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Meanwhile, In Finland II

 has just published an article for Paris Review about the resurgence of Finland, in of all things, literature. Furthermore, by Branding. Calling attention to oneself is just not something the Nordic adventurers do. In most of those cultures there’s even a word for it. In Sweden it’s lagom, in Norwegian it’s janteloven. But then, witness the Swedish break with tradition that put itself on the world stage with IKEA, H&M, Spotify, Skype, Absolut Vodka, ABBA, Stieg Larsson, etc.

Not one to sneeze at success, and reestablishing itself as a literary being, yet more so as a feminist literary happening, we have FINNISH WRITERS JOHANNA SINISALO, SOFI OKSANEN, AND LAURA LINDSTEDT.

finnishlit

I was going to write a bit more in this post, mostly about the authors but such a distraction were the book titles! If I’m ever to get this posted I’ll need to stop. Just note that I’ve got a few of the books in my cart. More on this later.

Picking up the post, or part two, the next day:

For one, Oksanen is cool. She has been described by the Finnish press as a feminist goth. But it doesn’t stop there. She writes well. That’s the best you can say about an author. She has been cut from a different cloth however. She doesn’t just write, write well, and often, she promotes. Her self marketing has paid off: she was one of the first Finnish authors to sign with an international literary agent. in France alone, Purge sold more than one hundred seventy thousand copies.

Apparently the most intriguing thing about the Finnish uprising is the uniqueness of the writing. For example, Johanna Sinisalo’s The Core of the Sun presents a new human subspecies of submissive women for sex and procreation while undertaking the capture and sterilization of those women unwanted for reproduction: the intelligent, the independent, the outliers. The government does not want the type of citizen they might produce.

Book covers have been copied from Amazon pages

JohannaSinisalo

 

I’m in the process of deciding which books/authors I’ll start out with. And I haven’t even gotten to LAURA LINDSTEDT yet.

 

By the way, my annotated copy of The Big Sleep is on the way. Oh what joy to be watching for the mailman, a child again in anticipation!

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Book Ramblings

IMG_1036I had threatened to purchase this and of course did. I like the outlier things—to wear, to read, to view. As if this is any surprise by now. And I am enjoying the book tremendously. It’s one of those which leads the reader down all sorts of rabbit holes. Terence McKenna is a favorite for Lin to follow, describe, and quote from. I feel I should have known about or read some of McKenna’s stuff. Some of the stories about him seem so familiar. And I’ve read some Kathleen Harrison, whom he wed in 1976. They all did psilocybin, DMT, magic mushrooms. When tripping the emphasis is on the encounters with strange creatures who live in the higher planes.

The creatures: tykes, fairies, self-articulating sentences, translinguistic elves, friendly fractal entities, elf legions of hyperspace, meme traders, art collectors, and syntactical homunculi. I have italicized the particular descriptors which I favor. Lin describes his higher beings as faceless, bodiless, genderless abstractions. The trippers all emphasize that these beings are so very much brighter than humans, are much more advanced, and are fully aware of us though we, in everyday reality, are unaware of them.

I’ll continue reading as I’m not through the book yet, and the marginalia continues to grow. (Slowing the process.) This book is not for everybody, thought the title should clarify for any prospective reader. For me, this is a book I’ll read again.

The next beauty on the dock is penguinRandomHousefrom our old pal Raymond Chandler. Penguin Random House had released this proposed gem.  

The first edition of The Big Sleep was released in 1939 and soon became acknowledged as a masterpiece of noir. The Big Sleep helped to define a genre. Today it is celebrated and remains one of the most revered stylish novels of the twentieth century. The class A writing and characters have made this novel a champion of the genre novel as literary fiction. While some continue to battle the genre uniform as a sub species, others are willing to display it in literary fiction.

I already have it in my cart. Arriving soon!

 

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Noting Observations Of Yesterday

“Note this before you note my notes, there’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.” ~ Much Ado About Nothing ~ Wm. S.

I finally got myself to the swimming pool. The one over in Seven Hills because they are replacing the building in Broadview Heights. I have no idea why I was struggling so to get there. An oversimplified fear of the unknown? A left-over fear from childhood? The one where you go in and do something incredibly wrong within the social norms of that place and are ever after known as the “newone” or names much worse. Ostracized by the fact of not knowing and therefore stupid. Children rarely allow for outside effects and circumstances; they are judges of the now. The right now, in black and white. (Maybe children should be the only juries we have.) That all seems silly to me. And yet—is fear, hidden to the self, why we call ourselves lazy?

But here’s the funny thing, the reason I noted the swimming pool visit: I got a sunburn, and it’s an indoor pool.

After the pool, I went to one of my favorite eating places which is right in front of the community center, Eddie’s Pizzaria. My intention was to get a martini and a salad. Yeah, right. I wasn’t craving pizza and I’m on a semi-successful diet. (Worth noting is that the swimming suit, once a struggle to put on, is now too big.) I managed the part of the intention that involved the martini. For desert I had one of those small fry-pan-looking things filled with a very large and warm chocolate chip cookie garnished with two large scoops of vanilla bean ice cream. It is decadent. deliciously decadent. I left not a crumb behind. This all leads to the subject of Will Power.

Will Power. First cousin to Free Will. If there is such a thing. (Some argument ensues in my mind. If there’s such a thing as my anything at all.) Staying with the subject of Will Power, among many other things there is more than one school of thought. The most recent propaganda espousing the limits of Will Power is the replenishing of same. Namely, Will Power is not strengthened by use, rather is run out by continual use. In order to replenish, one must refrain from all of that use. Just what constitutes over use is unknown. Unfortunately I must have run out of Will Power just after leaving the pool. That’s what I get for using up all that Will Power to get to the pool.

And I don’t know how to replenish this Will Power. Just how long must I refrain from using it? I want to know. Right now I am practicing disuse of Will Power. Wait, wait!…Doesn’t that call for Will Power?

 

 

 

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St. Bennie

Yesterday, July 11, was the feast day of St. Benedict. St. Bennie ranks high in Roman Catholic veneration.  He is known as the Father of Western Monasticism due to his great influence on the shape and character of monastic life in the West. He found the lackadaisical approach to discipline of most monasteries irreverent and unacceptable. He was happy to provide structure and rules, and open new monasteries for his followers.

StBennieThe Eastern Orthodox Church also venerates the saint who is the patron saint of students.

stBenedict

Eastern Orthodox icon of Saint Benedict.

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Really?

How great to be original, different, creative. My favorite descriptors, all the more potent when come to life. Below we see  fanciful tin ostriches embodying the season.

Slice ofLife

Posted by Slice of Life

In my own attempt to glorify my patio and because, I speculate, I’m always willing to push the limits, I went over the patio line. Yes, fully aware I infringed on common ground. Where previous dogs had peed on the ornamental grass outside our building and successfully turned beauty into brown death and yellowed greenery, I placed a large container with an ornamental grass. I thought it looked lovely. So did my neighbors. (The grounds people had given up on replanting as that had turned into a suicide mission for the grass.) I thought they (the dogs) could lift away and do nothing to the large brown pottery.

Then, successful with that, I put a large flowering hydrophone out away from the patio. I then purchased some large tiles to place for stepping into my patio from the sidewalk. As it is always being used for a footpath, it is wearing the grass into dirt. I then placed the purple hydrophone on one of the tiles to come to a realized glory in the sun.

Two days ago, while mowing the lawn, the grounds people took up the tiles and placed them and the hydrophone on my patio. When they were finished, I put the tiles and plant back to their previous state. Today someone else took up the tiles, the hydrophone, and the ornamental grass and placed them ingloriously on my patio. As there was no yard work being done, I must conclude it was a management minion in action.

Message received.  I guess brown and yellow are preferred expressions of apartment living, as long as the rules are obeyed. So now I’m sulking. I’m mostly sulking because my beautiful hydrophone will no longer get enough sun. And the lovely ornamental grass in the large brown pot that coordinated with the grounds elsewhere has been replaced by a mound of dirt.

My patio is so small that I could not now sit out there if I wanted to. The table is covered in flowering plants and the two chairs have been shoved out of the way so as to make it impossible to open the storage doors out there. It’s nothing other than ridiculous for me to be pouting and sulking. But I am. Really.