“My life just isn’t anybody else’s business.” by James Thompson
The other day, someone asked me how much like Kari Vaara I really am. It hadn’t occurred to me that I was much like Vaara at all, so I asked what prompted him to ask the question. He said, “You look like Vaara, you speak like Vaara, you act like Vaara, and I have a pretty good idea that you think like him, too.”
I guess because Vaara is a Finn, and I’m not, after thirteen years here, I’ve come to think of myself as neither American nor Finnish, but something in-between. But he had a point. There are other similarities. My wife is twelve years younger than me, as with Kari and Kate, except our nationalities are reversed. I have a disease in my knees, the name of which I can never remember, and a busted hip from an accident in the army, so I have a limp. Sometimes, it’s barely noticeable, my left foot just turns in more than in should. Sometimes, it’s quite pronounced. In fact, I’m on partial disability as a disabled veteran. There are major differences as well. Kari’s father beat him mercilessly. My father, God bless him, is a kind man and has never laid a hand on me.
But mostly, Kari and I both value silence. My life just isn’t anybody else’s business. It occurred to me recently that not a single person in this world knows my entire life story, and for some reason, I took a perverse pleasure in it. A friend recently expressed surprise that I have a family, because in the six years he’s known me, I’ve never mentioned them. He assumed they were dead and so, afraid it was a sensitive issue, never raised the subject. I tried sharing more personal things when I first started blogging, but somehow, it made me feel icky. Another person told me that sometimes, even by Finnish standards, my silence is sometimes disconcerting.
It’s not that I have anything against chatting. I think that when I moved to Finland and was unable to speak the language, I was couldn’t participate in conversations and just got out of the habit. It’s probably also why I became such a compulsive writer. Because I needed an outlet for my thoughts.
Today though, I’m going to tell you a story about myself known to very few. It seems timely because it relates directly to how Lucifer’s Tears, which will be released next week [March 17th], came into being. (more…)
