Summertime

Summer is magic.
The magic of sun, colours and music.
The magic of being alive.

Seeing things you’ve never seen before,
things you thought you’d forgotten.

Simple, beautiful things:
the laughter of a child under the deep blue sky,
the taste of vanilla ice on your lips,
the dance of the Superman on the rope in the park nearby.

Summer. I welcome you again.

Prescription

Let there be summer

Let the sun shine.
Let there be summer.
Look at the sea, see the waves.
The pure whiteness of the seagulls.
The golden reflection in the eyes of the mermaid.
Feel the salty drops on your tanned skin and remember
to laugh when you realize that the long and icy cold winter
is far, far away.

You are here.

The woman who didn't want to die alone

The cottage was quite near the sea. You couldn’t see the blue ocean, but the smell of the salty water made its way through the woods and the woman who was sitting on the porch of the hut, drew the quilt tighter around her shivering shoulders.

The woman had been living in her cottage for a long time. She lived alone, had always been alone, and for years she had been content in her solitude. She didn’t care about people, they disturbed her. They were either too noisy or distrustful in their silence. She felt awkward amongst people.

However lately, getting older, she had started to fear. She wasn’t afraid of getting older. No, getting older was a thing not worth fighting against. She wasn’t fearful of death. Dying was the logical end to life. It should had been silly to be scared of death and she had never considered herself to be ridiculous.

She just didn’t want to die alone. She despised the thought of dying and nobody finding her for weeks, months, even years. She felt nauseated when she thought about her body, slowly rotting in the bed or maybe on the floor.

She didn’t want that to happen. She didn’t resent the changes that happened in the corpse after dying. She wasn’t a person of vanity and yet the thought of her rotting body, spreading odours into her beautiful rooms, disturbed her a lot. Somehow it didn’t feel good. It felt sad.

The shivers grew stronger and the woman went inside. She was tired. Tired of everything and before she went to sleep, she wondered would she ever have the power and time to find somebody

Other Worlds

Tell me: when you
look at me, do you still
see the love in my eyes?
Do you see me at all?

Is there love in your eyes?

Tell me: am I still
the centre of your Universe?
Is your Universe the same
as it once was?

You and me.

Or has your world changed,
do you find other
spheres somewhere else?

Is that why you don’t
see me anymore? Are those
other worlds the reason you
won’t even look at me?

Where have you gone?

Where do I find myself now?
When did I lose myself?

Mind Games

The more I see, the less I know.

Gone are the days when everything was either black or white, when I knew right from wrong, when the difference between sane and insane was as clear as the difference of night and day.

The more I see, the less there are absolute truths, the ultimate right, the one and only perspective to look at things. What seemed before to be a madness of a mind, is now just common sense and a way to protect oneself from lunacy of the others or to hide from the insanity of the society.

The more I see, the fewer things astound me. I don’t comprehend more than I used to, I have just stopped in trying to understand and know everything possible.

It doesn’t make me dumb or indifferent. Instead, it makes my mind free and a free mind has to worry much less about things. A free mind does not have to judge things right or rate them from pure white to pitch dark black.

Seeing is not knowing, it is feeling. Feeling that there is nothing absolute. Everything is possible, also the change of one’s own mind.

A Lovely Weekend

A weekend without the Net is due. Without writing. An empty memory-card for new photos I hope to take.
Luxury just to walk and see things, not to write about them.

I’m going to visit my old hometown.
I’m going to see a friend.
I’m going to eat well.

Nice.

Have a lovely weekend. See you soon.

The world is spinning around

Mother's Day

My mother had fair hair and when I was in my early teens, she used to dye her hair into a shade of pearly grey. The colour was in fashion then and I wrote a poem for my mother on a card I gave her on Mother’s Day. I tried to convince in the poem that although she already had grey hair, she didn’t look at all old.

To me grey hair meant old age, not a fashion suitable for mothers. Children in certain age tend to put some limitations for their parents.

My mother’s fair hair didn’t turn into natural grey. She died at the age of fifty.

I would have liked to write a poem of her true grey hair.

Walking

I’ve been walking a lot lately. It’s the most reliable sign of spring for me, because wintertime is too cold and slippery for walking.
I love to walk and it’s no big deal for me to walk for three to four hours. Or more.

Walking relaxes my mind. I do observe everything when I’m walking, there’s no sleepwalking for me, but at the same time my mind is strangely emptying itself mile after mile. My feet stroll along, my eyes pick up things I like to take a photograph of and suddenly I realize I’ve been walking for two hours and it’s time to have a pause and drink something.

I’ve been walking almost two hundred kilometres in Paris in one week. It was a warm autumn and I didn’t want to use busses or other vehicles. I wanted to see as much as possible, but not through a bus window. So I walked and when I got tired, I went to see for a movie, sat for a couple of hours in the dark, looking at some old film noir movie, maybe dozing a little, becoming refreshed to continue walking.

Prague, Casablanca, Amman, Athens, Budapest, Ras al Kheimah, walking, walking, walking. Seeing, feeling, being a part of the street or the road. Hearing the voices and noises, being thrilled of the scents of spices lingering in the bazaar alley.

Walking is a state of mind. You can get the same sensation wherever you walk, it doesn’t have to be in some foreign city, it can also happen while walking in Helsinki or strolling along some dusty country road in the middle of nowhere.

Tranquillity.

SusuPetal goes Eurovision

Inspired by a poet, Lordi and the Eurovision Song Contest held in Helsinki May 2007.

Snooker

I like to watch snooker on television. For the past days, snooker players have been playing for the world snooker championship of 2007.

My mind rests while watching snooker. I like the slow and tranquil atmosphere around the pool table, the silence of the audience when the players concentrate. There’s no hurry, no rushing in snooker, only the mind which focuses on the balls. Snooker has finesse and harmony. Many people prefer pool to snooker, but not me. I like to look at Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler, but only because of Paul’s blue eyes, the game of pool doesn’t interest me as much.

My favourite player was for a long time Paul Hunter, who succeeded in winning the Masters, the British Open, the Regal Welsh Open and other tournaments several times. Paul had somewhat a gracious pose while leaning to the table. The blond ponytail revealed his high cheekbones. He was beautiful and skilled and I learned the rules of snooker with his help, because he made me watch tournaments, sit by the television our after our, into the late night.

Paul died of cancer last year, in October and for a moment I thought I’d lose my interest in snooker. I knew other players too, but in spite of their skills, I didn’t feel any attraction to their way of playing. Or their hair.

During this winter, I only glanced at the tournaments that went on, didn’t feel any urge to watch the finals, just thought that I’d had my share. However, when the world snooker championships began some days ago, I found myself again camped in front of the television. Snooker has put a spell on me.

Tonight, beginning at 5 pm. Finnish time on Eurosport: in the final of the world snooker championship are playing John Higgins and Mark Selby.

*****

Paul Hunter 100/break

Love talk

Take my hand.
But let it be the left one.

Take my breath away.
And if you’ll do that, please
give me
a bottle of oxygen.

If you want to steal
my heart, remember I haven’t signed
a will for organ donation.

If you want
to send chills down my spine,
I demand for a warm quilt.

Filling me with love
can be a hard thing to do.
I need food.

Light my fire,
by all means,
if you want to see me burned
and bashed.

If you’re going to be
lost in my magic,
I can recommend a good shrink,
be gone with the hallucinations!

Love talk is only for the ones in love.
They love also clichés.
And poems.
Of love.

World Weary

This song by Noel Coward suits my mood of today. It rains, it pours, and it’s too cold for me.

I find Noel Coward’s works very charming. I like his dry humour, his sophisticated touch and his wry grip of life, which all can be found in his plays, poems, lyrics, librettos, acting and in his way of living (or at least in the role he chose to live in).

When I listen to “Mad dogs and Englishmen” or “Poor little rich girl” my mind wanders to India and Bel Air. Quite a trip, with no expense.

Enjoy the music in this weary world.

The Meaning of Life

I don’t often find myself thinking about the meaning of life. That is because for me the meaning of my existence (and others, too) is to born, to live and then to die. That is everything and it’s enough for most of the living beings.

Therefore, it pisses me off, when I find myself thinking what the point in all this is. Living, that is. And when I find myself thinking such useless thoughts, I know that I’m in the mood of a beginning melancholy. I am a gloomy person, and though I’m used to my gloominess, this apathy and despair makes me crazy.

Despair always brings up questions that have no answers or the answers are of useless. It’s frustrating and that is why I don’t like to make any questions. I prefer just living without heavy consideration of my beings and whereabouts.

It would be a lot easier if I knew the right questions, which I don’t. I don’t have any good questions, because actually I don’t want to know anything in particular. I only want to live and it is enough of a task for me. If I had a special thought, a certain question to ask, I could maybe find an answer, maybe even a solution and then I could say farewell to my melancholy and look for the brighter side of life, or at least could lean towards the less shadowy side of the street.

However, the things being as they are, I can do nothing else than wait for this mood of mine to pass away. It usually does, in some time, and one day I realize that I can again continue my meaning of life: I’ll carry on with living, without bothering to make any questions.

Meanwhile, I’m still thinking.