try to work this day out

Opening shop three minutes late,
swearing, cheese sandwiches in the back office,
undrinkable coffee, the calming effect of spreadsheets,
a charity donation of 15 cent, a charity donation of "church hats",
an enquiry on how to import CDs, a malfunctioning cash register,
unwarranted crying once the doors are safely locked.

comfort in a Turkish pizza

Extraordinary, the strange comforts you can find when you need them the most.

Like when you walk home from work crying:

An obscure pizza place which turns out to be a little piece of Turkey in the middle of a bland Finnish town. Turkish music videos on the TV, fragrant spices in the air, muted chatter in foreign languages around me (me being the only white face in the room), and the waiter giving me what feels like the first kind words of the day.

The walk home, in mild September weather, the delicious heat of the pizza carton against my arm and the wildly beautiful colours of autumn leaves framing the back streets.

A quiet meal on the balcony in the safety of my own home, the greyness of the shifting rain clouds, the chilly and somehow still gentle humidity in the air. The silence of a Saturday afternoon only broken by the crows in the linden tree. And I'm flashing back to happy autumn days by an Irish lake after all the tourists have gone home.

storybook ending

That kind of autumn evening. When you drop down on the sofa with a glass of wine and read stories on the internet for hours and hours. And forget that there is a world out there, with real life and friends, and that you should do something about it.

I seem to have a lot of these evenings. Not sure if it's good or catastrophic, as lifestyles go. But tonight, I've picked up a few writing tips, I've been emotional, I've learned some valuable things about the possibilities of human life, and I have felt that surge of love for something undefined.

Tonight, I'm feeling peaceful.

a heather moment

"Pick out your heather quickly. Or I'll catch pneumonia!"

My mother is choosing plants to put on graves and her own balcony. Since they are expected to last over the winter, the choice is limited. Still, I never suspected there were so many varieties and sizes and colours of heather.

And we're standing in an outdoor flower market, it's a chilly autumn day and it's RAINING. I'm dressed for shopping (high heels, a beautiful white cardigan), not for braving the Finnish climate and getting plant soil all over me.

I feel miserable, shivering in the rain. But around me are flowers, one more beautiful than the other. Beauty, especially in dreary surroundings, never fails to impress me. And I'm with my mother, and she is going to make me coffee after this.

Suddenly, I get the feeling that this is one of those moments that count.

café comment

At our usual café, at our usual table by the window. He is talking about spiritual things. He looks great  in a stylish beard.

I say: "I'm wearing my hooker boots."

the storm is up, and all is on the hazard

One wall of my tiny flat consists almost entirely of windows, facing the bay. Facing the horizon, facing the world that is not my country.

I'm living on a ledge, on the edge of Finland.

Last night I really felt it. A storm crossed the sea and hurled itself at the Finnish coast. Me and my unprotected windows on the fourth floor were among the first to feel it, and it was like standing on the bridge of a small ship in the Bermuda Triangle. Only darkness outside, wind and rain lashing the windows. I ventured out on the balcony to save a lantern and a wind chime, and at one point wondered if the wind would toss me over the railing.

I used to be afraid of the autumn storms, a few years ago when I moved here. But although this was probably the worst one, I'm too used to them by now. Or perhaps the flu virus or my New York-longing preoccupied me. I went to bed but left the bedside light on for a while. I watched the wildness of the night, listened to the howling of the wind and for the first time (not counting the earthquake a couple of years ago) felt the whole building shake every time a gust of wind pounded against it. It was all set in stark contrast to the warmth of the small lamp by my elbow and the thick duvet.

"The noise will keep me awake for half the night", I said to myself. And fell peacefully asleep before I had finished the thought.

in love and war, and nothing is fair

I'm obsessively, absolutely in love. And have been for a while, two years perhaps, although it's getting worse lately.

With New York.

Every day I dream of going there (to live, not just to visit). At the same time, everything inside me except that obsessive, crazy-in-love part wants to stay right where I am.

Completely baffled, I watch this deranged conflict raging inside me. How can I want two opposite things, so badly? How long until I'm torn to pieces?

the garden of good and even better

Some places are iconic. At least to yourself.

Like a garden, not tiny but not large either. A normal, suburban garden surrounding a normal, boxy little house of the Scandinavian seventies style. When you're a child and this is your whole world, it's a universe of little nations bordered by flower beds, set to the soothing sound of the wind in the tall pine trees. Adventures waiting to happen when you crawl underneath shrubs and invent paths that wind around rocks. Raspberries to be picked, and strawberries if you avoid the horrible slugs. Apple trees, for a while even a cherry tree until it perishes one cold winter. A patch where peas and potatoes and tiny carrots are doing their best to grow. "Little Forest" where anything can happen - robbers and dragons hide there. And flowers of every description, from the flashy rhododendron that your mother loves and desperately tries to save from freezing over the winter by packing them into impressive cocoons, to the lovely lilies-of-the-valley that you yourself prefer.

The joy when the neighbours' cats come over for a visit, although your mother always chases them away, sometimes by making hissing noises through the open window. Mother likes other animals though, and birds who knock themselves out by flying into windows are taken in to recover in the unheated sauna room, safe from the prowling cats.

There are a couple of swings, a sandbox, even a playhouse that your father built. There are other children to play with. But the invisible features are the best. Even a tiny little slant in the lawn is a steep hill, even a towering mountain, when your legs are short. A couple of boulders make up a medieval castle, or an obstacle course for your imaginary Arabian thoroughbreds. There are imaginary dogs too, a whole pack of them in fact; never mind your actual, real poodle who is just annoying and disobedient. Pretend dogs are always clever and beautiful and don't require a leash.

The garden is paradise in the summer. But in the winter, you can build real castles in the snow and the landscape is alien like a foreign planet. You stay out and play until your clothes are soaked through and dinner is on the table.

ghost-watching day

Sneezing my brains out. Surely I deserve that extra-large chocolate bar? Yes? Yes.

Nothing like a stuffy head to make you ponder the meaning of life. Something else to ponder: Who is that old lady who waits in the prison yard (of a men's prison) every day, sometimes in pouring rain, until someone lets her in? Clearly neither a visitor (if so, she wouldn't be in the yard) nor a member of staff. There is something weird about her. Maybe she is an apparation in a bright blue cloak.

Or maybe she's all in my stuffy head.

family and fear

School photos on the fridge. A playful dog dancing around my feet. The wonderful smell of a casserole in the oven. Kids coming in and going out. Someone putting a CD on while I dig around an unfamiliar cupboard for utensils to set the table. The kitchen a lived-in, cosy mess.

My niece and nephews chat about teachers and football training and computer games and oh, this is what I miss in my childless state - being a part of a society, a neighbourhood, a normal lifestyle, a culture, being up to date with what kids talk about.

As I am out of touch with the next generation, will I in a few years be hopelessly on the outside of the world they are taking over?

how to type a power plant

My first real job - or the first one I counted as real because it lasted for more than a couple of months and didn't seem as pointless as previous summer jobs like babysitting or cutting grass at the cemetary - required nearly complete silence.

This was a problem sometimes and my boss made great efforts in trying to find me a room of my own, far from traffic noise and loud coworkers. He set me up with a minidisc-player (yes, this was a while ago... ), headphones and a computer, I would press "play" and start typing the interview recorded on the disc. The surrounding silence was necessary because the recording was not always of top quality and the interviewees spoke English with funny accents (Indian, Caribbean and Texan were the challenging ones, Chinese and Korean were the nightmares).

These were university times. I would come and sit in my room after lectures, before volleyball games, when I should have been working on my thesis, after church on Sunday, for a few hours or for countless hours at a time. It was a monotonous job. I should have been bored witless. But for some strange reason, once I started typing and disappeared into the discussions on generator malfunctions and maintenance contracts, I went into a trance-like state and could type for hours until my back ached and my stomach rumbled. Sometimes I would get up to stretch and walk around the room (usually borrowed from some postgraduate student doing research but mysteriously absent), absently poke through bookshelves, stare out the window and think about the Englishman that had recently broken my heart.

First, I had a room overlooking a quiet street where students rushed back and forth in the spring sunshine. Then I had a dark room in the back of the building, where I would get distracted by an entertaining squirrel putting on a show in the maple tree outside the window. A while later, the department moved to a beautiful old building where I sat in a very tastefully decorated and suffocatingly hot attic - until I threw a tantrum about the heat and some undefined background noise and my boss reluctantly allowed me to take the expensive laptop with me to work from home.

I would work for a few weeks, getting through a batch of interviews, then go back to my own studies for a while until I got called back again. My thesis supervisor was in despair but my boss loved me. Sometimes I had a friend with me in the room, working on other transcriptions, and we would go for lunch together and babble incessantly to make up for the hours of not talking to each other.

And I took pride in contributing to a research group who contributed to the improvement of the country's largest manufacturer of heavy machinery, whose environmentally friendly, energy-producing products contributed to improving the world. Yes, really. (Idealism may be silly, but it's never done me much harm.)

I learned: Funny accents. How to type fast. Names of machine parts. General logistics of setting up a small power plant. And the importance of silence.

not so manic Monday

Colour: Dusky pink
Mood: Tired/slightly desperate
Greatest accomplishment: Car oil change appointment made
Greatest accomplishment #2: Three book orders sent
Favourite customer: Guitarist
Lunch: A small sandwich
Coffee break snack: A larger sandwich
Energy level: Very low
Envy: People living in large cities
Worry: Clogged drains
New idea: Visit the city museum
Song: Orphans of God
Existential inner debate: Who is fighting my battles?
Evening plans: Unclog drains / sort photos / none of the above and nothing else either

the sixties, America and a poodle

"It was said that my New York licence plates would arouse interest and perhaps questions, since they were the only outward identifying marks I had. And so they did - perhaps twenty or thirty times in the whole trip. But such contacts followed an invariable pattern, somewhat as follows: 
  Local man: 'New York, huh?'
  Me: 'Yep.'
  Local man: 'I was there in nineteen thirty-eight - or was it thirty-nine? Alice, was it thirty-eight or thirty-nine we went to New York?'
  Alice: 'It was thirty-six. I remember because it was the year Alfred died.'
  Local man: 'Anyway, I hated it. Wouldn't live there if you paid me.'"

John Steinbeck is not one of my favourite writers. But I adore his Travels with Charley (In Search of America). Maybe because I would like to do exactly what he did: explore America from coast to coast with the help of a gentleman poodle.

Lots of interesting observations. Not to mention some hilarious passages. Coffee with whiskey, a dog whose "greatest fear is that someone will point out a rabbit and suggest that he chase it", an eerie night in a forest, coming up close and personal with racial conflicts in Louisiana, a magical description of Texas (that made me fall in love with the state despite never having been there), saving the lives of two coyotes.

Strangely enough, I don't think I've ever read a book set in the sixties before.

post-lobotomy

It's worse than I thought. My baby speaks to me in another language. But although his mind is refreshingly blank and malleable, his whining about petty details is comfortingly familiar.

(Yes, it's still my laptop we're talking obsessing about. I'm going offline now to go find myself a life.)

mood swings ahead

A mother going to pick up her child from hospital after he's had major brain surgery.

That's today's feeling.

My laptop has apparently been repaired and is waiting for me. I have been informed that there are mood swings to be expected and that he may not recognize me.

another bipolar day

The world is too much and not enough. The very air I breathe is intense enough to hurt my feelings, yet filled with indifference.

Weary euphoria and hopeful anguish.

Or it could just be the fact that my computer is broken and I don't know how to live without it.