Verily, I have seen the light

(and lo, very bright it is too) *

What this means is that I'd like you to pay very close attention to these bits of music, please. In particular, the high notes, which are to be found at circa 0:56...(in the word "Jerusalem")



and (if you are still coherent from the winding beauty of that thing), at circa 1:00...(in the word "Abend")



Well? I hear you say. Well yes, well indeed. For what are those notes? By my count, you see, they must be a (super high) C and a (pretty much super high, too) G, aka the high notes where God lives. Why so? Of course, mostly by the fact that they make me cry (proof positive if ever there was any for the existence of a divine being), but also, let us analyse the notes themselves. C is for "see". G is for - oh yes - "God". Or, if you want to take the other attitude to musical notes, they could be called "do" (as in "do") and "sol" (as in "sun"). See God. Do sun. Do we need more proof? So you could say I have found God, and that means it was well worth the extended Lenten excess. (And, at the end of the day, if I've counted wrong and they're *not*, after all, a C and a G - which they are - we still have the cry factor to prove our point).

It has been brought to my attention that I've had rather a long Lent. True, true. But do, if you please, take a look at the exact dates of my personal Lent. Wait a minute - how many months, exactly? Yeeeees. These things sometimes take a while to, shall we say, gestate.

* I have, of course, had to do some cutting and pasting on this photo so as to make it appear I still have my former, original face, stuck as I now am with the face of - oh woe - Eric Idle

Incessantly snuffling about - a dogot update

I love it that she takes me out walking at night (or very late evening, depending on the hours you keep) particularly now that it's not getting dark anymore (although, as I said, we're still getting stars, so it's nowhere near as light as it can - and will - get. The other night I checked my claim and at twenty-five minutes to midnight I could count three stars, and forty-five minutes later I could make out all of the Big Dipper, but it's a blue darkness, not a black one, and when you get away from the street lights you realise you can see perfectly well without them - better, even, or certainly better further. Darker than dusk, lighter than darkness). Of course I loved her taking me out on wintry nights as well, but that's right beside the point at the moment and seems to belong to a different life, because right now we plunge ourselves into the night of light darkness, together, and because it's late and there are few, if any, people about and I trust her, I will let her off the leash so she can explore the night. The smells of the kevätkesän yö, spring-summer night are heady in her nose, in both our noses, actually (and yes, we have words for the between-seasons times of the year - kevätkesä, syyskesä, syystalvi, kevättalvi. It's very useful). She will leap and run and roll on the grass a little, but what she loves most is following her nose, unravelling the spaghetti of scents which evidently wiggle along the ground, her chunky-ish bottom swinging amusingly from side to side as she trots along, all determined and purposeful, in concentric circles and spirals, with sudden twirls and turns and steps back, and all the while I hear her snifi-snifi-snifi-FHRHRFF, the latter being the huff of her outbreath with which, I fancy, she empties her nose of the scents she's gathered, to make space for more. She can go on like this forever, it seems, and all I can hear is her and the nightingales (there are at least three in the neighbourhood), because I am good at blocking out the drone-hum of the motorway a mile or so off, and it's anyway not all that busy at this hour, and I love her and am, like her, loving the night and its smells (although I prefer the bird cherry blossoms, the grass, the nettles, the fir trees, to the hares' and rabbits' tracks which she is so drawn to and I can't detect, and I'm so not letting on that I too wander around with a snifi-snifi-FHRHF nose-noise).

This shouldn't really speak to me, a non-believer, but it does

In fact, it speaks to me so it hurts. Shhh, folks, it's my secret weak spot, my Achilles' heel.

...and because her talent and pain go right through me.

Here, have a bit of Billie, for no other reason than because she really is the best...

I need to cleanse my mind and soul now

And what better to do it with than art (or love, I suppose)? So here's a love poem by the recently-deceased Jarkko Laine. I thought it was lovely:

SUUTELEN UIMARANNALLA HIEKKAA JOSSA ISTUIT, PIENI MARSILAISENI
Noël Coward laulaa We Were Young

Olen hulluna sinuun, oma pieni marsilaiseni.
Suutelen uimarannalla hiekkaa jossa istuit.
Jokaisen hiekanjyvän joka ihosi tunsi, minä talletan kieleni alle.
Tämä kivi tässä - sulana vieläkin, keskikesän lumikide,
merestä palavana noussut, Airiston kuukivi.
Jos ilmaa voisi koota syliinsä,
viesin kotiin jokaisen kuution jossa sinä viivyit.
Rantakadun asfaltista lohkon irti jalkojesi jäljet.

Sinä sanot että rakastan sinua liikaa.
Miten se olisi mahdollista?
Mikä mies minä sinulle jos en ylitse sinun miehesi?

Oletko koskaan nähnyt kissan pääkalloa?
Niin hauras on minun maailmani. Runoutta kyllä, siroutta,
mutta hetkessä mureniksi murskattavaa.

Miten osaisin sen sanoa:
unikuvien laatijalle vain väärentämätön kylliksi.
Utumies kaipaa käsin kosketeltavia asioita.

Älä väisty pois, jää auringon eteen. Sinä olet valoni.


AT THE BEACH, I KISS THE SAND WHERE YOU SAT, MY LITTLE MARTIAN
Noël Coward sings We Were Young

I am mad about you, my own little Martian.
On the beach, I kiss the sand where you sat.
Every grain of sand which felt your skin I will store beneath my tongue.
This stone here - still molten, a midsummer snow crystal,
risen, burning, from the sea, a moonstone of Airisto.
If you could gather air into your arms,
I would take home every cubic metre where you stayed.
From the tarmac of the seaside street I chisel off the marks of your feet.

You say I love you too much.
How could that be possible?
What man would I be for you, if not more than your man?

Have you ever seen the skull of a cat?
So fragile is my world. Poetry, yes, gracefulness,
but crushable to crumbs within a moment.

How could I say it:
for the maker of dream images, only what is genuine will do.
The man of mist misses tangible things.

Do not move away, stay in front of the sun. You are my light.

- Jarkko Laine -

The translation being mine, and a quick one at that - some words are not right, but what do you know. And, sorry - but I couldn't find We Were Young to link to...

If I keep on doing this, sooner or later someone will sue me for copyright infringement, or alternatively, offer me work as a translator. Place your bets, please.

Everybody should read Victor Erofeyev

There it is - another one of my obscure book recommendations. I don't know how much of Viktor Erofeyev's work has been translated into English - at least Life with an Idiot, which I haven't read. According to wikipedia, there's more in French, so if you have that language under your belt (or indeed, Russian, or like me, Finnish), and you enjoy a sharply satirical voice, make sure to check him out.

I have recently read his book Mushinyi, "Men", in its Finnish translation "Miehet" (as far as I can tell, a fine translation indeed, thank you Jukka Mallinen) - a collection of essays on, you'd never guess, men and on being a man - a matter of great interest to me, as it is something I can only wonder about. I have been delighted by the sharpness of his tongue, by the unrelenting way he rips into various aspects of society and human folly - but even more than that, I have loved the sudden outbursts, quite in spite of the satire and indeed, of the author's inclinations, the outbursts, in spite of himself, of his overwhelming sense of pity. Pity for mankind, pity for folly, pity for everyone on the planet.

I think that's lovely.

For good measure, I shall attempt a translation on a few wee snippets from the final essay in the collection I read - and do please note this is a translation of a translation, which will mean increased inaccuracies, as in photocopying. The essay is in praise of the physical male...again, a topic fascinating to me:

"I delight in watching a man when he walks and holds a child by the hand. A small hand in a big hand. I like this simple disproportion.
...
A man has gentle skin. It is so gentle you would like to touch it, continuously, with your hands.
...
The beauty of a sleeping man is difficult to describe in any language.
...
Have you ever seen the eyes of a masturbating man?
They are filled with dry tears."

Do you know, I think that is really lovely too.

Hurrah - she's mine

Do congratulate me, please. I have been chasing after this lady for the longest time.

A part of artist (and my friend) Mark Maher's "Digital Icons of Porn Models", I have wanted her for years - and he hasn't wanted my money. What sort of an artist is that? Today, I finally convinced him I am indeed well-enough off to purchase some art. (Or something - I don't know why he wouldn't sell her to me until now - I have been after her since 2001 or thereaboutsish.)

More confessions: I am a crybaby.

Went over to my cousin's yesterday to celebrate her graduation. She had a beautiful picture of my Sami gran, in fact our shared Sami gran, also in digital form which she sent me. It is above. We figured the photo would be from the early 1930s, making my gran around twenty. If you don't think she is woundingly beautiful, there is something wrong with you. Seek help, and stop muttering under your breath, "will she ever stop harping on about that granny".

We watched old cine films shot by my uncle, some from my childhood & my cousin's, some from my uncle's & mother's.

Old films make me cry, and I don't mean Casablanca or Buster Keaton. I mean the films that have snippets from ordinary people's lives, stolen from time, moments captured, preserved, the reality of the people long since dead, the reality of the moments long since gone. It doesn't have to be people I know or am related to, either, it can be anyone.

Today's mantra: ti-tyy, ti-tyy, ti-tyy

Om om om

Spring.

Spring spring spring spring spring spring spring.

Spring. Spring. Spring.

Spring.

Om om om

The incredible fact is the season's turned, and lucky I, on the tenth floor, I don't just have a view. I have a soundscape, too: the birds have started their spring-time spouse-finding. The talitiainen (literally, lard tit, but better known in the English-speaking world as a great tit) is our first harbinger of spring. His much-quoted love call used to be ti-ti-tyy, but particularly in urban areas, this is nowadays trunkated into ti-tyy. Like human babies, baby lard tits learn their vocabulary from their parents, and during my lifetime the wall of sound from traffic has grown to such a magnitude the baby talitiainen can't hear the first "ti". I was shocked to find the English think he says "teacher, teacher". No, no, no. Ti-tyy, ti-tyy is what we now hear.

I have also heard a peipponen, the fellow elsewhere known as a chaffinch (he says tiritiriteijaa, this proven by a popular old children's song). This is headline news, since, as everyone knows

Kuu kiurusta kesään
puoli kuuta peipposesta
västäräkistä vähäsen
pääskysestä ei päivääkään.

(NB I don't make this stuff up, this is an ancient Finnish rhyme which utilises the arrival of certain migratory birds to predict the beginning of summer:

A month till summer from the song thrush,
half a month from a chaffinch,
a little bit from a wagtail (sorry folks, you'll have to make do with the Finnish Wikipedia here as the English version illustrates the wrong subspecies altogether),
not a day from the swallow.)

I heard Mr. Peipponen last Sunday and nearly fell off the balcony. Half a month, and we're only in mid-March now! (Incidentally, hope you all bewore the Ides of March yesterday, was meaning to post an online warning, but the day ended before I got round to it.)

I also managed to catch Mr. Country Bumpkin Great Tit saying not only ti-ti-tyy but also adding the odd extra -tyy, for good measure, as it were, just to prove he could. I was so happy, he sounded like my childhood spring. Mr Tit, I said to myself, a lovely spring to you too, and best of luck with the lady lard tits.

Coming Too Close to God, or How Art Knows the Meaning of Life. My attempt at explaining.

Tonight, I saw my second butoh show, Jyu Ningen Zu. I cried AGAIN. I cannot begin to describe the show, just details of

how the shadow of her hand momentarily looked like the shadow of a toothed snake, or a dragon, on the talcum powder in the bowl on stage,
how their footprints were black in the spilled powder and white on the black rubber mat of the theatre floor, creating a pattern that seemed to mirror the Japanese character painted onto the backdrop,
how suddenly we saw a headless woman dancing,
how his Oriental face seemed to simultaneously be that of a newborn, and an ancient, and an extraterrestrial, and the face of mankind condensed into one face,
how the powder bowl left a perfect blank in the spilled powder, like a black hole, like a negative sun, and how, incredibly, he managed to leave a footprint in it later

and impressions of
bodies talking and saying the unsayable things,
beautiful ugliness,
expanding the mind like lsd or Tarkovsky, as in "let's look at this bit of lichen floating in this puddle for a few minutes or aeons until we really see it and understand the meaning of everything",
leaving me afterwards needing to run home and hide
because

everything:
shop windows with hat shop dummies wearing fur hats which I hate, Nike trainers in glass display cases
the city of my birth, in its full between-seasons ugliness
bus indicator lights, on-off, on-off
the digital clockface on the side of a building (20:41, +1 C)
the names of shops (TIMBER HEART. NEW LOOK.)
suddenly wears a face of indescribable beauty and meaning, benign and terrible

and because

I am wearing God on my non-believer face and the passers-by will see Him, or I will see Him in their eyes

and because

my too-open soul cannot take any more seeing, no, no, don't show me any more, I can't take it, it's all too beautiful