Addiction

I’ve been addicted to Judy Garland for many, many years. I love her brown eyes, her deep gaze and her voice is heaven to my years.

It goes without saying, that I’m addicted to musicals, too. You have to be like that if you get a kick out of looking and listening to Judy.

Some addictions are good.

(Thanks Kirsi!)

Trees and roots

A week without writing is heaven. A week without the net is paradise.
I had a nice week.

I took many photos, mostly of trees and roots. Someone could find it boring, I found it soothing to my nerves. To photograph things that just wait for you, don’t move and hide in the shadows, is very easy, and I’ve craved easiness into my life.
Something simple, something stable, something undemanding and yet solid.

Trees and roots.

Although I’m a city born creature, I find peace in the woods. I wouldn’t want to live in the country side, that would be no life for me, but once in a while I like to dust off the city lights. For some time, at least.

And then come back –to write, to live in the net. Among other things.

The Award

SusuPetal was given the Thinking Blogger Award by HPY, and once in her life, SusuPetal became out of words.
After some stunning moments, I (and maybe SusuPetal too) have regained some words and I want to give the Thinking Blogger Award to five bloggers, who make me think while reading their blogs.

In her blog Kehräsaari, Vintti writes about her life as a mother, as a woman, as a human being. She has such amount of courage, hope and persistence, that I can do no more than raise my hat and give her all the respect I’ve got. She writes about things that make one think, that life is not impossibility, but a possibility called now.

The poet Hannu Helin is somewhat obsessed with words and I find it quite charming, because his toying with words and etymology makes me strain my poor brain in a good way when I’m reading his blog Work in Progress.

Lurker makes me feel nostalgic and nostalgia is a way to find safeness. I admire Lurker’s skill to tell about things plainly, but yet in an interesting way. The blog Populaari makes me think about the past and look for the future.

Kirsi has several blogs and they all tell me, that the world is a beautiful place, which is a very important thought(especially for me, who tend to be a little morbid...). Her colours make me purr like a kitten, and her skill to visualise, reminds me that the beauty in life is not far away –it’s right here.

Runotorstai is a collective blog, which challenges its readers every Thursday to write a poem of the weekly given word. Through the links of Runotorstai I find constantly new bloggers who make me think what a great way of expressing yourself a blog is.

*****

This meme was started by the Thinking Blogger. If the awarded are tempted to continue with this meme, here are the rules:

1. If, and only if you get tagged, write a post with links to five blogs that make you think.

2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.

3. Optional. Proudly display the Thinking Blog Award with a link to the post that you wrote.

The Quest

I'll be looking for the sun behind the clouds.

I'll be seeking for rest and peace.

I'll be gone for some days.

The Bubble

Living in a bubble offers
no taste of champagne
no glamour
only the round walls
surround you
and there is no corner to hide
to find
peace.

******

Participating in the Finnish PhotoThursday

The Girl

I feel bad, mother. I’d like to shout and hurt somebody, but I can’t. It’s forbidden to hurt other people. I can’t do that. I have to be good.

But I’m so angry, mother. I’d like to tear eyes off somebody, I’d like to kick someone in the belly and hit somebody in the head with a steel bar and see how blood flows.

But I can’t, mother. I have to be nice and gentle and I can’t feel anger, it’s so ugly. And I’m ugly, too. I don’t want to be horrible. I don’t want to have these awful thoughts, can’t have them, no. I feel so guilty, because I’m bad if I think like this.

I can’t hurt anybody, mother. Not other people.

Only myself. Because I’m bad.

In the restaurant

When he called her and said he had something important to talk about, she was relieved and told him that she also liked to have a word with him. They hadn’t seen each other in a week, not after their quarrel.

They met in a restaurant. He was sitting by the table when she entered the dimly lit room. He had already ordered white wine for them. She would have preferred red wine, but didn’t say anything when she seated herself beside him.

-You look beautiful.

She didn’t smile, just nodded slightly her head. She was nervous and her hand trembled a little as she lifted the glass on her lips.

They ordered some appetizers, although she would have wanted to start with the main course. She wasn’t hungry, in fact she felt a little bit nauseated and she began thinking it would’ve been wiser to deal with the matter on the phone.
But she couldn’t leave him like that. She had once loved him and she owed him an explanation face to face. He was too kind of a person to be treated cruelly.

He ate with good appetite and didn’t seem to notice her idle fork which made round circles in the shrimp salad. The waiter poured some more wine in his glass and left with the plates. She caught his eyes and saw that he smiled.

-You’re not hungry? he asked in a gentle voice. – I thought I couldn’t eat, but I was wrong. It’s funny, I’m not at all nervous.

She couldn’t speak. She hadn’t thought this would be easy, but she hadn’t foreseen this would be this difficult. She knew the man would be hurt and she really didn’t want to hurt him at all. She just didn’t love him anymore.

-I love you. Will you marry me?

She drank some wine and she realised she couldn’t get through with the situation. The man looked at her, keenly and waiting. Silent moments passed and the expression on the man’s face became fraught. She tried to speak, to say no, but no sound escaped her lips. She had to close her eyes, because she couldn’t stand the anxious eyes of the man.

When she finally opened her eyes and saw the gaze of the man, she knew she couldn’t hurt him any more. She had hurt him enough.

The waiter brought the main course. He was too happy to eat and she had lost the rest of her nonexistent appetite. They finished the wine and then they left the restaurant.

*****

HPY gave me a sentence to end a story with: and then they left the restaurant. This is the story that came out.

The Princess

Once upon a time, there was a girl, who wanted to be a princess. She grew up, attended a reality-TV-show, won the contest, and had her fifteen minutes and some more in the spotlight. With the money she got from the sponsors of the reality-show, she flew to Cannes on a vacation and met a prince in the harbour of that magical town. Naturally, the Prince went crazy, for her, and wanted to marry her.
The girl became a princess and she lived happily ever after with her Prince in their huge mansion on the hill.

Hope you didn’t believe a word. This was a fairytale.

Actually, the story went like this: There was a girl who wanted to be famous. She participated a shaggy reality-TV-show on a lousy cable station, didn’t win, but got an admirer. She married the enthusiastic youngster, got pregnant once a year and liked her liquor. The youngster became a sombre hermit who used to beat her up whenever she tended to drink too gaily with the neighbours in the local pub.

One day he hit her hard enough and she didn’t rise up from the floor anymore. He went to jail and the children were taken into custody.

That’s how the story went. We do live in a real world, you know.

Ways to write

Sometimes I get tired of inventing stories. You know, one has to make up everything in a story of fiction: the characters, their habits, their ways of thinking, and the events they happen to run into in that particular story. You have to even invent their names (and that is why my characters seldom have names in my stories –I can’t find a suitable name,,,)

I could of course use real events from real life, but that is a little boring; people don’t tend to act like characters of fiction –they act more absurd in real life.

Because of my weariness of using my imagination, I sometime get kicks out of writing stories people want me to write to. They give me ideas (like “could you write about a woman who can’t have a child” or “why don’t you ever write about a woman who beats up her husband” or “I would like to read a story about paedophilia, could you come up with something”) and I’ll write.

Someone could consider writing like that restricted and too controlled (hey, where is the freedom of the writer!); I just find it easy because I used to write by order for years. The chief editor of the magazine I used to write to for many, many years ago, gave me a list of titles she wanted me to write of and so I did. During those years, I learned to write about everything possible and what’s more important: about all the impossible.
Moreover, what’s funny, I didn’t find it difficult at all. It was, on the contrary, very liberating not to have to have a serious statement of your own. You know, very many people expect writers to have something serious to say!

A given item leaves me enough space to express myself and I know where the limits are –writing “on my own” sometimes leads me to areas from where I cannot find back and it’s frustrating. To feel yourself utterly lost and not able to tie all the ends of the ropes. Disaster!

Maybe it’s laziness, maybe it’s a lack of an imaginative mind, a shortage of creative ideas? Maybe it’s that I don’t feel writing is a sombre thing to do and I don’t have to take myself or writing so seriously?
Don’t know. Don't actually care.

Well, I started to think these things while writing a story. In my Finnish blog of fiction, I asked the readers to give me sentences to start stories with. I got plenty of sentences and it has been fun to write these stories. Now I’ve soon used all the given sentences and I think I must ask for new words that’ll end a story. It’s going to be interesting and it helps me to rest my mind while not having to invent stories of my own.

Singing in the rain

I have been thinking about starting singing lessons. I’ve always liked to sing, I do love music, but I’ve had some difficulties with my voice.
It doesn’t come out right. Or not the way I’d like to.

The other difficulty is the question of what music I should sing. What kind of music suits my voice, which is quite husky, thanks to heavy smoking and liking of whiskey when I was younger. Nowadays I prefer red wine to whiskey and it is gentler to my voice.
My voice hasn’t become any mellower though.

As for my voice I could easily imitate Janis Joplin, but I haven’t the power and strength Janis got, only the same hoarseness and the same liking to whiskey.

I’m afraid my limited range in notes (high and low) makes some demands to the music I’m able to sing. I can easily picture myself singing like Julie London, with a small, sensually rasping voice in a smoky bar, although I don’t share anything in common with Julie.
Not even the looks.

I’ve got so many questions without answers and that’s why I’d like to start singing lessons. I’d like to know should I sing evergreens by George Gershwin or should I stick to jazz-standards and ad lib (that’s really convenient –no need to panic if you’d happen to forget the words!). Maybe a singing teacher could answer me? They are professionals, aren’t they? At least they are being paid for trying to make singers out of pure amateurs.

People go to aerobic lessons, they do yoga, and they paint porcelain for hobby. They take piano lessons and they do ikebana.
I’ve never heard about anybody who sings for a hobby. Showers are for singing, karaoke too, but I don’t want to perform to a bunch of drunken friends in a pub and my skin is so dry I can’t take long enough showers.
And I want to sing.

So, maybe next autumn, I’ll start a new hobby. Let it pour, let it thunder, I don’t mind. I’m going to force the song from my heart out in the blue (or the grey sky).

And while waiting for the rainy season I must learn how to upload videos to youtube…

Easter Parade

I like traditions. My traditions vary from time to time, because I also like to invent new traditions and get rid of some old ones I’m not fond of anymore.

I have traditions considering food, like most people do. United people like to have their ham or turkey on Christmas and nourish the lamb on Easter, frankfurters and potato-salad on New Year’s Eve and bathe in bubbling champagne when welcoming the spring on the first day of May.
(I don’t do the frankfurter and champagne-thing, they are not my tradition)

My tradition is to watch certain movies on national holidays. Today, on the Good Friday, I watched Easter Parade. To look at Judy Garland and Fred Astaire doing their routines in this film is a new tradition for me, because it took years for me to get hold of this film. I have dozens of old, American musicals in my collection of films, but this particular motion picture I managed to find just some weeks ago. On sale, which was nice.

I’ve had the soundtrack of the movie for a long time and I’ve seen the movie several times in different matinees, film clubs and the Finnish film archive. But now, at last, I own the film. Or the DVD, to be precise.
It comes without saying that I love the music of the film, composed by Irving Berlin, and now I can sing along with Judy whenever I want to. You see, that’s the difficulty in watching films in movie theatres: you can’t sing out loud. And you can’t dance either on the corridor of a movie theatre.

But now, a new tradition has been born and I can join the Easter Parade on the Fifth Avenue.

Weird? Of course, like my Christmas tradition to listen to Judy when she sings Have yourself a Merry, little Christmas from Meet me in St. Louis.
(I’m not able to sing that song, I usually cry too much and my words just come out in a soggy-kind of mumble as I look at the beautiful, teary eyes of Judy’s.)

Yes, traditions are nice. They make you feel safe and good and for some moments you forget the misery of your life.
Or something like that.

Happy Easter.

Lord, oh Lord

oh Lord
won’t you buy me
a ticket to hell
I heard
it has frozen
that’s the truth
people tell

my sweet Lord
mm
oh, my Lord
I really want to see you
and I think
you’ll want me
too

oh Lord
I pray you
to yell and shout
let me melt in your
arms
to be yours, without
any doubt

the angels sing
hallelujah
and I know
without
the demons
my love doesn’t
grow

I'll always have Casablanca

When I, for the first time, travelled to Casablanca, I wasn’t disappointed. I had been warned by my friend, who lived there:

-You won’t find any romance here, here’s no smog in the shades of black and white and you won’t see Rick and Ilsa whispering in the shadows. Sam isn’t going to play you again. Casablanca is not a movie.

No, Casablanca wasn’t a movie, it was more. It was life after death. I know I won’t have Paris any more, like Rick and Ilsa did. I know I won’t find beginnings of beautiful friendships anymore.

But - I’ll always have Casablanca.

It’s a state of mind. My own private Idaho. A place to seek out whenever I feel the need to.