Hindbrain, energy, etc.

[mrissa]

I'm sure you've all seen the video of the Helsinki Complaints Choir by now, but I just wanted to say: I love being a Finnophile. My hindbrain apparently had a very good idea what it was doing when it launched me on this very strange sequence of obsessions. It makes me happy.

Trust the hindbrain. I am reminding myself of this as I fix up the bits and pieces of the last few projects and take a deep breath before hurtling headlong into the next. The hindbrain may be a good deal of trouble along the way, but there's worse trouble when I argue.

Last night timprov and I got Chinese/Vietnamese food, and my fortune cookie said, "Avoid scattering your energies." Aheh. Yah, all right, cookie. At this point it's more a matter of, "Gather your scattered energies," so that's what I'm trying to do. Before the cookie brought it up, I might add. I don't take life instruction from pastries. Well -- not from pastries that mediocre, anyway.

I am distracted by something shiny -- a box! for me! -- and then there will be a host of practicalities to be addressed.

Oh, and on the subject of this weekend's poll: air? Really, air? I guess you learn something new every day, or if you don't my dad gets annoyed, but -- air? All right...I'm not surprised to find that I'm apparently far more radioactive than the lot of you, but the air and the style/voice things were total surprises. Which served the entertaining purpose, of course.

Comments

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I think so. In the air/swords connotation. I could describe air in all sorts of ways which wouldn't suit you at all, but the sense of words and decisions and deliberation, yes, in having your self be in line with (as opposed to perceiving a conflict with) your intellect, and also in having a--a light touch.

I had not previously seen the Helsinki Complaints Choir, and am completely charmed.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Did you mean air/words? Because if I'm triggering an air/swords connotation, it's new to me but...pretty cool, actually.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Hee. No, I meant swords. I was thinking about tarot. There's an at least rough association between the four suits and the four elements, at least the way I use them and learned them: air - swords (words, decisions, will, intellect, judgment, analysis), water - cups (emotions, relationships), fire - wands/rods (passion, inspiration, impulse), earth - pentacles/coins (work, money, stability, craft, domesticity).

People often ascribe creativity to fire, but I think that really creativity can be in any of the suits/elements. Take for instance the way matociquala discusses her creative process. There's a huge amount of earth in that - work, the kind of skill that can be learned, studied, honed, and degrees of mastery approached - and some air. There's probably fire in the experience of writing some of the time, but that doesn't make it into the conversation as often.

Swords, as a suit, have a disproportionately high number of the cards people generally think of as negative (the three of swords is pretty universally read as 'heartbreak,' the eight as 'the cage' and the nine as 'night terrors,' just for examples) but I think it's more appropriate (and more interesting) to read them as double-edged. There's a lot of power there. Air seems soft, but a storm is one of the most destructive forces in the world.

And I kind of do see that in you. Not just the words, which is pretty obvious, though no less true for all that, but the swords. If I think about you getting angry, for instance - which I don't think I've every really read you talk about being - I would imagine it as being a bit frightening because it would have all of your thought behind it - not a fiery flare-up and die-down, but things seeming calm until one suddenly realized that 'calm' doesn't mean 'not angry.'


Also, of course - not related to swords, so much as to elements - air is the medium for scents.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ahh, swords notionally rather than the physical objects. Got it.

And you have nailed me-angry rather perfectly, fortunately or not. If I'm ranting, things are still mostly okay. When I'm really angry, things go very quiet and very polite and very, very calm.

Happily for all concerned, I don't get angry much.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Air and the scent-focus stuff?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ahhh. That could well be. I may be more aware of the literal air around me than many people.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Hm. I was reacting very viscerally when I answered that survey, and the combination of ethereal and earthy seemed to fit with your online voice (IRL may be different).

You have a charming, intriguing way of moving lightly between subjects (air), with a definite emphasis on home (e.g. family, baking, doggers), which I connect with earth (hm again: earth = home? - that's what I get for reacting viscerally).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That sort of survey is about reacting viscerally. I just didn't expect it.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

I chose air because I associate it with the intellect (too long studying neo-pagan stuff) and you're very very smart.

I hadn't seen the choir either and it was lovely. Made me laugh out loud. Esp. the bit about Finnish being a hard language. I should tap your brain someday for a good guide to recent Finnish history. I think Jordin's family used to be Finnish and I'm a bit curious. They think they're Russian just because his great-grandfather emigrated from Russia to Canada. But Kare is a not uncommon name in Finland and the village in Russia that the family came from is not far from Finland. However, as that's western Russia, WWII left no records....

MKK

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I met Jordin once for about five seconds at a con and can tell you with complete certainty: he is Karelian. If you stuck a funny wool hat on him, he could appear on tourism posters for Karelia. He is just that Karelian. (I have had cause to pay attention to Finnish sub-ethnicities and provincial identities, with these books. One of my POV characters is Karelian.)

It was all Russia for awhile, and then part of Karelia was with Finland where it belonged, and then the Soviets ate the rest in WWII. It was just astonishing: 436,000 Karelians, 12% of the population, got up and left at the beginning of the Winter War. They got resettled into the general Finnish population -- by the end of the Winter War and the Continuation War (known to the rest of the world as WWII...), there were unfortunately many farms that no longer had farmers to occupy them, in other parts of Finland, and of course modern industry was taking off. So there were places the Karelians could go when the war turmoil was over. But it was the equivalent, in terms of percentages of population, of the rest of the US absorbing all of the people in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and part of New Jersey. The Soviets tried to move people from the southern republics up with very little preparation, to fill the newly empty area. It did not work very well.

Max Jakobson tends to be good for Finnish history, and Fred Singleton I'm thinking? I will look further if you like. It's not easy to find stuff, unfortunately. Finland is not Scandinavian enough to get covered in a lot of Scandinavian history -- different linguistic base and the time as a Grand Duchy under the tsar, I guess -- and not enough under the Soviet sphere in the 20th century/too much Scandinavian influence to get grouped either with Estonia and Hungary as bits of linguistic similarity or with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland for geographic similarity. It's part of what makes Finland interesting, but research is non-trivial.

If it was Jordin's great-grandfather and I'm guessing ages right, do you know if he had a communist connection? Because "Finnish social hall" is more or less synonymous with "communist party gathering," before the Russian Revolution. Some of that lingered even into the '20s and mid-'30s, once Marshal Mannerheim and the Whites had sorted things out with the Reds, but after the Winter War and the Continuation War, communism died pretty thoroughly with a lot of Finn immigrants to N.Am.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

i said water for you by process of elimination. earth was my second choice, and fire and air didn't seem right at all. and i just completely punted on the elements. :) i mainly remembered my high school boyfriend going, "how is this apple more ORGANIC than the other? they're all carbon-based." smart 11th-graders are fun that way.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I still occasionally relapse and have that organic/inorganic mumble to myself in the grocery store. "Do not buy inorganic produce! Silicon lettuce is very bad for you! No boron peas!"