Storybook love

Love stories always seem to focus on beginnings. One of my old favourites is Princess Bride.

My love is like a storybook story
But it's as real as the feelings I feel
My love is like a storybook story
But it's as real as the feelings I feel
It's as real as the feelings I feel

He said, "Don't you know I love you oh so much
And lay my heart at the foot of your dress?"
She said, "Don't you know that storybook loves
Always have a happy ending?"
Then he swooped her up just like in the books
And on his stallion they rode away.

I met my Princess, sweeping her off her feet and getting married

But in real love that is just the beginning. 

Frequently couples don't get past the falling in love stage.

We had better than a story book love in real life, as every trouble made us stronger, through the trials of life our attraction developed into real love.

Sadly in truth even story book love have sad endings sometimes. Our lives were parted by death.

I know that in this place my love for her endures. I hope that where she is her love can endure and perhaps our story book love can have a happy ending.

I guess my message is this; stop focusing on the farytale beginnings and work at the love you are building together. Because THAT is true love

Grasping clichés

A year has passed since my dearest Anita passed away.  I have struggled with many things in this time, one of which is the phrase people keep saying to me. It uses the words "letting go" in different ways.

I have wondered what the hell they mean (probably they don't know either).  I can never let go of the love we had or the bond we had (as hard to quantify as that is).

Today I have come to understand that it is perhaps like the meaning of letting go of you loved ones hand while they go to do something else. Like the mothers first day of taking their child to school. You let them go.

This is often a time of anguish for the kid and the parent.

Perhaps what makes that easier is the knowledge that you will see them again.

"Till death do us part" - wasn't part of our wedding vow.

At least this year the pain is not as acute and the tasks not as difficult

Body and soul

Injuries happen from time to time and our body does a remarkable job of healing. This once mysterious thing (we have come to understand) comes from the bodies many cells. While we have one body it is made of many cells that also look after the job of healing eachother.

While our body is composed of many cells we have but one mind. Once upon a time we used the term soul more in daily language than mind. Stuff like "not a soul around" or even SOS (the old emergengy call) literally means Save Our Souls, and was not a cry for last rites but for physical rescue.

I have found that just like the body it is in the interaction with other minds (or in old language other souls) that healing can take place. Withdrawal into isolation is not the path to healing but more likely the path to madness.

I am lucky to be of the mind to speak and share my thoughts, also I am lucky to have many friends around me willing to listen and aid.

Today is the day she died. It has been quite an injury to my soul. Combined with the suffering of my surgical infection this has been a very difficult year.

To all of you I say thankyou, it has made this healing process possible. Without you all I would perhaps be a more scarred person than I am.

They say what does not kill you makes you stronger. Well perhaps I begin to see that I am a little stronger than before. Paradoxically I still feel weak.

Most of all I feel I miss her still...

Why am I here

Well yes I know why I came.

What I don't know is why be here and not somewhere else.

There are many things about my other home that tug me in that direction, equally there are things that pull me here too.

Were I there I would be thinking of here.

Is it just the obstacles that daunt me? Well as they have arisen they so far have subsided.

I somehow look to events to guide me, as if they were portends of the path to follow. Somehow I just don't think thats how it is.

For sure its a nice place to be while I make up my mind

No, not here either

Here I am back in a place where we used to live. As expected she's not here either. Its one thing to know this consciously and another to go through it to prove it to the primitive part of my mind.

At least (because more here knew her than me) more people that I meet are more sad for her passing than for my situation.

As expected it feels like crap and I feel lonely. Now everyone that we knew here has moved to other towns and there is noone here I know. This is both good and bad.

As I have learned, "you have to make horror your friend, as horror is a formidable enemy". So no matter how hard it is I have to find a way through this or it will forever rule me.

Also, as expected, I can focus on my feelings and my future directions from here in isolation and without distractions. Living in my home was increasingly difficult. Lets see if it becomes that way here...

[picture by Lari]

The intangible nature of complex feelings

Edgar Allan Poe once wrote:

For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it.

Which I would have some agreement with. however there are emotional feelings which are in times far more complex and indistinct than I can express in words. Perhaps (as Poe himself observes) the reason for this is that the "thought is logicalized by the effort at (written) expression" and that in itself destroys the idea as surely as dissecting an animal to examine its inner workings kills it.

Like dreams which seem clear during the dream sometimes become intangible, mutating out of reach as we attempt to recall its details. Worse, sometimes I feel that by fitting it to words I change it somehow to be what I said, thus diminishing and obscuring it further.

The intense feelings and emotions that i have felt since Anitas passing are something like this. I feel like some infant overwhelmed by emotion yet unable to express it in any other way than tears and weeping. Worse, there are brief moments of clarity during which somehow I am able to feel at peace with an aspect briefly, only to have it evaporate moments later when other thoughts muscle in and obliterate that waif from my grasp. I am then left knowing that I had found some answer but have lost it again.

I am left feeling that for all the power of intellect to grapple with the world and enable us to do things, that it fails us (me?) when it comes to dealing with ourselves.

On yer bike

Clearly even in a small town you need some way to get around. As Finland is such a bicycle friendly place (as is much of Europe) I bought a bicycle!

Ok, its a girls bike (to my tittering Aussie mates back home) but its quite good at what I want it for, which is as a town bike.

The shimano Nexus hub gears are perfectly adequate in ranges for the local riding. 1st is good enough for all the hills here and 7th is as fast as one wants to go in mixed pedestrian cyclepaths.

I rode it some 20km home from where I bought it, and already its been a practical work horse too

ya mule :-)