On moving by carrying boxes and by staying still for a long time

The pine cones in their natural inhabitat

Now it is done, we've touched all items we own or possess and packed them into 47 banana crates and wrappings. But not everything went into a storage, a large segment of things was seen as not relevant to our current life and several items such as university text books, a container filled with hand-painted plastic and/or metal warrior-figures (Warhammer Dark Elves to be precise) and three giant pine cones used as decoratives were discarded. Books into use at work by colleagues, figures into a local gameshop (they were slightly reserved about it until it became clear that they wouldn't need to pay anything, after which the box swiftly disappeared from sight) and the pine cones were dumped into the wild. But not without drama: I took the first of the three with me on our morning walk to Tapiola with Anna-Mari, selected an open spot in the forest and chucked it into the fresh and untouched snow hoping to see some squirrel or rabbit tracks as they went sniffing on the thing. The plot worked - in the afternoon the pine cone had gone but instead of baby-rabbit prints, eager child-footprints were leading from the road directly to the cone and back.Next morning I repeated the bite, throwing the next pine cone a couple of meters further to the sparkling snow. On the afternoon the cone stood intact but I didn't get devastated but continued with a third morning, third cone and third distance and behold, in the afternoon both cones were gone and there were again eager child-footprints bumbling through the snow leading in a very determined way to the pinecones and back.

Eager child-footprints on the right and the second cone on the left

For the fourth morning there were no cones left so I equipped myself with a decorative branch we had had in the living room. My avid plan of exiting communication with an unknown eager-footed gatherer was however sabotaged by a merciless cuddly puppy who attacked me while I was innocently walking to plant the fourth item. First the puppy pretended to be in need of some cuddling and play but as I started patting, she instantly grabbed the decorative branch right from my hand and after few jolly jumps crushed it into a pile of unidentifiable and non-decorative rubbish.

The fiendish twig-crusher

After moving became travelling, which regardless of the high speed feels like sitting in a chair for 24 hours doing nothing. Or then doing something and as I'd never read a single line of James Joyce, I grabbed Ulessys for a light plane reading. After a couple hours of munching I still hadn't read a single line of James Joyce as the book started with a 89-page introduction to the book written by a professor of a sort. While digesting on the analysis of Joycean Joy of text I suddenly had a revelation on what Readers Digest is all about. I've now read 90 pages of analysis on Joyce and most likely can understand more of that 90 pages than the awaiting 900 of the book itself, which is apparently the most important novel (and according to the introduction actually defining the whole concept of a novel) ever written in English. The book is seemingly so important and groundbreaking that conferences are held to discuss and argue about the different typesets used and mocking the shocking mistakes in some printings where gaelic word "sláinte" has been written without the accent (unthinkable!) and "im barr" instead of "mbarr" (or "i m barr"). I'm not sure whether I will ever finish this brick as I can hardly understand a single sentence in the book. Even rather short sentences such as "O!" and "Ah!" are actually far too deep for me, as the professor analyzes:
The seemingly endless 'O!' sound of the preceding passage is now a curt echo, as if in hollow mockery of Bloom's earlier excitement; and it is fitting that the very line which describes his recognition of her lameness should itself limp along, with stops and starts after each word or two, as if to re-enact the difficulty of Gerty MacDowell's movements. The innocent, open sound of 'O!' is again repeated two pages later to record Boylan's gasp of pleasure with Bloom's wife, when indeed it is over-ridden by the more knowing, self-satisfied grunt of 'Ah!'.

Johannes not understanding what he is reading at the airport

With Joys, -J