Let's continue on the topic of weather

We've had a bit of snow today, and it's forecast to continue. This suits me very well otherwise, but I'd like it to be a bit colder so I could rely on it - it's only around minus three. The best weather is when snow falls in tiny needles, wind-driven, horizontal, wild.

Winter weather, that is. It will piss me off no end if we get it in June.

This seems as good a moment as any to embed my favourite Tom Waits song. It's one I have even been known to sing, on occasion - and even in public, not just in the shower.

Hope you enjoy.

Hit by a serious case of keyboard diarrhoea

It's been getting increasingly cold in Finland since my return on Monday, when it was plus seven with a harsh wind. They tell me it went to minus fifteen while I was away, which is totally unfair - and with no snow, which is quite peculiar. But still, not complaining, it's been getting colder and last night we hit minus twelve on my balcony. And still no snow - the lightest dusting today, hardly there at all. Still, it's probably a good thing, for we were forecast snow and warmer temperatures, which is not desirable. No. It might all make a bit more sense if I mentioned that I like a winter to be properly cold. We used to get them until quite recently. Please take note, all climate-change agnostics, for us in the (near-) Arctic climes will see the change first and in a more pronounced way, and the fact is that the winters have gone pear-shaped in the last five or so years. Certainly since the millenium, for I remember the millenium New Year and it was very, very cold. We had some special Japanese fireworks masters visit Helsinki specially (I think they were somehow invited by the city itself, you understand, not me personally) and I went with a bunch of friends to a central and (relatively) high location in the heart of town to see them. I was wearing an evening dress but on top of it, one of those great big ankle-length woollen overcoats (think Anna Karenina, please) and on top of that, my very beloved blue-green-aquamarine poncho (which has a story to it, but of that another time, mayhap. Oh well - now's the time, I suppose - I bought it from the island which neighboured My Childhood Island, from what still in my childhood was the local school for the island children, an adorable old wooden building with an outdoor toilet (with several, um, seats. One could imagine how totally unpleasant it would have been to run across the yard in mid-winter to go and sit out there - but then I expect the island lasses were used to it, as they had the same thing at home - although maybe with less seats) but which by my adulthood and due to the migration of people from traditional ways of livelihood, to city-living (and I never went to that school, you understand, I lived in the city really but we spent the summers, each glorious two-and-a-half months, in the island neighbouring this island I'm now talking about), had changed into a "local crafts centre" type of affair. I love my poncho, wearing it makes me feel like I'm somehow held safe by my childhood summer sea-landscape. That's that story). It was very cold, as I said, it must have been minus twenty-five or possibly colder. Another friend has told me about their millenium celebrations, how they had a bottle of champagne with them and it had probably been shaken around a bit, for when they popped it to toast in 2000, it shot out a spray which floated back down on them as flakes of frozen champagne. God, how I wish that was my story - I find it an outlandishly fabulous one, like the storyline in a song by an Arctic Tom Waits. (The fireworks, incidentally, were quite good as fireworks go (I have a very split feeling about fireworks). I remember I dreamt about them sometime afterwards, that they formed the number "2000" in the sky, and one spark shot out and landed on my hand like a glittering jewel.)

In minus twenty-five, the moisture which naturally occurs inside your nose starts to turn, well, to ice. It's a strange feeling to snuffle a bit and feel the ice crackle-cracking. In minus thirty and colder, I swear your eyes start to feel a bit more solid and stiff than usually, and breathing through your mouth gives you a stab of hot-cold pain in the back of your throat.

So, well, yes, after this brief look at everything through the lens of Helsinki climatology in the 2000s, I will tell you I absolutely adored going out with my dog in the cold today. She likes the cold - poor thing, her thick fur probably makes her feel overheated most of the time - and runs around like a pup. I cannot watch her running without laughing - in the femininity scale of dog-girls, she is definitely one of those hearty, healthy, earthy types, a robust and rosy-chopped little milk-maid with child-bearing hips and a pleasant if not very refined nature, and her back end definitely kind of wobbles from side to side when she runs, and I can see she's clearly imagining herself to be the fastest thing on four legs. I love her, the poor funny lovely thing that she is.

Although the leap second may yet ruin it for *everyone*

Okay, I'm going to have to be quick here, for I have firmly decided the future of life as we know it and *everything* depends on this post being posted before 2009. So, here goes, and excuse me if the sentences aren't formulated as well as they might, cetra. Too much is at stake, you know.

I wanted to come here and give you lovely things this New Year, given that I failed most miserably at giving you anything at *all* for Christmas. It might be argued, to be sure, that I shouldn't be giving you things which *I* consider lovely, instead asking you what you'd like, what you think would qualify as lovely things, but needs must as I have only twenty-three minutes of this dying year (and, as someone's aunt used to say, "geh, mit Gott, aber geh" - this to 2008, of course, not *you*).

So, the moon and Venus (I *think*) were doing funny things on the sky earlier tonight, look:



they drew love-hearts together. The fact that was and is freezing-froozing cold out there on my balcony, causing (even more) unsteadiness of the photographer's hand, may have something to do with it, but I still thought it was lovely. Here



is what they "really" looked like - still lovely. (I'm hoping v.fervently you'll agree.)

On Christmas Eve, I went looking for something lovely-Christmassy to post, song-wise, and as I've a secret weakness for boy soprano, I wanted it to be that. In my search for a boy soprano singing a Christmassy song of loveliness, I came across this



which, right enough, wasn't a Christmas song at all - it's a part of a Requiem, surely. So I didn't post it, in the end (the fact I fell asleep might have contributed to this, too). And thus there was no Christmas post, either. But the thought is what counts, right? Right, and boy soprano is so lovely a sound they could sing "Mum's Gone to Iceland" for all I care, I'd still weep with the pain of beauty (but it's better when they sing something like they do on the clip, I think.)

Eighteen minutes left. Okay, then I was very pleased indeed to find this piece of music, *finally*,



which I've been trying to track with methods that stretch the definition of "pathetic" and "ridiculous", making overseas friends listen to it on the radio (playing here at my house) to identify it (they *never* say what they play on radio, do they?), and humming a few bars over in one of my comment threads to anyone who'd care to listen/read. I feel gratified that it *is* indeed a Vivaldi, for I had a feeling it was, based most likely on the fact I'd managed to *once* hear them say it was so, rather than any huge knowledge of music.

Sixteen minutes. This piece here is the final scene from "Blue", a Kieslowski film which I really like and watched again a few days ago (it may have been Christmas Day, come to think of it). I find the music very beautiful, although it is "only" composed for the film. The lyrics, in Greek, are the Corinthians thingy about love (I couldn't find one which would have subtitles, which I am upset about, but you can follow them on the "more info" thing on the right margin if you want to). I *adore* the very end, the
"Love never dies
while the prophecies shall be done away
tongues shall be silenced
knowledge shall fade
Thus then shall linger only
faith, hope and love
but the greatest of these is love."



Tongues shall be silenced, knowledge shall fade, my friends, and thus shall linger only faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love, and with that thought in mind, and twelve minutes left, I wish you love and love only for the year about to be born.

(And please don't worry about the leap second - I'm sure we'll be fine.)

First they break your body, then they break your heart

Shell-shocked by life, currently, how painful and downright difficult and unmanageable it all can be, and how poorly one seems to manage the things that matter, and also wondering how much blame is it reasonable to apportion oneself, and how much of it all is just in the luck of the draw, chance, whatever.

I'm talking about children, of course, one's offspring, how they grow and change and become people in their own right, if you like, and sometimes it is not all a bed of roses, no. It may turn out so one can't say oh yas, my son, you know, he studies and plays football and the violin, or something, sometimes some of us have to say well you know, I am going to have to turn him to professionals, because what I have been able to do is now done, for better and worse, surely there are things that could still be done, avenues as yet unexplored blah, but as it is, I - me - I cannot do it, because my sleeve (as they say in Finnish) is empty, what I - me - could do has been done, and this is where it's got us.

(I'm here reminded of the Hollywood flick of some years ago, As Good as It Gets, it was really quite a good flick, I thought, and Jack Nicholson's character says something like "Yes well life is all yachts and sandwiches for some people but we aren't those people". Wish I could remember exactly how that line went. I bet I'll go and look for it on YouTube before I know it, and then I'll miss sauna because nipping into YouTube always seems to take hours of my life. But yes. Yachts and sandwiches and studies and interests and achievements and stuff it may be, only we aren't those people.)

I wish I could remember (something else that's coming up in my mind via some associative process) what book it was in and by whom, but there was a thing I read (years ago) where the writer posed a question, a "what if" - what if life moved backwards, and we disappeared, in the end, into the mental abyss of infancy and ultimately, back into the womb, would the final separation, the final parting, the final good-bye to those we love be any less painful. I am thinking about that now, playing with it in my mind (never really known whether I thought very highly of this particular "what if", but it has stuck on the mind, at least the skeletal framework of it), in a "yes, just think, we would live backwards, we'd come together from the various dust particles and ashes and what not, to, to - what is the opposite of the verb "to age"? Enyoungen? To enyoungen and enyoungen until finally we'd disappear up our mothers' birth canals no, better not write that, someone is bound to feel quite sick reading it, and then slowly disintegrate into cells which would become particles of her body, and all told it doesn't sound much different from the disintegration and disappearance into the ground.

The magpies have been coming in ones and twos so far this spring. Fine-looking birds they are, actually, magpies, shiny and handsome and graphically stylish. I wouldn't mind having one, and then I'd know where Sorrow would be, it would be waiting for me at home.

This Post Is About Orgasms, Take Two, aka The Second Coming. The Anniversary Edition, Including the Final and Ultimate Truth on the Matter at Hand.

Ognuno sta solo sul cuor della terra
trafitto da un raggio di sole:
ed è subito sera.

(Salvatore Quasimodo)

(The author of this blog would like to thank all her siblings-and-partners-in-crime, who came and exposed themselves, so beautiful, so naked, so poignant, so funny, so brilliant. Thank you. You made my earth move, you changed my life.

She would also like to point out that the idea for an anniversary post was put into her head by someone else. Bloody poets.)

About a dog

When she first arrived, she was depressed. I know, because she was withdrawn and didn't really want to eat. I know how that feels. I tried a couple of dog foods but wasn't going to go down the "try every one in the shop" route. Someone who has great psychological understanding and empathy suggested I eat from her bowl first, and it worked. (I didn't really, you understand, I just pretended, for her benefit - "yum-yum-yum, top dog eats first, your turn now". I'm vegetarian.) It worked, for a while, anyway, a few days. Then the depressed blank look at her bowl returned. I started to feed her from my hand. I still have to do it sometimes, and although when my son feeds her, she will devour her food without worry, when I feed her she likes me to stay with her and scratch and stroke her shoulders while she eats. If I go to another room, she'll follow me with a worriedly-wagging tail, instead of eating. I don't mind, actually, although obviously I want her to feel confident and settled enough not to need me for emotional support whilst having her meal. But the truth is, I love being there with her, squatting by her side, scratching her, feeling her all strong and furry and alive, her eagerness for life, shot through with the uncertainty that puts an ache in my new and growing love for her.

During her first three weeks with us, we had a few days of snow - four or five, which looks to be the extent of it this year. She has a way of snuffling the ground, following the scents and smells she detects, which was very endearing from the start - and a relief, as apparently many dogs with a dog-pound background can be so traumatised they don't use their noses anymore, and have to be taught and tantalised to do so again. Her sniffing became a reason to fall in love with her when snow arrived, for she would poke her nose in it and create the sweetest dog-nose shaped holes with a snuffle-sniffling movement from side to side. She would then look over her shoulder at me, as she does, checking that I'm there, that all is well, that she is a good dog, and she would have snow on her nose and love would well up in me. It was also when getting carried away in the snow to the extent of forgetting herself that she would suddenly, out of the blue, make the first clumsy playful love-lunges at me, coming out of the withdrawnness that was characteristic of her during her first days with us.

During her first visits to the local dog park she was so worried about having me off the leash (and thus easily lost) she would walk with her nose to my knee instead of running about, stopping when I stopped, walking when I walked. She has grown brave now and will romp with dogs much bigger than her with spirit and gusto, but she comes when I call her and usually straightaway (although I wouldn't trust her when rabbits, hares, squirrels and the like come into the picture). She got told to get lost at first when she tried to get into my bed with me in it (although she is always allowed on it, as long as I'm not in it. With me in it, it's invites only), and consequently will only grace my bed on weekend mornings, even if I invite her - but she does come and kiss me first thing in the morning when I roll over to turn off my alarm, except this Monday, when I was terribly down. Poor innocent creature, she feels my moods and takes them all upon herself. Her life will not be an easy one.

I've had her a month today, and, as is the case with babies and lovers, I cannot fathom I haven't always had her, that there could have been a life of not having her. I love her. I've waited for her for eleven and a half years. She's my dog.

I should apologise to ants, really

Not quite a fortnight from the solstice and you can see it: three o'clock and the sun is still clearly up - low down, yes, but not quite setting yet. We are winning, it has happened again, light is coming back. The planet keeps turning, light comes back, and maybe this is what matters, really. And as for us puny ants inhabiting the Earth, in spite of the horrors we cause each other, while there are still people in the world there will also be those who want to tear each other apart in love and longing rather than in hate and rage. More of those.

I need to think that is the case.

Peace/piece of (my) heart/mind - delete as appropriate

Today started out as one of those days when my mind is sorely aware of the hyper-reality messages existence seems to be sending me. There was the inevitable cliché of one magpie, in flight, from my balcony, right past my balcony, level to my balcony, in fact, and I had to greet it and salute it. (Later in the day, I saw another solitary in-flight magpie, from the balcony at work, and I greeted and saluted it, too, but together they make two, so I didn't really need to.)

From the bus window, just before getting off in town to go to work, I saw a child at the window of one of the old town houses. How lovely, it struck me, because these days so few people live in the heart of town in the old buildings, they have all been converted to this and that and the other, mainly offices, how lovely to see a person, and not just any person - a child, a resident of one the old town houses, at his window. Think what it was like, I thought, when people lived there, and looked out of the windows (in the evening, I thought, for some reason, although it was morning when I thought it), to see what went on, on their street, because they had more time for that then and it was good for entertainment. Just as I was thinking this, in the split-second it takes for a thought process to go several paragraphs, the mental image changed into the residents looking out of their windows, during the war years, fearing air raids. Wtf? Where did that come from? And why? And why can't I let lie, why does the next thing I see have to be a naff and garish advert for downhill ski-ing package holidays in the rapidly-to-be-destroyed Lapland, where - rejoice, rejoice, residents of our poor and deprived north - not only us southern affluent folk but also "real" Europeans are beginning to flock to, in increasing numbers, because they aren't getting enough snow anymore in the Alps (we aren't, either, here in the south). And yesyesyes, I know downhill ski-ing is fun and exhilarating, I have tried it once or twice, it is, and we need fun and exhilaration because we don't know how to enjoy anything else these days (we=mankind, here, not you and me in particular), although sinking into the environment, becoming one with the background (yes) that is existence itself, is bliss. What need have we for bliss?

And finally, I saw something I see quite often on my morning trundle - pigeons, drinking from a puddle which often collects in a particular dent in the pavement at the top of the block of my workplace, and why in God's sweet name am I always, without failure, moved by the sight of pigeons drinking from a puddle (it seems meaningful and symbolic of something, and I am reminded here of how thousands of years ago augurs used to read the meaning of life and the intentions of the cosmos from the flight of pigeons, although they did use sheep's entrails, too, which I don't see on my way to work, which is just as well)? What sort of an effing dork am I?

But then, I was almost at work, and had to buckle up and stop receiving cosmic messages of little worth and even less meaning, because people tend to take it all funny if they think (or realise) that's what you're doing. When I came home, I lit candles in my four little squat coloured-glass candle holders and started to work on writing this post, and yes, what the fuck has this been all about?