Tuesday, August 29, 2006

a normal, quasi-existential blog entry

After so many weird, angsty, quasi-existential blog entries lately, better clarify what's going on here in PianoPoet world.

I'm looking for the meaning of life.

They say it's all a waste of time. They say nobody has ever found it or even come close. I disagree. I strongly believe it exists and I even believe in a God who is in control and will show it to me if I'm willing to see it.

Of the meaning of my life, he only shows me one day at a time though. Guess he thinks I couldn't handle any more. Guess he's right.

Better clarify one more thing. I am quite sane. No, really! I get up in the mornings, get showered and dressed like normal people, ask my friends how they are, laugh at jokes, eat too many sweets, control my alcohol intake, read good books, frown at the news, sleep at night even though I do dream of angels (and demons) sometimes. I live life, because it's here.

And even in the darkest of dark, I feel a strange joy somewhere deep inside. I cry myself to peace.

See? After so many weird, angsty, quasi-existential blog entries, here's a weird, existential, quasi-angsty one! Told you I'm normal.

on poverty from a distance

Was going to whine here. Almost got moaning about how close I am to poverty.

Thought better of it. Lucky me, sunning myself in a welfare state where I'm not likely to ever get too close to the real thing. Even if I might have to decide on whether to give up my modem or my TV.

Not quite yet, though. Taking all those empty wine bottles to the bottle bank. Swapping alcohol for cyberspace time.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Bermuda love triangle

I want to know where I am and what I will do.
I want to have a deep voice and be loved, and I want to sparkle.
I want the person I admire to phone me and tell me he's been thinking of me all day.
I want to feel as if I'm being carried off by a whirlwind and I want to land in a place where nothing can ever shake me.
I want to love life, deeply and passionately.
I want to see the face of God and live to tell. Or die in its light.

There must be love somewhere in this overcast world. Deep and unconditional and overwhelming. This love that we all look for, which will draw us together, and we all go our separate ways in our desperate quest to find it. I turn my back on someone who loves me while I'm looking elsewhere. When I turn back, I discover I have killed through neglect.

So individual we will kill each other for the perfect, individual love. Discover the truth too late. Heartbroken.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

search for love in a dream

Just before I wake up, I dream of an angel.

Blond, blueish-grey eyes, boyish grin, and the warmth of true love in his voice. He looks through me and loves me anyway. I would laugh at the cliché but the truth in it chokes me up.

Against my will, I wake up. The soothing peace of his smile still in the air in my bedroom.

An angel looked at me. I mean something. Somebody spoke in my dream and I hear the echo in my reality.

Monday, August 14, 2006

a savage in a mini-skirt

I look up from my book just long enough to note the smell of smoke in the air. Faint but persistent. Not like something from the neighbour's cottage chimney, more like a mist covering the landscape. They say it's on the wind all the way from Russia and the forest fires there.

It's too hot to wear much more than you can easily shed when it's time for a dip in the sea but I'm trying out all the short skirts I usually never get to wear. Just for a few days, no more pressing problems than which novel to read next. Every third day or so, back to the city briefly, to enjoy civilization in the form of running water, the internet, TV and fresh newspapers. Not to forget real coffee. I might be turning into a savage. I even forget to wear mascara out there in the wilderness, and my hair is a jungle. I eye every approaching human being with suspicion - not that there's many. The family doesn't really count, they are savages too. Most of them have enthusiastically embarked on a project aimed to reshape the shoreline by digging up mud and rocks and moving them around, as usual forgetting they are fighting the land uplift phenomenon - our part of the country is rising like an Atlantis out of the sea at a rate of almost one centimeter per year. Not bad when you have a cottage by the sea and can move your picnic table a bit further out every year. The little nieces and nephews soak me to the bone with their water games but I forgive them eventually when they bring me a peace offering of blueberries from the forest. Ah, family.

But I've been clever. I've taken my holiday late in the summer. The family heads back to the city to return to jobs and schools. Only I will be left with the sun and the sea, my books and my increasingly savage heart.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

escape is all I think about

The summer has been one of the warmest and dryest in Finland for a long time. I've spent a lot of time on the beach with all those screaming kids around, and sun-bathing on my balcony while trying to work at the same time. I have spent even more time in front of the computer in a twilit apartment, with the curtains drawn, trying to pretend there is no summer.

Time to forget about work for a while, time to take some real time off. Time to take myself off to the cottage between the forest and the sea again. Time to lie in the grass with a stack of novels, light a fire in the cooling evenings and remind myself that this is where I belong and that life is here and now. Maybe then my writing will take off again, if I'm lucky. Feels like I'm stuck in my worries. Time out!