Kalevala
Plus ça change…
I seem to recall dreaming about the Kalevala last night. It has been on my mind quite a bit lately. My first experience with the Finnish epic[1] was when I was much younger. My parent's were inveigled into purchasing a subscription to Childcraft Books. It was kindergarten, and there had been a handout at school that one could take home to one's parents and receive 3 months of Books[2] free. I dutifully took this home and convinced my mother and father to consider it.
At some point during the next few months[3] and behind the scenes[4] an appointment was made with Childcraft, and they sent a salesman out to provide further parental persuasion. He looked almost exactly like Gene Wilder [5] and wore a light blue blazer over dark corduroy trousers. The salesman showed up late in the evening and was well equipped with charts, graphs, case studies and testimonials, all extolling the virtues of imparting useless information [6] upon a child at a young age. He did most of the talking. Delighted to be up past my 6:30 bedtime I built a zoo on the coffee table out of a bag of startlingly not-to-scale plastic animals [7] that my father had been beguiled into buying for me during an earlier grocery store trip for breakfast cereal [8].
The casual coaxing of the salesman apparently worked, and he sealed the deal and met his quota with a casually scrawled check from my father [9]. I remember as he was packing up his display easel and various forms in his briefcase, he annihilated the western wall of the zoo that I had constructed from those wonderful wooden blocks [10] to contain the wing that housed the Dinosaurs [11] and complete chaos naturally ensued as the Tyrannosaurus Rex, who had been previously segregated from the hippopotami and Brontosaurs [12], went on a feeding frenzy of frighteningly gory proportions.
Every month thereafter, for approximately four years, I received a plain brown cardboard slip-case-box addressed to one Mr. Ktrey Parker III. These were the first pieces of mail, addressed to me, that I recall receiving on a regular basis. Places To See was the first, and I marveled over pictures of the Pyramids, Pisa, and phosphorescent fungal caves [13]. Then abruptly after the incredibly insightful although dull, Guide For Parents the Books stopped coming every month. I received the next one, entitled About Dogs on my tenth birthday. I devoured it like any of the others, only to discover that the next book, Prehistoric Animals would arrive 3 months later. I gave up on Childcraft almost entirely after this point and actively anticipated the more reliable National Geographic, Readers Digest, and Boy's Life [14] magazines.
One of the books, Myths and Legends, contained an excellent selection of its namesakes. Beowulf was translated into 5th grade reading level English [15] and darkly illustrated, with the rendition of Grendel haunting me for years to come [16]. The only other truly memorable stories from this book were a bland telling of Tam Lin, and an excerpt from the Kalevala.
It was a prose precis of a couple key cantos, revolving chiefly around Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen traveling to Pohjola to forge and steal the Sampo from Louhi. The illustrations were incredible. Louhi capsizing the heroes' ship was almost as powerful as Grendel stalking the Mead Hall. The images of Väinämöinen calmly strumming his kantele and putting the Northlands to sleep, and Ilmarinen in his smithy with his hammer, banging out the bright lid of a fanciful [17] depiction of the Sampo.
Beowulf became my passion throughout high school, followed by the Elder Eddas and Das Nibelungleid, with the Kalevala itching in the back of my skull, unobtainable [18]. The first copy of the Kalevala that I purchased was from Recycled Books and Records, a local used book chain, when I was eighteen. I had seen it there many times, and intended to purchase it on several occasions, but there was always a piece of music that held precedence [19]. Finally, I waltzed into the store with a grim determination, I would not check the Used CD's or records, I had exactly $34.00 plus tax in my pocket, and I needed the Kalevala.
Mine at last! It was two volumes, bound in the same faded blue of those tiny collections of Shakespearean plays and sonnets, and a very old edition printed in the late 19th century and had the English and Finnish texts. It was property of the Selwyn School Library at some point, which is worth noting primarily because that was the school I attended in second grade. That same year I had received Myths and Legends from Childcraft.
Back to our sheep… My dream revolved around the death of Aino [20] in general and the Ophelia device of literature in general. My subconscious could not decide what point-of-view it preferred, and I peered from behind a rocky cliff, from inside a carefully pebbled tidal pool, through the foliage of a fir, and via the reflection in a copper bracelet Aino had cast aside. There was a pervading gray-ness throughout the dream [21] with the only colors consisting of metallic hues generated through the aura of precious ores. There was copper and gold, and I definitely recall that silver shined bright enough to overpower the clouded and ashen everything else.
I watched and listened to her suicidal soliloquy in a bored daze. Amusing myself by trying to guess where my next viewpoint would be. My eyes became set in the gravel behind a seagull nearby on the shore, and I watched the seagull thoughtfully watching her disrobe [22]. She paused, for effect I presume, and the bird pounded some kind of mollusk into a rock and greedily gobbled it's soft parts. The water looked cold, but I watched her wade through it as a small granite outcropping. The meaning of her words became muddled with other languages that I instantly understood. She was just getting to the part where she compared the fish in the sea to her flesh and the salty brine to her blood when the shriek of the alarm made terrible concentric ripples in the water and I opened my eyes. I squinted at Candace turning off the alarm from the perspective of my eye sockets. It was time to go to work, and I stepped on one of my copies of the Kalevala on the way to the closet.
Work became surprisingly busy toward the end of my shift, so I was only able to research the Voynich Manuscript [23] and RongoRongo [24] for a total of three hours. I searched in vain for more information regarding a cipher utilizing musical notes[25] that I seemed to recall from my research, and ate a disappointing sandwich for lunch. A co-worker took me home, and I put the post office off a day when I discovered that Chris was nowhere to be found. After a shower, I curl up in bed with some reading material and Finnish (excuse the painful pun) a few Cantos before the tin can puttering of Dave's Vespa pull into our back driveway [26]. I dress and we chat, I discover that Mary Hansen of Stereolab [27] died in a bike versus car altercation. Chris and Woody arrive and we all watch a few after-school cartoons. Candace returns from work and we leave for the liquor store, for I was dangerously low on scotch, and she was completely out of gin.
The day marked our 17th consecutive month dating (each other) and we picked up a fancy fast food feast on the way home, so as not too miss That 70's Show [28]. Two most excellent episodes later, I had a scotch to aid my digestion [29] while Candace spoke with a close friend from the past after she located her number using Information [30]. I tried to read more, but poetry is difficult to understand after a more-than-it-seemed glass of scotch.