skies

 

Dear Blue,

This song is nearly 99 years old this year.  It just keeps getting better, and it is your song of the day!

Pop Star

 

Dear Pop Star,

Yes, the thing is the metaphor, but we don't always agree on what it is that is like the first thing.  It's more than a feeling, and the reason is, my Pop Star, Marianne is a metaphor for your manhood.  See: letting the days go by.  And how does all this loss feel?  See: pretty Pamela Brown.  

And you know, you know I love you, you men of the patriarchy, but it's just such scraps, all scraps that are left.  The thing is, and you know this too, if you have any power your responsibility is not to abuse it.

the last Tove

 

     

Tove Jansson

Dear Readers,

This is the last, for Sun City anyway!

What was a conversation, and what could it mean?  Mutual consideration of important things.  Communication of experience and memory.  Construction of possibilities for the future.  To clarify and recognize together, and to observe the changes in a glance, a tone of voice, a silence- the silence of hesitation or understanding.  To shape without altering.  To laugh, or to sit quietly in common shyness that was never expressed.  

 

more Tove

 

Tove Jansson

Dear Friends,

Let this next excerpt from Tove Jansson's Sun City be a warning to us:

It was not until her ninetieth year that Miss Ruthermer-Berkeley began to ask herself whether her long life and not been lacking in what was once called a heart's desire.  A much too rigorous upbringing may have had something to do with it, but essentially, she realized, it was all her own fault.  Without sense or consideration she had striven for perfection and thus had lived with constant anxiety, anxiety for everything left incomplete the day before- work, duties, conversations- and anxiety for the day to come, which had to be shaped to suit her wishes and the demands she made on herself.  Lost in the future and the past she had not been abele to live in her own moment.  It was really a great shame, an omission that had probably made no one happy.  

 

I hope you don't recognize yourself in this passage- as for me, well, I wasted miles and years on perfection and anxiety; but there is time, maybe to loiter and play yet left.

Keep an eye out for one more bit from Sun City in a future post- if you don't want me giving you these tiny spoonfuls, you know what to do!

 

delayed gratification

 

Tove Jansson*

Dear Y'all,

I have two things, from beloved author Tove Jansson for you.  I will send you the next one soon.  I want to spread out the loveliness, to make it last.

Making it last is why- when I first started reading her books, the three volume edition of Moomin comics that the library acquired 15 years ago or so, and then the wonderful Moomin books, and then, then the amazing books for whatever an "adult" is-  I did not rush to finish all her books in 1 or 2 years.  I was very sad to have read the last (as in, the only one I hadn't read yet) Moomintroll book, so I have to take care not to read what is left too quickly!  

I am not sure exactly how many are left to me now; I have for certain, two on my shelf, and one that I know of but do not have.  I guess, if there are say 5 more, and I live another 25 years I should read one every five years?  Ah, but even as I write that to you, I see the flaw: what about the unexpected early death!??  What about missing out entirely on the few that are left??  Well, this is the rush and roar of our gambling, gamboling lives, isn't it?  Here today and 5 books unread tomorrow!  Still, I don't want to be one of these manic over achievers, so, maybe I will read just the two books I have before the end of the year.

But, I digress:  Here is Tove Jansson from Sun City, & yes, you should run (but be careful of that bus when you cross the street!) to your library or bookshop so you can read the whole delicious thing.

There has to be time to think, thought Mrs. Morris, an opportunity to reflect.  The time that writing requires, a mute communication, would leave space for deliberation.  Almost everything we say is marked by haste and thoughtlessness, habit, fear, and the need to impress one another.  So much needless triviality, exaggeration, and repetition, so many terrible misunderstandings.

PS  

Do you suppose that I am only pacing myself like this because I want to feel superior in my emotionally intelligent plan for delayed gratification?  C'est possible.

*  I don't need to tell you that you want (desire deeply) to read a book by a woman that looks like this!

Lynx Boa (Self Portrait), 1974, Tove Jansson.

(See also, related:  Dodo: 4/28/2025)

T is for to do.

 

Dear Ones,

The issue of now, the urgency of now is always a thorn in my side.  It just keeps on pricking.  I have some time-based tasks today; and I did three of the things, and then, you know, as a reward I went to do the thing I wanted to do; to read through the letter T in The Alphabetical Diaries, and then, at "The fear...." I was struck by the obviousness of my thought patterns- I saw beyond task management to some notion that all my problems would be solved if I could only (fill in the blank)... and I knew I wanted to tell you this, and right away!  So that you might save yourself the entrapment of this kind of thinking.  Which is a long way of telling you that I interrupted myself, spurred on by the self-doubts of the narrator, to doubt myself in the same fashion, and to see, to have it dawn that this is how we are.

(Another interruption: a bird just came to the door, to eat insects from the spider web covered door frame).

(The elder cat is also miaowing).

The following of the thread through my discomfiture leads always to the oldest (and dearest?) of my ineptitudes- the one that I must have taken on as a 3 or 4 year old.  It proceeds like this: I think why didn't I do that task already?  And the answer is because you are foolish, lazy, etc.  Why am I foolish lazy, etc.?  Because I lack ambition, because I lack care, because, because, and why the lack of ambition?  Because, because, and it goes like this, all leading back towards the Ur failure, the Ur flaw.  Like a Greek tragedy.  It is because you (I, one, we) thought you did not fit in a way, we perceived a lack; criticized for a little something that you didn't or did have, and you think, in total sincerity and absolute mistakenness, that if you could just fix that thing, that Ur thing, all these other failings would cease to be.  All the problems of your inner world- relationships, contentedness, productiveness, self-worth- would evaporate in your sobriety, your eating discipline, your productive routine, your independence from sugar, caffeine, any manner of drugs or medications, your willful self-control, your optimism, your commitment to wellness, your non-smokingness, your fitness regime.  And here we are, trying as always, most abjectly & self-injuriously, to think of the whole generative life force of nature as being a thing to win at, to master.  

Yes, tears are appropriate here, because it is sad.  But, I hope, not hopeless.  May we see that our lives do not revolve around some ancient mistake or lack, may we feel that there is time enough to do some things; this or that, either or both, or neither, too.

the musical question

 

Dear Radio Dodo Audience,

Today's song asks so very hauntingly, very beautifully, are you with me now?  The answer:  I am.