Friday 27 April 2018

New Quilt: Morning Puzzle





Hello! Happy Friyay my friend! April begins to be wrapped up and ready to be send to the next year. I feel time has been going on an enormous pace. Many wonderful projects going on at the same time guarantees that there has not been lack of activity. Quilt projects always take quite a lot of time and processing. It can't be fully scheduled that a quilt will be ready lets say in two weeks because there might occur something that needs more time like testing the technique or stitching pattern. This time the work was relatively straight forward. What took most of the time was sewing blocks that I did mainly by hand (I will show detail pictures so you can try the technique) and stitching. I haven't been doing appliqué for while but it went fine and I got an urge to work with round shapes and hand sewing more in the future.

Even though days are longer and there is more light I have felt that there is not enough time for all the things I would like to be doing. When I look back these two months I see too much rush. I have been productive and I have already planned new projects to start soon. What doesn't satisfy me is that I have had a lack of concentration in a way. When for example sewing I have been thinking five other things to do. So even though I have booked time for activities I truly love I haven't found proper mindset to fully enjoy that time. Quilting, DIY projects, reading for the challenge and writing + taking photos takes time. Balance would be a great thing to achieve. I am ambitious person and I have many projects that I would like to give equally as much time. It leads to the state where I execute tasks in a row and go to the overdrives. I am passionate about my projects so this is not how I would like it to be. I think bullet journaling more will be the way to go again. I have to go and look my days realistically. No over bookings that take the energy from the activity at hand. One week I had made a fine plan that worked well but then I grew my appetite and tried to stuff in more leaving the plan unfollowed.



Being ambitious means I can't just leave something to be. When I have been reading and quilting I have felt bad that I haven't been making DIY projects as much as I would like to. I know quilts take their time and can't be finished in a second but I feel pressure when I don't get craft related posts during these longer projects. This is something I need to work on. I can't be making more than is possible. More relaxed attitude with blogging could do great things. Instead of I should.. I will try to use I could.. I can post about progress with  bigger craft projects, what is going on in life, thoughts and book notes. And with this method I could get more time and concentration to the creative work that is not ready yet. I am not sure if it is the fast paced social media that makes me wait miracles from myself. Even though there is a pressure to publish great content daily there are still things in the world that take their time. Making crafts and processing thoughts are two of those activities that require time.

As I told you on my last quilt post this quilt has gotten inspiration from a breakfast serving and it's pale hues. In the stitching I tried new kind of embroidery yarn that has many tones. It gives an interesting and organic looking detail to the pattern that is otherwise made with one colored simple fabrics.



Tips and project pictures


For this project I cut 5 pink, 5 violet, 4 orange and 4 beige pieces in size 16 cm * 9 cm. Then with a model I cut 5 light pink and 5 blue half moons with 6,5 cm radius plus 1 cm down to the diameter for the sewing allowance. Then also with a model I cut 4 light blue and 4 orange triangles that are 6,5 cm high and have 13 cm basis plus same kind of 1 cm sewing allowance as in the half moon. 


Here are some tips how to easily appliqué round shapes. Make some stitches around the perimeter.


Make a cardboard model that is 1 cm smaller around the perimeter. Put the model on top of the fabric and pull from the yarn. now you have the sewing allowance evenly on the backside. Iron and take of the cardboard model.



Attach the shapes to the backfabric and sew by hand.



Sewn by hand. Backside and frontside. I used so called invisible stitches. I sew the the triangles and half moons of the blocks by hand and then sew the two sides together by sewing machine.


Then it is time to sew the blocks together, iron and stitch the layers together. You can check my previous quilt tutorials from DIY page, there you can find inspiration and tips for four different kinds of quilted pillows!


I hope you have the most inspiring and relaxing weekend! Let us enjoy the spring and all the ideas new season is bringing to us!

Sannu

Tuesday 24 April 2018

Many Faces for One Feeling




17/52 Anna Gavalda: Lohikäärmetatuointi ja muita pintanaarmuja 2018 (Fendre l´armure, 2017) With this collection of stories Anna Gavalda cleans potential dust from reader's lacrimal ducts. Starting from the first story she opens the human mind in it's barest. There are multiple characters that are different from the surface and come from various backgrounds. Woman who works in a pet shop, widow who is hooked on liqueurs, corporate owner who has it all and a truck driver whose dog is dying, just to mention few. What connects these and the other characters of the stories is that they are all alone and lost in life. Gavalda knows how to describe how cruel life can be in small details of abandonment and what are the coping mechanisms people have created to survive. I claim that it is impossible to read these stories without a tear so precise and to the point these are.

Fear of being present seems to haunt many of the main characters. Is it what they have experienced that has taught to them not to fully trust on people? Young woman feels that the animals she takes care of at the pet shop are better and more trustworthy than people. She seems cynical and doesn't dream that her short relationships would become something bigger. She tries to manage one night stands without losing parts of herself  but she is not intact. What makes her to be so pessimistic and disappointed of people she has just met even before she even knows how things would end up? Even though she would like to be hard and self-sufficient and that way unbreakable she is not. In the end there is the fact of human presence  that is not the same as robot's which can be put to work in a certain mood. One is destined to exist and think, make expectations for other people and dream. And what follows is that our dreams meet someone else's and might collaborate or crash.

In Gavalda's stories people meet in challenging circumstances and turning points of life. They help each other to survive and continue. Moral issues are not given much role. Who would like to be told in a difficult phase of life what errors have lead to that point? not to talk about clear methods of making things right. Everyone knows deep inside what has been done wrong and feels remorse. No help pointing that out. Also simple solutions usually sound great and work on paper. Stop doing what hurts you and your nearest and dearest. Be a better person. Most often those solutions one could find out self and act if it were that easy. Acknowledging the right way to sort things out might be actually one thing that pulls down. There is knowledge but it doesn't lead to a capacity to execute. When a widow attached to her bottles and woman who has ended up to a role of the other woman meet each other and became friends they don't point out where life has gone wrong or study whose fault it is. They just listen to each other for hours and try to find to the core. Widow questions why her friend wants to be in a waiting room her whole life dreaming for something to happen when she could choose to be free and get exactly what she wants. It is the bigger picture of life we need help to see, not the how to manuals. And a listener to hear our own thoughts spelled out loud.

When two men, both in good positions in their career, meet they understand each other behind the positions. Main character who leads a successful family company has been taught to acknowledge his privileges and abandon his inner thoughts that communicate dissatisfaction for life. In a company that shares the same world he is allowed to admit himself that he has not been the person he would like to be and not in a life and role he would feel right for himself. Other people have treated him according to his position, wealth and status and presumed that he has a life everyone would be content living in. Friendship with someone with whom one can forget what is obvious is refreshing and offers new way to evaluate inner thoughts. Everyone can have experience of loneliness and in that situation people who are far away from each other come the same and have very similar feelings about dreams not meeting the reality, notification that there is no control over one's own life and that life is happening somewhere behind the closed doors of the waiting room. Not the best of resources given will prevent loneliness because it is inside one's own head. Not money, position, health, talent, being smart, young etc. can explain loneliness away. To move in life big decisions are made alone and in best cases someone supports by listening.

The main characters in Anna Gavalda's novels are alive and because of that they are incomplete. They don't become better individuals who manage life with ease. I wonder if it is even be possible to become complete and fully enlightened as long as one is alive and in contact with life. As in the novel where a man is losing his dog and gets to finally work his pain about injustice of life and his own ways of acting in given circumstances. This is not a fair game.  It is not that sad though. The man whom life has made numb and pessimistic finds new openings that are not grand but something that take him forward. Grand turns are what we quite often dream about and wait for. That things would at once become totally different from what was before. In these stories the main characters are having cosmetic changes in their life and their own thinking. So small changes that it is not even possible for an outsider to see them but direction has been chosen and it might accumulate.


Thursday 19 April 2018

Love Story. Changed Ever After


This novel got me on the first page with it's beauty that is not in the loveliness but rather in the roughness of life. Still it holds lots of romance that has something similar with the worlds most read love stories. I often disagree when people describe a novel as romantic. I have read many books that have been said to be romantic and been very disappointed. I don't like love stories where the main participants just know each other from far away and then the other one dies and the one left behind spends their whole life thinking about love they had. I don't think it is romantic, it is plain cruel. Though I don't question the love that these characters have but I think romantic tale has to have something promising, some great moments even though the end would be tragic. The other way how romantic stories have let me down has been being too sweet, pure and easy. When a story is too sweet it begins to lose it's power to describe life holistically and human emotions in the broader scale.



16/52 Julian Barnes: The Only Story (2018) Paul is having a summer break from the university and goes to a tennis club from his parents suggestion. In the club he meets Susan, married woman in her fifties. In the novel Paul looks back his life and tells their love story that became his only story. Julian Barnes' novel has some elements of a classic love story. It is old fashioned in a good way and doesn't seek to hide it with cheap tricks. The Only Story is based on the romantic thought that there is one love story in every life that holds more meaning than the others. It doesn't give limitations or requirements what kind of love it should be. The novel makes it simple to believe in larger than life love.

It is easy to think that this story could take place in the real world. Their love story doesn't make you envy them, it has too much realism for that. But the main thought about one true love is something minimalistic and modest in this world of maximalist experience and rush to do more than one actually needs. It is stated as a fact in the novel that that is how it tends to be, one has single story that holds more in the mass of other stories. It is not idealism, it is realism. Truly fascinating thought. Especially if you think you only know your story when the end is closing and you can look back your stories and see what has been the theme in your life so to say. For Paul it was Susan who filled his life even when they were separated she had more meaning to him and his life than anyone else he met and was with. I wonder if we want to rule our life in advance and be in control when the name of the game would actually be to live and see and then make the conclusions. It is tricky to do it the other way around. Like if you write and try to close the summary first and then do the ten chapters before to match the summary you already printed out. Either you bury the leads the text could take or you still have to go back to the summary and write it again.

I liked the attitude Paul has as he looks back his life and ponders how it is to be at his old age and what kind of person he was at young age. He understands the young and their thinking patter and doesn't judge their omnipotence and belief in life. He sees how it belongs to the phase they are having in life and lets them be in their own reality. He sees the humor and irony in every phase of human life. I loved the way how Paul wonders that young people think the reason for the existence of old people is to envy the young.

Paul also thinks about age as an abstract phenomenon. Paul and Susan had a big age difference but it doesn't show in their relationship or their being together. They are the same age in their minds even though Susan has more years and that way more experience of life. Having lived through those years doesn't mean she knows more about how life should be lived. What she knows are some of the facts of life and realism about human being. She doesn't guide or influence but tells her notions that Paul will come to understand as he gets the same years behind him. There is no package about life one could pass and teach to other person to make them better and more ready. Experience comes through the years and with no shortcuts anyone could pour to one's head.

What comes to attitudes and values those are not connected to age. For Paul Susan is different generation by the values than the other members of her generation. Life values, political opinions and attitudes towards fellow humans and what is happening in the world is not bound to age. There are values that are more represented in some generations maybe because of the shared reality and experience. Still it is personal how one sees the world and what values they keep precious. Paul notices when he meets Susan that she is not like other people of her generation or as it could be put, like other people of the social circle both Paul ans Susan are members of. Young people are not always free and open minded as it could be thought stereotypically. Age can give more permissible approach to life and other humans. One is quite cruel and one sided when young. Through the years one comes more familiar with one's own faults, mistakes and dark sides and doesn't view other people so critically but with more mercy. Also what you know about world as a young person doesn't disappear. You still know it as you become to know what it is to be in the middle and old age. Maybe Paul and Susan meet in the circle of age in a perfect time. Paul has still the knowledge, eagerness for life and self-esteem of a young person and Susan has learned to view life with more open perspective and acceptance.

Still even though they meet on the minds level the years Susan has behind her begin to separate them. The life someone has lived can't be wiped away. Love or any other relationship doesn't  begin from an empty table. They both bring their own package that they have to accept and learn to live with. What has been has it's effect no matter how great you build your life together. The passed years continue to live in us. What has been the problem of one's own becomes a joint problem because it might develop a problem of a different kind for the other member of the relationship. It is difficult to see near and with small steps of acceptance both are in the same situation. What keeps together is remembering the wonderful moments and collecting more of them even though they become sparse.

If the other books I have been writing about have been about relatively young people in the phase when one decides what path to choose in life, what to become when grown up and how to spend life well then this book offers a different angle. In this novel one looks back life lived. There is no more pressure to make good decisions and spend life effectively. It is what it became. This novel examines life and love and makes both feel grand and meaningful. Like there is destiny and bigger picture we take part in with our own life histories and love stories. Paul's and Susan's story is not fairytale and that makes it raw and emotional. As Paul ponders there are things in life you can't get deleted even though you decide to forget because those things have already changed you. This is a romantic novel that lifts love high without offering a ready picture to keep as an ideal. It doesn't exclude anyone with it's happiness and easy answers that lead to happy ever after. Maybe it is more changed ever after and remembering why one has become what one is and keeping the story in mind.



Sunday 15 April 2018

Quilt Art: Everyday We Wake Up


Everyday we wake up and a new day is ahead. A day that will never come back after we have spent it. Time doesn't make difference between Sundays and Mondays. It is wonderful to wake up on a  Sunday morning when you have a free day to spend as you like. But time is spent on Monday too and Wednesday. Precious time of ours that is never coming back. They say a human being only wakes up to die. How I have thought that quote is that we can't actually understand how limited our time here is and we are kind of surprised when it actually ends. It is an abstract thought that we live and then we don't. 

To actually treat everyday with the importance it holds is a difficult task. Time goes so quickly and weeks just float away and that is how it is. It is part of life as time is not tangible. From the view point of time there are no class A and B days. Of course some days have more meaning to us than others. Most of the days hold so much routine it is difficult to tell days form each other as same activities take place in same order. But these are not class B days. When we go to sleep today we cross one day from the calendar. One day of our life that is not coming back. Do we think about it that way or are we waiting for something to happen so that we want time to pass quickly? Is it more important to focus on those days that are more special, more enjoyable? Tomorrow is one ordinary Monday, should we hope that it goes quickly? To get to the next day and finally reach the weekend, if weekend is the one holding more expectations than the five days most of our calendar is filled. 

Tomorrow is a lovely Monday, a start for a new week that waits to be experienced. It is motivating to think what we can do tomorrow, who we meet and what unexpected things may happen. We have had and will have moments we want to wipe out of our memory. But to wipe complete weeks in advance, just because we think those mundane days will have nothing to offer, is quite radical. So tomorrow when we do some everyday task we do it once in a lifetime at that time, at that age and in those exact circumstances. Special day, tomorrow is, as was today. 

This is what I have been pondering when sketching and sewing my latest quilt project. Time and everyday life and how great all days are when you come to think about it from the right perspective. This quilt project is going under the name Morning Puzzle. I have been practicing on focusing and enjoying every day equally as much. I try to book time for things I enjoy the most: crafts, reading, writing, walking and cultural events. I don't have time to make these all every day, it would be impossible. Yet I do some of these things on every week day. It is inspiring to think all the activities that the day at hand holds and make it meaningful. The geometric patterns you can see in the quilt symbolize porridge bowls and sandwiches. Round shapes and the color palette for this work came from my everyday breakfast. Porridge beige, lingonberry yoghurt pink, orange and pale blue, because a book that I was reading one morning had a cover of that color. 

Here are some project pictures. Every part of the process has it's own beauty and it is pleasing to see how the quilt begins to take an actual material form step by step. I will put more pictures when the work proceeds.

Have a truly inspiring new week my dear friends!






Saturday 7 April 2018

Entertainment Society



15/52 Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
The main character Guy Montag is a fireman living in a dystopian world where literature is banned and when books are found from someone's home the whole house is burned down. In Fahrenheit 451's world societal discussion has a veil of liberalism but it is just a surface to misguide people from seeing what is actually going on. Writers have been restricted from writing what they think so that their writings would not hurt anyone's feelings. Because literature has become neutral it doesn't interest anymore. The world seems fine but hides a wide spread anarchy. There is lots of violence going on and people don't pay attention to what is happening to other human beings. Empathy has vanished and entertainment is filling the emotional vacuum with rough and aggressive content.

This dystopian picture of the humankind is current as ever when we look at how media works today and the ways of common discussion. We have more platforms to use to say our opinions and social media has made it possible to use our voice in a very achievable methods. Yet our time is such that one might be afraid to say their opinion in fear of being misunderstood. In social media, that  is quick in it's moves, a clause can be cut out from it's context and given a new meaning. Even well meaning and constructive discussion openings can be turned upside down. Instead of continuing the thought and evolving it, a lot of  energy is used to examine it's form and weaknesses. We avoid conflict but at the same time people are divided into two separate groups in many public discussions. In fair discussion we could actually find the things we disagree and agree in disagreement. Then we could also concentrate on living together and constructing communities to those multiple things we agree. Because disagreement doesn't have to mean that the other party has to win and prove oneself right. In civilized and democratic community we can choose to see issues differently. Also in honest discussion we can learn. Like Faber says to Montag "If you hide our ignorance no one will ever hit you and you'll never learn." If we don't have the courage, or place, to say what we think and show where our thinking process is at the moment we don't expose ourselves to new knowledge and chance to get criticized and challenged to re-evaluate what we think is true. The world holds as many truths as there are people. Also it is part of life that what one holds as truth changes during the life. It is as it should be. Otherwise we have not exposed ourselves to life and it's influence on us. Today's societal discussion has a resemblance with what Bradbury describes in Fahrenheit 451. There seems to be need to have simple black and white answers to complex issues. Instead of acknowledging that an issue has many sides two opposing parties are built. Then these parties can yell each other from the opposite sides of the room. Rough contrasts are good entertainment. But it is not entertainment without a cost. When public discussion about societal issues is modified to a gladiator battle it doesn't lead to solutions that would benefit the common interest. When public speakers are pictured as flat characters in a game there is a danger that good points for discussion are muted just because of the part that that character is put to play. Behind the scenes of entertainment society someone uses power when we stare the show. 

Another interesting theme Bradbury brings up is the way we understand the difference between entertainment and real life. The main character Montag's wife Mildred has become talented in reading from the lips because she has some sort of headphones on all the time. She also follows keenly the life of her so called relatives, that are as I understood it, characters of a TV show. Montag suffers from the lack of communication in their relationship and also ponders how little people really talk with each other about subjects that matter. Commercial talk has taken the place of private discussion. Word of mouth is maybe the oldest form of advertising so there is nothing new. Still it is a scary thought if in the future we would become nothing more than brand talking and consuming machines. I also thought about how our brain functions when we binge series. Can we actually understand that it is a play? Films and series are entertainment. They are also art forms, some having more ambitious artistic goals than others. A good film for example can open a new world and help to understand other people and also make us learn something new about ourselves. Its the same with other forms of art as well. Yet the amount of programs we can watch is huge and it is easy to stop living one's own life and just stare life from screen. Favorite series' character's fortunes and misfortunes become important. I have often told about how I was watching films a bit too much over on year ago. One day I came to think that wait a minute, these interesting things are not actually happening to me, I am just sitting here and watching a play. 

Technological improvements are making entertainment feel even more real. Think about virtual glasses for example. Can our brain actually register what is real or fake? In the moment binging entertainment might feel great shortcut to experiences. It is question of values actually and if we appreciate reality. The classic test to evaluate our priorities is the rocking chair. When old, sitting in the rocking chair watching back life, would you be satisfied to memorize all the great moments of love, friendship, courage, excitement, fear that you experienced through screen or what ever technology we might have coming. Oh my! That time when I voted with my phone who should win in that reality show. Sweet memories about that perfect person built to match my dreams that I saw through virtual glasses. Did we have great time! When I think about these scenarios I can't help how the world around us and our physical body is left somewhere in the matter of universe. Have you seen Spike Jonze's thought provoking film Her about the same, lack of real communication, theme?  In Her people are wearing headphones where they can hear an operating system that communicates with them. The operating system sounds like real person and is able to talk and it has a sense of humor. People begin to fall in love with their operating systems and in one scene they walk through the city streets passing each other concentrated to what they hear through their headphones. The picture is not far from what we see around us in today's world. It is the same world Montag feels anxious and alien in. In Jussi Valtonen's novel They Know Not What They Do family's daughter sits in the dining table looking  front of herself expressionless. By a new technology she is surfing from site to site and sees all in her brain. With the technology one can move to a new site before even knowing consciously what one wants to see. 

The world Montag sees around him is bound in front of TVs. People don't know how to practice criticism and they take everything as given. All materials that could provoke one to think have been vanished. It is easy world with no need to criticize or evaluate controversial messages. But it is not a happy place. There is a war going on all the time and people are just cleverly distracted and manipulated. What we see on media is human made and can contain mistakes and misunderstandings. To have background knowledge, sense of context and skill to question what is said is essential so we don't build our life and decisions on lies. It is appealing to keep one authority over all, to think that they know all and that we can trust their word. But even the well meaning people are human beings and make mistakes. That is why we need to see the effort and use our brain: see what other people have thought and read about their views, study the backgrounds, meet people, have a discussion, criticize, learn and act. And it is actually quite pleasing to be in a world and fully see it how it is, not just it's limited presentation.


Thursday 5 April 2018

Private World Of Unhappiness


Sylvia Plath's work has been on my must read list for long. Before Easter I finally took her novel, The Bell Jar, from a library. I have wanted to read this novel and at the same time I have been avoiding it. I thought it might be too depressing, especially knowing how close it is to her own life story that had a tragic ending. To be frank I was a bit scared that I would feel anxious after reading this novel. I knew I wouldn't be able to take distance from the subject and just read it as a merely fictional story. What I found, when I took the risk and read the book, was that it was actually liberating to read about the main character Esther's experiences with mental health problems. Plath describes happenings honestly and brutally. The liberating point is to find from the book a person who has gone through same peculiar thoughts as you even though life stories and experiences are otherwise very different from each other. Like what has happened/ is happening to someone right now/ might happen to anyone of us some day are all shared experiences. Something that maybe not everyone but quite many people after all might have to go through and live with. Over an year ago I watched a documentary about the history of Finnish mental hospital Kellokoski. The documentary is called Hulluus kylässä and it can be seen at Yle Areena (here), it has no English subtitles though. It is a documentary that gave me a great dose of healing laugh. I hope I tell this right because it is some time from when I saw it but a man in the documentary told about his experiences with depression. He said how he slept through nights and days for some time. And then he said, "the quality of sleep was quite poor then". And I laughed. This is all very serious, the documentary had many interviews with patients and healthcare professionals. It didn't mock or understate mental health problems. But what you need sometimes is to be able to laugh. To think that even this dark matter is part of life and belongs to the day light. Sometimes you have to cry and laugh at the same time to get over it.


14/52 Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar (1963)

The main character Esther is a hard working and talented student who has gotten a chance to spend summer in New York and work at the magazine. In the middle of her summer of dreams she begins to loose her grip on life. Esther has a pressure to achieve a lot. She is ambitious and trained to chase goals she has put to her life. It is easy to relate to her hurry in life. All the possibilities that are waiting to be taken.  I think a lot of people these days have similar feelings especially when social media informs us from different exciting ways to spend a lifetime. So many possibilities from career options to travelling the world searching for oneself. Esther describes the options with a fig tree and how she tries to choose which one of the figs to take. When she is stuck in the phase of choosing she begins to loose her options. One by one fruits get spoiled. The pressure to choose and choose wisely is too much. At some point rules in life change and one has to make decisions. During the school years and studying life is still quite forward. You just do your best if you want to achieve your goals.  Then comes the big question. What would you choose to demand from life? The ambitiousness has not disappeared anywhere and all that you know is that you would like to have an extraordinary life. Some of the pressure is self made, one knows there is capacity and will to do better and it creates a circle of trying too much. Until someday energy has disappeared from every limb and even the most simple tasks begin to feel impossible. This would be a good point to stop and take a breath. But instead of that you look around and the people around you seem to move from one part of life to the the second and you are left out and try to reach the same pull to the future.

Plath describes truthfully how little by little Esther notices how things she could do before with ease start to feel impossible. She looses the edge she has had. World begins to feel unfamiliar and looks like other people have some extra dose of energy she doesn't have. She has imagination and she can think of different ways to spend a lifetime. Yet she lacks the last push to live. She would like to write but she hasn't lived yet so she could write about her experiences. The novel is a cruel and honest picture of what it is to be a young adult. World is actually quite sick in one way. A perfect individual is both young and achieved a lot. Some can perform this combination. Some are clever not to even try. Some get tired trying. I think when you begin to compare you don't compare yourself to one person at a time. In your mind you have a bunch of people whose best features and achievements construct an image of perfection. And against that perfection you compare yourself. Like Esther you see the fig tree of possibilities and you can't choose because you actually want to achieve it all. And that is where the last drops of energy are drained out trying and pushing too hard to stay on the surface.

 With no energy mundane activities begin to feel too demanding and even irrational. What is the point to wake up every morning when you have to go to sleep and wake up the next morning. Esther nails it with her thoughts about going to shower and how exhausting it is. She questions why to go to shower when this same activity waits you the next day. She would like to have it all done at once and for good. Every routine in life just comes as the same every day leading you through the boring and dull life that has no meaning. It feels strange where do these people get the energy to do all these things. The bell jar is a private bubble with it's own rules, logic and way of behavior. When one is inside the bubble other people are left outside. They will continue to live their life and do the things they have always done. Question is how many people are waiting when one comes out of the time capsule?  Life with mental health problems is hidden from the gaze of others but it exist to the one who is living through it. After the months, years, decades that have been spent inside the capsule/ bubble/ bell jar there might be a bad consciousness about the time wasted. Because time spent inside the bell jar disappears when one comes to the world outside. It is not one of the most cheerful things to bring up in a conversation that you spent years xx dealing with mental health problems. Not that many people want to hear about it. World wants healthy and able people. Like Esther's mother who suggest they start again from where they left as if Esther's mental disorder doesn't exist at all. When actually who is healthy after all? The line is narrow and one can't predict the future and what it brings and how you react to that. In the end of the novel Esther's ex-boyfriend Buddy asks "I wonder who you'll marry now, Esther" and refers to the mental hospital that is part of her history now. Maybe the question is actually larger, who and what kind of people will surround you in a new situation with the experiences you have had?