This strange melancholy tells me autumn is coming. / Laws that should be.
When the sky is not black and not blue but deep dark gray, when the sun has just set and moon not yet arisen, then trees and clouds and slow, lonely humans become creatures of the twilight, soft drizzle blurs the gleaming lights of the city and the wind just slightly more chilling than yesterday takes my hair; that's when it hits, the comfortable sadness, things long past slowly dying when dim eve turns to darkness and night. Dawn, I'm sure, after long and sleepless but dream-like night, has glory and beauty beyond thought, but when autumn comes, is time of dusk my favourite.
I should've written this entry when I came home yesterday evening. Now, when it's noon already, the feeling of pleasant loneliness is mostly gone, though some scraps of it remain and I'm certain it shall return again.
After those last words I wrote a little story. It's a thing I shaped in my head a month ago, when visiting my family's summer cottage; now I had forgotten much of the original idea and the story became quite short, like my stories usually do nowadays. This is weird: I find it unbelievably difficult to describe things in a long manner. Instead, my complex thoughts become too simple sentences and I hop from one thing to another without explaining the first to the readers at all. This bothers me somewhat. Oh, to me, my texts seem rich enough, but the few times I've let other people read them, they've found it almost impossible to follow the flow of my thought. They don't understand the subtle connections I have hidden everywhere - and they have a good reason not to.
However, don't bother looking for connections in this text; it doesn't have that many. I suppose that's because I thought and wrote it in English.
- - ~ * ~ - -
I'm a guy who lives in a city but dreams of the virgin wilderness and of return to rural form of life. Been like that the whole of my life. When I was kid, I used to spent all summers in our family's summer cottage, but now I've got kids of my own and haven't been there for - what? - few years, it has been, I say, too long, that's far too long since I love life in the cottage and I always have.
So this summer, my family has a different holiday. We drive all day to get there, and when we do it's dark and it's cold inside the cottage, and when I try to lit the fire all the smoke comes in, and I laugh and tell my wife: this is how it should be, that's what it's like in here. I sleep peacefully that night dreaming a dream in which I am myself.
Early in the morning I jump into the lake, and it's freezing and when I climb up to the pier, I feel reborn. Everyone else is still asleep and I decide, as in the days of my youth, wander of by myself to see all the old places and visit the memories left there. Sun is just rising and mist still flows around my knees. I circle the two buildings and notice something is strange about the forest, something I just can't place yet but that leaves me with an uneasy feeling. Something is wrong. I get nervous. That's when I decide to go and visit the demon.
The old stump has stood by the side of the road that leads to our cottage as long as I can remember. It's gray and wringled and has got a face not quite like human's; it's a demon, a spirit of the woods, and as kid I prayed for it and feared it and was never able to look at it - even from distance - without a cold shiver running from my neck to my knees. Now the old horror has caught me again. My feet are numb as I walk, I pass our car and take few steps and then I see. The forest is gone. Flat ground stretches to all directions, the tracks of logging still clear to be seen. To our lot's border, all the forest is gone. I don't understand this. I shook my head, and then I see the demon.
I barely recognize it; it's no taller than my waist and it takes me few seconds to flesh out it's worn-out features. I wish I would gasp, or drop to my knees, but I'm only staring and I notice that the old demon looks not angry but sad. I was so afraid; shit, I miss those days. The diabolic spirit, wild and unpredictable forest's guardian, is suddenly stupid and useless and I kick it; it's skin is still hard. Mosquitoes are buzzing around me, they land to my face and suck my blood, an ant is climbing up my leg under trousers and finally I scream and hop back. I used to hates those creatures when I was a kid. They would never leave me alone. Damn it. I'm cold.
Later that day it begins to rain. I tell my wife that after the first few days I never liked the life in the cottage. I'm a city guy, after all. My kids run around laughing, but I look out of the window and see that behind the trees, the forest is gone.
- - ~ * ~ - -
A law should be enforced dictating that after August 15th, between nine and twelve p.m, in every bus there should be radio on, and in the radio they should play only old, blue songs from the days of passengers' youth, and there never should be more than five people in any bus and everyone should sit next to a window.
That would be a good law.
And now something completely different. Last night, I and J again had one of our conversations. We had watched about half of the movie dealing with whether or not a how-to book giving detailed instructions of murder should be allowed to be published and were discussing about relevant factors of the question. It was - again - a very good and insightful discussion and we ended up with no simple answer. Myself, I wouldn't wish that kind of a thing to become a precedent against the freedom of speech (thinking, for example, all the computer games that could be banned appealing to it), but I can also sympathize with the opposing view.
A short after, however, we talked about media getting paid to report only certain news. Even though I'm nothing like politically oriented, I could turn this subject over and over quite long. I won't, but I wish to state that freedom of the press is one of the last things I would wish to give up in this world. (One of the last things, of course, only as long as this world follows the certain rules of predictability; if radically new alternatives were to appear, I could say nothing about my priorities.) Ah. I would probably make a lousy activist. Even when knowing there is not much I can do for the world, should I try to make the difference? Should I pick a position and hold it, even beyond rationality, since there are things that I the feeling person value? I shall ponder this. After all, I should be in my idealistic period of development and it's something I'm not, from my idealistic perspective, willing to leave behind.
Oh the un-clearness. Yet one thing. I accidentally went to watch Chronicles of Riddick the day before yesterday. I enjoyed it. The sheer epicity of the story concept, the undeniable beauty of, frankly, every scene (and the fact that it wasn't actually so action-centered that I had heard it would be) - these took me by surprise. Oh, the script (and especially the dialogue) was awful, but hey. It had an ice planet, a city planet and a fire planet, there were spacecrafts and an evil army of death and darkness. And a prophecy. And truly impractical weapons and armours. How could I not love it? Welcome to the planet Crematoria, worst hellhole of the galaxy to the UnderVerse come!
I should've written this entry when I came home yesterday evening. Now, when it's noon already, the feeling of pleasant loneliness is mostly gone, though some scraps of it remain and I'm certain it shall return again.
After those last words I wrote a little story. It's a thing I shaped in my head a month ago, when visiting my family's summer cottage; now I had forgotten much of the original idea and the story became quite short, like my stories usually do nowadays. This is weird: I find it unbelievably difficult to describe things in a long manner. Instead, my complex thoughts become too simple sentences and I hop from one thing to another without explaining the first to the readers at all. This bothers me somewhat. Oh, to me, my texts seem rich enough, but the few times I've let other people read them, they've found it almost impossible to follow the flow of my thought. They don't understand the subtle connections I have hidden everywhere - and they have a good reason not to.
However, don't bother looking for connections in this text; it doesn't have that many. I suppose that's because I thought and wrote it in English.
- - ~ * ~ - -
I'm a guy who lives in a city but dreams of the virgin wilderness and of return to rural form of life. Been like that the whole of my life. When I was kid, I used to spent all summers in our family's summer cottage, but now I've got kids of my own and haven't been there for - what? - few years, it has been, I say, too long, that's far too long since I love life in the cottage and I always have.
So this summer, my family has a different holiday. We drive all day to get there, and when we do it's dark and it's cold inside the cottage, and when I try to lit the fire all the smoke comes in, and I laugh and tell my wife: this is how it should be, that's what it's like in here. I sleep peacefully that night dreaming a dream in which I am myself.
Early in the morning I jump into the lake, and it's freezing and when I climb up to the pier, I feel reborn. Everyone else is still asleep and I decide, as in the days of my youth, wander of by myself to see all the old places and visit the memories left there. Sun is just rising and mist still flows around my knees. I circle the two buildings and notice something is strange about the forest, something I just can't place yet but that leaves me with an uneasy feeling. Something is wrong. I get nervous. That's when I decide to go and visit the demon.
The old stump has stood by the side of the road that leads to our cottage as long as I can remember. It's gray and wringled and has got a face not quite like human's; it's a demon, a spirit of the woods, and as kid I prayed for it and feared it and was never able to look at it - even from distance - without a cold shiver running from my neck to my knees. Now the old horror has caught me again. My feet are numb as I walk, I pass our car and take few steps and then I see. The forest is gone. Flat ground stretches to all directions, the tracks of logging still clear to be seen. To our lot's border, all the forest is gone. I don't understand this. I shook my head, and then I see the demon.
I barely recognize it; it's no taller than my waist and it takes me few seconds to flesh out it's worn-out features. I wish I would gasp, or drop to my knees, but I'm only staring and I notice that the old demon looks not angry but sad. I was so afraid; shit, I miss those days. The diabolic spirit, wild and unpredictable forest's guardian, is suddenly stupid and useless and I kick it; it's skin is still hard. Mosquitoes are buzzing around me, they land to my face and suck my blood, an ant is climbing up my leg under trousers and finally I scream and hop back. I used to hates those creatures when I was a kid. They would never leave me alone. Damn it. I'm cold.
Later that day it begins to rain. I tell my wife that after the first few days I never liked the life in the cottage. I'm a city guy, after all. My kids run around laughing, but I look out of the window and see that behind the trees, the forest is gone.
- - ~ * ~ - -
A law should be enforced dictating that after August 15th, between nine and twelve p.m, in every bus there should be radio on, and in the radio they should play only old, blue songs from the days of passengers' youth, and there never should be more than five people in any bus and everyone should sit next to a window.
That would be a good law.
And now something completely different. Last night, I and J again had one of our conversations. We had watched about half of the movie dealing with whether or not a how-to book giving detailed instructions of murder should be allowed to be published and were discussing about relevant factors of the question. It was - again - a very good and insightful discussion and we ended up with no simple answer. Myself, I wouldn't wish that kind of a thing to become a precedent against the freedom of speech (thinking, for example, all the computer games that could be banned appealing to it), but I can also sympathize with the opposing view.
A short after, however, we talked about media getting paid to report only certain news. Even though I'm nothing like politically oriented, I could turn this subject over and over quite long. I won't, but I wish to state that freedom of the press is one of the last things I would wish to give up in this world. (One of the last things, of course, only as long as this world follows the certain rules of predictability; if radically new alternatives were to appear, I could say nothing about my priorities.) Ah. I would probably make a lousy activist. Even when knowing there is not much I can do for the world, should I try to make the difference? Should I pick a position and hold it, even beyond rationality, since there are things that I the feeling person value? I shall ponder this. After all, I should be in my idealistic period of development and it's something I'm not, from my idealistic perspective, willing to leave behind.
Oh the un-clearness. Yet one thing. I accidentally went to watch Chronicles of Riddick the day before yesterday. I enjoyed it. The sheer epicity of the story concept, the undeniable beauty of, frankly, every scene (and the fact that it wasn't actually so action-centered that I had heard it would be) - these took me by surprise. Oh, the script (and especially the dialogue) was awful, but hey. It had an ice planet, a city planet and a fire planet, there were spacecrafts and an evil army of death and darkness. And a prophecy. And truly impractical weapons and armours. How could I not love it? Welcome to the planet Crematoria, worst hellhole of the galaxy to the UnderVerse come!