The Other World

I just signed the papers required for my mother living in another part of Finland to sell the house (for further background information concerning the mayhem around the building, see the entry 'The plot thickens...' in 15th of September).

The couple we're selling it (and the lands and the forest etc.) came at my place today and brought the papers me and my sister both have to sign, giving our mother the right to decide for us; in other words, her signature alone makes the bargain official and legal. I used to go to school with V; he's a year older than me. This makes me wonder one thing: is he doing things faster than he should or am I being left behind? I think it's the latter mainly, but quite frankly I think V's girlfriend M being pregnant may have an effect on the matter.

Once I first heard they would want to buy the house I suspected either or both of their parents might have their fingers on it. Both V and M coming from a conventional area of southern Ostrobothnia it would make perfect sense that when a 22-year-old knocks up his 20-year-old girlfriend the result is that their parents want them to do what is expected from them: to buy a house and get married. As far as I know especially V's parents who are trying to push them to the calm harbour of marriage (surprisingly enough; usually it's the girl's parents trying to make their daughter "a respectable woman").

M is a friend of my sister's, so when she told me her friend wasn't too eager to get the house I called my mother the same day saying that if M is being pushed to do what their parents want them to do I won't sign a single paper and take her misfortune my burden. But later my sister told me that she's already planning all the things she wants to do to the house, which room will be the baby's room and how she'd like to decorate the rooms... she does want it herself, too. So now V and M are happy owners of their own house. Good for them; maybe life will be good to them as well as to their unborn child.

- - -

The house... a lot of things happened in the place I grew up in.

I learned to walk.
I learned to talk.
I found out the realities of life.
I wandered in the nearby forests dreaming of being the long-lost princess of the queen of the woods.
I kept running away screaming from butterflies every summer.
I shared secrets with my friend.
I escaped from the cruel world in books.
I lost my virginity to myself.
I consider the possibility of being a lesbian for the first time.
I lived under costant fright and insecurity due to my father and his alcoholism.
I feared for my own safety, and that of my siblings, and that of my mother, the only one obliged to look after me.
I dreamed of a better life and cried for hours.
I threw up on purpose for the first time.
I cut myself for the first time.
I left it at the age of seventeen, my returns becoming more and more rare.
I visited the house for what is very likely the final time last Saturday.

- - -

By the way, I've met M once before. I have to say that for the first time in my life I saw for myself what is meant when people always say that a pregnant woman is glowing. M looked absolutely gorgeous and happy, touching her belly every now and then. A pregnant woman is beautiful.

Going to two schools at the same time sounds very noble and respectable and makes me seem so very hard-working but the thought escapes me in days like these.

I'm exhausted after a weekend at my mother's (whic alone is an exhausting experience) and then I kept having more and more deadlines to meet today. Well, eventually I ended up skipping only one class of a course I think I should get for free after three years in the university, but I did manage to finish all the things on time.

Hurrayh to me!

Okay, instead of doing what I should have been doing (in this case, revising my creative writing text and typing it in) I have once again been doing other things (in this case, listening to Nightwish and reading numerous interviews in four languages about Nightwish). I guess I have one hell of a night ahead of me because of my lazyness. I assume I have more caffeine hidden somewhere...

Anyway, I wanted to share with the rest of you (some of you are statistically likely to own the album so you'll know what I'm talking about) some feelings and reactions I had from 'Dark Passion Play' (the title has a double meaning according to Maestro Holopainen).

'The Poet and the Pendulum' - I'll just skip any analyses of Poe at this point since that was so very clearly overcome by something else: isn't Holopainen afraid of being so honest? Apart from the lyrics, the music hit me since I like progressive power metal. All the parts, whether an expression of aggression or a melancholic lullaby of worry, they seem to blend with each other, and every single time the chorus stops me.

"You live long enough to hear the sound of guns.
Long enough to find yourself screaming every night.
Long enough to see your friends betray you."

And furthermore:

"'Today, in the year of our Lord 2005,
Tuomas was called from the cares of the world.
He stopped crying at the end of each beautiful day.
The music he wrote had too long been without silence.
He was found naked and dead,
with a smile on his face, a pen and 1000 pages of erased text.'"

Another one of my favourites turned out to be 'Cadence of her last breath'. There's something incredibly addictive in the intro beginning with a piano melody and then followed by, what I perceive as aggressive guitars, with very nice sound. I listened to this song three times in a row; first with 'normal' sound, then with extra basses and finally with extra-extra basses. I'm telling you, the last one was best to accompany Anette's voice. The 'runaways' in the chorus I think could have been left out altogether; they just make the song sound llike Evanescence or some other American wannabe-Nightwishes.

'Eva' - obviously, having been bullied myself, I can relate myself to her complitely. This song actually made me cry, it's just so beautiful and sorrowful.

'For the heart I once had' made chilly shivers run down my spine. And I can assure you, they were not of pleasure but of sheer horror. The intro sounds *exactly* like that of an "iskelmä" song. I was absolutely terrified then, and I still have difficulties not to think of this and get all these negative connotations fill my mind while listening to the song.

Anette Olzon did her job extremely well on the album. So her voice doesn't range as much as Turunen's voice but it doesn't really even matter much to me. Only once (in the chorus of 'The Poet and the Pendulum', to be precise) did I wonder for a second what it would sound like sung by a trained soprano instead of someone testing the limits of their voice that much. Nightwish has had a few geeks already as Nightwish cover bands (such as Natuvissyt and Nachtwisser) so some already have an idea how the old songs, the classics, flow when sung by Anette. I'm sure some songs will stay out of the performance lists (like 'The Phantom and the Opera') but I'm slightly worried if they've changed the old ones a bit too much. Or worse: just a tiny little thing that you can't quite put your finger on but that still bothers you as a listener. What about her stage charisma? What I can see from the photos on NW Gallery looks like at least the wardrobe is not that similar with Tarja's. Okay, *far* too much comparing. In a nutshell, Anette will probably do well. Even her Swedishness doesn't bother (yet... let us wait for the Finland vs. Sweden annual ice hockey match...).

- - -

And now, circulating blood carrying water molecules a mother drank to the brains of her unborn child. Let's see how difficult that turns out to be.

The pain is back. At least it left me alone for the pathology exam this morning.

The periods better begin soon, goddamit!

DARK....
PASSION....
PLAY!!!!

One hell of a morning.

The second I got up from the bed my dear ovaries begin to scream, and an infernal pain pierces my consciousness. With infernal pain I'm referring to mild inability to stand straight without grinning in agony.

And being so damn conscientious I, the good student, have a breakfast consisting of an extra-strong pain killer (of a prescription that isn't even mine), water and lots of Pepsi to wash away that disgusting taste the pill left in my mouth. Then, with great effort I assure you, I mount my bike and cycle to school, every single pump in the road temporarily increasing the pain tricefold.

And still no periods.

...I want to go to bed. Hopefully it won't hurt this much tomorrow.

- - -

I should stop reading about my illness. The amount of negative things overrides the positive ones 6-0. Fucking gynaecologist... would it have been so fucking difficult to explain MY situation to ME instead of leaving me in insecurity reading random things from random sources?!

When I bought the new HIM album, I was left wondering; why do I still listen to this?

Venus Doom:

"Leave all behind to watch her crawl
through our dark gardens of insanity.
She'll be the light to guide you back home,
just give her a kiss worth dying for
and open your arms.

Watch me fall for you my Venus Doom.
Hide my heart where all dreams are entombed.
All dreams are of you, my Venus Doom."

And 'Cyanide Sun':

"I am dead to you, a shadow doomed,
my love, forever in the dark.
And of all untruths the truest is you, too close to my heart.

This emptiness I've made my home.
Embracing memories of dreams long gone.
One last caress from the corps of love is all I want
underneath the cyanide sun."

Because of this; because of Her.

Who ever said that seven hours of pathology on a Friday can't be fun? Especially when you're sitting in the same row with the classmates that have the worst mouth.

Yesterday at some point V brought up a question: does the anus begin to loosen if one has anal sex? I, as very typical to me, looked it up from one of the sexology books I have. The answer, which I presented to the part of my class with these curious minds this morning, is no, not if the sensory system is normal there should be no problems with a little anal sex every now and then.

H, however, was dared to ask the question from the visiting pathology lecturer, who is most of the time a doctor (she, H, would get four packs of cigarettes if she asked him). My first reaction when she opened her mouth and said she had a question: I leaned my head on my hands and said "dear gods...". And what does the doctor do? He answered to the question with his microphone ON. I'm sure just us in the front row knew what the question was and we sure laughed. I know, the question itself is justified but let's look at the mitigating factor: it was a Friday afternoon.

Anyway, H added the aspect of porn stars to the question. Therefore, the doctor/teacher/lecturer said it's likely there will be wounds and scarring before long. Well, I was right since I seeked the answer from the point of view of someone interested in doing it every once in a while, and the doctor was right since he seeked the answer from the point of view of someone more active.

I can't wait for Tuesday... =D

So that was the title of my very first Creative writing course assignment/text/short story.

Apparently (his handwriting is terrible; there are two words I can't make out even with the context's help) the teacher thinks I would do well as a gardener since my descriptions of plants and such was realistic, based on his own interst towards plants ("what?"). My story is also "Edgar A. Poe(ish)". Not far from what I was thinking about after reading it through for the last time before printing: Edgar Allan Poe meets the Harlequin novels. The difference lies in the literary value of those two... well, if the Harlequins really had any to begin with.

He had underlined the word 'fuchsia' and placed a question mark above it. According to both the OED and the Cambridge dictionaries online, 'fuchsia' means exactly the same as in Finnish: it's a colour. I guess the sex stereotype of a man not knowing the difference between the dozen shades of the colour white actually does prove right as far as he's concerned.

The subject for the next piece is 'The Motive' or 'The Motif'. Let's see... motives... and I just got the coroner's report... and I want to write about that... Yeah, it'll be about my father's suicide.

- - -

You know, I'll never get over that picture. In that one in particular, Poe is a spitting image of my father.

Okay, so here's the deal. I love puzzles and I find it extremely calming to put them together. Some time during the spring I came across with the world's currently biggest jigsaw puzzle on sale:

http://www.worldslargestpuzzle.com/
(I suggest you check out the 'Puzzle Close-Up' section; both the lost city and the space sections are absolutely beautiful)

Twenty-four thousand pieces... I was also able to track down a place where this puzzle was sold; 162,80 euros, free shipping. I know that by the time I was even near of completing this puzzle (Annick Oriol, from Belgium, completed it in 28 days...).

But. What kind of experiences do you people have of buying something from a different country than Finland via Internet? How trustworthy these PayPals and credit card numbers exactly are? I really would like to get this puzzle because I haven't yet checked if it can be found from here (I seriously doubt that).