Autumn Song

Tove Jansson was a Swedish-speaking Finnish novelist, painter, illustrator, and comic strip author. She was the author of, among other works, the Moomin books. She was also a beautiful poet, and among many other things wrote the lyrics to this wonderful song "Höstvisa" ("Autumn Song") set to music by Erna Tauro.

I always prefer it with the Finnish group Cumulus, because they sing it in the authentic Finland Swedish dialect.




Autumn Song (English translation by Bock McMillan)

The road home was very long
and I have met no one
Now, the evenings are getting cool and late.
Please comfort me a little,
for now I'm pretty tired,
and at once so terribly alone.
I never noticed before,
that the darkness is so great,
thinking of all that one should.
There are so many things
I should have said and done,
and there is so very little I did do.  
Hurry my love, hurry to love, 
days getting darker by the minute.
Light our candles, it's close to night,
soon the flowering summer is over.
 
I'm searching for something 
that maybe we forgot about
and that you could help me to find. 
A summer is passing,
it is always so short,  
it is the dream of all you could have won.  
You will perhaps sometime, ere twilight turns blue 
before the meadows are dry and empty. 
Perhaps we will find each other, 
maybe we will find 
a way to get everything to bloom. 

Hurry my love, hurry to love,
days getting darker by the minute. 
Light our candles, it's close to night,
soon the flowering summer is over.

Now the winds of a storm out there 
and closed is the door of summer, 
it is too late to wonder and look.
Maybe I love less than I did before 
but more than you ever will know. 
Now we see all the lighthouses
around the autumn of coastline 
and hear the waves slowly wandering.
Only one thing is important 
and that's heart's content 
and to be together with each other.

Hurry my love, hurry to love, 
days getting darker by the minute.
Light our candles, it's close to night,
soon the flowering summer is over.

Nakna avatarer i SL 109

 

As usual on most Fridays during workweeks I have been hit by "The Friday coma" as I call it. Which for me means that I am really, really tired after the workweek, perhaps more so now than earlier due to the medication.

However before going off to bed tonight I checked my e-mail and saw a message from Blanche Argus where she asked me if my project for peace and art in SecondLife "Nakna avatarer i SL" ("Naked avatars in SL") was still accepting entries. I also saw she had sent something to my inventory. So of course I had to log in to SecondLife to check what it was.

When I got inworld I received this beautiful and sensual picture of Blanche Argus and her soon to be husband - if I have read the blogs correctly - Ob Almendros.

First let me send my warmest congratulations to the two lovebirds. Love is a rare gift, take good care of it!

Then let me finish by telling you all that "Nakna avatarer i SL" will continue to publish pictures in this project as long as this blog exists, so do not hesitate to send me more pictures.

My Plans for Halloween

I have been mulling, tossing and turning what to do for Halloween in SecondLife. Now I - for the first time - can safely say that my real life solved my problems in SecondLife.

Instead of spending my Halloween-weekend with you, my lovelies, I will be going to Copenhagen tomorrow with two old friends and their spouses.

We are going to wine and dine at the great - and still extremely affordable - wonderful little restaurant called "Den lille fede" ("The little fat guy").

The five of us have been there together a few times before, but this will be my first night on the town since Ars passed away.

We have already preordered the five courses menu with wine. I am so looking forward to this outing into real life with these nice friends.

Let me show you pictures of four of the courses, I found the pictures on the restaurants site.

Absolutely mouth watering, don´t you think so too?

Change of Plans

Due to recent events, I do not think it will be possible to go through with the contest in the way I outlined the other day. I have therefore decided to cancel it in that form. 

Instead I will ask - or perhaps force - a few of my friends and family from outside Swedish SecondLife to help me reach a decision on which picture should receive the prize of L$ 25 000.

So no there will be no jurors, no public voting and no party!

A Slow Farewell

After the events yesterday I feel like I have a really bad hangover. You know the kind where you wake up with a throbbing head, shivering body and an awful bitter taste in your mouth.

I am guessing that yesterday in a way will mean a slow farewell to people who have given meaning to my life, which is always a sad thing.

This calls for some Mauro Scocco



A Slow Farewell

And I wish I could say this is just a phase we´re going through 
A storm we have to ride out
And I wish I could say that we´ll make it together 
That everything will work out eventually 
But how do you say to someone, that the road ends here 
And how do you say to someone, that your heart longs to be out
 
And I cannot lie to you,you know me all too well 
But if you look me in the eyes 
They are saying a slow farewell 
(So slow ... a slow farewell)
 
Here is your king now without crown 
Indifferent and tired
A sad figure, whom you never really met
And when I look over my shoulder at the years that just went by
I see everything that was lost but also all that we got 
And what do you say to someone who wants to start again 
When it is already too late;when one is already leaving 

And I cannot lie to you,you know me too well 
But if you look me in the eyes 
They are saying a slow farewell 
(So slow ... a slow farewell) 

I took my hands in the name of love 
You can win everything you lose sometimes 
You fall over, but you rise again
It is not over, it's just the way it feels 
And my heart wants, and the heart can 
Do wonders sometimes 
But the road that we travel on - it leads nowhere 

And I cannot lie to you, you know me too well 
So whatever we call it 
It is just a slow farewell,
mmm Ooha slow farewell! 

So when you look over the shoulder at the years that just went by 
Do you see anything that was lost or everything, oh everything we got.

A Witch-Hunt

Certain events lately make me think of the Swedish word "häxjakt", which means"witch-hunt", so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Here are a few excerpts from the long article.

Although I am sure this will alienate a few I cannot refrain myself from posting this. I have often thought about how I might react in situations like this. I find, I am learning more about myself as I go along.

I have always found it strange, this need in us humans to externalize the responsibility for our own failures and shortcomings as humans, as businessmen or as avatars - whatever.

Well now that I have at least called out what I see, I am awaiting the reactions.
....... 

"A witch-hunt is a search for witches (...), often involving moral panic, mass hysteria and lynching, but in historical instances also legally sanctioned and involving official witchcraft trials.

The classical period of witchhunts in Europe and North America falls into the Early Modern period or about 1480 to 1700, spanning the upheavals of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 40,000 to 100,000 executions.

In modern terminology 'witch-hunt' has acquired usage referring to the act of seeking and persecuting any perceived enemy, particularly when the search is conducted using extreme measures and with little regard to actual guilt or innocence. It is used whether or not it is sanctioned by the government, or merely occurs within the "court of public opinion".

The first such use reported by the Oxford English Dictionary dates to 1932. Another early instance is George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (1938). The term is used by Orwell to describe how, in the Spanish Civil War, political persecutions became a regular occurrence.

The term is used when a hunt for wrongdoers becomes abused, and a defendant can be convicted merely on an accusation. 

Use of the term was popularized in the United States in the context of the McCarthyist search for communists during the Cold War, which was discredited partly through being compared to the Salem witch trials.

From the 1960s, the term was in wide use and could also be applied to isolated incidents or scandals, specifically public smear-campaigns against individuals. The McMartin preschool trial of 1984 to 1990 is another iconic example of a moral panic which saw day care providers accused of what was dubbed "satanic ritual abuse", i.e. the charge of physical and sexual child abuse out of an alleged Satanist motivation. The case and the associated media coverage was frequently termed a witch-hunt by commentators."

What About A Contest?

I was thinking - pffft yeah I do do that sometimes - about this several times today. In the back of my head or actively.

Let me just toss out this idea to you all and let's see how it flies.

There are in my possession 108 contributions of wonderful pictures in my project "Nakna avatarer i SL" ("Naked avatars in SL").

Even if we take away my own contribution, my contribution of Ars, my contributions of my two alts, Wild and Hedda, the contribution that was withdrawn and the entry number 108 - which really is just a sneak photo at an event, there are still 102 amazing pictures left.

I love them all for different reasons, but still I think that some are on the whole a tad bit better than the rest, and one could possibly even be considered the best in show.

What if I offered to pay L$ 25 000 to the winner, the rest get nothing.

I think if we could get a jury consisting of five people who were willing to go through all the 102 contributions and each give the ten pictures they like best points - in falling order from first to last - 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 point(s).

From the jurors votes we could select the five or ten that get the highest total scores put these pictures out for popular voting. Everyone who wanted to take part would then be free to vote once on the three contributions they liked the best giving them the points 12, 10 and 8. Voting would of course be free of cost.

From the sum of the popular vote we would award the prize to the picture that got the highest score and the one on the winning picture would receive the prize money on Christmas Day, December 25th 2010.

For the final prize ceremony we could have a party on the field by my barn. I could get a DJ or two to play for us.

Just a rough idea yet! Please tell me what you think about it and if you have any suggestions for changes.

----
P.S. I would of course not be a juror or take part in any other way than donating the money and the use of the field and paying for the DJ´s.