Love and anger

Temperature: 10/50 degrees and galeforce winds

Eating: see below

Drinking: such a sore throat I'm concentrating on hot beverages

Watching: Finnish Ismo Leikola win the first ever Funniest Person in the World competition. Also just watched Syria - Faces of War, Prix Europa 2014 winner in the Best Current Affairs Program category. Faces of War follows Finnish photojournalist Niklas Meltio to Syria where he's been documenting the war since 2012. I raise my hat and glass to you, Mr. Meltio. And if you're the praying kind, dearest denizen, put in a good word for him for me. He has lost dozens of colleagues in that conflict alone.

Listening: feeding the melancholia that follows the arrival of fall with the beautiful baritone of Matt Berninger

Reading: How We Learn by Benedict Carey

Writing: some unfinished business messing with my writing mojo. Not complaining or explaining, just stating a fact, a debilitating fact, but I'm working on it, one day and word at a time. Plans I had don't work anymore, and it's getting harder and harder to not feel defeated or deflated by recent events. It's a matter of trust. Principles. And I know I shouldn't go there and I shouldn't say things like that but you know what? Screw that. Facing facts is the road to both wisdom and freedom. And I do like my freedom. And I do looove my principles. And I sure as hell don't take kindly to being jerked around.

Feeling: the anniversary of my maternal grandfather's death is drawing near and I'm getting ready to lose him all over again. There's a fine line between sweet remembrance and rehashing the past past a point where the memories become hurtful not healing. You can actually reinforce a trauma by reliving it one time too many, by stamping the memory so firmly in your psyche you end up worse off than when you started your personal purge so take care. I don't want to forget him. Not what he meant to me, not what he taught me, not how losing him made me feel. I loved him. I still love him. And I know he loved me, too. I miss him. I miss you. The talks. The teasing. The somber moments. The fun. I won't forget. How could I ever forget.

Woke up with this song in my head

But what does it mean? I'm thinking Dita vs. I. I'm thinking maybe I feel too much and think too little and that maybe if I thought more and felt less I'd feel much better.

Headlock

If anyone asks, never once did I mention fear in this post. I'm doing my best Jedi gestures here and telling you I feel none and you never heard a whisper about it. We were getting into a discussion about first impressions and I wasn't confessing that maybe somewhere deep down where self-preservation resides a part of me is getting ready for a round of ground-and-pound.

I was asked if, after so many months in the making, it feels anticlimactic having Alex Rising out (release date pending). What? Are you kidding me?! My story is coming out!!! And then it crept up on me, the inner oppressor did. The unreasonable voice of reason reminding me to enjoy the high because I would need the memory of it when hit with the lows. Someone will like my little ditty, someone will categorically hate it, and that's all there is to it.

Bruises fade, you get used to the hammering, but the brain is a tricky organ, not as easily bended to the will as the body is. It's built to contradict us at every turn so we wouldn't get too complacent. It's a paradox that we need to be plagued with questions, doubts and fears to grow when they can also do much damage if let run the show. 

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but first it only hurts. And annoys, and makes you feel stupid and small. Come on, it does. If you're human, it does, but since you're also smarter and greater in spirit and courage than you give yourself credit for you understand that, as someone said that Cindy Lauper once said that Chaka Khan once said, you'll get over it.

So what's the problem? I fear being misunderstood, of what I write being misconstrued and turned into something it isn't, of first impressions being everlasting ones. A good opinion once lost may be lost forever. A good impression may translate into expectations I might not fulfill or even want to trying to do something different next time.

It's stupid, I know, at least related to fiction, since I might not even want to explain where some idea or inspiration came from, what possessed me, and above all because I embrace the notion that when a story is out, it does no longer belong to the one who wrote it but those who need it (as Il Postino's poem-snatching postman put in), and it's theirs to enjoy and interpret as they please. 

Pride and Prejudice was initially titled First Impressions. Neither Wickham nor Darcy was who Elizabeth thought they were, but she had to get past those first impressions to get to the truth. It could have just as well been titled Second Chances. Not everybody gets one. Maybe that is at the root of the problem. Maybe that is the fear. 

I'm getting way ahead of myself, I know, but one thinks about things. One sometimes thinks too much about things, especially those one has no control over, e.g. postini filching my story and having their way with it. I promise to try to let go gracefully and not turn it into a wrestling or pissing match no matter what they end up saying. It will soon be theirs, and I'll live, why wouldn't I, my story will finally be out!