Improvements & Railsea

Since the last post, things have been getting better.
Mummi is able to respond to questions, smile, nod, and speaks simple sentences. It's still hard to have a conversation with her, but she is like a completely different person. It's great.

Over the past week, we did many things to distract ourselves and to keep our spirits high while visiting the hospital nearly every day. As soon as I download the pictures, I'd like to share some of these things with you so you can see what sort of things you can get up to when you're in Finland in the summer...

I'm in England now, freshly checked into a quaint canal-side hotel. I love the sound of the seagulls and doves, but I wish the toilet would flush properly without me having to insistently pump the handle.

I'm reading China Mieville's "Railsea" novel, which is a fun mishmash of a few elements: Moby Dick (but with giant moles and other digging creatures), steampunk, trains, and Laputa: Castle in the Sky. While I read it, I can't help thinking this would be absolutely amazing as an animated film; perhaps as a stop-motion film or a Studio Ghibli-type quality Anime. There is a bit of gore, but I think that would just make the stop-motion all the more fun!

Here, let me read a passage for you. If this doesn't make an artist's fingers itch, I don't know what will. It's a description of the train Captain, Captain Naphi, as we observe her for the first time during the hunt of a giant leviathan-sized mole.

Naphi watched the moldywarpe through a huge telescope. She held it quite steadily to her eye, despite its bulk & despite the fact that she hefted it one-handed in a strong right arm. She was not tall but she drew the eyes. Her legs were braced in what might have been a fighting stance. Her long grey hair was ribboned back. She stood quite still while her age-mottled brown overcoat wind-shimmied around her. Lights winked in her bulky, composite left arm. Its metal & ivory clicked & twitched.
The Medes rattled through snow-flecked plainland. It sped out of drag'ndragun into another rhythm. By rock, crack & shallow chasm, past scuffed patches of arcane salvage.
Sham was awed at the light. He looked up into the two or more miles of good air, through it into the ugly moiling border of bad cloud that marked the upsky. Bushes stubby & black as iron tore past, & bits of real iron jagging from buried antique times did, too. Atangle across the whole vista, to & past the horizon in all directions, were endless countless rails.
The railsea.
- Railsea, by China Miéville

You might notice the rather odd use of "&" instead of "and", but don't worry, there is an explanation for it. The book also has little illustrations every now and then of the gigantic, dangerous creatures of the railsea, such as giant moles, naked mole rats, burrowing turtles, ant lions, etc.

I haven't finished it yet, but so far I really recommend it especially if you are travelling by train, like I have been today, as you will find the train sets the atmosphere with its clattering against the railroad tracks as described so aptly in the book.