Istun itseni varjossa,
kysyn: kuka peittää kuun?
Näen vain valoa, joka näyttää pimeydeltä;
yö sekoittaa aistini kuin rakastajan hengitys.
Nousen, kävelen kohti sinua, en saavuta;
yritämme tanssia siten,
ettemme olisi toistemme varjossa.
Huuhkaja nauraa, hiljainen huilu,
ihmisyys on koomista.
Vaikka olet sylissäni,
kutsun sinua yhä.
The morning sun laid its head on her chest, which made her look like she was made of gold, only more precious. Light never disturbs our sleep except when it is so bright that it awakens the desire to exist more fully, to burn like a star. But we were young then and more often awakened by lust than the desire to keep on living. Maybe it was just a craving of the flesh but it felt like enlightenment.
I was in love and the whole world was present in us, everything was made of joy as though the universe was a fluid made of feelings. Her skin was an empty sheet of paper on which I could write my invisible love. Why does it have to be invisible? Perhaps so that we would not know that the paper is never empty.
My fingers drew paths on her stomach but left no traces. Just when I was thinking of tiny strawberries swimming in milk she sighed something and I lifted my head from her breast. It is enough of a miracle that we are breathing, which made this moment sacred. She is the altar on which I worship our existence.
From the window we could see the beach and the ocean kissing the sands without tiring. The sea is more patient than we could ever be, but she is more beautiful. I wanted the sea to stay outside but it kept coming out of our pores and I would keep swimming in her currents, breathing in the scent of her sweat, the scent of eternity.
The morning made us both glimmer but I was not sure whether the light came from within us or from the sun. It surely felt like we had turned into two stars orbiting each other. The space was gone now, the world had never been this empty, or this full. But time still existed, the movements of her legs were showing the way to the future. Will death be waiting for us there? Do not worry, it will.
She smiled and touched my chin gently. We had only now been born.
Olen riittävän vanha
näkemään itseni
lehtiään varistavassa vaahterassa,
myöntämään etten ymmärrä
niitäkään asioita, ihmisiä,
joihin samaistun.
Mutta miten loistaakaan keltainen
sinistä vasten,
kun värisen intohimosta kohottaa oksani tuuleen,
seistä keväistä aamua,
uskoa sateisiin,
joita ei tarvitse selittää;
miten hyvä onkaan hiljaisuus silmuissani,
vielä tulevissa.
The same song as a scratchy recording in case the video above is blocked in your country:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhwOw-yAwfQ
A song that is at the same time sweet and sad, L’amour qu’il fera demain feels like an antidote to cynicism. This is a rare type of song, admitting the impermanence of love without a hint of numbness or anger. It starts by stating that love changes quickly like good weather, and ends by an exhortation to not waste any moment because we cannot know what will happen tomorrow, or even tonight.
The refrain varies confessions of love from the romantic notion of eternity to a more pragmatic attitude. It uses anaphora, the rhetorical device of repeating a phrase at the beginning of each sentence, to drive home the idea that we convince ourselves and each other that love still exists even while it’s crumbling:
“You will love me, you will always love me
You will love me until the next love
You will love me as many days as you can love me”
Yet it doesn’t feel cynical. Instead Laforêt’s voice sounds thin and fragile. It is sadness without despair, for there is strength and determination to keep on believing as long as the two people can somehow make it through until the next day, the next spring, as long as possible. The melody and the waltz time also bring out the beauty in impermanence, softening the blow.
I mention the absence of anger or numbness because nowadays such songs much more commonly express one of those attitudes whose function is to disguise sorrow. Sadness is difficult to control, and two common ways to hide our vulnerability is to deny it altogether or to claim agency and strength through anger. Another way is to give in to the sorrow too much and to give up altogether. And there are many songs that express only hopelessness in the face of adversity. This song is special because it admits the sorrow without falling into it completely, and also avoids emotional diversions.
Love is here and now, so let’s enjoy it while we can. It is an age-old notion, and yet each generation must find it anew. Even when it sounds like wisdom, staying with that feeling of vague melancholy is not wise in itself. The sadness of impermanence is itself impermanent. We love, we grieve, we lament. And then we move on to love again, even if more laments would follow.
Jo illan hämyyn kietoutuu
tuo pelto kivinen,
ja usvaan peittyy nuori puu,
vaaleat versot sen:
niin täynnä voimaa, ettei voi
sitä tukahduttaa yö,
vaan varkain hiipii aamun koi,
kun hirvi latvoja syö;
niin hauras vaikka voimakas
kuin toivo rakkauden,
kun valvot, mietit armaintas,
ystävä kaipauksen.
Me kurkotamme aurinkoon,
kun onnessa hehkuu maa
ja tuhansittain latvustoon
taas lehtiä puhkeaa.
Mut monta on koivua longollaan,
myrskyissä kaatuneet,
on männyillä jähmeinä kaarnassaan
pihkaiset kyyneleet.
Ken seisoo vielä kanssasi, kun
ei latvasi vettä saa
ja lahonnutta runkoas sun
pari kääpää koristaa?
Itsekin usein katson vain
tuohon peltoon kiviseen,
mietin mitä usvasta hain,
mitä yksin seisten teen.
Ilta hiljaa itkeekö taas,
vain tuuliko vaikertaa?
Syksy saapuu, lehdet on maas,
ne tanssittaa kuolemaa.
Istahdan silti silmin kuivin
haaveissa valon ja veen,
kaulaani kiedon tähtihuivin
viel uskoen rakkauteen,
ja lailla puiden kietoudun
tähän yöhön turvaisaan,
tähän uneen, jossa luonasi sun
voiman ja haurauden jaan.
When she says we cannot be together I am looking at the trees. The yews remind me of death, but maybe they also symbolise resurrection in other forms, other lives.
She is smiling and I cannot help feeling happy despite the rejection because I think that she will be happy without me. It is not so bad. The world is full of people who do not need me. But her hands are so beautiful I want to bury my face in them and I know that every touch would bring forth a new part of me, something forgotten and lost.
She has dark hair with orange streaks like gentle flames covering her head. I reach out my hand as though trying to pick up something high in the air. I never touch anything, maybe that is the problem. Feelings are not there to be touched directly and it feels so cheap to try and charm anyone with casual touching.
But now her smile is transforming, it is a lake into which I wade. I start sinking but I am not afraid of drowning. Do all people feel this bliss right before dying?
There must be new life, new hope in the waters. The darkness of her eyes makes me shiver. I do not see my reflection, only the place where life began, the puddles of primordial soup, the depths of the ocean. The end of life is also there, the eternal darkness. For we were born in the eyes of others, in their personal darkness. We were shaped by prejudice.
I have given my everything to her, I have given the end of the world but we are still smiling. She says it is a really nice day. I can only agree, the sun is burning through my skin and the wind is making my lips crack.
She asks what else is new. There is nothing to say, certainly there is nothing new about this situation. I bury my grief. She might be unhappy to see it. I want her to keep on smiling, even if it means denying myself. The tears can wait.
I wrote all the stories in this section between 2011-14. After all these years I no longer feel happy with the styles, yet it seems worth it to record them somewhere, since people have enjoyed the way I tried to explore different emotions in each piece.
Each story was originally written as just one paragraph. For readability I have split the paragraph into several more only now, several years later.
The idea was to have a short piece that hints at a larger story. Describing emotions or a situation like a snapshot I tried to imply what the main characters were like beyond the constraints of the paragraph. Sometimes there is a clear narrative, other times it’s more expressionist. There are a few allegories. I also experimented with the kind of detached style which is quite popular among authors today, as well as purple prose which is often ridiculed but fun to write.
The stories don’t describe my own life or mentality at the time. While writing I was always trying to inhabit the skin of a character, even if the narration is in first person. I find this aspect of writing difficult to explain. Of course when you write about emotions, you must have some experience of them. But the more you write, the further away from your real life the text gets, because ordinary life doesn’t have enough variation to make the writing interesting. Even when a story looks more like a blog post, it is still fiction. There are a couple of exceptions, when the mood of a story has clearly been affected by something in my life. I’ll point out those exceptions when I get there.
