Monday, July 29, 2013

the year I lost control

Flashback to the year 2000: My first days in the  Magic Valley,  a quirky hotel in a historic and intensely beautiful valley in the Irish mountains, surrounded by the sweet fragrance of spring. I'm overwhelmed by the strangeness and intensity of everything. I have never met so many weird people in my entire life. They are so unFinnish: they shout, they laugh loudly, they are openly rude, they are intensely alive.

One of my first days at work, I'm standing next to my coworker in the hotel reception as she is being yelled at by the assistant manager. "Around here, we are not allowed mistakes," is her sarcastic comment to me when he's done. The manager fixes steely eyes on me and says calmly, "Don't make mistakes. Ever."

With this in mind, I take a walk later that evening. A winding path takes me high up on a mountainside, through a fairytale setting of crooked trees, bubbling brooks and wild flowers. Unused to the wilderness, I belatedly realise I really should get back to civilisation before nightfall, and it's already getting dark under the canopy of trees. I stumble back along the uneven path, getting nervous. Looking back along the valley, I see dark clouds rolling towards me, the wind picks up and there is the roar of approaching rain.

Maybe it is in that moment that I understand what a sheltered life I have led so far. As an urban girl, I have never experienced the danger in being out in the wilderness at night, chased by a storm. Raised among the polite and coolly friendly Finns who never raise their voices, I have never been yelled at or threatened during my first week at work (or any other week ).

( Although I did realise later that with the Irish, the bark is worse than the bite and you shouldn't take them too seriously ).

As the storm finally catches up with me there on the path I turn around and face it, heart beating wildly from fear and ... exhilaration? The rain and heavy winds sweep over me and threaten to knock me over. I throw my arms out, breathe in the world. This coolly polite Finn laughs out loud and feels, down to her very bones, threatened and unsafe and gloriously ALIVE.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

who can be lonely when you're loved by grass?

To leave this, last Sunday evening, to return to the city and a new work week, felt impossible:
This piece of land is home and I've been coming back every summer since I was born. It consists mainly of a lot of grass, lodged between a dark forest and a quiet, beautiful bay. Two tiny and very primitive cabins, plus the mandatory Finnish sauna, house the family in the summer. It seems to me a miracle that this paradise has not yet been ruined - by pollution or noisy neighbours or, even worse, the vague feeling of unsafety that often disturbs a woman when she is alone in the middle of nowhere.

And I was alone, last Sunday evening. This happens so rarely in this particular place that I expected to feel lonely. Instead, I was wrapped in a feeling of warmth, as if the very air and grass and water were breathing love over me. This is not something a pragmatist like me usually expects. It was enough to make me understand what the Celts mean when they talk about  thin places.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

the dragon vs. the silver jeans

I know I'm bored at work when I'm cheered up by the prospect of compiling statistics in a spreadsheet.

But: things are looking up! A coworker has gone on maternity leave, earlier than intended, and her most difficult and complicated project has been dumped on me. As much as I've been dreading this, I feel the same way I used to do when I worked in hotels and for the first time was entrusted to take a shift unsupervised: it's proof that I'm no longer the newbie. That I'm capable of doing the job for real. It's scary but you know that once you've  slain your first dragon,  nothing is really difficult anymore.

So now I'm sitting down to work through a list of all the difficult and complicated details of this project. And I'm wearing silver jeans so nothing can go wrong today.

Monday, July 15, 2013

on the courage of men

I'm fascinated - from a strictly socio-anthropological point of view - with the two men in the office, the boss and his brother. The boss is a macho guy, the Alpha male. He is generally well liked but all the employees cower a little when he walks into the room, just because of his assertive body language and don't-talk-back-to-me voice. His younger brother cowers most of us all because he is at the receiving end of a lot of unfiltered older-brother rudeness. He quietly obeys the bossy instructions, and the rest of us pretend we haven't witnessed his humiliation. Even though it's hard to miss anything that happens in our tiny office.

And yet, I have to conclude that the younger brother is  the braver one  of the two. When I was new in the office, he made an effort. He made small talk, asked about my weekend, tried to get to know me. The macho boss displayed the typical behaviour of a shy man hiding behind a tough facade: avoiding situations where he might have to make small talk to a stranger like me, because he doesn't know what to say.

Most women like strong men. I like macho men, but I admire even more the quiet, genuine strength of men who dare to be themselves.

Saturday, July 13, 2013

stringing up my Julys

The month of July, as experienced the last few years:

Sipping espresso in French seaside towns and lying to myself (2006)
Smiling at tourists and longing for a blanket in the sun (2007)
Singing bitter songs and fleeing the city (2008)
Strolling on quiet streets and plugging my ears (2009)
Sizzling in the sand and snarling at married people (2010)
Staring at fighter jets and rejecting novels (2011)
Spinning around and running scared (2012)
Seething over snake's beard and living slowly in an office (2013)

Friday, July 12, 2013

poetry in motion (and icecream)

Another slow day in a cool, quiet office...

At the strike of 4 pm I will be out of here. This evening will be spent in the stands watching the beachvolley championships. There will be a hot sun and loud music. There will also be exciting action and some really good icecream.

Not to mention some incredibly beautiful and inspiring people.

Monday, July 01, 2013

self-pity and snake's beard

FaceBook, these days, is chock-full of status updates with exclamation marks. They are all on the same theme:

"Happy days! Four weeks of summer vacation starting now!"
"Last day at work - for the next six weeks, nothing to do except eat strawberries and read novels!"
"An eternal summer holiday ahead!"


A normal Finn gets four weeks of summer holidays, some even more (not to mention my teacher friends, who have something like eight weeks). A normal Finn, having suffered through a freezing winter and a rainy spring, needs every single minute of it, now that glorious, joyful summer has finally arrived.


Choking on rage, I shut down FaceBook and vow to never log in again ( a couple of hours later, I'm back, reading more of the same updates ). Having recently changed jobs, I haven't earned more than one week of holidays, despite having worked as hard as everybody else the entire winter. Even that one week I had to squeeze out of my employer.

And having spent most of that week sniffling from a summer cold and feeling miserable, I feel entitled to more than a little self-pity. I returned to the office this morning, hating everything in sight. Most of my coworkers were on vacation, anyway, so I was free to seethe to my heart's content.

I spent yesterday, the last day of my meagre holiday, dreading the return to work. Went cycling around some back streets near the railroad tracks and found some strange and marvellous things, like a mountain of sand and the place where household appliances come to die.
But my mind finally found rest when I wandered into a garden centre to breathe the scent of flowers and stare at snake's beard and the vivid colours of pygmy paprikas.
I didn't know there existed such things as pygmy paprikas or snake's beard.* So, not an entirely wasted holiday week after all.


* ( Actually, snake's beard doesn't exist, not as a name anyway. Ophiopogon planiscapus nigrescens is called black lilyturf or black mondo grass. But its Swedish and Finnish names both translate as snake's beard and I like it that way. And I get to decide, since I only got one week of holidays. )