Hello 2018, Goodbye Heart! Best Nine of 2017

You gotta roll with it, commands Oasis, and rolled we have, haven’t we, last year, the year of all years to contain so much utter crap, but, on closer inspection, some pretty great things as well. Reading Hanks’ wife Rita’s short encounter, accompanying her own Best Nine pictures on Instagram, on how gathering the pictures she first had thought it had been the worst year ever, what with her husband’s enormous heart surgery and all, but, really thinking back, it turned out it had been sort of amazing, too. Her man got his heart back on track, and yes, he’s doing fine, returning to work in a couple of months. So, her brief tale got me thinking about my own Best Nine, and what that might entail.

Here’s what I got:

One. Yep, the blog. During some of the most difficult times of one’s life, writing has been kind of a solace, a moment of serenity for the over-stressed. For reasons I myself do not quite understand - the Internet is a strange and fickle animal - the story to garner the most reads last year, surpassing the second most read by almost a hundred, has been the one with all the shopping around Tampere’s vintage stores, called One More, with Feeling. I figure the reason may be because it works as a kind of how to -guide for the city itself. Whatever the reason, thank you for reading, and hopefully those just tuned in will stay with us. It isn’t always fun here, inside Mrs. Dalloway, but sometimes it is, and at least it is always interesting. Have I mentioned how I despise false modesty? Or modesty of any kind? Well here it is.

Two. Laughter. Laura Marling sings on her album, Semper Femina, the best album of the year 2017 if you ask me by the way, how she once did not smile for a whole year, not really. I have laughed, last year, a bit feebly, perhaps, but it was there. However, laughter has been a bit few and far between in my household in 2017, and my man has been a little worried lately. I’ll try and find the joy more. But the reason I am mentioning the laughter at all, is because I have two friends who share the title of having the most fabulous laughter in the whole world. These friends do not know each other at all, but they have in common the great whole-hearted laughter that makes one smile and then laugh along, just because one is in the presence of such an amazing, contagious, all-consuming laugh. Usually I write about existing people in my life using aliases, but on this occasion, let’s use their real names. Heli and Heidi, yours are the greatest laughs, and whenever I hear you laugh, I just have to laugh along. Therapy schmerapy.

Three. As far as life experiences go, I am tempted to say the highlight of 2017 was the annual trip to Paris with my lover, my spouse, my life partner. But, if I am honest, the most revealing and painful experience of the year 2017 also brought back so many wonderful and unique forgotten memories, I reacquainted myself with the child within, as if I ever needed any help in that department anyway, but here it is, I guess my mental age is about seven now, and I got to spend a lot of time with my family, the last days in our very own home, the last place I can ever say was really ours. Not everyone understands how losing one’s childhood home can alter you forever, but those who do, have not once questioned my teary eyes or my lamenting losing the woods and the hiking paths and the Stars Hollow that can never ever be replaced in my heart.

Four. The year 2017 was a year of winter coats for me. Somehow, I just bought and bought and bought them, and I am embarrassed to say how many I now own. The phrase Days-of-the-Week Underpants doesn’t even begin to give you an idea. I buy my shit from flea markets and vintage stores, so I wasn’t out a fortune, buying my new coats. But I guess I have been pouring my sorrow into consumerism, and am contemplating my own greed, clothes-wise, right now. Anyway, the best coat purchase was the last one I bought, an original Marjatta Metsovaara from the early Sixties, a beautiful lime-colored calf-length tweed coat with a zipper and and a small collar. Oh, man.

Five. Loyalty. I am finding lots of bonds broken and loyalties re-aligned. As one gets older, the old saying about how true friends are that much harder to come by turns out to be true in ways that was once difficult to imagine. People are busy, people change their minds, people don’t have or won’t make the time. People disappear. I realize that life, in all its vastness and beauty, is high school. High school never ends. It seems to me that it is always who you know, who hangs out with whom, who’s the new kid and who are the losers. Well, bring it on, Varsity Jackets of the world. I was never the new Heather anyway, I am strictly a Veronica, the one whose head is used as a croquet goal stake at the beginning of the movie, ever since my days a hick teen in a giant city high school. The one major distinction in the analogy, however, seems to grow out of maturity. Sometimes I have wondered why it must be so, that the Heathers always rule the world, but I have stopped wondering. They just do. But lately, luckily, the whole world does not belong to Heathers anymore. Why we do not include more, but love to exclude, is pure mystery, but alas, that also seems to be human nature, especially right at this moment in time. Let’s be really careful, people, and consider the ramifications.

Six. Dumping the sleeping pill. Anything but a mean feat, I still did it. Losing the pill has improved my life so much, I feel sometimes strange that I was on it for so long. Having the sleep come naturally, if and when it comes, losing the few k I was fairly warned about when I caved and went on it a few years back, getting my groove back after a month or so of total confusion and exhaustion, has been one of the most illuminating things of the whole last year. There is time to take one’s pills, and then there is time to forget about them. I went cold turkey, the hard way, some might say, see how I am channeling Oasis here, too?, and in my case, it worked great. Perhaps I wouldn’t recommend it to others, but for me, everything turned out okay. I love waking up and knowing what day it is.

Seven. Lucky seven. Now, what kind of a Stephen King fan would I be, if I didn’t hail Muschietti’s It Part One as the movie of the year 2017? Even with its insane moments (the woman from the painting I’m looking at you: not scary, Larry, but I guess he likes these kinds of things) and imperfections, the heart of the story has not been captured this beautifully before. I adore the old, notorious Tommy Lee Wallace TV movie, as some of you may know. But I adore this new, edgier, truer to the original story line, version as well.

Eight. Apropos It, what kind of popular culture connoisseur would I be, if I didn’t hail Stranger Things 2 as the streaming service event of the year? Yes, maybe it did lack something, some magic, some serendipity, compared to the first season. But hey, we always forgive a few minor mistakes. During Christmas, I decided to watch Super 8. I hadn’t watched it in years, and just remembered it as fun and just my kind of E.T. meets the Goonies meets the X-Files type of film. Well, I am sorry to say, the allure had all but evaporated, since the Duffer brothers entered the play field and upped the level of the whole experience of this type of movie making through the roof. Super 8 seemed so tame now. Details, the big bad, even the kids, seemed now mere shadows of what has come after this, granted, pioneer. A curiosity, yes, but nothing more now. Stranger Things is where it’s at. It just is. Special mention goes to Dacre Montgomery as the new evil kid, Billy. God, his entrance to the series, getting out of the car and slowly turning to the camera, with his hair and moustache and blue Levi’s jeans, to the Scorpions’ Rock You Like a Hurricane, was one of the greatest entrances on TV, ever.

Nine. It takes a man of great tolerance and patience, as well as great understanding of the importance of words, to live with the likes of Mrs. Dalloway. You may not always be a man of patience or tolerance, but you are getting better at it. A man of words you already were when I met you. The shape-shifting, mood-swinging, pasta-eating, coat-hording, unpredictable yet stuck in my ways persona that is me, must be at times pure torture to live with. I know. As Lorelai Gilmore has eloquently put it: I am totally flexible, as long as everything is exactly where I want it. I do not say it enough in our day-to-day life, so here it is, my last but not at all least of the best nine: Baby, it’s you.

For M.