Moominland Midwinter

The irony of your comment Rozniy is that as a child, I always identified with Moomintroll in the book 'Moominland Midwinter' which was one of the first books I ever read. I saw direct parrallels between me and my life as a ten year old boy (I only learned to read at age nine) with the Moomintroll awaking to find himself alone in a dark and silent winter world . I think this childish perception must be a common one for Hans Christian Andersen tapped into it with his story 'The Snow Queen'.

Characters in 'Moominland Midwinter' took on deeper significances for me. I began to identify people around me with characters from the story. Sometimes directly, other times symbolically. My friend Føns, with whom I fell in love but could never have became Snufkin (the dear friend who is always absent). My mother became, the Groke;


She seeks warmth and fire, but is unable to do anything but to put them out. Although she has a scary appearance and is dangerous to get close to due to the cold that she's radiating, she's not really evil... Just very lonely.

This last twenty four hours I've spent either catching up on sleep or sat beside my dying mothers bed. Sat beside the Groke and feeling every emotion under the sun as a child plays with building blocks. I was called in to the hospital this morning at 8am because my mother had had an anxiety attack. Since I last saw her on the 14th, she's deteriated rapidly and I expected her to die any time. She didn't and now I'm at home, my mind in a whirl of memories and conflicting emotions. I don't know whether to laugh or cry or howl at the moon. I feel like one of Dante's angels caught in the maelstrom and cast helplessly about.

As a child, growing up, I often hated my mother. It wasn't that she hit me or treated me bad, she was just that huge, dangerous entity who would later become The Groke in my child-mind. The empitome of the winter depression that I've suffered from my entire adult life. The insomnia and fear of an imagination that like Saurons eye never sleeps... More irony now that I think on it since I used to draw the udjat glyph as a sort of signiture back in the days when I signed all my work 'Ré99'.

I suppose every one, in some way projects their emotions onto the world around them. I just happened to do it using Tove Jansson's novel.

The only clarity I have from all this is that my turn will come too one day. Sooner or later I'll be the one lying helpless and dying and whether its fast or slow, painless or painful, the one and only thing that is going to matter is whether or not I have the comfort of looking back at my life and knowing it was a good life and the strength I hope that conveys. I have to hope that love is the answer for its the only answer I have. My mother is dying a good death, though slow and painful and sordid in its details because she is surrounded by people who despite all our differences and petty squabbles, love her.

In the mean time, my mind is floating in a kind of abstract daze but my body is like a clenched fist. I am in no doubt that I am going to pay for this when its over and done with. I can feel the stress building up inside me like a time bomb and my never-sleeping-imagination is conjuring up layer upon layer of private perdition in anticipation.