Haste makes waste

There's a professional classical musician in the family. Someone who has devoted his whole life to studying music and made a career of performing it to us poor folk who enjoy his art but never learned an instrument beyond dabbling. He learned and he plays it and oh how he plays it. Preludes, symphonies and everything in between. No score is too hard, no conductor too demanding.

What sounds so lovely and looks so effortless is the result of decades of hard work and single-minded dedication, endless hours of practice and repetition. And passion, the love of music, the hunger to learn more.

Education takes time. Devoting yourself to a craft means devoting time to learning that craft. The young hopefuls of today don't seem to have time, our house musician said. Ideas and eagerness, sure, maybe even passion, but time, no. They watch talent shows and follow popular YouTubers and what not and think anybody can do it, overnight, just like that.

You don't achieve richness of sound, excellence of execution and maturity of expression overnight, just like that. Those take years of hard work. Sometimes that hard work comes to nothing. You don't get into the best orchestras, you don't become a professional at all. But if you don't dedicate time and yourself to it, you never will.

Live to tell

Yesterday, the 12th of August, was International Youth Day. Yesterday, Robin Williams' suicide was all over the news. And the Academy was chastised for its "Genie, you're free" tweet, for implying, even inadvertently, that suicide is always an option, a way out, which I'm not sure was the message they were going for, but if the discussion that ensued comes back to message the UN was trying to convey about youth and mental health, so be it.

So can I just say something on the subject, not from a professional but a deeply personal perspective and experience? Well, I'm going to anyway, so if you don't wanna hear it, it's time to click on.

The summer before the last year of junior high, O spent a fun evening with his buddies, went home, tied a noose around his neck, cuffed his hands behind his back and hung himself. That's where his parents found him two days later, Sunday night. My sister lost a friend in college, a smart, witty and bubbly girl that one night stepped in front of a train. My husband's cousin shot himself in the army after a squabble that, by all accounts, could have been resolved with a sit-down.

Nothing connects these people apart from the fact that they were young, they are gone and no one had a clue that's where they were headed. Nothing in their demeanor, speach or actions hinted at thoughts they could have been thinking for a while. A spur of the moment thing then? We'll never know, we can only guess, and wish they had talked to us, someone, anyone, about the knots in their mind and the pain in their chest, whatever made the heart so heavy.

Isn't there always a clue, we're just too clueless, blind, insensitive to see? Here's the thing, and feel free to object, but we live not double but triple lives. There's the public level and persona we take to work and school, a personal one we share with family and friends (which may extend to people at work, school, etc.), and a private life we may share with both of the above, or not. Never fully, that's for sure, and it's always a personal individual choice how much and with whom you share that inner life.

Some have no problem talking about anything and everything with anyone who'll listen. Some have problems talking to others, period. It's not necessarily a matter of chemistry, temperament, trust, how long or well you know someone, some external condition, but an internal struggle or shadow, and I guess that's what baffles us not privy to that information, that personal inner lever. How could someone so full of life harbor thoughts of death?

It's easy to lose connection with colleagues, with friends, even family. It's just as easy to lose connection with yourself. That rich inner life can turn on you, overwhelm you, and some are better equipped than others to fight and find their way back, to sort it all out. But what becomes of those too tired to seek help themselves? Those who don't have anyone to help them seek help? Those who're told to stop crying wolf, to snap out of it? Those who do seek help but never get it, for whatever reason?

My oldest is now a preteen. Well in advance, and many times since, I told him something I was told in my youth, something that helped me, something I hope will help my kids through the turbulent years ahead. "I have bad news and I have good news. The bad news: For the next few years, life will suck. When you don't know what and how to feel you will feel ten ways at once. You'll love everything and everyone one day and hate the same with a vengeance the next. The good news: It will pass."

I've only had one thing to add to that: Don't be afraid of your thoughts, your impulses or your emotions. A full life, a rich inner life, is not a life without strife but a true to life honest life without the rose-tinted glasses, a life where you face and embrace the whole spectrum, not just the rainbow. If your thoughts, your impulses or your emotions do start frightening you or overwhelming you, you must bring it up. Talk to a friend, a family member, doctor, teacher, priest...whomever you feel most comfortable talking to. If they can't help you, they will help you find someone who can. If you feel death would be preferable to feeling what you're feeling, you owe it to yourself (because that's who you're stuck with, that's who you need to get along with, get to know, first and foremost) to get to the bottom of it. Why not see this thing, your life, to the end, whenever that end comes, because rest assured life inevitably and eventually grants a death wish even if we never lift a finger to further it. So why hurry.

I once walked alongside someone with a diagnosed, debilitating depression. One of the longest and most frightening and frustrating and humbling walks of my life. Long because it took two and a half years. Frightening because I feared she'd lose the will to live. Frustrating because there was nothing I could say or do to help her or heal her, my love couldn't save her, all I could do was walk with her while she did all the work, the hardest part, sorted out all the unfinished business that burdened her soul. Humbling because she let me be there all the same, in all my utter uselessness and helplessness, and because she talked to me, showed me that inner life of hers, trusted me with it.

This much I can tell you about our walkabout: There will be days, weeks, months when you will be certain you will never pull through. Amid those thoughts, somewhere in the back of your mind, another thought flashes, dim and distant, occasional but definitely there: It doesn't have to be this way. Seize that thought. Reconnect with yourself. If you never felt that connection in the first place, search for it. Build it. Build on it. Take all the time you need, however long that is, and it may be a very long time, but there's no hurry. You may have to shut out the world and focus on yourself and yourself only while at it. Some people will understand and they will be patient. Some won't and they will be cruel. Seek professional help if that's what it takes, take the label, the diagnose, the meds if need be, just don't give up on yourself. Every day decide to hold on for one more day. Repeat. Every day. There will be setbacks. That's OK. Don't rush it. Don't expect a road to Damascus moment. You don't have to find Jesus, the meaning of life or anything of the sort, just your way back to yourself. One breath, one moment, one day at a time.

Take this with a grain of salt or throw the container at me but give things another think before you act on any impulse or emotion, as strong as they are, as all-important or permanent as they may feel. And don't always think too long before you speak, as scary as it may feel, as crazy as it may seem. It's your life so stake your claim. Own it. Own it.

100 years of Jansson

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of artist Tove Jansson. And when I say artist I mean author, painter, illustrator, cartoonist, caricaturist... 

She lived and loved freely and worked incessantly, wanted to be remembered for her paintings but is perhaps best known for the Moomin, their eponymous valley and adventures. Which is just as well. It's a microcosm of infinite wisdom adults enjoy and appreciate along with (or even without!) kids. Translated into more than 40 languages, you should be able to read them in your mother tongue. For other works, search

Tove Jansson Life, Art, Words: The Authorised Biography

Sculptor's Daughter: A Childhood Memoir
 
The Listener

The True Deceiver

The Summer Book

A Winter Book: Selected Stories

Art in Nature: and other stories

Travelling Light

Fair Play

If you're in London you're in luck, you have some two weeks left to get thee to the Institute of Contemporary Arts right on The Mall and catch the Tove Jansson: Tales From the Archipelago display that presents "original unseen photographs and material relating to her life and work, illustrated books and early first editions."

If you're near Covent Garden you're in a hurry,  there's a Moomin Summer Madness - A Birthday Party going on, a day for the whole family, this very weekend.

If you're in Scandinavia, or planning a visit, you still have some four weeks to catch a wonderful exhibition courtesy of the Finnish National Gallery that covers all periods of Jansson’s career.

If you're in Japan (Japanese love and I mean love all things Finnish in general and the Moomin in particular), you have a whole year ahead, filled with goodies, to look forward to.

If you're a curious being, you're in good company. Nothing was ever too tiny or trivial for Tove. Life was a big adventure in a small boat, every morning a new opportunity to start afresh. “All things are so very uncertain, and that's exactly what makes me feel reassured." (Moominland Midwinter)

Coming around again

How are you, dearest dearest denizens? Doing well, I trust, being as Tardis as they come, right? We came back late Friday night and on Saturday I celebrated my birthday in glamorous fashion by doing loads of laundry with some bubbly close at hand, estupidamente gelado i.e. insanely cold as Brazilians drink their beer. Vacation time is over but summer certainly isn't, the sun finally found it's way to Scandinavia and it's a hot one.

The last leg of our trip was a scorcher of a week in Denmark where we met a lot of very nice (and very tattooed!, what's up with that?) people, at least half of whom had probably done bit parts in Vikings (the TV series) at some point, judging by those tattoos I mean, which read like episode guides. If Finland is a forest spotted by towns and fields, Denmark is a (level) field of connected islands spotted by towns and forests. Using Swedish was just as useless as I thought it would be, apart for reading signs and such. They might understand what you were asking but trying to decipher the answer... Holie!

The World Cup now feels like a hundred years ago. I felt sorry for Brazil for a minute or two. So did they. And then life and the party went on. Germany displayed amazing restraint on the pitch, playing against a team playing in total shock, and admirable sportsmanship and support later on, on Twitter for example, and I second Mesut Özil: "you have a beautiful country, wonderful people and amazing footballers-this match may not destroy your pride! #Brasil".

Life resumed normal programing but they'll never ever forget. They're still talking about the loss against Uruguay in 1950. 1950! Brazilians still love football but many hated the Cup (read: FIFA) and are actually relieved Brazil didn't win because then all the insane amounts of money spent would have been forgiven and the protests forgotten. They didn't deserve to win and that's that, not with how they played, and maybe the pressure was too much, the expectations too great and the signals the team got, well, like I said they were mixed. What do I know. What I do know is football has always been fun and free and inclusive, an outlet as much as a doorway to a better future, everything the multibillion business the Cup is wasn't.

Next in line: the Olympics in 2016. We'll see how that goes. Don't know if we're going. Time to get back to work and down to business or we're definitely not going. Looking forward to it, actually, going back to work. No, really! Sure it was fun spending time with family, mine and Hubby's. On the rare occasion all siblings on both sides get together, I've counted 4 nationalities of 3 denominations with an atheist and agnostic thrown in who speak 5 mother tongues and all work in different fields. A family of many cultures and colors and creeds, some deeply rooted, some expats on the move, and it may look and sound like Babel but it's our life. It's life.

Such is my family, sweetie darlings, and such is the world and such a shame not everyone sees the beauty or respects the diversity of it all and I guess I can't make them, but we're all cousins on this planet, some more distant than others but cousins all the same. So when that's the world you know, your truth and your experience, how depressing was getting up to speed with the news after doing the Dark Side of the Moon Tour i.e. trying to unplug and avoid news outlets of all sorts. Pretty damn depressing. South Sudan and Syria, Gaza and Ukraine, Libya and Egypt, ISIS and Boko Haram, Ebola and terror, extremism and nationalism of the worst kind. Never again but always one more time.

What a family of feuding, belligerent clans we are. One thing I've noticed, no, four: In the middle of all the barbarity, it's easy to lose sight of all that's good and right and getting better. In the middle of all the savagery, it's easy to lose hope and trust and faith things will keep getting better. In some, any sign of vulnerability or helplessness, of distress or fear, rouses the need to protect. Some it just puts in a sadistic rage, and when that rage takes over you get a baby torn out of a belly sliced open with a machete. A five-year-old shot in the head. A woman raped to an inch of her life then buried alive. A man gutted like a fish. Not on the dark side of the moon. Not in some alternate sick twisted world. Ours.

I know you can't dwell on it all day long or you'll go mad. You cannot not think about it because it's like toothpaste oozing out of the tube. Good luck trying to push it back in. It's out, it's a mess, so what are you gonna do about it? What does this have to do with anything? Nothing, I guess. Everything, I suspect, because last night I dreamed I was back with my grandparents where I spent many happy summer weeks in my childhood.

I wasn't a kid in the dream, I was an adult and so were they. Not old like in the end, just adults. Funny that's where my mind went for solace. Logical, really. They gave the best years of their youth to a war that claimed her brother early on and a piece of his mind forever after. The very same years I spent at university having fun and getting a degree, he spent dodging and firing bullets while she worked her fingers to the bone in backbreaking labor so he'd have a home to come back to.

He rarely talked about it, any of it. She often told stories about life in the home front and what her brother was like, and one of my most treasured pictures is my great-uncle in his uniform, 19 years old, so very handsome and about to die. I could only imagine her pain. She missed him all her life. I could only imagine her fear. Would she lose her husband next?

He came back after years of fighting and close calls with barely a scratch on him. How is that possible? How do you go on in the middle of all that, after all that, with all you've witnessed and suffered and sacrificed? Play some football, meet up with family and friends, go out and see the world, not with a rifle on your shoulder but a backpack? You just do because you have to and because there is no option and it's not always your choice or voice that matters, it's not about you but the people around you.

So much randomness, a location lottery, a game of chance, an inch, a second that changes the course of one's life or spells death. So much love and selflessness, so much beauty and wonder, a word, an act that changes the course of one's life for the better. What a world we live in, sweetie darlings. What a family we are.

Away we go

Temperature: heading south because it's been c-c-c-cold up north

Eating: what the garden and greenhouse deign to give. They're kinda pissed the sun won't shine. As am I. As if it helps.

Drinking: would that help?

Watching: the World Cup! And it's turning out to be the surprising and exciting copa das copas the Brazilians hoped for.

Listening: to Chrissie Hynde's Stockholm

 

Reading: just finished Home by Toni Morrison. That book is a Tardis, so much bigger than its size! Next in line: The Goldfinch. Laugh all you want at my tardiness but when you read in more than one language you don't have a TBR list, you have TBR lists. So there. So shut up.

Writing: back and forth to settle something that's been up in the air for far too long. Hoping to return to good news, just in time for my birthday!

Feeling: my wanderlust about to be slaked. Be good, sweetie darlings, willingly good. I will see you soon. And if, for whatever reason, I never do, promise me you'll be a Tardis, always bigger than your size.