam once.

And the rest is history. My history. So here I am, in spite of many things, not drowning but waving to those my two selves of five and four years ago, respectively, going attagirl, you've got fighting spirit and what it takes, I'm proud of you, go get it, tiger.

It's actually reasonably easy to praise your past self overmuch from the distance of the future. At least here in my House of Future and Past it is, and this is A Very Private Place Indeed. But do you know what, gentle Reader? I actually can praise myself, these days. I have worked hard. Really hard. And I am very driven, and hard work and drivenness will carry me right the way through my life.

Do you remember my incredibly talented and lovely as well as dear and beloved friend Rebecca? Well here's a video of her two-man band doing one of their very new songs. I love it, it's beautiful and honest, real and true.

At least I can still have a bee in my bonnet

So I saw the poster for Lars von Trier's new film Nymphomaniac (or is it Nymph()maniac? Or even Nymph({¡})maniac? Very clever) on the wall of a tram. Have you seen it? Here:

Now I'll be honest – I found myself annoyed. I seem to oppose seeing and/or having to look at people coming on my tram wall. Who knew? I've nothing against people coming in general; in fact, I hear it's quite nice (boom boom!).

And let's get one thing straight immediately: I haven't seen the film. I also know nothing whatsoever about the film, except I did look at a few of the posters on google as I was searching for an image to rip for this post. So I'm being a total dilettante, or is it a counter-dilettante, as I'm cultivating a disinterest in something I know nothing about? Whatever, I need to get to the point. What I, to my surprise, found myself annoyed about was how come*, in this day and age, can we have images of men of all manner of ages, shapes and levels of beauty in the throes of the little death, whereas, apparently, to fuck and come women must surely be a) beautiful b) (hence?) able to come without any unsightly facial contortions (can you do that, girls?) c) young, with the notable exceptions of Connie Nielsen, Uma Thurman and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who, in spite of their unfortunate age problem (all three are vaguely my age) manage to look fucking lovely, unmarred by their age – if anything, quite the contrary, growing more gorgeous as the years go bye-bye.

I mean, it's the same as in porn. There are all sorts of guys fucking their balls off over there, on the playground of online adult entertainment, but pretty much the same rule applies there as  on Lars's poster: beautiful women coming "sexily" only, thank you.

I don't know. O tempora, o mores. Or maybe I'm just annoyed as the poster hasn't that much eye-candy for a largely-heterosexually oriented woman? Moreover, such a woman who is both aware of her own growing years having so far not taken away any bit of desire or ability, possibly quite the opposite, and somewhat acutely aware of the fact that her growing years and growing desires and abilities don't necessarily add up to her being accepted as a sexual being.

Ah well. I'm sure I'm not the only one to be going "down with this sort of thing" – but I did think it unprovoked, as it were, by any truck-driving macho female-rights activists, I'd just like to point that out. It can actually also piss off someone who's seen and, so help me, done a fair bit, and not just politically-correct things.

*Pun intended. Boom boom!

Dacw 'Nghariad

(It is a well-kept secret that when I am alone and find something like this, I listen to it 698-and-then-some times over, and dance around my home with my eyes closed. Shhh. But it is one of the things I really like about being me. Big shhhh.)