recurring dream #7

I had that dream again. The one where I go back to work in the Magic Valley, which I sometimes, but not very seriously, daydream about doing. It's almost twenty years since I left now.

The dream is always filled with people, sometimes a few well-known faces but often strangers. I'm usually running around trying to perform a lot of tasks in the lounge/bar and the kitchen, only occasionally going back to my real workplace behind the reception desk.

Sometimes the important people are there as well, the ones I long for and never will see again.

gravel, sun and a red skirt

I don't remember how it actually happened. The tall, lanky man was sitting on a chair outside an Irish cottage, on a sunny summer's day. I think he pulled me down to sit on his lap, or maybe it was my idea. We probably kissed. In any case, the chair tipped over and we both fell on the gravel, which hurt him more than me because I mostly landed on him.

I remember I was wearing my blood red wrap skirt, because in that moment it opened and showed more than was completely decent. He teased me about my "wardrobe malfunction". I laughed wildly, still lying in his arms, on the gravel under a warm summer sun.

Later, he texted me: "I  have a bruise on my arm where a girl fell on me. Not that she was heavy, mind."

I remember the day I met this man - I was in high heels and walked with him into a kitchen. I turned around and smiled at him and knew that I liked him.

I also remember the last time I saw him. It was just a glimpse of his anguished face because he refused to look at me. I turned my own face away because I knew I had destroyed him.

But that day with the gravel, the sun and the red skirt is my strongest - and fondest - memory of a man I once loved.

still lost in the Delta Quadrant

The pandemic drove me to go on a retro-trip on Netflix. I binge-watch Star Trek: Voyager, the series I loved madly twenty years ago.

I've had no interest in the show since then, but I've fallen right back in now and can't stop. What a dream it would have been twenty years ago, to have access to a series streamed on demand, or even DVD boxes! Back then I was limited to one episode a week, broadcasted on TV (and if my VHS recorder or TV malfunctioned I only got to see it once or missed it completely), a few pages of fanfiction on the brand new Internet, and a couple of paperback fandom novels I found in a sci-fi bookstore on a dodgy backstreet.

(But if Netflix had existed, I would never have got a stitch of work done, or managed to find my way out into the world.)

Filming and acting were different in the 90s. Now the acting looks clumsy, the dialogues sound clichéd. But were they clichéd back then or do they seem so now because I recognise every line, from that show or any of a thousand others I've watched since?

Oh the nostalgia! Twenty years ago I was graduating and gearing up to go see the world for real. April then was like April now, minus pandemics and lockdowns: the golden light returning, seagulls, wild spring in the air, exuberance, promises of happiness. I threw open my windows to dark, crisp evenings and watched Voyager's crazy adventures while I secretly, desperately wished for adventures of my own.

And yes, I got them. I got on a plane, almost on a whim, and ended up in a mad place where I sometimes thought of myself as part of a starship crew in a universe of impossible adventures. Because it was actually a bit like that. I ran around putting out fires, fighting monsters (sometimes almost literally) and kissing aliens (really literally). I wore a uniform, screamed for backup in threatening situations, tried to communicate with hostile entities and ate things I probably shouldn't in the mess hall. I couldn't have found more drama and weirdness if I had gone looking for it in outer space.

Still, did Star Trek: Voyager set me up for disappointment? I mean, what normal life could continue to provide such a maelstrom of mad happenings and tightly-knit teams of friends? Yet somehow I think I expected it to.

I watch episode after episode and find myself back in that stormy spring world of the year 2000. It was a magic idea, such unlimited freedom, to end up 70 000 lightyears from Earth like the starship did - but the other day I saw a picture on the news of a black hole 5.5 billion lightyears from here and that adjusted my perspective a little.

But I still wonder why my life has so few space/time rifts, hull breaches, aliens wielding flashy weapons and chatty Talaxians cooking leola-root soup.

Prague and the long-lost friends

I went to Prague for the first time in my life.

The sun shone bleakly on the famous astronomical clock, where a crowd of chattering tourists waited for the hourly chime. The cool April air shimmered with spring promise. I stood underneath the fifteenth-century clock and waited for a friend I had not seen for twelve years, the girl who taught me to play chess in Cambridge. I was nervous. Seeing a close friend for the first time in twelve years is scary. Would I even recognize her?

She suddenly stood before me. I recognized her immediately and hugged her tight as the clock chimed the hour and all the apostles looked down on us. We went to an obscure pub where nobody spoke a word of English but where they set cheap, delicious potato cakes and dark beer in front of us with typical Czech matter-of-factnesss. We discussed life for hours. Then we parted ways again. Not knowing if the next time we see each other is in twelve years or never.

The following evening, I crammed myself into an overcrowded tram in lashing rain and tried to interpret the tram map while not falling into a stranger's arms. In a dark restaurant by the river I was greeted by a man with wild, greying hair and beard. Another friend not seen for fifteen years, the last time in an Irish pub where he mocked me relentlessly and forced me to grow intellectually in order to keep up with him.

He told me his dark secrets and then showed me the secrets of Prague. As he kissed me goodbye, he looked as sad as I felt. Fifteen years or how long? Or never again?

April shimmers with promise of new adventures and is a good time to travel. To find long-lost friends. To lose them again.

recurring dream #6

I am back in my Magic Valley, setting out to explore its wondrous wilderness again. It is beckoning me with its irresistible siren call, this lush and marvellous fairytale forest with hidden brooks, weaving paths and sunlight playing in yet undiscovered glades.

This time, I'm aiming to go further than ever before, beyond the mountains at its far end. I simply must see what lies behind that horizon. I revel in every step of the journey, joyfully discovering new wonders at every turn.

I never get to the mountains. I get held up on the way every time, sometimes by enervating circumstances. Most often by the knowledge that I have to turn back and leave. Because I'm only visiting this, my former home, my paradise lost.

I have to leave, and it's breaking my heart.

in Ireland everything takes more than 15 minutes

Addition to the recap of 2018:

Ireland in April: A country looking more worn-down but with the same fabulous seafood and friendliness. I showed my friends my previous life.

Blackbirds in a Dublin park, rain and hot fires, wandering around my Magic Valley forever, watching sheepdogs at work, feeling absurdly happy on a cramped bus on a rainy morning, finding the sun over hot chocolate on a vast beach, having my first reflexology treatment, not finding a pub in Dublin but running straight into a Romanian midnight church celebration, crawling into the 5200-year-old Newgrange tomb, a music session on the happy west coast, the spectacular and strangely unknown Slieve League, terrible back roads where the speed limits are the most optimistic (not to say homicidal) in the world, a joyous Monday night pub crawl in Monaghan.

Quote of the trip: "Fifteen minutes there, fifteen minutes back." (I.e. my rather optimistic estimate of the time a particular walk would take us. My friends never believed me again.)

coming home, fourteen years later

I'm back in the Magic Valley, fourteen years after it changed my life.

Nobody here looks familiar - all my friends have moved on too. But the valley is as welcoming as ever, soothing my soul with its loveliness and sweet memories.

After a long day out in all this beauty and fresh air, I walk into the hotel bar, nervous. What if I recognise someone but they look straight through me? The thought is unbearable.

That fear is laid to rest when a man looks at me and exclaims: "Come here, stranger!" It's an old friend - the patron saint of magic valleys.

He spends the rest of the evening buying me drinks and talking to me. I stumble back to my hostel a little drunk, completely happy and at home.

you and me and the road to Hook Head

You have no idea how much it means to me - to be driving around the back roads of Waterford and Wexford with you on sunny, windy April days.

Avoiding potholes, looking for the first spring flowers, taking the ferry across the wide river Suir. Stopping for a baguette lunch in sleepy villages, seeking treasure on marvellous beaches at low tide. Asking for directions to Tintern Abbey. Rating garden gnomes for their ugliness, cooing over newborn lambs.

Wrapping scarves around our necks against the cold, putting on sunglasses and feeling the hope of spring. Looking for the devil at the eerie Loftus Hall. Almost getting swept out to sea by the wild waves around Hook Head lighthouse. Feeling at home in a country that is not our own.

All this, while asking each other the deepest questions in life.

walk on water, win this fight

I walk along a windy, endless beach of smooth sand, seashells and pretty pebbles. With me is one of my closest friends, not seen for years. We are less than an hour into our happy reunion and there is a slight tension between us - are we still close, has she changed, have I changed?

We watch surfers and playing dogs as she tells me of her plans to kill herself before her birthday next week. It seems so wrong, more than ever against the wild beauty of the beach in the sunshine, the tide just starting to come in.

When the April wind gets too cold we sit down in a café that is warm from sunlight, steaming coffee and the exuberance of families celebrating a sunny spring day. We drink hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows and talk in low voices about possible reasons for living.

It's completely absurd, but I have never felt so intensely alive.

monday in Monaghan

"Don't taste the foam", I say. "Dip straight through to the dark liquid."

I am in Ireland again, at last, and this time I brought a few Finnish friends with me. We're on a road trip and ended up in the rather unknown little town of Monaghan, where we had to stop for the night.

It's Monday. Monday in Monaghan, and we're celebrating our last night in Ireland with a little pub crawl. One of my friends is trying Guinness for the first time and I'm giving her advice. Guinness can be a shock when you're not used to stout - it was for me, the first time, and I couldn't even finish my pint without adding blackcurrant essence to it. Now I'm thinking I should make Guinness my drink.

Monaghan is dark, quiet and secretive, a contrast to the wild coast of Donegal we experienced during the last few days. Already drunk on holiday feelings we have stumbled out of the guesthouse and into the nearest bar.

In Ireland (and probably everywhere else) you know you've found an authentic, non-touristy pub if the only patrons are a few men, seated at the bar, who turn around and stare when you enter. You know you've really struck gold if one of them, the resident drunk, greets you eloquently despite his inebriated state and the others tell you not to mind him. This bar in Monaghan does not disappoint. We reply cheerfully and drink our Guinnesses and Jameson's.

The next, and last, bar on our tour is even better. Dark as sin, Gaelic name, even more unembarrassed staring. A couple of us decide to shake things up a bit and order Bailey's on ice. The bartender couldn't have looked more shocked if we had asked for a pint of the Saviour's blood. That's all it takes for the locals to engage us in an intense discussion about the terrible spring Ireland is having and whether Finland's could possibly be any worse.

The Bailey's comes in slightly dirty glasses and is delicious. Our Monday night out in Monaghan is a roaring success.

the making of music

My mother, probably sometime in the 1940s, sat down at a pump organ, the kind that was rather common in Finnish homes, chapels and schools at the time. Her grandfather kindly taught her a few basic major and minor chords and she practiced putting them together. In the same way, she sat me down at our beautiful upright piano many years later and passed the chords on to me.

My father, when the mood took him, would sit down at the same chocolate-coloured piano and hammer out the sad-sounding tune to a hymn with the oddly happy title "Jag har inga sorger i världen".

I had already taken many lessons in classical piano (and hated it) but chords were a new world to me. Somehow I managed to figure out, before the age of the helpful internet, how to put them together and make music, starting out with a melody and the root note. I found some song books and taught myself to play.

When I moved away from home and the chocolate-brown piano, I bought a synthesizer with a little help from my father and took it with me to university.

A few years later, my music maker was an old, black upright in a back room of an Irish hotel. The hotel staff got used to me sneaking into the room in the evenings to practice everything from the Moonlight Sonata to hymns and pop songs. The music soothed me if I was upset and inspired me when I was restless and frustrated. The piano was eventually moved to the hotel's main lounge and occasionally, when I was feeling brave and not too many people were around, I played there too despite my fear of public performance.

Then, there were the quiet years.

Now, every Monday evening, I cycle through lashing rain or walk along icy back streets to the little bright room with the piano, clutching sheet music in my hand. My teacher meets me with a smile and many encouring words. Music has returned.

by the turf fire

For the best breakfast in Dublin:

Make sure it's lashing down rain of the coldest, most awful kind outside. Find an ancient, venerable café that has a marble-topped table right next to the fireplace with a fragrant, warming turf fire. Order organic porridge with blueberries, granola and honey, and a glass of orange juice. Read the paper and eavesdrop on upper-class people complaining to the manager about how the service no longer is what it used to be a hundred years ago. Feel the friendliness and goodwill of the Irish permeate the atmosphere, even so.

Sigh with pleasure as the heat from the fire soaks into your cold, weary body.

the country of deadly

I went to Ireland, again.

I found a country slightly more worn-down and a people even friendlier than I remembered. The coffee had improved slightly, in some places.

Everything else seemed more or less the same. Green hills, curiosity, sunny spells and scattered showers, radio morning shows in cosy kitchens or on commuter buses with rain-streaked windows, the best seafood in the world, Guinness in dark pubs, great bookshops, wild landscapes, B&Bs with flowery curtains. A feeling of home and adventure at the same time. All the world in one small country.

You're 100% Irish when punctuation really isn't your thing

an unlikely pilgrimage

In a faraway land, where I once lived, a cave sits on the steep hillside above a dark lake.

More than a thousand years ago, a saint lived in this cave. The hillside is impossibly steep and treacherous and the cave is said to be unreachable except by boat - and there are no boats on the lake anymore.

But on dark nights, over too much red wine and whiskey, one or two of my many intrepid friends have whispered to me of a secret path that winds along the lake shore to the cave - difficult to walk, dangerous too, but not impossible if you have courage.

One of my stranger dreams is to find this hidden path and make my way to the saint's dwelling. To reach this wild, impossible place at the end of the world. I may never get the chance - after all, I live two thousand miles from there - but it doesn't really matter in the end. Having this secret plan seems important.

the buzzing at week's end

Saturday, the day of possibilities. Of sleeping late, of setting out on adventures, of partying in glitzy clothes and smoky eyes.

I used to love Saturdays as a child. I got up early in the morning to watch a long and boring Swedish talk show (it was before the time of children's morning TV) just to see a Tom and Jerry cartoon that appeared somewhere midway through. I didn't even like Tom and Jerry - too violent! - but it was my own Saturday morning ritual. I sat quietly, played with my toys and listened to the boring drone of the talk show, peaceful and happy. The house was quiet. A long day of freedom lay before me.

During my years in the hotel business I fell out of love with Saturday. It was a busy, long day of work and sometimes parties that were just a little too wild. During my time as a shop assistant, Saturday turned out to be a short and sweet workday, full of interesting people and with freedom dawning when I locked the door mid-afternoon.

Now I spend my Saturdays working hard at my laptop at home, looking forward to free days ahead. Watching people through the window, often still in my pyjamas. Taking a walk in the early evening on streets still quiet but brewing excitement for the party night to come. Returning home for a movie night with friends or in blissful solitude. If it's the latter, I still feel the Saturday night fever in the air - faraway friends suddenly message me and distant laughter is heard.

the Irish saga: the call of the wild

The air is different in Ireland.

It's not just the softness of a mild, humid climate. It's the attitude. I'm not a great believer in supernatural things but suddenly I'm prepared to believe in fairies dancing in the misty fields and meddling in people business.

Strange things happen in Ireland. There are inclines where things roll uphill, not downhill. There is a church ruin where an entire stone wall has mysteriously jumped three feet. There are plaques commemorating the fact that nothing happened. There are strange sounds, optical illusions and people believing in all kinds of mystical things. And I feel a new wildness growing inside me. I'm turning into someone a little more carefree, reckless, impulsive. I don't drink as much as the people around me but at times I wonder if their intoxication is an airborne contagion.

Maybe it's just the freedom of being a thousand miles away from anyone that knows me.

My new friends, a party-spirited, loose gang of mostly Spaniards, Swedes and Canadians, put drinks in my hand. "You are too mellow for this gang," they tease me. "You drink less than my baby sister!" someone complains, almost angrily.

I'm grateful for being included in the "in" crowd so easily and fascinated by the carefree attitude, so far from the sobriety and intellectualism of my university friends. I'm also dismayed by the way they slander people behind their backs and constantly complain about the job. We spend long evenings in the bar or partying with kalimotxo, chorizo snacks and bottles of Jameson in the staff house. There is plenty of dancing, singing, kissing, hugging and punching. The Spanish boys get louder the more they drink and are prone to impromptu stripteases. The Irish demand everyone's attention and then sing a melancholy song about injustices suffered under the hands of the Brits. Scandinavians and Canadians throw themselves joyfully into the festive mood. Belorussians and Romanians take one look at the party and withdraw to their rooms to watch TV.

There are fights, love affairs, weed and broken bottles. Hotel staff love to party hard.

Late at night I'm often exhausted by the rowdy atmosphere and the cigarette smoke and sneak out without telling anyone - I learn the fine art of the "Irish goodbye" long before I realise it's a thing. Then I go for a walk in the dark. Through the thousand-year-old cemetery, straight out of a horror movie, if I'm feeling brave. Along the winding mountain road if not. Away from the inn, the quiet of the wilderness surrounds me like a warm blanket.

But the magic does its work on me and it's not long before I'm dancing with strangers and throwing rocks at someone's window. I still take my midnight walks but sometimes I bring a boy to kiss and sometimes I need to be alone to scream out a rage I've never, ever felt before.

the Irish saga: an academic enters the maze

The fairytale inn, a little Irish hotel in a hidden valley, is bursting with people on the evening I arrive.

I'm exhausted and shaking with adrenaline as I walk into my new life with no idea what to expect. Darkness has fallen on the May night outside but the inn is as merry as one would expect of a fairytale - lights, laughter and clinking glasses. The geography is confusing - I wander winding corridors with slanting floors before I find the hotel reception.

I am a twenty-seven-year-old woman who just days ago completed the last assignment for my Master's degree in English as a foreign language, back home in Finland. I have no experience whatsoever of hotels, unless you count a few unmemorable nights in cheap chain hotels during my travels. Nevertheless, here I am in an Irish hotel, hoping the job offer sent to me in an informal email is still valid. Hoping that my father's irate prediction, that I will end up chained to a brothel bed in a foreign country, is NOT valid.

I'm two days into my new freedom after a completed university education. My official graduation "ceremony" is still months away and will consist of me opening a boring envelope with my diploma inside, sent to me care of the hotel. I'm dizzy from the sudden transition from university life to working life - over a thousand miles and a lifestyle shift away.

I'm fresh off the plane and the bus, so exhausted that I'm leaning against my heavy suitcase. But it will be three hours before I get to fall into bed in my temporary staff accommodation. In that time, I will have experienced my first hour behind the reception desk, found my first friend - the chatty Canadian receptionist who will later lead me into so much trouble - and fallen in love with the red-haired chef who put together a simple spaghetti supper for me.

Before I fall asleep I look out from the window of my tiny room, somewhere deep inside the maze of corridors. A cobblestoned courtyard, the bright windows of a bar, a merry party. So this is Ireland?

the Irish saga: the white bus of a saint

My first sight of the country, coming in on the plane from Helsinki, is a patchwork of fields, one greener than the other. No trees, only hedges. It seems foreign and fantastical, like something out of the Enid Blyton books I read as a child.

Treading my way uncertainly through the airport, someone hands me a clementine and a smile.

I walk through sunny Dublin streets, hating the heavy suitcase I'm dragging after me. I find a beautiful park near the bus stop - the bus isn't due for several hours yet. This park has duck ponds, hedges and fragrant spring flowers. I stretch out on the grass with relief and stay there, half asleep, until the bus arrives. My longing to explore the strange city has been subdued by my tiredness, the suitcase and my anxiety for what lies ahead - a job I've never done before, an employer I've never met, a new life in a foreign country.

The bus doesn't look like the other city buses. It is completely white, with a graceful script adorning the side - the name of a saint. It is packed with both tourists and local commuters. It winds its way slowly through town, through leafy suburbs and into the countryside - climbing into the hills on narrow roads, past tiny villages and fields filled with sheep and cows. The road gets narrower, the landscape rougher and wilder. Hills turn into mountains.

I eavesdrop on a conversation in the bus. "You know, he always loved you," says a man to a woman. This fact seems a surprise to her - something she never knew, but wishes she knew. I marvel at the intimacy and gravity of this conversation, the first one I hear in Ireland. I don't think I would ever hear something like this on a bus at home.

Twilight in the mountains, and we arrive at last in the valley that is my destination. Shadows play with the last rays of the sun, the road dips sharply. Through the wild hawthorn hedges I glimpse a real mountain - steep, dangerous, beautifully offset against the evening sky. It takes my breath away. There are no mountains where I'm from. The bus comes to a final stop in a wooded valley, dark but with glittering lights from the windows of a fairytale inn.

I don't feel as if I'm in a foreign country. I'm in an alien world, an alternate universe. I gasp at the sensation of a free fall. Ireland, I'm in Ireland. God help me.

darling books: the only hotel you need in Dublin

"The walk to Room 105 was all too short. They reached it in seconds. Silently, Karl Brown took her key-card from Detta and opened the door. The room spread before them, dim and seductive in pale mushroomy light. Its red and black carpet was thick and soft, and its enormous bed, shaped like a medieval longship, beckoned them to its fluffy bosom. 'Try me!' called the sirens of the bed.

Detta turned a deaf ear to them, and so did he."

The two novels Finbar's Hotel and Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel (written by several authors, edited by D. Bolger) found me in Ireland and followed me home. These two books speak of heroes and villains and some very curious characters in a Dublin hotel. It doesn't get more Irish than this. Wonderful.

the year I stepped through the looking glass

From my diaries: the year 2000 ...

* The eve of the new millennium: a cold, cold, winter's evening in my home town. Dinner with friends and a church youth event. I wore my first short skirt and was bored. Just before midnight, I was given a candle and told to think deep thoughts for ten minutes. Couldn't. But when the countdown clock to the new millennium hit 00:00:00 I was struck with unexpected euphoria. There was dancing, then I went home and wrote a lousy poem.
* The year took off on a wave of inspiration. I finished my master's thesis on Englishness, fought against Jules Verne in French and hid in a basement at the university. In love with the internet, fanfic and solitude.
* Braved great adversity to get my thesis to the printer's - cycled on icy streets in lashing rain. Who says a university degree is all about mental exertion?
* Played a lot of volleyball, assisted in an Alpha course, had a houseguest for two weeks (wild hippie with blond braids, just returned from Africa).
* Planned my Irish adventure and tried to convince my father that I was NOT going to end up chained to a bed in a brothel.
* Birthday spent planning an international move, attending bible study and having a café night with friends.
* Hectic spring weeks bubbling with university students celebrating spring. Sushi and dancing, the theatre, picnics with beautiful men, country drives and a flight in a small plane.

* Moved all my furniture 400 kilometres, then said goodbye to everyone I knew and moved to Ireland. On arrival, I was greeted with sunshine and a clementine.
* Began my working life in a hotel reception at world's end. My arrival coincided with that of the digital revolution and the big, old hotel ledger was thrown out.
* Fell in love on the first evening, with the red-haired Irish chef who made me a spaghetti dinner.
* Spent the rest of the year intoxicated, wild and in love - with a reserved chef, a cool businessman, a bohemian soulmate and life itself.
* Worked and partied with an international bunch who at first seemed shallow and negative but brought out the wildness and strength in me.
* Learned to drive on the wrong side of the road and collected counties. Kissed the Blarney stone and saw the twelve mountains of Connemara.
* Dated a jockey who stood me up three times out of four, partied in a cemetery, threw stones at a man's window and modelled for a mad Belarussian artist.
* Learned how to be a hotel receptionist and do everything else as well - from babysitting newborns to waitressing, carrying suitcases and handling irate managers.
* Took long walks in a magic valley to get away from fights, drama and burning cars.
* Had a sheepdog that disappeared into thin air.
* What else I learned: how to be loved, how to let loose, how to not take it personally when people scream insults at you, how not to date, how to drink, how to deal with an unfair world, how to be me.
* Went home for Christmas.