World of more

St. Basil the Great is doing fine, requires more water now, it seems.

I've been reading a book by John Nash called "Enough - Breaking Free from the World of More" (in Finnish: "Riittää jo - irti maailmasta jossa kaikkea on ihan liikaa", Atena). The main idea is that due to the relatively quickly developed culture of humans, our brains have parts in them which are still pretty much from the Stone Age and haven't evolved that much - therefore we are programmed to think that all this food, stuff, success and happiness that we have accumulated can be taken away from us any minute, and we must always get more, more, more, to feel more secure.

Back in the good ol' days when a few hunter-gatherers roamed the woods and fought for life and death, it was important to be the most clever one and have most food stacked in your cave for the bad, rainy days - the survival of the fittest, you know..

Now, we are still stacking our closets and garages and cupboards with stuff we don't need, stuffing ourselves with more food than we actually need to stay alive and well, work our asses off because it's supposed to be somehow cool to always say to people that "I'm soooo busy at work", and aim for Bigger Happiness even though we should be quite content with what we've got now. And, by doing this, we all know what we are doing to the natural resources of this planet.

All of this in order to keep up with the Joneses, with the needs that are instilled into our minds. It's no use blaming The Society or Advertising or the Modern Culture (the famous Them, root of all evil) for this problem - it's just that our brains are programmed to act like this, and marketing people have found out where to strike with most power. You are nothing if you don't own this or that gadget, if you don't care about which shampoo you use, or if, god forbid, you want to drop out of the rat race and don't want more money, more power, more of everything.

The message is very simple: it's way past the Stone Age, dudes, we have enough of everything and consuming more or shopping for more will not make us any happier - and we should somehow de-program our minds to settle for less, be content with what we have. And in this context, the terms 'to settle' and 'to be content with' should not have any negative connotations.

Well, I guess I'm somehow carrying these ideas out in my own little way, now finally implementing into reality what I have been feeling over the past years in my private thoughts - by letting go of my 'safe' job (and just who's job is safe anyway, these days...) I'm also happy to renounce the mentality where nothing is never enough and more-more-more is always required.

It was fun while it lasted, sure, and brought along with it many good experiences, but in the end I'm happy to let go.

* * *

To end this posting with higher note after the Thursday Sermon, here's a May 1st joke for you:

Two cannibals were eating a clown. One said to the other: "I don't know about you but this sure tastes funny to me".

Yeah, I know. It's so last season :)

Thé

I've been reading, or more like gulping, a book on tea ("Tee teematka",by Helena Petäistö, in Finnish). It's such a nice book - plenty of delicious descriptions on the best Afternoon Teas found in various European locations (mostly in grand hotels of the capitals, but of course also in actual tea houses and tea rooms), a lot of history (sometimes very bloody measures have been taken in order to guarantee tea to the salons and chippendale tables of the high and mighty), and personal accounts on different tea varieties. The lady who wrote this book is a long-time foreign correspondent of Finnish television, she's located in Paris, and is an expert on all things French.

Being known as a not-so-avid coffee drinker (meaning no coffee for me, like, ever...), I've lately taken up different coffees, and grown to somehow even like them - I guess more important is the mood and athmosphere of the café or coffee house than the actual drink itself. Although I must admit that the boost of caffeine for someone like me who's not used to it is quite something, and at times can provide good extra energy for a short period of time.

Due to this background of not drinking coffee, I've been always offered tea at parties etc., and mostly it has tasted bad, bitter and bland. The Lipton Yellow Label, which gets a special mention in the book for the most awful thing that has ever happened to tea, is the worst of them all. Rumour has it that it's made from the stuff they sweep off the floor after finishing the production of the better teas. Eww!

Anyways, this book has been really inspirational - she's comparing teas with wines, that it's possible to find as subtle and multiple differences between different teas (black, green, white, yellow..) as a wine-buff can find among red wines, for example.

If you take time to prepare the tea properly (quality and temperature of water is the key, and after that make sure that the brewing time is correct), it's really an experience worlds apart from the 'place-the-yellow-labelled-bag-into-boiling-hot-water-and-let-it-simmer-there-until-taste-is-unbearably-bitter' method.

Just imagine a fresh pot of delicious tea, some scones with thick cream and strawberry jam, cucumber sandwhiches, cakes and pastry.... Makes you want to jump on a plane and hurry off to London/The Hague/Dublin/Frankfurt/Vienna immediately (just to mention some of the best places mentioned in the book to have your afternoon tea in the old fashioned way).

In the meantime, you can also feast you eyes on the web pages of the top Finnish tea place. The calm effect of this alone will convert anybody from the rush of caffeine into a Slow Movement supporter and tea drinker.

I know what you did last Christmas...

...and this Christmas, as well (besides eating, sleeping, and knitting).

Merriment to you all during Christmas time - it seems to be a white one, after all!

The sleeve #1 is coming along nicely - I've decided to have this cardigan with 'bracelet-length' sleeves (if that's what it's called - as opposed to 3/4 length, you see). Like this:


So leave it just a couple of centimetres above the wrist, to accentuate the delicate wrist bone. Luckily I thought early enough of the matching of pattern - since this will be knit round with both body and sleeves from armpits onwards, the pattern would have to match at the place where the body and sleeves meet, of course.. Again, brilliant mathematical genius at work :)

This is what I started and finished during the weekend:


..and I still don't know what to think of it. I got really high hopes when starting (due to her previous masterpiece, "What I loved"), and partially those hopes were fulfilled - the book was touching and complex. But. Almost just too many things, plots and people, happening all the time - it got almost too much to handle, and somehow some of those stories felt like glued-on, artificial coloring, if you get my drift. There's an uncanny similarity between Siri Hustvedt in this book, and her husband's (Paul Auster) work (which has over the years lost most of it's novelty due to too much repetition, book after book - too much of a good thing, and all that...). Strange things, coincidences, happening to people, the basic storyline of 'a lonely guy comes against some secret/sinister/strange happening/person/phenomena and then gets deeper and deeper into whatever it is'. I don't know.. - at least she got me thinking, and managed to write many sentences which really touched me on a personal level. That's always worth something, yes indeed.