“There was always drama on her footsteps”

Sometime ago I stumbled across a quotation by Jane Austen: “Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings” (or actually the form of the quotation was “her life became a succession of busy nothings”). The picture that Jane Austen paints of her heroines life with that little sentence is somewhat chilling in the emptiness it reveals but at the same time it is also wonderfully dramatic and strangely elating.

The line prompted me to a quest of making up a one-liner that would somehow describe me or my life as poetically as hers did. That is how I came up with “there was always drama on her footsteps”.

For sometime I reveled in the sentence, repeating it over and over like the name of a new lover. All in all, I was quite pleased with myself. I felt a new, more lyrical aura around myself had risen.

But as I am a person with some sort of  lite commitment issues (I could never make an all top something lists as I feel if you do those you need to stick by them  for ever and ever, and I need to be able to maintain my freedom to change my mind on stuff), and appetite for diversion so when I was faced (in these uncertain times I may add) with the choice of making the sensible decision or the not-so-sensible decision, I naturally opted for the latter.  And that is how I discovered (or rather came into realization of one aspect of my personality)  “she was never one to shy away from an adventure”.  (She being me.)

With a sense for drama and a taste for adventure on my side, I think am pretty well set on the tag line front. And life.

ps.

I do not I deliberately seek to create drama around me, and I  certainly  like my relationships with friends and family to be even-tempered and mellow (and for the most part and most of the time they really are) but perhaps I do tend to respond to things and situations (life) with somewhat of a poetic approach or an excessive zest.

I would also like to add, that am not about making irresponsible or poor choices. It is just that if an opportunity to see the world or live life knocks on my door am apt to say yes.

When dishes need washing, the washer goes blogging

Or so I  thought a few days ago when the number of clean coffee mugs was going down at a rate that suggested a  instant merge of water, detergent, a dish brush and some elbow grease was needed . (I even advertised my upcoming post as my status in a well-known online community as I was convinced that building pressure from more fronts than one would surely result in a text (the other front being myself) as I usually thrive under pressure.)

As I sat down with the intention to write (or rather finish yet another batch of beginnings) about recent events that have occupied my mind, I noticed that the subjects that really got me going were once again, yes you guessed it, cleaning and blogging.

“Is that it? Is that all I can write about? Blogging and cleaning! Cleaning and blogging?” I was shouting at myself when I came to a halt with the realization of the most chilling kind  anyone can experience: I have become  my father.

My father, like me apparently, has two genres of stories he tells. The first genre usually takes place in a factory where he worked as a “process designer / engineer” of sorts (the title does not translate really) and usually those stories beside being full of eccentric personae, that I have never met but have heard of so many times that I feel like they are almost family, are also full of technical details and minute process descriptions. These stories, given the right mindset of the receiving end, can sometimes be somewhat entertaining, whereas the second genre stories seldom are and indeed are not meant to be such. I call these narrations “the dangerous situations in traffic”-stories.

“The dangerous situations in traffic” – stories are a specific breed of stories that are very much place, time and situation bound. Obviously, the plot is simple, and always the same: my father has witnessed a dangerous situation in traffic or has almost been part one due to negligence or foolhardiness of a fellow driver (or pedestrian etc).

Place and the situation where these stories are told are always the same: upon collecting me from the railway station when I have come to visit my parents. The forte of these stories is in the repetition.

The first time I hear of “the dangerous situation in traffic” is when we are sitting in the car at the railway station parking lot waiting our turn to get out. The second time the story is summarized, is when there is a situation that bears some resemblance to the original. (Really, there does not have to be much in common to trigger the words from my fathers´ lips.) The third time the tale is told is when we actually pass the place where the situation took place, this time explained very thoroughly and in detail. And finally, the fourth round of the story begins when we get home and my father repeats it to my mother. (But this does not happen before my mother has asked me (while am taking my jacket off) “how was the trip” and “was the train full? Did you get a seat?”)

(I have been hearing these traffic stories, well basically the one story for a good fourteen years. On average I visit my parents once a month. Fourteen times twelve times four is..what…six hundred seventy two. That´s how many times at least I´ve heard of dangerous situations in traffic. You´d think that make me terrified of driving a car! You are right, it absolutely does, am terrified every time I´m in the same car with my father when he´s driving. Wouldn´t you be, with that track record of almosts. The funny thing is, he taught me how to drive, but that´s another story.)

The similarities do not end here. We are alike in the way we tell stories:  we fill our stories with unessential (albeit interesting?) bits and pieces of information and embellishment, we rarely go straight to the point (they call it the storytelling for a reason!) and our stories generally are relatively lengthy to say the least. Oh, we also stray from the topic easily as the story we are telling usually has its´roots or is connected to another story and in order for the listener to be fully able to appreciate (or understand) the story, those must be incorporated in the thread (hence the length). We  can come up with quite concise and clever one-liners (or two), but that´s not the same.

When it comes to storytelling, there is no middle ground. It´s nothing or all. Like father, like daughter, I guess.

post scriptum

I would like to add that I have only the utmost love and respect for both my parents that truly are good and funny people that have lot of interesting stories of their own). Even though they do drive me crazy regularly (father especially, mother not that much). I would also like to say, that my father is a good driver even though he sometimes confuses his build with that of an owl (rotating head, you see where I´m going with this? Head, traffic, situations etc).

Blogging emptiness

Isn´t is strange that when you are supposed to be doing something, there is always something else more interesting or rewarding to be done. And you know that if you only could be doing the thing you are not suppose to be doing, the results would be magical. But as soon as you could be doing the other thing, instead of the first thing: numbness hits you. I am of course talking about blogging.

I have not posted anything for a while as I have been busy with (can you guess with what) writing yet another essay for the seminar. (Truth to be told I have not been writing as much as contemplating writing and the ever impeding deadline. In the end 9 weeks of “writing” culminated in 2 days of frantic grinding out words but little content.)

When I was supposed to be writing the essay, many many posts were started, not finished though. That would happen in a mere moment when the essay would be finished. Or so I thought.

Now I have been staring at my little embryos of a blogs for couple of weeks and nothing is happening. Instead I am drawn to cleaning (again?!), reading detective stories, playing scrabble in french, dreaming of distant lands & new blogs (can you imagine!) and thinking of starting my own business.

Oh well, what is a mademoiselle to do, except publish this one and continue staring. And maybe, just maybe a new post will be born.

Blogging anxiety

I´ve only started to blog recently & one of my main reasons to start it was to avoid doing other things that needed to be done. I thought this would be nice diversion.Ha! Never have I been so wrong.

Even though I have written only one proper thing (just posted it) I think I am already suffering from blogging anxiety syndrome. You think you should write often (as obviously people are waiting with bated breath what is to come), and you have the ideas, but, nothing seems to be good, interesting, smart, funny or whatever enough to be actually posted. Then comes the late night calls to friends: listen to this, can I say this, what should I do, can I post it already and at the same time you realize the err of your ways: you never should have told anybody about the blog…

So, dear reader, despite all this, I hope to that you´ll find your way again to Mademoiselle Clouseau. Mademoiselle is waiting & promises to try to post more often.

About the blog & author

• Blog:This blog is about nothing specific & all in general. How original, you all shout with excitement! But that´s how it is.

• Author: 20 something and then some, female.

• Lives in: Helsinki, Finland

• Is: University student & freelance producer for a new media advertising agency.

• loves (amongst other things): to laugh, hang out with friends & family, absurd aspects of life, opera, movies, litterature, champagne, good food, comments in parentheses, shoes, handbags…

• doesn´t like: cleaning (washing, dusting, vacuuming etc), winters that are not proper (give me snow, give me – degrees!), virtual beverages, stupidity, empty speeches that fool no one, acting up

• is obsessed with: cleaning devices & detergents (despite my dislike of the action itself).

• dreams of: exotic places, maid or au-pair, big kitchen with table for at least 20 persons, walk-in closet, a pair of pumps I saw in a magazine the other day (as there always will be lovely shoes to dream of, every day)…

So this is how it begins

One simply starts to write. That´s not too hard. But what is hard (I´ve come to notice after 37,5 minutes of staring at the screen) is to continue writing.

Decision to start a blog was quite a whimsical idea on my part. I am a person who can not commit to taking vitamins every day (not if my life depended on it) let alone write a journal. But something had to be done: there were dishes to wash, essays to write, clothes to iron, etc. So naturally I had to think something to do in order not to have to do things mentioned above (& one can spend only a very limited time on Facebook per day).

As you, my dear reader, have probably already noticed, I a) love parentheses b) am not a native english speaker ergo not a writer either (my sincere apologies for spelling & grammatical errors) c) obviously have delusions of grandeur (why else write in english except in hopes of attracting large & devouted worldwide following).

You might want to know little bit more about yours truly.

Sex: female (which some of you might already have deducted from the title).

Age: 20 something and then some ( I was born in the seventies, I give you that much).

Living: in Helsinki, Finland. (Not born there though)

I think that is enough, for now at least. I do not think that I am ready yet for a fullblown (or even semi) blog exhibitionism.

( d) have a very short attention span judging from this post.)

I hope, dear reader, that you will find your way back to my humble abode again.

Sincerely yours,

Mademoiselle Clouseau