Things which Make me Happy…

The repulsive dog-vomit published by HS last week really bothered me (ref. to my previous post), then some personal hate-mail, the death of a someone dear to me… Put it this way: I’ve had better weeks than the previous one. I really have.

So I thought: I want to share and write something positive. Show that life is not only gloomy and dark — but that there are other things; things happening which really make me happy — and somehow make it easier to stand all the shit which sometimes gets poured over you. Small things, but perso­nally very important. People who care and who make a diffe­rence. I’d like to mention two of them here — a sort of “thank you” and giving credit where it is due.

I always complain that there is no multi­media worth mentioning published in this country. And then just by coinci­dence, I come across this one. The piece is called A Decision — a small, simple linear story describing the difficulty of choosing between a life or an abortion. Done brilliantly by Lotta-Liina Salonen in the University of Tampere.

Unfor­tu­nately this version is in Finnish only, but let me translate to you the intro­duction, so you get the feel of it.

“Making a decision is a journey — a travel from a beginning to an end or back to the beginning. A decision is not static stand-still, but a movement along an axis of yes, maybe or no. It’s going round in circles, pulling back and forth, running here and there. It can be an uncer­tainty which tears you apart- you go round and round when all the options scare you.

This is a story of one difficult decision. It begins with a positive pregnancy test and ends with an abortion.”

I had the honor of teaching Lotta-Liina two years ago. She is one of the brightest and most focused minds I have ever had the pleasure of teaching — and I learned a lot myself during our brief encounter. I publish her work here in this blog with her permission.

Although I perso­nally had nothing to do with this particular piece I also sense a small pinch of pride: this is my student, maybe there is a hint of something I managed to teach her , trans­ferred into the creation of this poignant story. As I said, she really focuses in what she does and I can only admire her beautiful visual narrative.

Yes, there are things which I might have done a bit diffe­rently (see, the teacher in me never sleeps.… ;-) ), but they are totally irrelevant, minor things and I have no reason to talk about them here. I only mention this as to say that I make no claim as this to be perfect — if anything ever is — but it’s about the best piece of multi­media I have ever seen done in this country. I got goose­bumps when I saw it for the first time — and I don’t know how many times I have seen it by now.

Congrats, Lottis, seriously. Proud of you.

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Another “thank you” goes to Kristjan Jagomägi in Tallinn, Estonia. He sent me the image below couple of days ago — with a couple of lines of explanation: