Verity of creation, that
Uniqueness dwelling in the
Loins of a woman, not dormant but
Valiant;
A true survivor in this disrespectful world.
Voyage to the gateway of your existence, give in to the
Utmost beauty of life; the gleaming clam, the
Levelly opening flower, the quietly approaching tide.
Veiled or free, large or small, smooth or frilled ; it is the
Abode of mermaids and oysters.
Vespers of life, long-forgotten,
Unholy to some, yet
Life-embracing, important and eager; all you
Votaries of this cradle of life, stand up unashamed and be silent no more!;
Again rise to celebrate the vulva!
My work consists of doing things with my hands. Therefore, I have plenty of time to dwell in my mind in far too complex contemplations about anything during the day while I'm listening to my favourite music. But by the time I get home in the evenings (such as now) I have no energy to write them down here even though hearing your possible thoughts of the matter(s) would be very interesting.
I'm so lazy.
And now I'll watch that final episode of the Bad Girls (season one, to be exact). You know, I identified myself with Nikki Wade right away. Curiously enough, Simone Lahbib playing Nikki's on-screen lover looks very much like Her. Guess what was going though my mind when they finally gave in and kissed at the end of the ninth episode? ;)
- - -
The Meme of the Day:
I rated my blog at http://mingle2.com/blog-rating. Thanks, Rain! My rating (as seen below) is due to the somewhat extensive use of the following terms:
suicide (17x)
dead (10x)
kill (7x)
death (6x)
fuck (5x)
hell (3x)
I found out a while ago that someone I like was diagnosed with a chronic disease last autumn. I didn't ask the specific name of the illness out of sensitivity and because of my policy of it's-none-of-my-business-she'll-tell-me-if-she-wants-me-to-know. Now it just keeps worrying me. The fear of unknown is worse than knowing all the details, no matter how icky. And I really so care of this woman and it makes me sad not being able to help her in any way. I wish I could at least say something to comfort her, maybe. I wish I knew what is the monster she has to fight for the rest of her life; all I've been able to do has been to go through different medical sites of all the diseases matching her discreption. I wish I knew... I wish I could do something.
I feel so helpless. At this very moment I wish I could be committed to some kind of a religious movement, to have someone(s) to pray for guidance and to have a way to send lots of positive energy (or something similar...) to her. She needs all the strenght I or anyone else can give her. Except for the idiot male who is utterly, throroughly and completely incapable of seeing that she deserves better than him, a guy who made her autumn even worse.
"Kauniit muistot eivät koskaan kuole eivätkä milloinkaan jätä yksin."
- - -
So. That's what funerals are like. The service at the chapel began at noon; most of the us (there were twenty-five of us in all) had arrived about fifteen minutes earlier and we had to sit there in the chapel in silence only broken by occasional sobbing from my grandparents and my aunt, as well as my mother and her mother. It seemed like an hour, though, sitting there in the front row with only the coffin to stare at and waiting for the priest to show up. The coffin was simple, white (they had argued about the coffin a week before the funeral); I couldn't imagine my father in there even though I tried. Instead, a picture of him smiling kept coming back before my eyes. The sermon was pretty much as someone on Monday evening said: relatively short, and the one speech (which, albeit not untrue, was one-sided and superficial, as was the other speech he made in the memorial service) was made by the priest. I understand the usual number of hymns in a funeral is two; in my father's funeral, however, the number had increased to three, quite possibly due to my grandmother. I got the impression that she had planned this funeral a long time ago; how else could she have all the hymns and the food (she wanted to have a food service in the memorial after the burial, my mother didn't but eventually gave in) looked up so quickly? I know it took me a small eternity to even come up with a written list of all the songs I like and then try to narrow to list a humanly understandable proportion, which then could be played in my funeral. It's still not finished; I update it all the time as I encounter more and more good songs. I don't know, maybe I'm just indecisive and she's not.
Anyway, the sermon continued after the hymns with all of the guests taking their bouquets to the coffin. The text cited in the beginning is what was written on the card with our bouquet. Since I was the only one not to cry or even weep (you can probably guess how many glances it made others to silently throw at me during the course of the day) I read it out loud by the coffin as my mother cried, my sister wept and my brother looked like bursting in tears any second. In the end the sermon finished with 'Adagio', and the pallbearers (I wasn't one of them; I seriously believe my grandmother's strictness of the sex roles was the reason since my little brother, still a minor, was allowed to be one of the carriers; I was furious) took the coffin to the hearse which then lead us all to the cemetery farther away from the church.
The burial itself was more like what I had imagined the funeral would be like. We walked to the right place (I didn't know the exact place in the cemetery beforehand). Each of us children was given a white rose by our mother to drop above the coffin after the lowering and before covering the grave. I walked to stand by the grave with my siblings. They stood there for a moment and threw the roses in; I kneeled down, dropped the rose accompanied by a Shakespeare quote: "Fare thee well". For some reason a Sonata Arctica song kept going on in my head during the burial. I no longer remember which one it was, 'It won't fade' or 'The Vice'. Somehow I knew he would be buried there, in that particular cemetery. I've always thought it’s so much more beautiful than the one surrounding the church. This one is older, and you can see it from the different tombstones. Actually, it's nicer to be buried in a cemetery that is surrounded by a forest and has different trees growing amongst the graves, and has a great variety of iron crosses and tombstones (there is actually one with a pentagram that I've found particularly interesting). For a while I thought I would be buried there as well, but now… no, I'll be buried here, this is my real home.
Okay, to prevent this blogging from becoming a report of descriptions in great lengths, I have to share a funny anecdote (at least it's funny in my opinion, so therefore the semantics of 'funny' is disputable…). Once my father's final resting place was settled and paid for, the authority in question told that my mother had a place automatically reserved for her next to him as she was his wife. The day following this "reservation" my mother found out something incredibly hilarious: my grandparents, the ones to blame my mother for my father's suicide, had reserved each a place for their own graves next to my parents' (to-be-)graves. I wish I could have been present to see the look on my mother's face when she found out she's not going to get rid of those two even in death. Well, at least the place is only reserved for her, she’s not obliged to be buried there. Actually, I started thinking the possibility of a stepfather. I would much rather not think about it, but since I'm myself a walking and talking proof that my mother is a sexual being I also have to face the fact that having a stepfather is quite plausible. After all, my mother isn't that old, she's only forty-four. That would also mean it's feasible I may have stepsiblings in the future. Eh… I'm really not that enthusiastic about having to get to know to new people without really wanting to get to know to new people; but I couldn't exactly avoid it, so I guess I'll just have to grin and bear it if it comes to that.
Then the wake… let us state the OALD's definition for the event: "1. An occasion before or after a funeral when people gather to remember the dead person, traditionally held the night before the funeral to watch over the before it is buried." Save the watching over (the doctors wouldn't allow my grandmother to look at her son's body; I gather it was in a pretty bad shape since he had been in the car dead for a day [or at least the pathologist's preliminary report said it's l i k e l y he had died on Sunday] before he was found) the definition is nowhere near the memorial service we had. I thought of it, too, as we ate the lunch my grandmother wanted to offer to the guests. I mean, the name itself says it: it was supposed to be a "memorial" service, and yet it had nothing of the like in it. We should have had my father's favourite food, not the one my grandmother and my mother like. We should have listened to my father's favourite music, not sing the hymns my grandmother selected, ones I very much doubt my father ever even heard of. The only thing to tell it was a memorial service, instead of some random religious occasion, was my father's picture between two white candles on a table in one corner of the room in which the service was held. My grandmother had selected the picture; I cannot understand why she chose one that depicted my father in such a depressive and intimidating way (in the picture he's sitting on a chair on the left side of and in front of the picture, staring at the camera with a look on his face, a look that says that he's now very angry and couldn't care less of being taken pictures of right now). I know there actually were plenty of pictures of him smiling. I think that would have been far better.
So, in short, the funeral was a rather formal one with much more Christian contents than I would like to have. Now the next subject of debate between my grandparents and my mother will be the tombstone: they had already argued about it the Sunday preceding the funeral. I do think it’s my mother's opinion that weights more: she is determined to have an original stone that is taken from a forest and has a metal plate with my father's information fastened on the stone's surface, instead of one of those impersonal boxes you see everywhere, one that my grandparents would prefer. Next, within the next three months, will be the estate evaluation, and after that my father's possessions will be divided as the law degrees. It'll take place during a week day, so I can't be physically present since I'll be at work. I could take off one day but travelling back and forth would take one more day at best, and I already had to do that for the funeral (why, why it had to be held on T h u r s d a y ?).
Näistä kuvista, näistä tunnelmista, sayonara. Now I'll have a movie night since I have a night shift tomorrow. First I'll watch 'Bruce, Almighty' and after that I have to watch 'Populäärimusiikkia Vittulajänkältä' again (it was so good!!!).
Build a map of all countries you have visited. The bad side is that the map also shows, for instance, Alaska as one of the visited places even if you had never set a foot on its soil, only because it is a part of the US. I created a map of all the European countries I have visited; no need to expand it any further just yet. Have fun!
Okay, came back online albeit the fact that I should be in bed already since I need to get up at 5.15 and start cycling to work at six... I just fitted my entire outfit for the funeral and I have to say I'm quite proud of myself. Not once did I actually boil over in the shops, not even when I heard that the Elisabeth Shannon collection is leaving the building and therefore I had to go through the whole fuss of finding a good model and size and brand all over again. I fitted one ES pair of trousers that were otherwise perfect but as they were made 43 percent out of wool I started itching within the first ten seconds when wearing the pair. Too bad, I liked the shape. Eventually, I ended up in Seppälä to discover a new pair of pants which, as I am currently wearing them, feel really comfortable. Good that I coould find a shirt (a satin tunika, feels and looks really nice) and trousers relatively easily. And I finally get to publically wear the corset I found last December from Kappahl (or however it's correctly written). And my locket stays on display, raising questions who's inside. But would they really start asking about that, or about my personal life, in my father's funeral? Wouldn't that be, at least amongst the most traditional people, considered rather rude and insensitive?
Speaking of the funeral... I'm beginning to experience stage fright. These are my first funeral ever so I have no idea none whatsoever of how I'm supposed to behave, where to sit, whether I'm supposed to say something or go somewhere, and in what order...??? I'm puzzled. Sure I'll know after the funeral but that's a little late if I manage to act in a completely wrong way at some point. Do I need to sing the hymns? They picked them, I had no say in that (as if I had wanted to...); can I just adopt my school methodology again and merely stand up but not sing or even mouth the lyrics to pretend I'm singing? Am I supposed to cry there (still no tears out of sorrow; only a tear or two resulting in the feeling of enormous gratitude towards someone who spoke to me about this yesterday)?
I just saw the film based on Mikael Niemi's novel and I cannot help but recommend it to everyone with even a little sense of Finnish humour! Gods know I needed to laugh that hard and concentrate on other matters...
I'm not quite sure which I should find more alarming: that I could identify myself with Niila almost completely, or that the one to recommend this film to me last night said I would find it interesting? She can read me like an open book, to torture the cliché.
Niila... I may have to re-think my son's name again. I had already decided that but Niila sounds very nice... My daughter's name I decided years ago, so there won't be any changes coming to that (unless the Finnish admiknistration decides that the other name isn't justified, that is). But at least I could keep the first name, that's an important one! Curiously enough, both my son and my daughter would be named after literary figures, the other one coming from a bit more scholarly background than the other.
"You are Charles VI of France, also known as Charles the Mad or Charles the Well-Beloved!
A fine, amiable and dreamy young man, skilled in horsemanship and archery, you were also from a long line of dribbling madmen. King at 12 and quickly married to your sweetheart, Bavarian Princess Isabeau, you enjoyed many happy months together before either of you could speak anything of the other's language. However, after illness you became a tad unstable. When a raving lunatic ran up to your entourage spouting an incoherent prophecy of doom, you were unsettled enough to slaughter four of your best men when a page dropped a lance. Your hair and nails fell out. At a royal masquerade, you and your courtiers dressed as wild men, ending in tragedy when four of them accidentally caught fire and burned to death. You were saved by the timely intervention of the Duchess of Berry's underskirts.
This brought on another bout of sickness, which surgeons countered by drilling holes in your skull. The following months saw you suffer an exorcism, beg your friends to kill you, go into hyperactive fits of gaiety, run through your rooms to the point of exhaustion, hide from imaginary assassins, claim your name was Georges, deny that you were King and fail to recognise your family. You smashed furniture and wet yourself at regular intervals. Passing briefly into erratic genius, you believed yourself to be made of glass and demanded iron rods in your attire to prevent you breaking.
In 1405 you stopped bathing, shaving or changing your clothes. This went on until several men were hired to blacken their faces, hide, jump out and shout "boo!", upon which you resumed basic hygiene. Despite this, your wife continued sleeping with you until 1407, when she hired a young beauty, Odette de Champdivers, to take her place. Isabeau then consoled herself, as it were, with your brother. Her lovers followed thick and fast while you became a pawn of your court, until you had her latest beau strangled and drowned.
A severe fever was fended off with oranges and pomegranates in vast quantities, but you succumbed again in 1422 and died. Your disease was most likely hereditary. Unfortunately, you had anywhere up to eleven children, who variously went on to develop capriciousness, great cruelty, insecurity, paranoia, revulsion towards food and, in one case, a phobia of bridges."
Lots of it, and all of it has to be done before the funeral. Nice timing, and quite paradoxal really. An example: the three of us (the children, that is) had to sign this bank document to give our mother the right to rule over our father's bank accounts. The paper was this tick-in-the-box-if-you-agree statements; funnily enough it was a little difficult to decide since no-one knows the exact state of my father's bank things but we couldn't find out about these things b e f o r e we had all given our mother the right to rule over the accounts. To simplify, we had to do the X in order to get the Y done, but we lacked information of the Y to do the X. Nice going, Nordea.
Now we'll have to wait for the estate inventory to know for sure the state of my father's bank issues. I can't help thinking of some possible surprises: what if he took off all the money from the account he and my mother shared (and from which the funeral expenses are to be paid) and used it all before he killed himself? What if he had accounts none of us had a clue about?
I have to go shopping tomorrow. And I really mean "have to": I couldn't care less about going to buy new clothes for the funeral, or for any other occasion. I just don't like fitting in far too expensive clothes that are not really me anyway. I'm made out of band shirts and black trousers. Well, at least I am (for once) allowed and even expected to wear all-black outfit. If I'll just track down a pair of Elisabeth Shannon trousers and some black T-shirt and a black coat or something on top of it. As long as I get to keep my locket around my neck and in plain view. If I could just find a shirt that I could use otherwise as well, at school for instance, then I'll be happy. My mother gave enough money for me to get the clothing and if there's some left after that I could consider dying the root of my hair black. Ahhh... a second thought, no, too much trouble. And besides, everyone present at the funeral know me already so why bother. And it probably costs as much as dying my whole hair.
- - -
The Meme of the Day from Millikan. The idea is to answer the following questions with the random article button on Wikipedia's main page.
01. What are you afraid of?
The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) which is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of African American trade union members affiliated with the AFL-CIO.
[right...]
02. What would you take with you on a deserted island?
The 1972 UEFA European Football Championship (Euro 72) final tournament which was held in Belgium.
[how can you take with you an abstract thing that you have no memory of?]
03. What would you like to have for a wedding gift?
The Red Oak Independent School District, a school district in northern Ellis County, Texas (USA).
[yeah, I could turn the rules upside down and found an elite school for LGBT students, teach them independent thinking, and then wait for one of my students to become the first female president in the US!]
04. What do you worship?
Ptolemy Keraunos who was the King of Macedon from 281 BC to 279 BC.
[I don't think so...]
05. What is your secret fetish?
Wonderful Parliament which refers to an English Parliamentary session of November 1386 which pressed for reforms of Richard II's administration.
[ye gods!]
06. What will you be dreaming about the forthcoming night?
Selection sort which is a sorting algorithm, specifically an in-place comparison sort.
[This would be a small miracle since I have ni idea what that even means]
07. If you could afford it, what would you buy?
The National Progressive Party, a political party in Kiribati without parliamentary representation.
[Sure I would.]
08. On what would you write a book?
Sarchu (altitude 4,290 m), tented camp in the Himalayas on the Leh-Manali Highway, on the boundary between Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh (Jammu and Kashmir) in India.
[I suppose it would make a nice setting for a story.]
09. What do you collect?
An agar plate is a sterile Petri dish that contains agar plus nutrients (media), used to culture microorganisms.
[You should see my bacteria collection!]
10. What is your best memory connected to?
Karen, which is a Danish form of the name Katherine and means "pure".
[Can't think of even the feeblest connexion...]
11. The most useless thing you know?
Michael Fullerton (born 1971) is a Scottish artist living and working in London. He is primarily a portraitist and paints in a traditional style.
[Who is he?]
12. What is your favourite subject of discussion?
Cezzar Ahmet Pasha (1708-1804), also identified in some transliterations as Djezzar Pasha, was an Ottoman governor who defended Acre successfuly when Napoleon Bonaparte besieged it during his campaign in Syria. Djezzar, which translates as Butcher, was known for his brutal techniques when handling enemies.
[Possibly...]
13. What is the thing you are/will be working with in your profession?
The Later Jìn (936-947) which was one of the Five Dynasties during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period in China.
[Good to know.]
14. What makes you laugh every time?
The third USS Preston (DD–19) was a Smith class destroyer in the United States Navy during World War I .
[Yeah. Hilarious.]
15. What makes you cry every time?
eFunda is an online reference work and community designed for engineers. The 'e' stands for 'engineering' and 'Funda' is for 'fundamentals'. Started in 1999, it is based in California.
[Engineers make everyone weep.]
16. What was the first thing you saw after you woke up?
Venceslaus Ulricus Hammershaimb (1819 – 1909) established the modern orthography of Faroese, the language of the Faroe Islands, in 1854.
[Hopefully never wake up next to his corpse.]
17. What do you have in your pockets?
Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips is a Muslim teacher, speaker, and author.
[A physical miracle!]
18. What could replace you without anyone noticing the switch?
Meade Stadium is a 5,180-seat multi-purpose stadium in Kingston, Rhode Island. It is home to the University of Rhode Island Rams football team.
[Go fuck yourself, Hans.]
19. What were your first words?
Danny Dickfos, who was an Australian rules footballer who played for the Brisbane Bears and Brisbane Lions in the Australian Football League.
[Dick...?]
20. With what will you be buried?
Yaroslav Popovych (born in Drohobych, Ukraine on January 4, 1980) is a cyclist with the UCI ProTour Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team, and considered as a possible successor to Lance Armstrong as team leader.
[I am not marrying a man!]
21. What do you have hidden in the drawer next to your bed?
Conklin is a town in Broome County, New York, USA.
[In a miniature size, naturally.]
22. What do you love the most in the world?
Danitza Kingsley, who is an American photographer, writer, model, actor and film producer.
[No, I love Her.]
(Whatever happened to number 23???)
24. When you look out of the window right now, what do you see?
Rebecca Bellingham is a female badminton player from New Zealand.
[Wouldn't know what she looks like.]
25. Who you really are?
Asthenization is a condition experienced by astronauts following long-term space flight, in which following return to Earth the astronaut experiences symptoms such as fatigue, irritability, lack of appetite and sleep disorders. The condition's name derives from asthenia, which is a medical term denoting a feeling of weakness without actual loss of strength.
[Well, finally. At least one correct out of twenty-five.]
Do you have this vague memory of someone saying that a common result amongst the relatives and friends of a suicider is that they tend to blame themselves? Yeah. That may be the thing in some cases, but in my family it is each other that they're blaming. Would it really be that bloody difficult to pull their heads out of their asses and look at the facts? First of all, blaming will not bring him back and does no-one any good in the long run. Secondly, blaming others only makes the atmosphere even worse for those who feel no need to blame anyone. Thirdly, coping with my father's death is probably difficult enough without destroying the remaining relationships.
I called my mother today to inquire the names of the newspapers in which she had put my father's obituary notice. (She talked to me after the Combat class to offer her condolences and askme if I was okay; she had read my father's notice from a paper and connected him to me due to my unusual last name.) Before I got to ask her about the notice she described the situation at my grandparents' place where they had all been earlier this week, selecting hymns for the funeral with a priest. It appears that both of them, my father's parents that is, are blaming my mother for their son's death. And as I imagined someone would be flat out accusing my mother that it's her fault my father killed himself. But what I didn't imagine was that it would be my grandfather to say it. Well, at least he had enough reason to apologise my mother. My grandmother (a dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalist Christian who, naturally, after living her whole life in hypocrisy) didn't say it out loud, although I'm quite sure (No. I'm absolutely certain) that she thinks that way. I think it's my aunt (my father's sister) who doesn't blame my mother.
It's probably only a matter of time when they start accusing the children. I know I'll be able to handle it since I've had over a week to deal with it myself (without anyone feeding me these ridiculous ideas) and I am strong enough to stand behind my own principles publicly. It's my younger siblings I'm worried about. They are there, right in the middle of the crossfire of the battle between our grandparents and our mother. They're not strong enough to handle that kind of arguing, the manipulation used in our parents' constant arguments when we were children. I hope you're wrong, Millikan, for my siblings' sake. I need to keep it together, because on Thursday we're going to have to have someone in the funeral who is able to control and reason those emotional disagreements between them; someone who is able to tell my grandmother to quit the navel-gazing and realise that not only did she lose her son, but that we lost our father, my aunt lost her other brother, my mother lost her husband.
Fuck. I have to somehow get familiar in advance with what the bible says of suicide to know what to expect from my grandmother. I couldn't care less what that thing has to say about suicide, although I can already guess how the Old Testament views the matter at hand. I don't want to read some stupid, ridiculous, paradoxal book to gather small pieces of prejudiced attitudes. FUCK! It's because of these fundamentalists who take the bible's word literally only to ignore the important ones ("don't judge so you wouldn't be judged") that make me loathe Christianity. A small yet very loud minority.
I can't wait for the actual funeral day: more arguments, more useless blames, more fundamental Christianity. Jesus fucking Christ. If only he could see what his original message of loving others as they are has been turned into, what it's being used to justify. I am ashamed of being a human being, but proud of not being a Christian.
The employees of the factory are all leaving one by one. At ten o'clock within the hearing distance the are only me and one of my co-workers. I'm listening to music from my portable CD player, she is listening to radio. I have this very annoying habbit of mouthing the lyrics of the songs I'm listening to, sometimes even saying them out loud (not singing along, though!). Then comes a moment when all the machines in the hall happen to be silent. Now imagine being my co-worker, a rather silent and appearing somewhat timid, sitting there opposite me. Suddenly, on that silent moment, behind a thin wall in front of you, you hear the following, said with a husky whisper: "Let's make a bomb, let's blow the place up to the very foundation."
I was listening to Velcra's 'Quick and Dirty'. You can probably imagine the look on her face one second later as she glanced at me.
I need to stop doing that in public.
- - -
The Meme of the Day:
A while ago I ordered a certain hedgehog shirt. Inspired by that I want to share with you this sympathetic spiky creature with lots of foul language to challenge your ability to keep a straight (...) face.
