Saturday 30 July 2011

Blog compulsion

"You haven't blogged for over a week", Staffan says. Yes, I know. Luckily, I have never committed myself to regular blogging so I don't go around tortured by anguish. I blog when I feel I have something to say. I have a line-up of topics in my mind: why Moll Flanders is a great novel (and not at all how you may remember it), and what a Dean is in Cambridge as opposed to everywhere else, and how much you learn about the history of shoes when making a roombox. However, the recent events in Norway have rendered me dumb. To blog about them is impossible because there are no words to describe my feelings. To blog about anything else is still more impossible and highly disrespectful. Yet I know that we will eventually "get over it" as we got over Estonia, 9-11, tsunami. Not in the sense of forgetting, not in the sense of going back to normal, because you can never go back to normal after a tragedy, whether large or small. But many people have repeated, in connection with all those horrors, that the best thing we survivors can do is to go on living and thus honour the dead. Not to allow fear dominate our existence. To raise our children, to produce great art (to everyone's ability), to tend our relationships, to go on being human.

So, My Dear Reader (if there is such a thing), just give me some time, I'll be back.

5 comments:

marly youmans said...

There is.

I have enjoyed reading your blog befor in a lurky sort of way, as I like a good many children's books.

About Norway: I was rather bothered at the way some people talked about those events on facebook... And this is all I could muster to say to them in reply:

It does not matter where it happened--does not even matter if some people don't know where Norway is on the map, or if other people are too distracted to really notice. The roots of sorrow and the need to grieve for our human family and the belief that goodness and truth shine in the dark are still the same. "Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness." — Anne Frank

I still do not think there is anything more that I could say, and I would not have said that much except that I was bothered into it...

And yet, despite all, I would still like to know what a roombox is.

Maria Nikolajeva said...

Thank you for your thoughtful comment, Marly.

A roombox is like a dolls' house, but it's just one room (in a box with an open front), which may be a shop or a scene from a book or your own office or anything. I have three proper dolls' houses, one Tudor, one Victorian and one modern, and I also have roomboxes that are a coffee shop, an art gallery, a nursery, a vegetable stall and an antique shop. I have made a Victorian drawing room, Lord Asriel's lab and a bridal shop which I gave away. Right now working on a shoe shop for a friend's birthday. I work primarily with recycled material and found objects.

Maria Nikolajeva said...

See some roombox pictures here
http://nikolajeva.blogspot.com/2011/08/roomboxes.html

Marly Youmans said...

Ah, now I know exactly what you mean! I have never heard them called "roombox" before, but it is a good name for them...

I have seen lots of old ones and some miniature new ones; I have not seen any that are new and made for one person as a gift--I'd love to see those, especially the book-inspired one.

We have only one marvelous dollhouse around here--a four-story row house with a scalloped top made by a carpenter uncle. It belongs to my daughter.

Marly Youmans said...

And now I shall go look at the link--hope to see Lord Asriel's room there!