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[misonteijanvessa]

Christmas tradition and plants

This is just a short, no real reason post. Plants seem to be a central part of Christmas. Where I live, hyacinths are one of the flowers associated with Christmas. When the flowers open, they smell amazing, a sort of sweet, pure scent that makes the room smell good as well. I'm not sure if it is common in the rest of Europe or over the seas but it's my favourite of all plants used to decorate for Christmas. Although it's already the new year, they're sold on sale in the grocery stores here and I got a few for my home. These ones have not yet fully opened.

Christmas cactuses are also used and btw, if you buy one, you can take it from it's pot and replant it and have yourself a new life partner.

[misonteijanvessa]

Christmas tradition and plants

This is just a short, no real reason post. Plants seem to be a central part of Christmas. Where I live, hyacinths are one of the flowers associated with Christmas. When the flowers open, they smell amazing, a sort of sweet, pure scent that makes the room smell good as well. I'm not sure if it is common in the rest of Europe or over the seas but it's my favourite of all plants used to decorate for Christmas. Although it's already the new year, they're sold on sale in the grocery stores here and I got a few for my home. These ones have not yet fully opened.

Christmas cactuses are also used and btw, if you buy one, you can take it from it's pot and replant it and have yourself a new life partner.

[misonteijanvessa]

Christmas tradition and plants

This is just a short, no real reason post. Plants seem to be a central part of Christmas. Where I live, hyacinths are one of the flowers associated with Christmas. When the flowers open, they smell amazing, a sort of sweet, pure scent that makes the room smell good as well. I'm not sure if it is common in the rest of Europe or over the seas but it's my favourite of all plants used to decorate for Christmas. Although it's already the new year, they're sold on sale in the grocery stores here and I got a few for my home. These ones have not yet fully opened.

Christmas cactuses are also used and btw, if you buy one, you can take it from it's pot and replant it and have yourself a new life partner.

[misonteijanvessa]

Ginger Water

I felt like sharing this. I thought I would do a semi fast detox type thing today. The only thing missing from the photo is cellery but I'll be hitting the store later. In any case, it's finally below +16 here and it's sunny and very autumn-vibing and ginger water is what I drink nearly every day during the autumn/winter season to help (at least on a psychosomatic level) with blood circulation and metabolism and the immune system. For detoxing (bc I was sick and ordered in and ate gluten and feel like crap) I use the mixed green powder in the photo, which has chlorella, spirulina, wheatgrass, barleygrass and nettle and lemon with hot water. The ginger water was originally recommended to my mother by her acupuncture doctor.

Ginger Water Recipe

About 1cm of ginger cut in slices

Water enough to be boiled for 11minutes and leave you with something to drink. I use 1litre.

Put water to boil on low heat. Add ginger once the water is boiling and boil for 11minutes.

I don't know what the magic number 11 is about, but I don't question it :) Also, when I have my once a year obligatory flu, I use the ginger water to steam, with my head under a towel with the kettle. It helps losen whatever needs to come out and helps breathing.

-misonteijänvessa

[misonteijanvessa]

A random thought on chemistry, people and relationships

I don’t really look at mutual interests with people. Of course you need to share some common ground, like respect and boundaries in order to be able to communicate and share time and space. But wether it be a friend or something else, you liking the same band or artist or politician as me, is of no interest to me. If you happen to like similar things, cool. If not, that’d be even more interesting, to be given an opportunity to view the world with different insights and try to understand. People seem to emphasize common interests a lot for some reason. People are impressed by weird things like beauty or the fact that you share the same favorite animal. I find it too vague a basis for how you go about creating your friends, lovers and by default, family. I will have a lot of common interests and likes with people. What I look for is can I be myself with you. Do our chemistries find some sort of common ground to live around each other. Can I sit opposite you and lean my chin against the table and say nothing without being self conscious. I don’t care what you look like. What you look like to me, depends on how I look at you and wether I’ll look at you, depends on your energy. It’s with everyone. With some you go to bed, with some you don’t, but with all you use your time well in company that is suitable with your time. If I can be myself around you, I can be funny around you which means I can laugh with you. That’s really all I care about. Can I be crabby and tired with you and can I be happy and laugh with you. 

-misonteijänvessa

[misonteijanvessa]

The House That Jack Built by Lars Von Trier

I love Lars Von Trier’s films. Breaking The Waves was released in 1996, the year I was born and that was actually the first Lars Von Trier film I saw. I didn’t know it was Lars, I was a kid and only remember staying standing still in front of the television, while my parents were watching it. I remember the brown shades of the film.

My favorite is Melancholia but I can’t watch it often because of the feeling it leaves is really heavy. It is visually and narrtivelly incedibly beautiful and so is the music, Tristan Und Isolde opera’s prelude being the dominating piece. His films tend to have good soundtracks.

He seems to have an ability to bring out a sort of coarse, fine feeling in actors and actresses which is interesting when some of the ones he uses have only been mainly seen in big Hollywood films. He has great taste in them too although Matt Dillon really surprised me.

A random thing I’ve noticed in his films is the use of spoons and car trouble. Like in Melancholia and Nymphomaniac, there is car trouble with the limo getting stuck in the turn and with  Jerome’s motorcycle and car parking and it’s always men who fuck it up. Also in both films there are scenes to do with spoons like when Justine’s father takes the spoons and when Jerome dares Joe to put the spoons inside her. I don’t know if it is a conscious choice. I also love his analogies, the visual metaphors/quick clips he has started using by putting in between comparisons with animals and people.

And he has a very authentic, not buffered show of humanity and greed and lust and “morality”, cruelty and the way the mind can handle and decipher and calculate things but also on love and insecurity and need and how there rarely is any logic behind actions done in those states.

It’s terrible to explain art or how its experienced, it always sounds pretentious and stiff and stupid but anyway.

I really want to see this, he’s latest, The House That Jack Built particularly this part in the trailer made me want to see it. It made me laugh; it reminds me of a few people.

Link to trailer of The House That Jack Built: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwDpDEgN0uw

-misonteijanvessa

[misonteijanvessa]

Balcony Project

Avocado, Chili, Jade

Above is a photo of my still baby staged avocado tree (called Mort). I give him one glass of water every day. He does grow incredibly fast, I'm sure if I sat next to it longer I could see the process in real time. (And yes, avocados are one of the most ecologically unfriendly foods)

I let the plants out (on the balcony) in warm weather. Later I'll be planting a mango (the seed is in water at the moment), some zucchini, green beans etc to eat.

-misonteijänvessa

[misonteijanvessa]

Book Recommendation

Niemi by Juha Hurme

Niemi means peninsula or headland or point; basically an area of land by the shore. If you are Finnish speaking and into history, I recommend this. If you're Finnish speaking and not a history fan, I really recommend this. He writes of the history of the peninsula that would later become Finland; the life around from neanderthals to the Vikings all the way to 2017. It covers in a humoristic and light handed yet incredibly accurate (kudos for the background research that the book must have taken) way, for example, the birth of language, religion, inventing of tools, rituals of performance that have ebolved into mythologies and incantations central to Finnish identity (yet originating from ancient Egypt although the incantations and hexes are all ours) and the trips most of Finnish culture has travelled to get to the peninsula. So while the anchor geographically is the land just risen from underwater after ice age, the scope is global. (Now I know, people who follow buddhism in the name of free spirit and happiness haven't really studied their religions well.)

I used to be really into history as a kid. I loved going through our bookshelves. My mom had shelves and shelves filled with books about ceramics, paint works, sculptures, pop culture, sexuality in art, art history, just plain history, fantasy, biographies, fashion etc. In school I got off history because the way in which school books are written tend to make the subjects monotonous and they cover the very general war and economic history but not micro histories, which would have depicted a more in depth story of how people lived and what it was like and what they thought and felt etc. This book kinda made me feel nerdy about history again.

Juha Hurme's Niemi has won the 2017 Finlandia price for best fiction.