The Old Bait-and-Switch

Once upon a time the Viking Line buffet was the stuff of legend. Once, to me, The Buffet was the highlight of any Baltic crossing. The number of salmon dishes alone made the soul cry for lack of stomach space to stow it. Now, since they include booze, the price is 50% higher, the food quality verges on bad, and the queues of hungry people are longer than ever.

That's how things go, I guess.

But it's good to know that quality food can still be had on the ferry, in the Food Garden. Their appetizer buffet is delicious, both the quality and variety impeccable.

It all goes to show that if you keep your eyes open, "what is the case" will be yours; the dregs of yesterday's delicious wine will be seen for what they now are; today's beauty lie open like a ripe fruit ready to be plucked from the tree.

What is the relation between Santa and sex? Very little as far as I can see. Yet there seem to be dozens of songs, tv shows, commercials, jokes, etc. that link the two together (and it seems to be increasing each year). Why? Is it because he leaves us presents, and sex is the best way we can think of how to repay him (does that make us prostitues). Is it perhaps some fantasy about sleeping with an old, fat guy with a beard (like an electra complex). Is it because families are close during the holiday season and so husbands (represented by santa) and wives get frisky around the time? Personally, it all seems a little unseemly to me. I mean who's next, the tooth fairy? The Easter bunny?

Tom Ridge as a terrifically hard job. He knew this going in and yet he did not shy away from the responsibility. It is amazing to me that in a position like his, you hear so little negative about him and his department. The fact that you hear so little is a testament to how great a job he has done.

Christmas makes me feel like two different men, one is Scrooge, the other Tiny Tim

The weather finally cooperated and it's become gloriously white and cold, though it's a Christmas illusion, since rain is forecast for Christmas Day. But for now, it doesn't get better than the fresh powdery snow thickly draping everything. The crisp air is invigorating. The darkest day of the year is past and things will now begin their slow uptick until green begins to stir again... Today we bought our tree from one of the local vendors and carried it back home. (A trip that's maybe just under a kilometer.) Owen sat in the sled with a small spruce limb, Matilda carried her own tree she'd bought with her own 5€, Melina pulled the sled, and I carried the family tree. The gray sidewalks were replaced by narrow white pathways; the forest was nearly mystical with white limbed spruces overhanging the path. I couldn't help thinking how a car would have spoiled the whole thing with practicality. As I set the tree up in our living room, Owen ran up to the tree and shouted over and over, "hauska, hauska!" ("Fun, fun!")

These Christmas events make me happy, they're the ones I hope my children take with them into their futures. Even cleaning the house today in preparation for the big dinner tomorrow was enjoyable, since I knew it was the last cleaning before the celebration. I keep imagining the ham, the fish, the food in abundance that awaits us tomorrow. (True, we still need to make it, but I look forward to that as well.) Already the scents of Christmas fill our apartment. Even as I type, the thawing tree releases its fresh smell. On the table next to the computer a beautiful gingerbread house my Mom and Matilda made has been smelling delicious for a week now. It's covered with candy and I keep craving gingerbread as I sit here working. (Or even writing this.)

I have off work until January 7th, and I need the rest. I am glad. In Finland the concept of "Joulu rauha" (Christmas Peace) is deeply ingrained. Everyone looks forward to making time for family and friends (depending on the day), and just enjoying having no obligations and not having to rush around. How different that is from the scene I unwillingly threw myself into yesterday. After a big snow and suddenly plunging temperatures threw the railways into chaos, I managed to get from our new office to downtown in an hour, whereas it normally takes ten minutes. So already grumpy I thought I'd quickly buy Melina's present. Unfortunately, the seething crowds in the Forum didn't bring Christmas cheer to mind. How stupid that Christmas can be reduced to spending money you don't have, on things you don't really need. (After all, making presents of what you need is pretty boring. "Here honey, I bought you next week's groceries!!!") Granted, the amount you don't have to spend varies, and perhaps it's more accurate to say money that would be used for different things, but surely I make myself clear. My "bah-humbug" juices flowed swift and strong. I shook my head at the lines of people, the torrents of shoppers washing from store to store. I couldn't take part in it. I couldn't pay the outrageous price for a little stripped Marimekko makeup bag Melina had told me she wanted. I stepped out of the line, put the bag back, and made a quick retreat for the bus stop. But I wasn't through. Knowing Melina would be a very unhappy elf come Christmas with no present, I rallied myself for another assault, this time into Sokos.

In no time flat, the products on the shelves became a blur, displays were obstacles in the writhing crowd. I knew I didn't want to buy something practical like household goods, cookbooks, etc., but I also couldn't bring myself to throw away money on something that she'd rarely use. Oh, the things you can buy! Oh, the money you can spend! I faltered once again, and walked a beaten man to the bus stop. There was nothing for it. Clothes, shoes, lingerie, etc., those were the things I thought would be best, but I knew better than to trust my own judgment as to style and pattern, let alone size. I came home empty handed, and even as I type here I fret that the trinkets I've bought won't be enough to make my girl smile. Though I've promised we'll go and look together for those things I couldn't choose alone. (Talk about anti-climax!)

Perhaps I'd like shopping better if I knew how to buy gifts. I've meet people who have a real talent for gift-giving. They seem to know exactly what people want and know how to get them. I wish I had a little of that in me.

In the end, I know the commercial stuff is what you make of it. I know it can get out of hand, but it shouldn't be confused with the celebration and excitement of the holiday. I, for one, am just glad to celebrate the passing of the year; to mark with hope and joy the year's turning, the lightening; to add my little light into the winter darkness, so that together we can make the long, cold nights something enjoyable.

unEnlightenment Blues

Throughout our "open office" the clickity-clack of computer keyboards attest to the work being done. I see them, colleague & friend alike, sitting quietly (oh, so quietly!) on their blue swivel chairs, ergonomically positioned by the specialist that came to reconcile our divers postures to them. This office is a reality I did not create, within a larger reality I had no hand in, within immensity I cannot contemplate. When I understand freedom, life, or meaning, will I leave these brightly lit confines behind me? Will I seek still water, the teeming forest, that life abundant I imagine outside my workstation's window (oh yes, I've been granted a window), that I glimpse from the bus or train? Because when everything clicks, when I see the big picture I've waited for patiently, how can I stay put? How can things go on like they have heretofore? & if they don't change, won't the picture, the meaning I've found slip away; slip on to someone that will use it better than I can?

If only...

Owen's limber tongue

Owen's words are coming fast & furious now, each day he busts out new ones, dazzling his doting parents. He's a natural charmer, & it even shows in his labored speech. Over the past few weeks he's exclaimed at random times, "I happy". Where he's learned the concept of happiness, I'm not sure, where he's picked up the good humor to revel in it is a mystery, why he says it when he can't vocalize more trite concepts speaks volumes about the boy.

As I undressed him for sauna last night he said without prompting, "I good day." He'd been to the park with his buddy Elias & then they'd played more at Elias' home. When I asked what he'd done at the park, he said, "Play. Car. Truck. Chugga." (Chugga = train).

He's begun listing the people he knows. Last night at dinner he went round the table "Isä, Äiti, Da, O-we" pointing at each in turn.

A couple nights earlier he said "Tank uu", for the first time as he left the dinner table. I replied, "You're welcome." With casual indifference he said, "Yeah, yeah."

The night before that, I said to him as he left the table, "Say 'thank you' for the food." He looked up and said instead, "Ei good!" As if his opinion of dinner made gratitude impossible.

He also generally speaks the correct language for his audience. I'm impressed that he's sorted that out even before he has much of a vocabulary.

Of all the things I fear, that which terrifies me most is what will never be.

I look out and see the day spread, your hands in mine, the world become us

What I really want is to feel a part of the happenings around me; I want a bond to the goings-on. Sometimes, of course, I'd like to have no part of things done. Bad decisions, made by people that see no further than their own good, or worse, those that do see, but willfully harm others anyway. If I close my eyes at certain moments I can feel the grass dying beneath the snow falling outside my window. Digging deeper, I can feel the lushness of the Argentine Pampas grass flourishing beneath a summer moon. I have never seen the Pampas, I cannot imagine it with my eyes open, but there in my mind it grows, jumbled with an owl perched on a ponderosa pine's twisted limb in the Rocky Mountains. Somewhere mushrooms are springing to light, or drying secretly, or dying unnoticed in a field or forest.

News... is one way to see humanity stumbling through life. Philosophy, religion, poetry, maps, tour guides, books on fishes, on birds and plants, these all connect me to the world, but I can only lap a small portion of these things.

In the hub-bub of what is, I am a small player. Compared to this, my worries become tiny flags that cannot drown out the enormous beauty of things. The world's near infinite complexities, the vixen in heat, mamma bear protecting her cubs...


Tigers, tigers everywhere

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

Lately tigers have filled my imagination. I see their sleek bodies move silently through wonderful jungles, their long flanks never entirely visible. Perhaps this is Jorge Luis Borges' gift to me. To see beyond a doubt the terrible grace and strength surging through the tiger's limbs and knowing that this, too, can be mine and me... I have but to let it in.

Trembling beneath the barrage, I stumble through doorways I didn't know...

My mind numbs & the repetitious information spills through my eyes swirling around my saturated brain until it's siphoned into oblivion... Or maybe it's in there somewhere. The point is, I'm a news addict, but I want more than mere news, rhetoric, and posturing. I want delving opinions, the familiar twisted into startling new shapes. I want to gain a better perspective, one that will lay the whole truth out before me; as I rise above the jungle (of life) & see (for the first time) the gullies & hilltops, the splendid layers of green upon green, the dazzling sunlight and murky shadows beneath the canopy. To be in & not in the forest...


So dies another dream; Pulla Palatsi, I hardly knew you...

Day runs through its figures beneath the hidden stars. Blue sky & white clouds, coffee & something sweet in a corner shop that can't compete with the chain kiosk across the street. You'll never win if you take them on using their terms. The stars are shining somewhere up there in the blue, but you must look past the light; see darkness, the spaces that are overlooked. Venus is visible, if you know where to look. Aldebaran, where are you? Will dumb luck leave me where I want to go?

Tax the Dead, They Need But One Obolus

I've recently rehashed my near 100% death tax idea with a friend here and he makes a valid point that people do work harder so their kids will start out better in life. Previously, I've maintained that people pretty much do whatever they want and apply the best sounding labels to it later on in order to justify their actions. So the businessman who's work takes precedence over his kids claims he "did it all for them" when he needs a comfortable excuse.

This is cynical and only partly right, since no single reason can explain a course of action. Reality is a tangled web of causal relationships that become more knotty, not less, as you delve deeper into them.

But, however that may be, we can say something about "doing it for the kids", which a sizable number are. Though it's a virtuous parenting instinct, it may prove harmful to society as a whole. This is entirely conjecture, but I'm a big believer in the "journey" being more valuable than the destination. In any event, the journey invariably affects the destination reached. I like to believe finishing something easy won't be as rewarding finishing something hard. Not to me anyway, and I think I can say not to most people. After all, a man who earns a million dollars by the sweat of his brow must have learned something along the way that the lucky lotto winner can never understand. (Except, of course, lottery winners are often hard-working folk who'll never draw in the big cash. Their ship's headed to East St. Louis, whereas Mr. Moneymaker's is headed to Tahiti.)

"I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain." --John Adams

So, you make the cash so your kids can splash in the pool of leisure. Or, at least follow their hearts desire and do something pleasant, rather than compromising. Does this successive improvement in life choices ever end? When does it breakdown and leave us with weak-willed spendthrifts whose sole notion of the "good" is pleasure? After all, if hedonism's not to lead to ruin, it must be accompanied by ample doses of willpower.

"On another occasion he was going into the house of a courtesan, and when one of the young men who were with him blushed, he said, 'It is not the going into such a house that is bad, but the not being able to go out.'" --Aristippus

(Okay, so Aristippus isn't the best source to support an argument that working for something makes the end better, but I love the quote and idea behind it. Decadence takes discipline!)

Is this the wrong place to insert an ubiquitous reference to Ancient Rome? (Rome! The idea of all that's good and orderly done in by an unbridled pursuit of pleasure and abdication of duty by those who benefited most from its splendors!)

If Adams is right, and his outline is fairly good, he neglected to add the final step: So their sons can be wastrels and profligates, since it's rare that anyone raised in ease will form the discipline necessary for their situation in life. (To be fair, that kind of discipline is rare altogether; being unable to indulge our wanton desires is simply a natural buttress to our weak wills.)

How many talented painters, musicians, poets, and such do you suppose we've lost because they slaved away in coal mines or wasted away in front of computer terminals? It might be plenty, but I suppose despite their inabililty to create a lasting monument to their talent, that talent created value and comfort to them and those around them during their lives. And if they never discovered their talent, then it wasn't very important. Because raw talent is worthless without drive, and since they gave up they must not have had much.

Connect the Dots & Paint by Numbers

Lately, I've made connections between several things I've been reading, my own thoughts, & conversations with Melina that have had a mood altering effect on me. I wanted to write up a coherent narrative that would cleverly explain my new view of old things, but laziness has got the better of me. Instead, I will insert the fragments that pass for thoughts I've managed so far & will try to flesh out the picture as I go on. How long will I draw comfort from this? I don't know, but it works pretty well right now, so here's hoping... The problem in the end is that usefulness others can draw from it will rarely corresponds to mine. Or I might even seem naïve or willfully ignorant...


3 December 2003

Dwell on death & you reject the infinity behind. There is an end to all times, & death seems to be that end. But I want to live before then; I want to live as if death will not come. I hope when my time comes, I hopethe day before even, I'll plan a trip or buy food for a meal I'll never eat.

Instead of dwelling on the end, I'll dwell on the present as it happens. & when all is still, the infinitely divisible past stretchs back like a highway with many destinations happy, sad, plain...

[imagine six inches and three minutes of silence here]

17 November 2003

Beneath the puzzled stars
an order grows.

It's our nature to strive for order within the wilds of the universe. Right & Wrong are merely moral manifestations of order.

Moral order.

Sickly, sweet thoughts fill my mind

Sickly, sweet smells fill my nostrills,
Sickly, sweet tastes fill my mouth,
Sickly, sweet sounds fill my ears,
and Sickly, sweet screams fill my lungs.

Say Nothing, Be Nothing

I see the silence this blog testifies to & wish I could fill the electric pages with wit and wisdom.

I am glad Steve was here for a while. It is nice seeing and speaking with friends. I forget how nice, tucked away in this silent corner of the universe.