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You can contact me at svaha@iki.fi |
30 Aug 05: Gropin' to Open (A-gain) Clearly haven't been writing anything real until the last entry for far too long. Useless chitchat not good, not necessary. For anyone or anything (no, not even to own memory - short notes make everything flat, diminish them into nothing but those facts, with no experience, no emotion, no inner truth connected to them). Will try and work back in the right direction. Therapist still ill. Own sleep patterns still recover-y. Anyway, was thinking, and just came to wonder... How many selfish people are actually born the opposite: too sensitive, feeling the world's pain so strongly they don't know how to shield against it partially, only completely? Because they feel the need to help in such overwhelming quantities that they fear they would not know when to stop giving, trying, working... and so they don't dare even start? Not that this, even if it is so, is an excuse. One should find ways to give. But it's a possible explanation in this confused, chaotic time where we are all alone and therefore powerless. May write more later. Need to work on some correspondence and debriefs. (Also, since Moira loved her investiture dress and told me she got many compliments on it, I feel much better about sewing at the moment. Now that there's no acute pressure to finish too many things in too little time, I'm eager to get those unfinished projects out of my hands.) Apropos dresses: I'm also eager to show what I've done (which I suppose is a healthy sign) and so want to update pages of own costumes and also put up a page about costumes I've made for others. And I guess I need to do something about the second-hand costume sales pages, as I really want them off my hands. Now all it needs is to wait and see if Kalle figures out why I can't open an FTP connection from the living-room computer to our server. So if I've made a costume for you and you have a picture of it somewhere on-line, please let me know. (And if I'm making one for you, yes, I'm about to get them all finished in the following weeks... Let's get proper pictures then, as well, okay?) I'm afraid of going to class. There. Said it. Will it help...? 28 Aug 05: Counting Graces Went to the event. Was glad to see M&D, of course, and some others there as well. Coasted through the hours, sleeping more than most, sometimes enjoying myself and at least as much vaguely wondering if it was worth it, really. It felt very fitting to be, late Saturday afternoon, eating late blueberries from the shore: they were watery and bland, and the initial delight at finding them was lessened by the expectation and subsequent lack of taste... one always wanted more, as the mouth expected sweetness and found little, so one could not stop, but could not get satisfied either. Somehow that - expecting more and getting little, but not so little one could really stop - seems to characterise most of my SCA experience lately. And it's not really about attitude, or at least, not solely. I'd so much like to enjoy it full-heartedly, but I'm just not invested enough in details nor deeply enough in other participants' lives, and I feel that the atmosphere that I long for has been lacking lately. It's like today, when I was watching The Man in the Iron mask, for which I hold a similar bittersweet softness: there are so many separate things one really, really adores, so one desperately wants to like the whole thing, but it just... clunks along like a perpetual train and therefore really can't hold one's interest the way one wants it to. Nah, I guess I did have a good time. Depends on what scale one measures it, I suppose. But when will it stop being about hope that it may be fun, once I "get into it properly", and actually start being fun? I like finding out about the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, yes. I guess I like sewing, too, or at least I like the results. I like the courts and the jousts, as they seem to be the only part where the romance and chivalry are present these days in any amount. I like some of the people. But I am not into working for these things, having bitterly learned what a thankless bother volunteer work is. So I don't think I like the whole organism of the society, and I don't think I'll ever be "in". I thought it might not be necessary, but... Oh well. Whatever. I suppose I also keep going in the hopes of sometimes being "in" enough to travel and find a man, since suitable ones are in such short supply around here. I guess that's as valid a reason as any, considering I don't exactly hate the whole hobby either. And yes, despite all this, I intend on going more regularly now. I might just be depressed about not having been able to do that already. I got more books while visiting Suvi last week - now I won't run out of the drug that is Cherryh's Foreigner sequence for a long time! 25 Aug 05: The Best Intentions... This week has not been as much fun as I hoped. Therapist got the summer flu, and I got stressed buth about Moira's gown and about the whole Baronial Investiture weekend. So I've sewed, eaten humongous amounts of stuff and slept ridiculous hours, and not made it to ballet. Well, at least it's done now, and I have to find a way to get to the event after all. It's not like I want to miss it, I'm just scared again, as I haven't been active like I hoped to be. And feeling fat and ugly. 21 Aug 05: Recovery Sleep Slept most of today. Not much else. Will go back to sleep and then begin ordinary life again tomorrow. Ballet! Therapy! Going out! Finishing books! And not sewing except for only a little bit, one evening's work. (Will get back to those unfinished other things, of course, but some respite is needed after this week's craziness.) My dreams were emotional, terrifying and adventurous, again. Doctor's appointment tomorrow, to talk more about how not to be ill all the time. Trying very hard not to think of what most of other friends were doing yesterday, but hurting even so. Should be proud of not giving in yesterday morning (it was not an easy fight, or short), but worried about the one job that was not able to complete then - simply not enough time. Now there is, but will it help even so? 20 Aug 05: Another Small Step Fell asleep and slept most of the time was supposed to be sewing. Almost gave in, but then didn't, fought through and got everyone clothed in the nick of time (with help). Had an interesting and therefore surprisingly rewarding game. Exhausting day, but finally home (without crashing the car out of sheer exhaustion!). Sleep. Blessed sleep. 20 Aug 05: Rushed No time to write, all time taken by sewing, sleeping or studying game material. Meetings and briefs tonight; now a night of sewing ahead. Tired... but it's all my own fault that it's this late. No time until Sunday. No clothes for oneself. 16 Aug 05: Down One Mountain, Up Another Didn't get enough tabletweaving done. Clothes were usable, but not as pretty as I had hoped. Went to Savujen lahti. Had a reasonably good time, at least in the living-history sense. The practical side of the game worked very smoothly, no complaints there. The Micmac village was nice (though the huts were not as well made as I've seen at other times - if the blankets are slack, they leak, and there was one spectacular outpour to add to the overall wetness), and the women particularly worked well together and created a great atmosphere. The GM's heeded our desperate cries of inadequacy at cooking, so one of them spend a lot of time in our camp, tending the cooking fire and helping us face our tasks. We finally managed to come up with something resembling edible food on our own as well, but it was good to feel we were not left on our own! However, our pre-briefing was highly unsatisfactory, as we were not given time to get to know each other and figure out who was who (and I, for one, can't even learn the names by heart without having a face and situation to attach them to). It took us quite some time to get into the swing of things, and I never learned quite everyone until the game was over. That was Not Good. I repeat that in general, it was a competently arranged game, and that's no small feat for a hundred-person (mainly-)historical larp! However, the most frustrating part for me was not having any part in the central plots; not being able to see the (supposedly very cool) Dreamland, or to be able to move between the villages. I'm sure I wasn't the worst off, as I was the wife of the Indian chief and therefore at least somewhat in the know... but even so. I suppose I've developed a great need for action; for things to experience, fast and hard. Hanging out in historical reenactment is all fine and dandy, if that's what everyone is doing... but not if I know there's something more exciting around, and I just am not allowed to be part of it. Well, at least I know that now, and know what to ask in the near future. And at least I've now had my weekend in the forest. Now back to sewing - lots of it, but luckily nothing as slow and complicated as tabletweaving. (Night) Tonight, it matters so much less (No, I haven't lost all strength and given up on work. I just lost all the small glimpses of hope for any kind of self I had already started to take for granted. I feel old, ugly, stupid, laughable, lacking life... generally miserable. And it makes me even more miserable to think that this might possibly be because I simply am not strong enough, for whatever reason, to be friends with certain people, even though I'd thought I could. And anyway, that is always an illusion, and it's about my mediocrity anyway.) 10 Aug 05: Working Hard Did I happen to mention that tabletweaving sucks? Or rather, I suck at it. I'm sure there are ways to thread the cards that don't take four hours before one even gets to the first throw and turn, but I have not received the insight for them. When that finally was done and I started the actually-quite-lovely Birka variant (in deep yellow and dark green, with dark-red borders), I soon realised that despite the gruelling work, I still could not get it right. I thought I had understood the instructions, but apparently not. However, I bloody well could not afford to have those four hours of threading wasted, so I just wove a few rounds to see where the problem was, tried it out again in the opposite direction, realised that that should probably have worked (so I had, after all, interpreted the threading instructions upside down) but there still was only half a beginning of a pattern, so I had screwed up some of the turns on an individual line... and finally just calmly accepted that the first five inches were lost, stopped, checked every card and its threading and set them right. And lo! wonder of wonders, it's working now. And if I can manage to avoid screwing up some of the part-turns from now on, there should be something resembling a Birka band for Jaakko's tunic tomorrow. Hopefully. Even so, I still hate the stuff. It might be reasonably rewarding if only that bloody threading part didn't take so ridiculously long. But as it is now... The weather's not looking good for Savujen lahti. At least I may have enough furs by now to stay warm and dry at night (as long as the huts won't develop serious leaks). I'm not so sure about my costume yet. And transportation's still a problem. (Night) I need a regular sex life. Badly. 09 Aug 05: Trying To Distract Oneself Tabletweaving sucks. I haven't yet developed the eye to be able to create nice patterns that don't need an incredibly even hand; I loathe the setting up with all those dozens of pieces of thread that get tangled (though I don't know anyone who likes that part, really, as it takes a long time even for an expert weaver); and the mini-loom frame that I thought would make it substantially easier, doesn't. The twisting of the threads makes for changes in the stretch even in one loom-length. And I don't think the beater really works as well as tightening every weave by hand, so I'm about to get carpal tunnel syndrome even before I'm halfway done. It's more than irritating, because I like the idea of tabletweaving and would like to be proficient at it. When I discovered the mini-looms made by Severinus and Wiljalempi I thought my problems were solved, but they mostly help with very complex and slow patterns. I guess I might see if I can find some nice patterns on the web - for some of them, such as the Eura weave, it seems one's hand does not matter that much. But I do need the pattern and its instructions to be able to do something like that; as I said, my pattern eye is still totally undeveloped. I ran out of the third season of "Law & Order" last night and now need to find other things to watch while toiling, which is a bother. I've really enjoyed rewatching those first seasons - I didn't even remember how good it was. I think I've noted it here somewhere, but if I haven't: EADA Stone makes the grown-up me go all mushy inside. It's clear that one type of men that definitely does it for me is justice-fighters - those who will follow their convictions to any lengths, as long as they are convictions I find right and therefore reassuring. Responsible men, with a core of moral steel. This was a new insight for me: I didn't think I had any other "types" besides the Young (Suffering) Hero. But, well, it shouldn't be any surprise really, with my submissive tendencies. Nor with knowing my father. Whatever other shortcomings he may have in his personality (such as inability to handle difficult emotional situations, like discuss them maturely instead of just pulling away), I have always seen him as a deeply moral man, particularly as a teacher and a headmaster. I have never disagreed with his general attitudes to the responsibility of an educator, though I consider him somewhat too conservative in his political-edonomic views. And despite having grown up in a very old-fashioned environment and being privately religious and patriotic, he is open-minded and up to current issues about people different from himself (when I got married and he had to coordinate with friends of mine who he knew were of sexual minorities, I don't believe he was too comfortable with the idea, but he was never anything less than normally polite with them). All this has actually made it more than usually difficult for me to see him as a fallible human being and therefore drop the fear of the parental judgement like a grown-up should. I can see he has faults, but they are not the sort of faults that would make him "weak", you know? I remarked a while ago that I had had a phone conversation about dreams with my brother; it was about this, really. The dream and talking it over with him made me realise this problem for the first time, and made it easier for me to begin to deal with it. The fact that I respect my father very much in general does not mean his weaknesses - his habit of distancing himself when he doesn't know how to deal; his very meagre understanding of the complexities of relationships - are not there. And vice versa. So, someone like Ben Stone is like the ideal of my father, without the irritating parts. Apropos family, as I've started to tinker with these pages again, I thought I might put up a bit of trivia to explain about our family name, for those who still haven't heard the story. I'm too lazy to make a page for it right now, so I'll just put it here and then move behind a link it at some later time. Prauda is very unusual for a Finnish surname, so I get questions about it every now and then. In fact, there are only twenty of us or so, and they are all either descendants of my grandparents or spouses of said descendants (with one or two exceptions, who still have the same connections). It's a Carelian evacuee name, from the village of Vegarus in the Carelian-speaking, Greek Orthodox part of Suojärvi to the north of Lake Ladoga (so in the "real" Carelia instead of the Isthmus, which was culturally Finnish and Lutheran before WWII). The family can be traced back to the the 1700's in the same area, but it was never larger than two houses. There is a tradition that at that time, the head of family was a man always worthy of his word, hence the name: the word "truth" in Carelian is a loan from the Russian "pravda" (with vd->ud* where d* is soft+voiced, the same sound as in "whether"). Supposedly, there was a saying: "As Old Man Prauda says so, it must be so" ("Ko Ukko Prauda sen sano, ni ka se prauda", with softenings on the appropriate consonants, which I can't mark here). Whether true or not, it's a nice story, so I'm rather proud of the name. I will certainly stick with it, whether I will marry again or not (it never even entered my mind to change it the first time either). Hmph. From dry trivia back to tabletweaving, here we go... 07 Aug 05: Gnnnhh I'm so bloody lazy it's not funny. And I hate everything. 04 Aug 05: Good Food The Q's took me to dinner, and we ended up at Meze Point. I have practically no experience with East Mediterranean cooking (never even been to Greece for vacations), so I was thrilled to be able to try it out. We made the whole meal out of the meze appetizers, and I was really happy with all of mine - well, one bowl turned out to consist too thickly of bell peppers, but luckily Topi suggested a switch with his spinach-yoghurt-thingy (which was perfect with the carroty lamb rolls). Perhaps the deep-fried goat cheese that I got to taste was a bit overly greasy, but everything else was most satisfactory, so I can recommend the place, particularly to those inclined to prefer vegetarian options, of which that type of cooking offers an abundance. Have to check on recipes in that style on the net. I ought to learn to cook tasty vegetarian food - as I've told myself for a couple of years now. I'm pretty finicky with what I can be bothered to cook for myself (ie. I'm practically no cook at all), and I just don't like the flavour of many veggies as such (and can't stand bell peppers at all - not allergic, just loathe them too much). If it's prepared well, I'm all for the more ecologically and ethically sensible option. I really would like to have the willpower to drop meat, at least chicken (which I'm trying harder, again) and pork. I've learned a little bit from P&P, who are gourmands completely beyond me; paradoxically enough, they've shown me that tasty food can be really simple as long as you choose your ingredients carefully. But more would not hurt, and the Mediterranean kitchens seem to have a lot that I could use (as long as I can skim the ones with the bell peppers). Oh, and the rosé wine we had was lovely, too - just the right freshness for summer. It was Argentinian, I think. But the best part was seeing friends again, after far too long a while. There's lots of stuff I probably should write about, but this is again one of those nights when my brain is wrapped in wool. Or maybe it's the wine and the jug of margarita afterwards. Anyway, still in the middle of at least three books, will report on them once they are done. Don't know why somehow paused and wandered off right in the middle of Orhan Pamuk. So far, not too crazy about the new Kay either; hope it gets better (it's not bad, just... well). At least there's Neruda, with whose images, bit by bit, chapter by chapter, I fall asleep every night now. They make me laugh and love and remind me that that is what it is about, writing: loving all you see so much that you need to register it in all its special, particular glory. Dunno what'm gonna do when I get to the end... I also found far too many intriguing web comics the other day... Mom is currently reading the new Potter, and I am looking forward to her impressions on it with some amusement.
03 Aug 05: Proud of Finnish Literature! I just found out that the translation of Tainaron, Leena Krohn's wonderful classic, is a nominee for the World Fantasy Award in the novella category! Congratulations, Ms. Krohn!! How fabulous! 01 Aug 05: Notes To Self Darling, I know you will remember this, but let's just put it out there, in black and white, so you won't be able to go back on it even when it makes you feel like a big old meanie: When you finally (hopefully) have kids, remember to see to it that they do not have any unsupervised (meaning YOU NEXT TO THEM ALL THE TIME, not a teacher looking in some other direction) access to the Internet until they are at least 16. Yeah, sixteen. Before that, girls are so impossible and impressionable in their fandom phase that all they do is feed each others obsessions and compete on who manages to display them in the stupidest manner - in public view of millions of people. No. Just no. And all boys would do would be to search for porn, and I'm all for their being a bit more inventive and less time-consuming about that. A more current reminder: Off The Fleamarket Habit. Right now. Yes, yes, of course there are great finds that might some day be useful, but remember what happened on Friday when you dived in your closets for an Arabian Nights costume? And came up with enough stuff for four equally glittery outfits at the minimum?? So, no more buying all the fancy scarves and saris and silk scraps you see - which practically means: no more fleamarket-hopping for you, girl, at least for the foreseeable future. We can get back to this sometime next year, after you have finished all your commissioned costumes and updated your SCA wardrobe from the current stash. Right? Right. And stick to that earlier insight of defining yourself not through your past, but through your goals! Also, remembering that life is damn unfair and mostly consists of toil and bother might be good: nothing happens unless you make it happen, so if you want something to come into existence, there's no other way except to make it. If you want to sew, sew. If you want to write, write. If you want to dance, the only way is to dance. Life neither waits for you, nor waits on you. (Hey, that's a good one. Must remember that.) Or, at least, try and think towards that. As Liisa would say (and will, again, from the 23rd onwards). (P.S. Put up that dream diary already! You've spent all day in a haze of half-remembered, weighted images. Just like a week ago. And on Thursday. And so many times lately... Get a grip on them if you ever want to learn turning images into words!) |