Tove Jansson - celebrating 110 years from her birth

Today would be her birthday. She used to wear a flower wreath on her head and celebrate on her very own island. Where others saw a man and a woman she saw an artist. The artist has no gender. She lived through the horrors of nazi occupation and had the courage to speak her mind, even though she would be censored. She worked so much, travelled, hosted parties, was a keen observer of human behaviour, and also appreciated slowing down in introspection to really focus on the body and mind’s immediate needs - cooking, reading, creating in an environment that was a celebration of solitude in a wonderful natural setting - the Åland Islands.

A valuable thing I take from reading her biography (that I got last month at the Moomin museum in Tampere where there is a temporary exhibition on her life), is that it is very important to write things down. I was fascinated by the beauty of her letters, always accompanied by a nice illustration she would sketch after the words were put down. 

I do remember having enjoyed writing a lot before getting my first serious job. Verbal communication, the email writing style had taken over my life since 2006. It had become professionally very important to achieve verbal expression mastery - so I did that in several languages. Now my language of choice when I write is English but it is probably more out of the habit of speaking it every day, not because I would master it better than my mother tongue - Romanian. Tove had a lot of friends to write to, and lived in times when this was the go-to means of communication. Even when she wasn’t even sure that Eva - her friend in the US - would receive her letters, she continued writing to her, the mere act of writing becoming an act of confession. She continued this correspondence for 20 years, which I find significant for a long distance friendship. She kept other correspondences, for instance with her parents and brother Per Olov who was dispatched to war. This, besides her notebooks, were composing a prolific writing life.

Another style of writing is the one that happens when things get hard and the spirit feels too crippled to write down anything of substance: it is important to do some sort of record keeping -  of significant events in the private and social life, or of important mail. 

Like many other people, I would love to dedicate more of my time to things I truly love: knitting, reading, baking. For such a feminist I am rather domestic. I travel extensively, this is why traveling is not part of the things I love to do and would do more of.