Rome

I just realized that I have to talk a lot less.

I have to do more.

I have this bad habit of blustering about my books instead of actually writing them. After this post, I'll remain silent and write the book. I promise. Goodbye, too many words.

When I use Microsoft Word, the temptations of the Internet tend to become too strong. So I've decided to write the rest of the book with an old typewriter. No more Internet. Writing with the ancient typewriter is physical work. I actually really like it.

So. I'll go away. I'll really go away. If I come up with something oh-so-funny that I would like to say on this blog, I won't. Instead, I'll scream into my pillow and move on. I'll come back when I have an amazing manuscript in my hands.

Today I was waiting for a bus and feeling sad for many things, like Jasper Pääkkönen saying that fish are 'Finland's gold' (no they aren't; fish are fish and they aren't yours) (if somebody's Finland's gold, it's me, rock'n'roll), and running into a person I used to know in secondary school and realizing that here I am, still, stuck, but then I listened to this and the world brightened up:

You have to listen to it. You must. You will learn to love it.

That's the kind of feeling that's kept me alive for several years now. Proud losers knowing that they're better than the rest of them. Defiantly holding on to the idea that some day we'll win.

I spent a week in Rome with my mother and sister. I don't know what exactly we were doing there, but the Romans* served me beer in every restaurant and nobody wanted to see my ID. Apparently in Italy, I don't look like I'm 15. Also, it's entertaining to look down from a tourist bus and stare at people's crotches. Very mildly entertaining, but entertaining.

* A Roman.

Curiously, I find myself getting angry at every place I visit. There's something especially intimidating about big cities filled with people. It's like my ego crashes with Rome, and I must win. There might be something wrong with me. (Only slightly, so don't recoil.)

The first time I visited Rome was 5 years ago. 5 years ago I was a very intense antitheist. I remember walking by nuns and very quietly whispering "Fuck you." This time I felt like nuns were the only people I could understand. They're rebelling against the modern world. That's what I'd like to do too. 

It's too late to try and stay anonymous. I've already ruined the whole thing. I'll be semi-anonymous from now on. We'll see how this works out.

Unfortunately I'm one of those naturally annoying people. Some people are given the innate gift of infuriatingness. And sometimes I wonder if my levels of horniness are even normal anymore. They probably are, which could be seen as alarming. What a hysterical species, makes me throw up.

My mother got hit by a car. It was night and raining, and a gentleman driving a car simply didn't see us. The moment when I realized what had happened was one of the most horrible moments in my life. I remember shouting "Call 911!" (what?), but 5 seconds later I knew that my mother would be completely okay and then I just completely calmed down. Maybe I can handle situations like this one.

Doing my best, anyway. In the end, spending some night hours in a surreal Italian hospital was a useful experience.

Today I was told that my half brother, who hates my family and whom I haven't seen for about 13 years, wants to meet me. Apparently just me and nobody else.

My life is mostly about trying to handle my brain and live with it, and secondly about trying to find out what to do with it. I don't know why intelligence was given to me and not to other people. (Given to me? Was my nervous system something that was just floating in emptiness and waiting to be given to somebody?)

I often wish that every single person on this planet was as intelligent as me. Then I wouldn't have to do the thinking on behalf of the other person too when I debate things with them.

A few days before my mother got hit by a Roman car I met someone. I met a real person and I talked to them and they took me to an abandoned match factory. Later, sitting on a nightbus home, I listened to Morrissey's voice sing in my earphones: I've seen this happen in other people's lives... and now, it's happening in mine.

Like I'd been waiting for those words to finally mean something to me.

(Btw, I've been reading Morrissey's Autobiography. Finally. I have many things to say but they are too complex to be said.)

It's obvious that Morrissey is relatively insane. That's wonderful. I'd love to try that. I wonder if it increases or decreases his potential for happiness. Some day we'll sit down for a cup of tea and discuss this.

Simply talking to another person may not be a big deal for most people, but I haven't really done it for 6 (or 7) years, so to me it feels like a new form of existence. And I know that I need it. I've always known that I need it. I need a new form of existence.

I guess I'll step out of this cave after all, sooner or later, probably very soon. Maybe I already did?

6 years of loneliness. I truly am Sauli Niinistö. Except that I guess it was 5 years for him. I like him, for some reason he seems like a decent human being.

Walking in Rome, or walking anywhere where there's other people, is always weirdly exciting. All those thousands and thousands of people become a boring hum, a huge ghost whose particles all want the same things. They want to live and die, and then they simply disappear. And that's all.

I don't want to be a part of it. There are people who are happy spending their lives focusing on small things, and then there are people who want to truly ride the waves of history. I'm one of the people who ride waves.

These are starting to get really artistic.

So many people are so very boring. I can't stand boredom. I just can't, it makes me puke, and I'm being literal here. So whenever I come across another intense creep, it's enormously thrilling.

There's this person in Helsinki who sometimes rides the same bus with me in the nighttime. He looks like a lonely Italian gentleman, and he seems to always carry an umbrella, and I don't know, there's something about him. He always looks like he's quietly laughing at his own thoughts. He has... presence, like he's there, just like me, unlike everybody else (who simply stare at their cellphones). One of these days I'm going to go to him and say, "I'm 100% sure that you live alone, and just for the lulz, would you like to become my lover? I'm over 18."

Jokes (?) aside; I really don't know why I want fame, and I don't know why other people don't, but it seems to be a rather easy thing to get in this arena. It seems like it's sitting there waiting for somebody to take it, and all I have to do is walk on stage. Because there's zero competition.

A poor man sold us flowers.

Am I right? I want to be wrong. (I always want to be wrong.)

But really, is there anyone else doing anything like what I'm doing? I'd love to see another furious young writer who wants to write big stories about fascinating souls and start a few revolutions in the process; another young writer who's going to devote everything to this thing. Who could say no to that? (If you could, it's ok. You don't need to raise your hand.)

If I succeed, I'll be the first writer in forever to be an actual pop star.

I wonder what's wrong with young writers and writers in general. Very few have talent and very few have a plan, and those who have a plan never have talent and those who have talent never have a plan. Old writers are gray and boring, and then the young writers are trying to be like the old writers just because they think that's the proper way to be. Ugh, so very boring.

I don't understand people with no ambition. It's not like I hate or despise them. I just can't imagine what existence must be like for them. If there's no scary bright light shining at the end of the tunnel, can life be anything else but boring?

Maybe it's simply about wanting attention. Maybe I want attention simply because I haven't experienced it for many many years. I was a pretty famous troublemaker when I was a child, and then suddenly I turned 13 and completely lost my ability to communicate and nobody ever looked at me anymore. Maybe this fucked me up, y'know. I need somebody to look at me. I need somebody to listen to me. I want to look interesting in a photograph. I want to have fun and be fun.

More than anything, I want to tell these stories and get as many people as possible to feel them as strongly as I do.

But it's not this simple. I wish it was this simple. I wish it was this simple, but it's not.

There's this another task that I have. Something much bigger than any of this. Something so much greater than me. And it makes things so much more difficult.

Okay, I've said all this for three thousand times before and now I'm going to do it again. And it's really tiring and depressing. I ABSOLUTELY HATE IMPORTANT THINGS. Saying these things so often makes me feel like I'm some sort of vampire literally vomiting blood on innocent people's faces, and I want to apologize, but somebody needs to repeat these things, somebody needs to. I just hate that it needs to be me. Why, Lord, oh why, why didn't you give me nice things to talk about?

There's a restaurant in Rome called 'Rewild' that serves seitan that is, well, identical to meat. I'm happy worshipping Satan seitan until in vitro becomes a thing. You do what you have to do, babe, but please, promise me that you'll join me once the revolution starts. 

Argh, here it comes, again:

In 2014, the overwhelming majority of violence and suffering caused by humans on this planet is still legally protected and culturally accepted. It shouldn't be. There's no reason why it should be. We've invented the concept of human rights, and it's a great start, but we've really only just started. I think I have some cool tools to help change the status quo, so I suppose it's my duty to use them and help humanity take the next step: the biggest one, the one that helps us understand why human rights matter in the first place. Essentially, human rights and animal rights matter for the same reason: if you hurt us, we suffer.

The most beautiful thing about Rome: historical ruins turned into a sanctuary for homeless cats. This cat had lost his eyes when he was very young. He lived happily like he'd never needed eyes in the first place. There was also an older cat who had lost his eyes at an old age. He was too horrified to move in the darkness.

But this task is not fun. (Sometimes it is.) It's not making me happy. (Sometimes it is.) I'm happy when I think about unimportant things, say unimportant things, write about things that don't really matter. The whole animal rights thing is like a wound in my side. It's mainly sadness. I don't know where it came from. Luckily it's a burning kind of sadness and gets me to act and think. (But would I be more useful in this battle if I let that wound heal? Possibly?)

So when I see an old man selling one-month-old puppies in the street in Rome – sadness. (I did my best to kindly explain to the man that the puppies were way too young to be taken from their mother. He didn't speak English, so I wrote him a note where I tried to say the same thing in Italian. It was all a bit desperate, of course, but, well, doing my best.)

And when I see drunken people fishing by the Tevere – sadness. (I guess the reason that I feel so strongly about fish rights is that most people currently don't. Somebody has to. Fish look like ugly prehistoric monsters. Cuteness isn't protecting them the way it protects other vertebrates. I always identify with the underdoggest of underdogs. Heaven knows why. I guess because somebody has to.)

Jesus. How easy life must be for people who can just accept everything.

It's like there's two separate sides of me. The first one just wants to write books and be loved by as many people as possible. This side HATES the other one: the other one wants to change the world. And I have to find a balance. I think I have the ability to turn this stuff into pretty fascinating literature, but first I have to calm down a bit, for fuck's sake.

Let's assume that animal rights become a big mainstream thing in the coming decades. Let's assume that I make it and play a role in this process. In this case I would probably be considered a 'hero' by future generations.

(By the way, I find it lovely that Luna Lovegood has taken up singing:)

And how would that hero thing work out? Come on, look at me. (Yes, I know that you can't actually look at me.) I'm not like the kind of people who lead revolutions. This could never be a Mandela kind of story. I can't do that. I'm too idiotic. Somebody else must come along and play that role.

The truth is that I'm just a weird-looking kid with a weird posture and a weird voice. I'm a stupid, horny, giggly, clumsy child. (A cute little bugger.) I don't know if I could ever be considered 'good-looking' in the known sense of the word. My only hope is to look interesting.

I don't know.

I think that people should stop taking their genders (and most things) seriously. Masculinity and femininity and all that. People should stop trying to be those things. It's impossible. Nobody's that way. You're doomed to fail. Just have fun with it and be yourself. Unless 'yourself' is utter garbage. Then be something else.

I'd rather be a drunkard than a regular person. How pretentious. I'm not sorry.

In any case, I need to toughen up a bit. Especially mentally, but also physically, those are often two sides of the same thing. I've already toughened quite a bit from what I was 1.25 years ago, but there's still work to be done. I have to stop taking everything so fucking personally. I have to stop taking anything so fucking personally. I have to stop being the kid who cares about the universe expanding.

Sometimes, when it comes to certain things in life, 'I don't give a fuck' is a perfectly healthy reaction.

Maybe I could look like a boxer*. I could. I want to toughen up. I'll start by taking up jogging. Don't worry, I'll probably give it up in a couple of weeks.

Whatever. The thing is that I'll be a superstar and the people I hate won't.

* A boxer.

Now, whoever you are, close your eyes for 10 seconds and think of the one you used to love madly, but don't anymore.

And now ask yourself: are you sure?

Anyways, love always,

Will Hunting.