slow moves in messy hair

Sleepy homesickness, slow moves in messy hair and woollen socks. The office on those silent last days of the year when Christmas is still in the air. Almost alone.

Fir trees in snow outside the window, shifting from dark to golden pink, to greyish white, to dusky blue, to dark again. Christmas lights, leftover chocolates. End-of-year statistics, last-minute shipments. Lonely colleagues between empty desks at the other end of the office. Lazy chats over mugs of coffee.

I'm reluctant to let go of glittering lights in dark snow, cinnamon scent, angelic voices, traditions of centuries, magic of millennia, Christmas in the North.

the accidental bombmaker

Things I brought to the recycling centre, probably causing speculation among the staff regarding my life choices:

1 rusty car exhaust pipe

10 injection needles (most of them used)

2 tiny capsules of butane gas

1 packet of painkillers

miscellaneous small electronic gadgets

I had just been clearing out some old junk at home. But while driving to the centre, I visualised a scenario where the ancient gas capsules exploded, turning the injection needles into deadly shrapnel, and wondered if anyone would believe that I hadn't actually intended to build a bomb.

melt into it

While others struggle with this winter darkness, I melt into it, gratefully. Books, sleep, heated blankets.

a shout into forever

“You mustn’t live so lightly, 

spin your stories, tell your tales. 

Let them dance across the oceans 

and set the wind upon your sails. 

For every truth found on your travels 

and in the pits of your despair, 

is a shout into forever 

of ‘I existed, and I cared!'”

-e.h

hot, exhausting, fabulous Italy

A hot autumn week in Italy. Train rides where I wrote in my old-fashioned journal, stared out the window at fields and hills, and sometimes got into heated debates with my companion. 

The food was wonderful, the coffee even better and the gelato to die for. The heat was no joke and the amount of tourists in some places was unbelievable.

Venice, Florence, and then on to Cinque Terre - village-hopping by train with lots of tourists, but more space to breathe than in crowded Florence. We walked around picturesque villages on this rocky coast, cooled off in the sea. Sun, sand and salt water eased our weary souls and aggravated the blisters from walking over 20 000 steps per day. A fresa colada on a hilltop overlooking the sunset over the Mediterranean was a dreamscape. From the train we glimpsed the white marble mountains of Carrara.

Pisa was squeezed in on our last night. The aim was too see the damn tower and then crash into a hotel bed. But we world-weary travellers were taken by the strangeness and awe surrounding that leaning tower and the basilica. The smooth marble and the green lawns were cool and peaceful late in the evening. We lingered - deep in thought, weariness and a little melancholia. We laughed at tourists taking mandatory pictures of themselves in funny poses with the tower. Then we laughed and took those same pictures of ourselves. 

There is an odd comfort and warmth in sharing the same ridiculous joke with strangers from all corners of the earth.

A leisurely meal at an outdoor restaurant as the warm darkness fell and the lit facade of the tower leaned towards us. We shared spritzes and the best moments of our journey before walking back slowly and discovering that Pisa is an unexpectedly charming city.

As if Italy wasn't enough, the plane that took us towards our home in the North flew over all the tallest Alps - mountain lakes, rivers, summit snow glittering in the sun - and continued over Prague and the meandering coastlines of the Baltic Sea. I got my money's worth from this European trip.

the day we nearly missed Botticelli

After Venice and love at first sight, Florence gave me an overwhelmed feeling - too hot, too many people, too noisy traffic, the Duomo too immense, the Uffizi Galleries too vast with too much to see, too much walking. 

And yet - who wouldn't want to be overwhelmed? 

We had a too-strong drink under the watchful eye of Michelangelo's David, at the site of the Bonfire of the Vanities. Gaped at the thousands of people queuing for hours under a lethal sun to enter the Duomo. Did a few Italian lessons on Duolingo over iced cappuccino on the Uffizi café terrace. Realised, after 3.5 hours of walking through the Uffizi, that we missed the Botticelli room and had to backtrack to the beginning. Stood before the graves of Galilei, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. Found the shirt of Saint Francis of Assisi. Had a pain in the neck after gazing in wonder at too many painted ceilings. Had knees that literally buckled from too much walking. Kept walking anyway, driven by hunger for more wonders, to the Ponte Vecchio, Porta Romana, Palazzo Pitti. Admired a street performer singing "La donna è mobile". Almost got run over by a police car pushing recklessly through a crowd. Almost got run over by one or several horse-drawn carriages. Ate cannoli. 

And finally, had a glass of wine in a deserted B&B while watching the comings and goings in a back street, discussing how the world overwhelms you - with its wondrous art and its infinite masses of people.

all the dark alleys where we got lost

The cynic in me saw damp and mold, rotting buildings and dirty canals, millions of tourists, gondoliers with fake smiles, plastic trinkets sold in old squares. 

The rest of me ignored the cynic and fell in love with this fairytale maze of alleys, canals, bridges, history. Venice, the city that looks more or less like it did in the 16th century. The strange city with no traffic except boats: boat taxis, gondolas, transport barges, ambulance boats, police boats, luxury yachts and immense cruise liners further out, and people's everyday boats everywhere. The city where darkness pools black in back alleys and smaller canals, just outside the colourful lights of cafés and bistros - so dark that the stars can be seen in the middle of the city.

The crowds of people and pigeons, both of which got too close for comfort sometimes, in the vast Piazza San Marco. The expensive old cafés around the open place, a classic orchestra playing newer tunes, thousands of tourists taking selfies. The impressive campanile that crashed down to earth once, the intricate decorations on the ducal palace, the odd cupolas of the basilica and its Byzantine wonders out of my reach.

The stretch of designer shops from the waterfront along winding streets up to the expensive hotel terrace where we dropped of fatigue, drank Aperol spritz in the shade and watched gondolas, some with men singing dramatic songs in them.

The narrow alleys leading from a tower on Piazza San Marco, past a cannoli shop we couldn't resist, past old-fashioned payphones, to a square where tourists milled around and blue lights from spinning toys glittered in the air, on to the Rialto Bridge with its densely packed tourist crowds, shops, entertainers and glimpses of the Grand Canal.

The quieter square where we had gelato among pensioners reading the paper in the shade of old trees and a small boy gave us sweets. The heat of the midday sun and the cooler shadows in cobblestone lanes.

The deserted back alleys where we got lost in the dark, a little scared, until the staircase of Contarini del Bovolo suddenly rose before us, shining like hidden treasure.

The corner of yet another unknown square where we sank down in a corner to drink water and eat over-sweet cannoli - lost again and with the maps app out of sync. Darkness was falling but friendly cafés shone bright and children played around us, there were voices and the tinkle of glasses.

The quiet San Zaccaria where a priest said Sunday mass under Bellini's altarpiece. The Orthodox church where three ladies sang a hymn. The wild peals of church bells echoing between stone walls and bridges, loud and unapologetic.

The quirky bookshop Acqua Alta, hidden somewhere in the maze, with its gondola filled with books and steps made of books leading up to a viewpoint over the canal - and the narrow aisles so packed with tourists you couldn't breathe.

The morning we got up before dawn and watched the stars shine over the promenade by the lagoon, its choppy turquoise waters now dark. Sitting on the deck of a vaporetto in a cool breeze as the morning light crept in, travelling slowly up the Grand Canal. Past palaces, some beautifully restored, some worn down by centuries of neglect and mold. Intricate windows, little jetties, dark canals leading into the maze of alleys behind. Crystal chandeliers glittering under vaulted ceilings in some of them, rotting shutters hiding others. A man watching the sunrise from a top balcony of his palazzo. The boats everywhere - water taxis pushing past at high speed, tiny private boats with outboard motors, small barges carrying wine cases, vegetables, building supplies, garbage. Gondolas tied up waiting for the tourists to wake up. The white Rialto Bridge almost deserted at this hour.

Before I boarded the train to continue exploring the rest of the world, I ate my breakfast sitting outside the station, watching the boats on the canal and thinking I never wanted to leave at all. How many mysteries and old stories did I leave behind?

autumn's to-do list

Go to Italy, buy a fridge magnet, read Of Mice and Men, sing in a choir, make myself strong, pray, live now.

to know the earth as poetry

Some of us don't want

to be tough alpha leaders.

Some of us just want to write

and wander

the garden

and breathe in the sky

and nourish and nurture

and quietly create

new pathways

and live our

lives as our art.

To know the earth 

as poetry.

(Victoria Erickson)

three strengths and a weakness

I can walk alone through dark woods. 

I don't kill spiders if I can avoid it. 

I can do hard and holy things even if it breaks me. 

My heart is growing softer, bleeding too easily, and I don't know how to survive it.

glittering moments in July

A guinea pig, swimming in a dark lake, linden flowers, sushi with mango, an Eighties' version of Trivial Pursuit, and baffling a physiotherapist with my handgrip strength.

midsummer: boredom wanted

Midsummer - the fragrance of a thousand flowers, blackbirds and chaffinches and everybody else singing for me. The world's greatest show, pulling out all the stops whether anyone is watching or not. I never want to lose this sense of wonder. I never want to miss this feeling of grace.

Midsummer week had it all. I watched two elks swim across the sea and climb wearily out of the water. I called excavators to dig up a leaking waterpipe. I worried about the sudden revolt in neighbouring Russia. I witnessed death stalk my family and wondered if I would get a call saying someone had been taken. I celebrated Midsummer with old friends - eating grilled chicken, fish and potatoes, strawberries and chocolate, drinking homemade birchleaf mead. The sweetest taste lay in the old memories and undying friendship - and in beating the boys at darts.

Midsummer with extra everything, including mosquitoes. 

Now I've withdrawn to my summer paradise, alone, to see if I can still find the old me somewhere. The one who writes blog entries and feels wonder and feels the heat of summer despite a chill in my heart.

then, a party or two

Expensive champagne, food, a pink hat, lilies that smelled of cinnamon. A roaring toy dinosaur, roses, a big surprise party. Kitsch vases from the secondhand shops, pictures from my childhood, stories from my wild youth, a unicorn, a weird teddybear lamp. Friends who said loving words and laughed at my jokes and knew my passions and quirks.

So much for spending my birthday alone. I have never in my life felt so seen and known and loved.

stand here upon your ground

On my birthday, I sat sulking in a café in Helsinki. I was alone. On my birthday. 

The hotel breakfast had been worse than average, the coffee undrinkable. The sunny weather had turned into icy winds and a little drizzle. My feet and back ached after too much walking the day before - my body felt old. I am old, I thought bitterly. And I have nothing to show for my life so far, and I'm alone. On my birthday. While people I knew were taking holidays in Tuscany or Cape Town and torturing me with sunny pictures on social media. I had gotten no further than Helsinki - cold and not exactly exotic, only a few hours away from home.

My sister had spent a couple of days with me (but had to go home earlier than me), and my friends were gearing up to celebrate me when I got home. But I was forgetting all about that for the bitterness of being alone, right now, on my birthday.

I had a vague plan to catch the ferry to the little castle islands of Suomenlinna, a wonderful place in the summer. Not so wonderful in April, in icy drizzle and high winds. I didn't really want to go.

I went anyway, thinking I would have a quick look around and catch the next ferry back. The islands were still grey, no spring green yet in sight. Thousands of geese had invaded the place, cackling gleefully when I stepped in the poo they left everywhere. A few tourists wandered around, looking lost. I got lost too - it was off-season and signposts were missing. Incredibly annoying.

Finally I found my goal, the King's Gate which I remembered from previous visits, decades ago. Specifically, an old inscription there had stayed in my mind: "Posterity, stand here upon your ground and never rely on outside help". 

There I stood upon my ground, in a beautiful spot normally crowded with tourists. At the Fortress of Finland. All alone (on my birthday) except for a couple of geese. The sun came out.

I found a deserted beach with an incredible view over the Baltic Sea. Sheltered from the wind, warmed by the sun, it was actually enjoyable. I ate the salad I had brought. I swigged Sangre de Toro directly from a (mini) bottle and got pleasantly tipsy. I talked to the sparrows that looked for crumbs around my feet. A friend called to wish me happy birthday, and sweet messages were pouring in on my phone. I looked out over the sea, sun glittering on waves, and suddenly saw adventures and hope and a long summer ahead.

When I caught the ferry back, hours later when the drizzle returned, I had explored the castle and every exciting little footpath on the islands. I had also sat for ages in the sun, writing my journal and making plans for the future and gotten a tan. I had had the absolute pleasure of being alone, on my birthday, and loving it.

weeping with the fig

I gave all my potted plants new soil. Then I got it into my head that I wanted to know more about them. But instead of looking up the best way to treat them, I looked up their names and their native regions. Madagascar is overrepresented in my living room.

I don't think plants have souls but they are definitely living beings. I don't talk to them. It doesn't cause me much heartache if they wilt and nearly die before I remember to water them. But sometimes I have to cut the top off my weeping fig, which reaches to the ceiling, and it ... well, weeps. And then I weep too and apologise. So we have a good cry together.

a day to remember, and to forget a little

Crazy birds sang so loudly in a tree on a streetcorner that I forgot everything else. A ragtime tune suddenly took me back to a long-forgotten TV show that I watched as a kid. The sun made the melting snow look like an inviting duvet. And I remembered that I knew a few words in Polish.

the greenfinch and the unexpected memories

Today I remembered how my father taught me to say totta kai when I was very young. And how on an early spring day once I spent hours on the porch, with binoculars and a bird book, until I had identified the greenfinch that sang so loudly from a pine tree.

Strange how memories suddenly fall on me without warning. I'm not sure what to do with them, sometimes.

jubilee for a warrior queen

This year is supposed to be good. Wine, road trips and roses, strawberries with cream and sun, friends and dogs and feeling loved.

I sink into my sofa to read books, to tired to take on the world. I pick out a journal in soft leather to document my year of jubilee. I read the Book of Job:

Put your ear to the earth - learn  the basics. 

Listen - the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories.

 

I'm missing a part of me and I walk alone like a warrior queen, magnificent and sad, with a diamond core.

add up to something

"What You Missed That Day You Were Absent From Fourth Grade" by Brad Aaron Modlin

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark

After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—

something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation
look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person

add up to something.

beaming peace like the North Star

I Confess
by
Alison Luterman

I stalked her
in the grocery store: her crown
of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip,
her erect bearing, radiating tenderness,
watching
the way she placed yogurt and avocados in her 
basket,
beaming peace like the North Star.
I wanted to ask, "What aisle did you find
your serenity in, do you know
how to be married for fifty years or how to live 
alone,
excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to 
possess
some knowledge that makes the earth turn and 
burn on its axis—"
But we don’t request such things from strangers
nowadays. So I said, "I love your hair."

helsinki magic

Vague sounds of traffic, far-away sirens, voices. Lights from the street projected on the ceiling of a city flat at night. I'm trying to sleep on a makeshift bed, on crisp sheets smelling sweetly of detergent. Listening to the sounds but not disturbed by them. Unfamiliar sounds, a large city living and breathing around this young country girl. Unfamiliar smells of old stone and concrete, fumes, gas stoves, other people's cooking.

Whenever I visit my sister in the big city, my days are spent exploring. Being treated to delicious desserts and cinema evenings. Learning how to travel on the metro, navigate the city, savour ethnic food and appreciate art. Laughing at the sarcastic, hilarious jokes of my sister and her friends in candle-lit cafés at night. Seeing strange things and strange people.

I'm shy, wide-eyed, hopeful that life will always be adventurous like this.

The world is much louder than I knew, I think as the nightly sounds of the city rock me to sleep.

going home, when you live in Finland

Going home, when you live in Finland, often means driving long distances through dark forests.

I used to lie in the backseat of my father's car, a long long time ago, and look at the winter night sky through the window. Treetops flickered past at its edges, yellowish street lights when we passed through a village. The stars stayed still, far above in the inky sky. The air smelled sweetly of wood smoke from cottages we passed. The road was icy and my father drove slowly, looking out for elks. My mother talked in a low voice, the dog slept on the floor. Hot air blasted from the vents but the chill crept in and I pulled my coat tightly around me. 

I thought about my grandmother, who we had just been to see, and aunts and cousins I had met at her house. Their lives and that place in the countryside seemed so far away. The quiet farmhouse that smelled of old wood, the wide and open fields around it, the ticking of an ancient clock, the memories of relatives long dead, the peaceful and very alive presence of nature. Almost like a fairytale. 

Sometimes I felt I had been abducted from that life that I'd never known, plucked from the embrace of doting aunts and lively cousins, forced into a suburban life among cold strangers and harsh demands.

Now I gladly leave the urban lights of the large cities in the south to travel home, along a winding road through the darkest and wildest of forests. Towards the north of the North. The road narrows with the hours that pass, signs with strange names flash by. 

The stars appear, the wood smoke, the old cottages. The sight of empty fields against a backdrop of spruces that always quiets my heart. Wilderness stretching from here to the Arctic Ocean. I'm going home.

the ancient road to Samarkand

I spin my old 80's globe gently, brushing the dust off the USSR and inspecting the crack that has appeared just off the International Date Line.

I got the globe as a Christmas present as a kid. Probably after nagging my parents about it for quite a while. I love maps. Nowadays I can explore Google Earth with a passion but I still find it fascinating to read the mystical names in tiny italics on my globe: Kufra Oasis, Sea of Okhotsk, Society Islands ...

I used to love travelling. I logged quite a few countries during my intense twenties. Now I dread bumpy flights and the exhaustion of arriving at midnight in foreign cities. I still travel, but not without suffering many sleepless nights about it. I force myself to go - because I have to. I have to explore.

I explore mysterious forest paths and strange neighbourhoods locally. But I daydream about sailing among the Society Islands. In my nightly dreams I follow the ancient road to Samarkand.

2022: the year of French castles and a knife in the stomach

2022 was a year of exploring paths, listening to 57 different genres of music and reading 115 books. 

In the beginning of the year, I couldn't play volleyball, go to church or have dinner in a restaurant because of the pandemic. At the end of the year, the pandemic was more or less forgotten and people worried instead about war and NATO, high prices, energy crises and iodine tablets.

I worked remotely and in the office, went to the gym, walked in the woods, gave up volleyball (again), looked after my mother, had Lucifer evenings with my world-weary friend.

 

Highlights:

* New Year in suspected covid isolation and a holiday alone in Narnia.

* Graffiti and rebel art exhibition in a spooky, abandoned, Arctic fun fair.

* Kicksleds and flashlights with sister on a dark night.

* Winter party in a snowy, dark forest - lanterns, carrot cake, spicy coffee.

* Art exhibition with French masters, pastry as a reward.

* Participating in a demonstration, shouting "Slava Ukraini!"

* St. Patrick's Day celebration - watching live stream of Dublin parade during a boring day at the office.

* New sofa with sheepskin throws and a sea view and many a cozy evening. 

* Turku, my favourite city, just before Easter: snow and sun, Dumbledore's secrets in the cinema, secondhand stores, emotional Sunday service in the cathedral, Bach's St Matthew Passion with spiritual insights.

* Birthday in isolation with flu, pizza and blackcurrant beer, slow walk at a safe distance from a friend, cookies in the spring sun.

* Studying innovative textiles: nettle, banana, coffee fibre, self-regenerating octopus genes ...

* Theatre with friends: Botnia Paradise, met the stars of the show (KAJ).

* Walpurgis Night celebration: listening to spring songs in the park, party with donuts and Popeda music.

* Street market in my old neighbourhood: Sunday school memories and strangers.

* Trip to Stockholm: two archipelagoes seen from the deck of an enormous ferry, churches and cafés in the old town with a friend, water buses and the charming Söder, window shopping and weird cinema in Mall of Scandinavia, luxurious hotel night with velvet and royal portraits, old friends and a sermon in Arabic at a church service, munching churros with sister and niece, an afternoon alone at a historical Stortorget café and in a wonderful scifi bookshop, a night show with cocktails on the ferry home to make the most of life while others slept.

* Military exercise that I walked straight into on my quiet forest walk - had to ask heavily armed soldiers for permission to pass through.

* Celebration of summer: two-minute boat trip and an outdoor lunch so windy that my friend had to hold down the wine glasses while I cut the pizza.

* Studying French until I dreamed in French and heard birds converse in French.

* Rickshaw ride with excited old lady.

* Midsummer with the usual crowd and a boat trip under the midnight sun.

* Fleeing a heatwave to a house with a hidden garden - read C.S. Lewis, walked a poodle and watered tomato plants.

* Hen night with Slovakian liqueur, chocolate quiz and book bingo.

* A wedding that was all my fault, in a leaning church. Reunion with old friends, the charming of new ones.

* Summer with boat trips and library trips, golf played with tennis balls and steel pipes, butterfly safari and finding fallen stars.

* Epic road trip through France.

* Two Tampere weekends: summer with beachvolley, autumn with exploring, wine and Mortal Engines.

* Dark september evenings in the wilderness cottage - a fire, wine and books.

* My first trade fair, with colleagues, free sweets and strange innovations like exoskeletons and neurological beds.

* Dancing salsa with beautiful people, trying not to crush their toes.

* Power cocktails and fire extinguishers - just another day in the garment industry.

* Crane-watching in a meteorite crater.

* An eventful week in a suburbian house - dealing with bleeding poodles, ambulances, cranky heating systems, videocalls in the dark, ghosts in the garage.

* MRI, laparoscopy, post-op pains - all resulting in a whole month of rest, then physical uproar and trouble finding medicines.

* Christmas season concerts: 90s gospel and traditional chorals.

* Luxury Christmas lunch, crises and passive aggression as an end to the work year.

* Christmas week: five parties, work, plus a New Year's Eve on the Island. Still finding the time to stuff my face with chocolate.

Domestic road trips of the year: Lapua and Kauhava for vintage shopping and too much snow, Jakobstad for books, Isokyrö for the following of a river towards a yellow cupcake.

explore, pray, read

I'm the eternal explorer. Of forest paths, medieval castles, secret doors to new worlds, old-fashioned Swedish words, libraries, languages, cities, local history, bird sounds, personalities and motives, my own past and present.

I also pray, read, write, and try on clothes.

starting at the end of the world

New Year celebration with candles, friends, a French look, discussions on the war and the latest Jewish Messiah, bubbles, a strong wind and bad roads - on the Island at the end of the world.