To counteract the myriad single magpies,

we, meaning the dog and I, came across a patch of good luck, in the wasteland on a grassy verge.



She wanted to eat them, so we had to leave.

A Portrait of the Artist in Six Words, Courtesy of Dr But Why?

Anna MR - A small number of large experiences.

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.)

Eat your heart out, Inuit*

Last year I wrote a couple of jokey little entries on the oddities of my native tongue. It's time for another.

Snow is lumi. I, a latter-day city-dweller, can only really name two distinct types of snow - nuoska, the snow of lesser minus degrees (not räntä, sleet), the snow which squeaks under your feet, the snow you can make snowballs out of, and viti, the powdery snow of colder weathers (which won't work as snowball snow). Once on the ground, the lumi forms a hanki, in which you can discern individual drifts (or piles formed otherwise, e.g. by shovelling the snow with a kola). These are known as kinos. In the trees, particularly the fir trees, in certain conditions the snow sticks onto the branches and onto itself, creating huge billowy formations - tykky. Tykky can pile up so much the weight of it bends the tree into a bow or an arch, and sometimes snaps the trunk altogether. Snow can fall in various ways - pyry implies a thick snowfall, possibly in short bursts, during which the flakes can be bigger and can billow in the air, every which way; tuisku a thick snowfall, possibly of long durations, of smaller flakes, maybe with a wind driving them in a particular direction. Both words are used as first names - Pyry for a boy, Tuisku for a girl.

There are many more snow words. These are the ones I can remember at the moment.

I am going to see a butoh show tonight.

*and I only meant the language. The author of this blog wishes to thank Anne Kleemola for her lovely tykky photo. She has some other totally gorgeous shots on her Flickr account, mostly from Lapland, and one, as a surprise bonus, from Scotland. Go Anne.

And now for something completely different...a non-commercial commercial break

Although naturally I hope you will all enjoy this little clippety here embedded, I am particularly aiming it for those (un)lucky enough to live in Finland (delete as you see fit). Because, you see, you Finland-dwellers can go and vote for the dude leaping about in the clip. Ramin Sohrab he is called, and he is a participant in (Finland's) Channel Four's Talent Suomi competition. More importantly, one of the pirates attacking him at around 0:45 is my younger son. Sunday's semifinal will show a completely new (even bigger, even better) choreography, not this one here, and although I am naturally sworn to total secrecy, I can tell you my son will be one of the guys in sunglasses (in this one, he's the pirate exiting alone upstage left).

Actually, while I'm here, I can inflict something truly horrible on you all. I have been a bit sombre, not to say po-faced lately (also a bit silent, I note), and I feel it is high time to inject some healthy bollocks into the proceedings here. But BE WARNED. The link contains possibly the most annoying, and to make matters worse, simultaneously strangely compelling, even addictive, brainworm known to man. I would like to point out the link was sent to me by my son, the very one swashbuckling on youtube (and here).

I am such a proud mother. I'm sure you can see why.

It's official: I'm nice. Oh shite

Goddamit all to vitun hell, I have another award, flung straight back at me by no less than my hero herself, Madame Signs of the Deft Pen (and Keyboard). Thank you, Signs, I muttered under my breath (and, to be honest, to her straight up as well), thanks a vitun bunch. She has only given me a "Nice Award". Nice. Me. I am reknowned, all over my world, as a sharp-tongued pathologically self-centred meanie ex-punkette, I am, and also, increasingly as a reclusive hermit who's just short of taking the monastic oath of virtuality (the idea for which is © Signs-the-very-same-as-above, and I'm not laying claim to having invented it, just jumping on it with gusto, because it's a good one). I am not nice.

And now, it seems, I am. My world-view has crumbled down, I don't know what to do and where to put my hands, I have never realised but I am actually viewed to be a tea-and-cucumber-sandwiches, kittens-and-balls-of-yarn, tell-me-your-woes type. And the worst of it is, because it is Signs who has come up with this assessment, it must be true, and no amount of swearing in Finnish is going to change the situation. I console myself with Signs' words "Nice is the New Cool".

I have been given no instructions as to how to behave now, but I expect usual rules apply, one must nominate others to suffer the same fate. Not very nice of me, this vindictive passing-on of the hot potato, it rather contradicts the terms of the award, but see if I care (that's how nice I am, do you hear, Signs?). Right. I pass the niceness-trouble on to

NMJ, Ms Legs my Cyberfriend, because she is lovely to her bloggy guests, cares about people in the world, she brought me Marmite although she hates the stuff, and I have met her and can verify it, she truly is nice. Really nice.

The Periodic Englishman, for similar reasons: he is lovely to his bloggy guests, cares about people in the world, and we, too, have had Marmitey transactions, albeit of the virtual kind, but (see above) virtual is fine by me. I have also, once upon a time, given him a pink pony, and it's high time that poor creature had some feline company, I think.

Right, that does it for now, I think - and this isn't to say, by the way, that I think the rest of you blogfolk are not nice, because I think you are very nice, the lot of you (see above, oath of virtuality, etc). You are all so nice you are welcome to come for tea and cucumber sandwiches over here at my house, whenever the mood grabs you.

In the grand scheme of things, it really isn't a big deal, but

For reasons best known to myself, I need to have a bit of perspective. Therefore, a post with two images,


one of which is taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and depicts Hubble Deep Field, a glimpse at some of the furthest away (and consequently, the oldest) stuff in the universe; the other, depicting a reflected Sun and flakes of tree pollen on the surface of a lake, my lake, taken by yours truly.



I quite like both of them, although one is, of course, rather grander than the other.

An unfortunate typo led them to me

My "cyberfriend" is gone. It was great to meet her. It was she, who, many months ago, (publicly) exposed the habit (which I was more fond of than I'd care now to admit) of publishing lists of googlehits as being lazy blogging. I haven't published them since, and only once mentioned a particularly juicy hit, but the one I'm about to quote is too good, and she will be too tired out by her recent travel travails to be able to chastise me for laziness...

Reader - I have been the source of much knowledge for many seekers in my time, but (to my recollection) none have come with a quest as obscure as the person who landed on my site, with the undying search words

"puss between toes"

I kid you not.

NMJ said to me

NMJ said to me, I feel as if I walked here, and I said, Well, you did, in a way.

We first "met" each other when I was living in the tropics and was a virtual blog virgin. She was a blog I next-blog surfed onto, and realised (to my delight) some people online actually could write. Besides which, she was fun and quirky and clearly someone I wanted to know. I nearly ruined it straightaway, though, as I accidentally hit "next blog" and lost her. It took me forever to remember her blog title "Velo-Gubbed Legs".

I am really glad I remembered it in the end. Knowing her has brought an untold amount of good stuff to my life.

I am going to tell you a story

Once upon a time...


I met and began to date a man very desirable, who was arrested and went to prison very shortly after the relationship started. I used to visit him on Saturday and Sunday mornings, having to wake up early after a night out on the piss, the drunkenness still in me. I remember the humiliation and the reverse pride of having to leave my bag in a safe, of walking through a metal detector with my shoes in my hand, of waiting in the visitors' room with the other visitors. I remember the visits themselves, sitting opposite each other, separated by glass not all that high - we could easily have touched each other over it, but there were guards keeping an eye at every row of tables. Once, without warning, he tossed me his necklace, strung with a collection of amulettes, over the glass. I doubt it was the common direction of smuggling. Another time, when I was leaving and already walking across the prison grounds, he had made it back into his cell quickly enough to shout and wave to me from the little window. It wasn't the window in my picture, but one just like it, and I know which one it was.

I came to my senses after a few months and stopped going to see him. When he was released, he called me for a while and was once waiting for me outside my house. I kept the necklace for years, unable to throw it out or return it, but I think I finally binned it in the big clear-out before moving to the tropics. He was in for multiple rape.

The prison was in the heart of old Helsinki. Since then, it has been closed down and the building converted into a - hotel. The other day, I went and sat outside on the terrace of the hotel bar, drank a glass of white wine, and thought of the various stories of my life. They only play Elvis Presley in the bar. I had a necrophiliac love for him when I was ten and he was just dead. I know every one of his songs intimately.

I would like to thank the Academy, Dr Why, my mum, and five others

The eminent blog doctor, Dr But Why?, has presented me with a Thoughtful Blogger award. Being an awardee not only means I can have this label on my blog margin mantelpiece, but I also get to salute five other bloggers. Ok. Ahem. Here goes, unaccustomed as I am to public speaking...

The Courageous Blogger award goes to someone dearly beloved by me, my dear Ponipoika McPoni, aka The Periodic Englishman, for the obvious reason that he is very brave, strong, and courageous. He is also many other things, but I particularly want to recognise this aspect - easily overlooked because he is so many things, including riotously funny - of him and his blog in my award-giving.

I am also giving out four Creative Blogger awards, in no particular order, namely to

NMJ of Velo-Gubbed Legs. NMJ's was the first beautifully written blog I came across. Hers is a special house of flowing words and thoughts, of sharpness of mind and goodness of heart.

Ms That's So Pants, of the site that bears her name. She is anarchic, she is thoughtful, she is funny as all hell.

trousers, a young man with a good stonewash look and a voice of his own, pleasing on the ear and with something to say. housut, I salute you. (I realise you have recently said you are not doing another tag. housut, this isn't a tag.)

Reading the Signs, an outstanding writer of very real merit, and my fellow offender in many a blogland crime. Signs has recently also received the blogland Nobel, the Inspirational Blogger award, but I'm not going to let that hinder my awarding her. I'm just not, because that's the way it stands.

So, you lot, your contributions to blogland are seriously appreciated by yours truly. Toddle off now to Writer's Reviews to pick up your badges. If you find out how to get blogger to accept uploading them, let me know too. I am finding it fiendishly difficult and hence cannot display mine, much as I'd like to.

(The description of a thoughtful blogger is actually really sweet, sounding like a nice person to hang around with, and in my present state (I have been a bit oddy lately, as you, Dear Reader, may or may not have noticed) this hit me where it hurts, so I'm trying to hide behind some serious corny. The blabbing I do around this post does not mean I'm less than serious about taking off my hat for the people I have awarded, though. Because my hat is firmly off and I'm applauding wildly.)

PS Ha-ha! I have done it, with cunning. Firefox was the key, I am sad (as a Safari devout) to say... now quickly quickly, I need to get it up in the sidebar as well...

8 random factoids

I have been tagged by Signs (again - Signs, you will pay for this). I am finding this surprisingly difficult, as I harp on about myself so incessantly anyway at various forums it seems there isn't a fact I haven't visited somewhere or another. But, for beloved Signs, I am willing to try.

Here are the "Rules":
(Note from Anna MR: Please adapt or ignore as you see fit).

1. Let others know who tagged you.
2. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
3. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
4. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

1) I have a good head for languages, which sadly has been completely thrown to waste, as I only speak two fluently (Finnish and English) and one passably (Swedish). I have, though, during my life attempted to teach myself several others, namely (in order of appearance)
- Swedish (yes I know, but I was teaching myself it at home as a six-year-old, before I started it at school at 11)
- Latin
- Hebrew
- Greek
- Welsh
- Russian.
Do you see a pattern of little use developing here? In addition to these, I did a smattering of German at school. Something tells me it would have been more worthwhile for me to focus on that and learn it, rather than spread my energies on a collection of difficult others.

2) I have slightly webbed toes - not all of them, I hasten to add, before you die of disgust. Just the two toes next to my big toe (why don't toes have names, the poor things? Index toe and middle toe), and not all the way up, just to the top joint. I have always known this about myself, but my mother only noticed it when I was five. We were in the sauna, and she exclaimed (in Finnish, so I am treating you to one of my translations) "Dear God, child, you have webbed toes!" to which I replied, "But mum, so do you." She does as well, and she had never noticed that (she was 33). This genetic anomaly has been carried to both my children. I also have minute feet - nowadays I take size 3 1/2 - before I had the children, I took a 3 (that's 36 for us Europeans, by the way).

3) I also have the wrinkliest palms in Christendom, or nearly - my mother and older son have these too. Another genetic anomaly.

4) In theatre, I have played one bitch, one bloke, four frustrated and/or mistreated wives, one madwoman, and Sylvia Plath's mother. Amongst other things. I don't know whether I am typecast or not.

5) I have had eleven cats but only one dog. The cats were called (in order of appearance) Sune, Nelson and Lulle, The Puss and Parsley, Punch, Eek-y-Puss. Between The Puss & Parsley combo and Punch, I also hand-reared four kittens (Parsley fucked off and never came back, and left me to deal with them). They were called (in order of appearance) John, Paul, George and Ringo (what else). I fed them from a special kitty bottle. They slept on my pillow, climbed in my dreadlocks, and called me Mum in kitty tongue. I found homes for all of them. George was the smallest and had the most disgusting habits. She (yes) was also the last to go. I have regretted giving her away at all ever since, although it is now nearly nineteen years and four moves-of-country ago, so she'd probably have given up by now anyway. The dog was a lurcher called Burroughs (after William S.). My first husband kept him - another great regret of my life.

6) I like French roast coffee (black, plenty of sugar) and Earl Grey tea (usually white, no sugar, occasionally black, with lemon). I prefer white wine to red, as even very small amounts of red has started to give me god-awful hangovers, and it stains my teeth and lips black.

7) I have fear of flying (manageable, barely), mild vertigo, middling claustrophobia. I will put off going to the doctor's and dentist's until I absolutely have to go. I get travel sick quite easily.

8) My unfulfilled/able ambition is to play the title role in Hamlet.


Phew. Done. In turn, I shall inflict the suffering on the following poor bastards:

Dr But Why
trousers
Ario
Mellifluous Dark
Zola-Ink-Spots
Anticant
Rhysaurus (he doesn't know I exist, I don't think, so this should be a goody)
Basest (he hasn't said a word since May, but perhaps he shall now)

Phew again.

Dr But Why's beautiful WET SPOT MACHINE

Seeing is believing. Ok.

Chop chop everyone, go and see *it* - The Beautiful Dr But Why's Incredible WET SPOT MACHINE. You don't know you've lived till you've seen it.

And although she must get all the credit, don't forget you heard it here first.

Word, as they say.

Oh bugger

I was going to write a thoughtful and very concise post. It was all worded in my mind.

I went to Ario's site. I saw a quiz. I took it.

You're Watership Down!

by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're
actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their
assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they
build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd
be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

My reputation - nay, my whole self-image - as an elitist literary snob is ruined.

Oh bugger.

This is for you, dammit

I don't know. There I was, committing an act of great altruism and love, and what do I get in return? Petty quibbling on whether the Republic of Ireland can actually be considered a part of The British Isles or not.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not some uneducated twirp who thinks England is the name of all the countries thataway, forrin geerrl as I may be. I am speaking purely geographically - not geopolitically - when I claim that The British Isles is the name of that island group. To me, this smacks of the reluctance of the Canadians to be known as North Americans - which is, of course, abject nonsense, because they just are, ok?

Anyhow. Just in case this matter needs any clarification, I sent my beautiful, 22-hours-a-day Finnish sun over to comfort a weather-violated friend in the Republic of Ireland. You had better be nicer about it after this clarification, as I am wondering whether such a magnanimous act was altogether wise - it has gone down to + 16 here and it is absolutely pissing down (my summer holiday starts in two days).

For good measure, I'll send another sun. The first one can be for the weather-beaten friend who is, beyond any shadow of a doubt, not only in The British Isles, but also in Great Britain. So there.

This is for you

One or two of my dear people have been suffering terribly from the recent weather conditions to mistreat the British Isles. In an attempt to offer them some comfort, I am now sending them the Finnish sun, with an added feature of the auringonsilta, the sun's bridge - that's what we call the reflection of the sun on the water.

There you go. Hope it helps.

A Rant. Possibly, my first around here.

I have realised I don't seem to rant about anything on my bloggy, ever. That is a bit strange. I have a feeling I might have unwittingly cultivated a (very false) impression of myself as someone very placid, sedate, calm, non-ranty. It's all wrong and false. People must have thought I am a right royal pain in the arse with my never-rantingness (I am, though, they're right - but for entirely different reasons - at least in the world of "real time", "outside-bloggy", whatever you wish to call it).

Ok. I am now going to rant and I am going to make it quick. In less than ten minutes, I will have posted a fine rant and gone for a cigarette on the balcony, just you wait and see.

I read about these a while back, I can't remember where, but I failed to be all that angered by them when I met them in writing. But lo - last weekend, I was out of town for midsummer, a big date on the Finnish calendar (very nice it was too, in many ways, and I have some nice photies which I cannot get round to posting anywhere), and went to a huge supermarket to shop for food for the long weekend, and these - items - hit my eye from their shelf.

They are stupid. I cannot bear stupidity.

They are unnecessary. I only bear unnecessity if it is clever, funny, intelligent, amusing, something. Not if it is stupid and unnecessary.

They are horrible and symptomatic and symbolic of a stupid era and stupid people and a stupid culture of stupid nouveaux-helplessness that just really, really piss me off.

They are - straws you dunk in milk, to get flavoured milk, when the milk is sucked into the lazy gob through them.

I fucking ask you. Chocolate flavour was the one that wanked me in the eye, but I believe banana and strawberry are also in existence, and surely this is only the horrendous beginning. Oh, so help me someone. I mean, it isn't enough we have ready-grated cheese, for those who are so-incredibly-busy with "juggling their lives" (aaaaaaaargh) or being shit and useless or too bone-idle or what-the-fucking-ever to actually use a cheese grater (you may note this has been a pet peeve for a while). No. We have to do away with spoons as well - it is, after all, way too time and personal lazy-arse energy consuming to actually pour a glass of milk and stir in a spoonful of cocoa powder from a box.

I am NOT very old. I turn 40 this September. But even I am so old I think a real cup of cocoa is a cup of Van Houten, mixed into a drop of hot water (with ample sugar) before the hot (or cold, as the mood grabs you) milk is poured on top. In a few years, this incredible skill - "cocoa-making of yesteryear" - will no doubt have vanished into the doctoral theses of social anthropologists.

Please, the god of all cranky ranty wankers such as myself, let the underprivileged underclasses from all over rise and come raping and pillaging and fucking eating us alive with our chocolate-flavoured fucking straws. We don't deserve to be in the driving seat anymore.

THAT, Dear Reader, is how those straws make me feel. And now I'm off for my fag.

A day in the life

I blame you, Reading the Signs. It is purely your influence that has muddled my mind into reading everyday events into meaningful coincidences, nay, even synchronicity (perish the thought).

I set out today to have a look at the Manolo Valdés statues currently in a park in the heart of Helsinki. During this wee outing, as well as seeing the statues, I happenstanced on

- the free hugs people, out for another session of handing out hugs to needy passers-by (I leapt upon one of the young men, yelping "Mun vuoro!", My turn! - the hug really hit the spot)

- my son and his friends, out to celebrate his sixteenth (I had a general idea where they'd be and had specifically avoided going there, so as not to embarrass him by turning up)

- a heart of gold (yes, I found a golden heart, lying on the street - it is now threaded onto my key ring)

So what does it all mean? Will sit indoors for the rest of the evening, not only in contemplation but also to avoid running into any more peculiarities interpretable as meaningful. Too much of good things -

Did I write it?

I have a schizoid attitude towards graffiti - some of it I consider city art, from the people to the people, proving that pig-ugly things can be beautified, or at least made meaningful, some of it I find scribbled by people either with no soul, or who just are too bloody young to realise anything.

Anyway. This had appeared opposite to my place of employment, sometime last night. It seemed to fit me and my life and particularly my life at the moment so well I was a mite startled to see it there at 7:55 am EEST, on my way to another day, another euro. Even the handwriting is a little like mine, particularly the loose loop of the "f".