thawing out the zombies

It's the idyllic part of the Finnish year.

Birdsong and fragrance and people who seem less like zombies. Myself feeling slightly less like a zombie.

alphabet for gloomy children

A Dystopian Alphabet
…for gloomy children (and their parents) everywhere.

A is for APPLE, iPhone and Mac.
B is for BEES, that died out some time back.
C is for CONCRETE, our modelling-clay,
D for DISPOSABLE – throw it away.
E is for ENERGY (that’s what we burn),
F is for FINANCE that makes the world turn.
G is for GREENHOUSE GAS, warming the earth,
H is for HOPE, of which there’s a dearth.
I is for INTERNET, that’s where we play.
J is for JOBS, performed for less pay.
K is for KINDLE, where e-books are put.
L is for LIBRARIES (all of them shut).
M is for MEDICINE for all our ills.
N is for NHS - submerged by bills.
O is for OXYGEN, without which we’d die
P for the PLANTS that provide our supply.
Q is for QUESTIONS that should have been asked.
R, for RESOURCES, running out fast.
S is for STATE SCHOOLS, which used to be free,
T is for TRANSPORT, which links A to B.
U is for UVs that come from the SUN
V is for VIRUS - never much fun.
W is for WARHEADS we cannot afford
X marks the spot where your VOTE is ignored.
Y is a chromosome, cleverly linked.
Z is for ZEBRA, now sadly extinct.

(Joanne Harris)

choose a man

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman." (Anaïs Nin)

And people wonder why I'm single.

a mini-van and someone else's life

Late one night I find myself trying to manouver an unfamiliar mini-van through the city streets after receiving a panicked phone call from a friend going into labour.

Nervous and high on adrenaline, I put all my effort into projecting calm and cheerfulness for the benefit of the three small children staring at me shyly from the back seat. I'm a half-stranger to them and the situation must be even weirder for them, after hearing their mother gasp in pain and their father give me hurried instructions.

As I try to figure out the car and navigate vaguely remembered roads to find their grandparents' house, I feel oddly elated. This is like taking a peek at someone else's life. Like being a mother. Is this something I have missed out on?

It's oddly satisfying, being responsible for three small lives. On the other hand, it's nice to be the one that can be called on to sort out a crisis at a moment's notice.

manual overload

Downloaded a manual for my new phone onto my new phone.

Now I can't find it because I need a manual to tell me where to locate a downloaded manual.

Just another day in the life of a 21st century savage.

a bigger brain moved in

New phone. (Old one broken, beyond repair they say with an infuriating shrug. It was only three years old and well treated.)

The phones of today scare me. I don't have the first idea what mine is doing. It asks me for mysterious downloads and updates and registrations and I feel as if I'm signing away my privacy and safety and soul. It has a bigger brain than I do and is always humming away, doing mysterious stuff in the background.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it starts to share information about me with the entire world. What I do, where I am, what my bank details had for breakfast.

And it conveniently fails to locate my high score on Angry Birds.

why Mondays (or Thursdays) are blue

I think life's secret is to just decide to be alive and present and happy, and I will be.

I also think it's all a fatal mistake I've made, a dreadful self-deceit, and the moment I admit it, everything will crumble around me.

This is like trying to believe in two impossible and mutually exclusive scenarios at one. No wonder Monday mornings are tough.

(Actually, Thursday evenings are worse. But that's just me.)

That was today's Deep Thought. And a reminder why it's detrimental to my health to have too many of these Deep Thoughts. Now, back to being shallow and superficial and watching NCIS: LA.

Mucha and the red toaster

My phone is broken and I feel a bit lost and anxious.

Tried to fix the situation by buying a curtain, a Mucha illustration, a velvety jacket, a tomato-red toaster and icecream. Most of it in a second-hand shop, but still.

for cuddling

"Saturdays are for adventure; Sundays are for cuddling."
(unknown)

Or picnics. Picnics are okay on Sundays, too. I had one today. There was pizza, fizzy cider, wild kids, friends who screamed with laughter, and a little bit of vomit.

art with Nutella

Fallen in love with Pascal Campion. Can't get enough of his art, especially the urban landscapes. Or anything of his, really. Finally someone who knows how to create a masterpiece named "You, Me and Nutella".

garlicky, chocolatey birthday

The rest of my birthday, by the way, consisted of the following:

* watching a train arrive at the station - one of my favourite things
* lunch at an unassuming but oh so peaceful pizza joint, sharing a very garlicky pizza with a friend
* going on a quest for cloves, brown sugar and a lemon
* working
* a deluge of birthday greetings on Facebook, moving me to tears
* and a candle-lit evening of wine, pie, pavlova, chocolate liqueur and three girls laughing until they cried. No-one ever went home. It was perfect.

laughing over blueberry stains

I splatter blueberry juice over half my kitchen, squeeze lemon over my sleeve, leave a carton of salt in the bathroom.

I laugh, free and unconcerned and happy to be alive. Happy that it's my birthday and I've created a beautiful pavlova and strangely combined it with hot whiskeys.

When I feel old, I celebrate the best thing about ageing: the strength, the confidence, the joy in just being who I am.

second home

City libraries in Finland are fantastic.

The one I frequent has enormous selections of books, magazines, audio books, films and music (not to mention sheet music!) in three languages, and smaller ones in a few other languages.

You can rent paintings to hang on your wall. Play the piano with headphones. Read magazines you've never even heard of. Join a book club, attend lectures and get personal tutoring on how to make the most of your iPad. Look at art. Eavesdrop on people in the café. Use a scanner or printer. Borrow music online. Hassle the staff with demands on foreign newspapers they should have in the reading room. Pick up second-hand (non-library) books for free at the book exchange table. Bring your laptop and work or study at one of the desks all day. Go look at the fish tank in the children's section. Borrow an interactive course to learn a foreign language or musical instrument. Watch a thunderstorm through the gigantic windows.

Or, most importantly, crawl up in a comfortable chair in a forgotten nook and lose yourself in a book. This library has nooks. Nooks are important.

the opposite of war

"The opposite of war isn't peace. It's creation."
(Jonathan Larson)

Perhaps this is why there is a war in my soul. What do you do when you can't create?

rest, and all the rest

A day of rest.

I never really know what to make of it. Stay in bed with Pinterest and a book? Watch DVDs? Go fleamarket shopping? Have a lazy lunch at a cute café? Take a long walk? Meet up with a friend? Visit Mom? Clean the house?

Do I want the result to be tired but content, or well-rested but bored?

retrieving a friend

Went to a dog show last Sunday.

I felt 12 years old again. The age when I ran around the neighbourhood with my best friend A., ringing strangers' doorbells to ask if we could walk their dog, knowing every dog breed by heart, making up a bunch of pretend dogs when  the real ones weren't enough.

Then friends took over my attention, and boys, and books, and Jesus, and volleyball. And A. disappeared out of my life, more or less, for decades.

At the dog show, I looked around and saw thousands of dogs and even more humans. I found I could still identify most of the dog breeds. At the retriever ring I stopped, because retrievers used to be our favourites.

Someone said, "Hi!" And there was A. beside me, grinning. It was so unexpected, so predictable, and so right. The tousled little brat was now a bank teller and mother of two, but the grin was the same. We walked around, discussing life and pointing out weird-looking dogs, and everything was the same.

you who have suffered

"You who have suffered - 

find where love hides,

give, share, lose,

lest we die

unbloomed."

(Allen Ginsberg)

rye chips day

Today is: blustery weather, rye chips with Greek yoghurt, and googling French caves for work.

horses and God

Fact: I can happily stand in a cold drizzle for hours if there are pretty horses to look at.

As long as I have a thick parka, a hotdog, a cup of lukewarm coffee and a friend who demands that we discuss God.

So I ended up explaining my views on heaven and hell while stroking the soft muzzle of a beautiful Irish Cob.

happiness, a dog and an inflatable raft

One of the very first  works of fiction  I wrote, at approximately age 12 or 13, was heavily influenced by (not to mention plagiarising) something from The Famous Five. Jo, the gypsy girl, takes her dog and runs away, but not without some careful packing of essentials which she loads onto an inflatable raft.

A raft, because it's handy and can be deflated and easily transported also overland (or so I imagined). The story I wrote never got very far beyond a detailed list of the stuff Jo packed.

What intrigues me about this story now, except how ridiculous it is, is how exactly it mirrors my sentiments today - sentiments that lay buried somewhere inside me for decades, under more generic nesting and gathering and mothering instincts. The urge to purge everything out of my life except the essentials, to travel light and be free of baggage.

And to have a dog. But that's another story.

wish I loved its silly face

"People are so different", a friend sighs on the phone.

I sit on my kitchen stove as I talk to her, absently staring out the window. I really need to do the dishes. I have spent the day working and obsessing over the bedspread I want to buy and can't find. Later today, I will interpret a church meeting into a foreign language but I'm not worried. I will also play a volleyball match, but am not worried about that either. I will show up and do these things and not think twice about it.

But I worry and think more than twice about how to deal with my friends. With people in general. Sometimes I find myself wishing to be left alone. Not a healthy thought. But I could do without most of the human race - or so I tend to think, with annoyance.

And then, sometimes, I am hit with such a soul-crushing pity and love for people that my knees almost literally buckle beneath me. It's too much, I can't handle it. I turn away.


“I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I’m introduced to one,
I wish I thought; “WHAT JOLLY FUN!””

(Sir Walter Raleigh 1861-1922)

chat to change a nation

I feel a need to  chat to strangers.

I'm not actually the type of person who chats to strangers, rather the opposite.

But somebody has to do it. Nobody in Finland does (except my Dad, but he's dead). And that is just wrong.

carrots and love

On Equinox, the sun sets behind the tall chimney on the horizon.

By now, it overshoots the chimney without effort. And I saw swans flying north and someone in a boat trying to break up the remaining ice on the bay. Reliable signs of spring, all of them.

I'm chewing carrots, feeling troubled by all the terrorism happening in the world. Why all this hate?

Trying to come up with ideas on how to conquer the world with love. By tomorrow, I'll be back to my old cynical self.

subtly entitled

My subtitles can be seen on national television.

I feel kind of famous, except for the fact that no subtitler has ever achieved fame and I'm not likely to be the first. Still, something to brag about the next time I'm inebriated.

criminal, ugly fashion

Here's the thing: I really, really like  clothes.

Just wearing something a bit different, something I know looks good on me, not only makes me happy. It can give me hope for the future when I have none, it can boost my dreams and make me feel reinvented and inspired. Clothes help shape my self-image and heavily influence how confident I feel.

Having said that, I can lounge around in old PJ's on my days off (and hope nobody rings the doorbell - while I'm on the subject, let me apologize sincerely to those two Jehova's Witnesses whom I traumatized by answering the door in nothing but a ratty old bathrobe). And there are many days when I just throw on the same old pair of jeans and the first decent top that falls out when I open my closet door.

I spend very little money on clothes, since I buy most of them second-hand. Shoes I can occasionally drop a bit more money on (annually maybe 200 euro in total so not exactly shopping Louboutins, here). I view most of the fashion industry as an enormous, criminal waste of money and a disgusting oppressor of women.

I page through a glossy magazine, now and then, in the library. Mostly for the fashion editorials. Sometimes I like the clothes they present, more often not. (Maybe because my style never really seems to be in fashion, maybe because fashion editorial shoots just showcase really weird clothes that only sit well on stick-thin models and sometimes not even on them.) The shoes I may like, but know they wouldn't look good on me (six inch heels? I'm already taller than many men, so no thanks).

And the bags. What's the deal with the bags? All these LV, Chanel, Prada bags, all of them. SO UGLY. Am I really the only one to think so?

I have identified the outfit that is me, completely and utterly me.  Black, short/mid-length pencil skirt, black leggings/tights, and black boots, combined with a top that can be almost anything but preferably boho chic. I don't even wear it that often. But when I do, I know I'm being completely me.

stopping at Shell on your way to war

Out of some forgotten drawer, a postcard turned up.

The black-and-white picture on the front: an insignificant Finnish town in late Thirties or early Forties. Ancient cars, some unassuming buildings and  - of all things - a Shell petrol station (probably the hottest thing in town at the time).

The card is stamped "field post", which means it was sent from the battlefront during World War II. But what fascinates me most is that it was written by my grandfather to his son, my father. My grandfather whom I barely remember. The only real memento I have of him is an old violin - he used to play at wedding parties and such, until he found religion, which apparently put a stop to all that. Nobody else in the family played the fiddle. My father inherited it after his death and hung it on the wall - maybe just looking at it gave him some comfort.

I have never seen this handwriting before. I stare at it, bewitched. The ornamental curls in the capital N of our last name. I have never felt such significance in that name before. The father of my father wrote it as his own, sitting on some rickety train on his way back to the nightmares of war after a brief furlough at home. Still young but already a veteran. Already knowing what it's like to cower in the trenches under such heavy fire that you're convinced it's your last day on earth.

So when the train pauses in a tiny town, he gets off to buy a postcard to send home. The things he writes to his young son are generic and easy-going. "On my way there" to wherever he is going. "Hoping to be home soon." I can almost feel the pain behind this, leaving his wife and several children to fend for themselves on the farm, not knowing if he will actually make it back.

And the phrase "gud skydde oss alla". God protect us all.

I cried over this postcard. I'm going to start writing my last name with that curl in the N.

cyan and Indra's daughter

If you stare too long at a screen, the screen stares back at you.

Didn't Nietzsche say that? Why do I always seem to quote Nietzsche anyway (or is it the same quote over and over?), he wasn't that great from what I very imperfectly recall?

I've been staring at a screen forever,
drunk strawberry tea and chocolate tea and chamomile tea and not enough coffee,
shivered in many-layered scarves,
read my old history textbook from high school and scoffed,
savoured the colour of cyan,
involuntarily learned some politics,
donated blood,
felt happy,
felt bitter and anxious,
prayed for the life of a baby,
understood the pity of Indra's daughter,
bought two bottles of wine although my knees were almost too weak to carry both me and them.

guess this is what they call a spree

The unusual shopping list (turquoise bedspread, white paint, a bag of soil, and a pizza) turned out to be quite a challenge.

Let's just say that there are no nice bedspreads AT ALL in existence in the world. Whoever decided humanity should only have ugly bedspreads? And why?

The pizza was substituted for a tub of icecream but I managed to get the paint and the soil.

I also came home with a tiny chair, a huge wall print (picture above), three books, mini-daffodils and two spatulas. I seem to have been on a roll.

I also seem to have installed the Kindle reading app on my laptop today.

white paint and pizza

The Finns have a convenient word, takatalvi. "Return winter." Takatalvi is when you are enjoying a beautiful spring with budding leaves, singing birds, promises in the air - and then you wake up one morning to a blizzard.

There are weird people who enjoy all kinds of weird weathers, but I have yet to meet someone who likes a takatalvi. It's frustrating at the best of times.

I will deal with this week's takatalvi by getting to grips with an unusual shopping list: a shimmering, turquoise bedspread, white paint, a bag of soil, and a pizza.

legal alien

"If you want to know what’s important to a culture, learn their language." (Joanne Harris)

I'm trying. It feels really weird, being part of a minority sometimes. As if I'm an alien in my own country.

ice, mud, whiskey

Ice-skating on a silent sea,

going to the village where strangers wave at me,
an exhilarating mud drive with my mother's Toyota,
coffee al fresco,
making someone happy,
celebrating St. Patrick's Day with a hot whiskey...
...and with the magnificent aurora borealis, torching the night sky in green.

phone manners in Ireland

What happens when you buy a new phone in Ireland: You turn it on for the first time - fresh out of the packaging - immediately receive a text message and assume that it's some generic welcome message from the service provider or something.

Instead, it says, "Bitch you woke me up I was sound asleep".

In Ireland, even the phones are short-tempered. And woefully ignorant (or uncaring, more likely) about punctuation.

the vertical disco

The strip light in the lift is dying. Flickering wildly, sometimes plunging the lift into complete darkness. It's an exciting ride down from the fourth floor.

Someone has tried to put a positive spin on things and added a helpful note on the lift door.

poetic weather on the Baltic Sea

I'm not really interested in the weather forecast (why spoil the surprise?). But I partake of it sometimes, purely for its lyrical qualities.

I mean, "an Arctic blizzard with strong winds and six inches of snow", although not enjoyable in real life, sounds very poetic.

I also browse the website of the Finnish Meteorological Institute on occasion. It has links to beautifully named stuff such as the "Finnish Wind Atlas" and "Auroras Now". The funniest thing about the otherwise very professional-looking English version of this site is that it mistranslates the name of my part of the Baltic Sea, Kvarken, to  "the Quark".  I have heard that quarks are very difficult to observe, so here is a picture of not only a quark, but the Quark:

The warranted, genuine Quark

But the best part about the weather forecast is the report from the marine weather observation stations, listed every day on the radio. I don't really care what it actually says, but the list of stations is so evocative: Kalbådagrund, Makilo, Bågaskär, Utö, Kylmäpihlaja, Strömmingsbådan, Tankar, Ajos...

It awakens in me memories of waves crashing against lonely lighthouses, of seagulls and the crystal blueness of the sea in summer, and of the crisp saltiness in the air as I sit on the beach and stare out at my very own Quark.

an 81st

A candle, sweet pastries on a plate, steaming mugs of rooibos and instant decaf coffee.

This is the celebration of an 81st birthday. And not a bad one.

laugh with me

"I have these two neighbours and they’re married and they gotta be like in their late 30s and I’m making dinner and I look out the window and they’re running around outside in their pajamas and bare feet with water pistols soaking each other and laughing so loud it made me realise I’m wasting so much time trying to make relationships perfect when all that’s really needed is someone who will laugh with me for the rest of my life."

(unknown, via lost-and-so-not-found, Tumblr)

things I suck at

* Maths, or anything that involves numbers. Except counting money. I'm really good at counting money.
* Planning. Hate it and never stick to the plan anyway.
* Cooking. It bores me, and nothing beats a delicious sandwich or cold pizza slice anyway.
* Diving, snorkling or anything that involves putting my head under water (showers excluded). Won't do it.
* Calling my friends. I'm no good with phones in general. Face-to-face or some form of text-based communication only for me, and I'm not the best at staying in touch.
* Ambition and getting stuff done, go-getting. I'm more of a careful observer and inch forward step by cautious step.
* Conflicts. Scary. Although I'm getting better at speaking up.
* Cars. If my car is making a funny noise I deal with it by turning the radio up.
* Cold weather. Like a reptile, I go limp.
* Dating. Beneath a charming surface, I'm fickle and difficult.
* Being open and approachable. I hide.
* Growing up.

slow, sleepy, sweet

The slow sleepiness of a Friday afternoon.

Sun, dancing dust motes, strawberry tea. A friend reading a novel on my sofa, after a late lunch and a delicious glass of chocolate Bailey's. I'm not used to having people around, can't even remember the last time I cooked for someone else.

This weekend will consist of volleyball, wine and that terrible movie everyone is talking about. Right now, life is sweet.

by stories

"We age not by years, but by stories."

(Maza-Dohta)

my theme song

...and now I'm over-rated, overdressed and overstated.

how to stay happy

"Eat food from farmers markets.
Drink good tea each morning.
Read books that make you feel.
Paint, even if you’re awful.
Write, even when you have nothing to say.
Sit in the fresh air outside.
Go on hikes.
Swim in lakes and wade in streams.
Sleep as long as you need.
Work hard at what you love.
Work hard at what you hate.
Love unconditionally and wholeheartedly."

(unknown)

time for a Danish or something

Greyness that looks soft but is cold like frozen iron to the touch. And exhaustion.

Those are the characteristics of this time of the year, when you don't know if you dare hope for spring yet. The end of winter, but what an interminable end.

That's when you should go to a Thai restaurant. With soft lamps in all the windows, a smell of hot spices, colours that are a bit too garish and a Buddha staring at you. A refreshingly un-Finnish welcome.

In fact, I welcome anything  un-Finnish  this time of the year. Thai restaurants. Irish pubs. Portuguese wine. Kenyan coffee. Israeli oranges. Swedish music. American movies. Polish door-to-door vendors. Nigerian scam letters. Dutch courage. Spanish lullabies. French kisses.

(I draw the line at Brazilian waxes.)

driving me sane

Driving at night. Alone. Electronic music with a steady beat and a melody that twists, turns, explores ever-changing landscapes.

It slows down the endless spinning of my brain, cools the fever, creates a calm focus on what is right before me: the road, the night, the solitude. And sometimes, God speaks.

evolution's proudest moment

The "Please prove you're not a robot" feature in my blog's comment field has amused me before (I mocked it here).

Nowadays you no longer have to enter numbers and stuff to do this. To my absolute delight, you are now only required to tick a box next to the statement "I'm not a robot."

Apparently, the ultimate proof of genuine human nature is a mouse click. How our species has evolved!

put down your gun

"I seemed to hear God saying, 'Put down your gun and we’ll talk'."

(C.S. Lewis)

herbal tea and a kite

My eyes ache from staring at a screen and my herbal tea collection is growing - vanilla chai, chamomile and spiced apple, mango and strawberry, peppermint and nettles, chocolate.

I lift my eyes and they land on a bright blue kite against a grey sky.

I look at it for a long time. I dream about being a läppärikulkuri and of reading Kalevala. I think I should get that suspension thingy fixed in my car so I can drive without limits. I want to be brave.

become invisible

"I’m an observer. I read about life. I research life. I find a corner in a room and melt into it. I can become invisible. It’s an art, and I am a wonderful practitioner."

(Christine Feehan)

heading upstream with Herodotus

"... they all say that the earth is divided into three parts, Europe, Asia, and Libya, whereas they ought to add a fourth part, the Delta of Egypt..."

The library of religious and cultural history. Deserted, dusty and quiet. Sometimes there is a librarian there who gives me a discreet nod. Sometimes the only living soul is a dachshund, walking around with claws clicking against the floor.

I come here because it is the only department of the university library that has a copy of The Histories by Herodotus. And you are not allowed to take it out, so I sit in the quiet and read it for a few hours at a time, taking notes and listening to the clicking of claws. Knowing that just outside the dusty windows, the slow river is flowing by and that I could be sitting on the river bank in the sun.


"With regard to the sources of the Nile, I have found no one among all those with whom I have conversed, whether Egyptians, Libyans, or Greeks, who professed to have any knowledge, except a single person. He was the scribe who kept the register of the sacred treasures of Minerva in the city of Sais..."

What about the sources of the Aura, peacefully flowing past the window? One day I'm going to pack my bag, leave the libraries and go explore.

away

A nice, smiling girl in a shop made me cry today. She was nothing but nice, I just didn't like what she said about redeeming a voucher.

So I walked home in tears, and okay, I was probably hormonal or something but it happens too often nowadays. Having spent time around people I don't know, even if I don't interact with them at all, I come home exhausted and disillusioned with the entire human race, vowing to never again get within fifty feet of a person I don't know and like.

Away, away, I need to get away.

forget stardust - you are iron

"Forget stardust—you are iron. Your blood is nothing but ferrous liquid. When you bleed, you reek of rust. It is iron that fills your heart and sits in your veins. And what is iron, really, unless it’s forged?

You are iron.

And you are strong."

(n.t., Tumblr)

whole and laughing

A gang of handsome men burst into laughter when I spectacularly dropped the ball during a volleyball game today.

I grinned and took a bow. Then I did a little dance that was at once self-mocking and genuinely joyful.

This is a miracle.

Some years ago, I was a shattered soul who cowered whenever people laughed around me, convinced I was once again the butt of their jokes. I usually was. For many of my early teenage years, verbal and psychological abuse was thrown at me every day in school. I learned the hard way to never trust anyone's smile and to assume the worst at the sound of laughter.

Can you go on to live a trusting, loving life as an adult after that?

I don't know how, but I know I am. In all the years after that, my life has been crowded with women who entrust me with their darkest secrets and men who love me deeply and aren't afraid to say so. I don't really know where they came from so I have to say they were sent by heaven.

When guys I barely know start laughing in the volleyball court, I don't get that horrible, terrifying coldness inside. I laugh with them, somehow incongruously (and probably somewhat mistakenly) assuming they all adore me - and even if they don't, that nothing they do or say can really hurt me.

During those awful, lonely years I prayed many times for God to save me. He didn't exactly smite my oppressors. At the time, anyway. And I was never much of a fighter myself.

But not so many years later, this soul of mine that I thought was destroyed has a diamond core. It is whole and safe and feeling loved.

It shouldn't be possible. I think God gave me a miracle.


No power of hell, no scheme of man 
can ever pluck me from His hand
Till He returns or calls me home, 
here in the power of Christ I stand

(excerpt from song "In Christ Alone" by Getty/Townend)

first duty of the novelist

"The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone."

(Donna Tartt)

this business business is so complicated

I am the born employee - fiercely loyal, eager to please, dutiful to a fault. Smart and multi-tasking like a demon. So why do I sit through a day of lectures on how to start your own company? In embroidered white clothes and angelic hair, no less.

Maybe it was to meet men. If you want smart, strong men of various ages gathered in a room, go to a lecture on entrepreneurship. (There were many women there, too. My people are a people of entrepreneurs.) Fascinating, how many ages, professions and dreams were having coffee together.

So I sat there, absorbing information on how to set up and run your own company. "Motivation is vital," the lecturer said.

I thought to myself, "I have everything it takes. Except motivation."

Admittedly, I also lack even the most basic understanding of bookkeeping. Even if you hire someone to do it for you, you should probably at least be able to understand concepts like turnover and cash flow. Maybe if I work really hard I can squeeze these things into my mathematically challenged brain.

But motivation is more complicated than bookkeeping. The only motivating factor I can think of is the mental image of myself doing a job that I love, sitting at a café table in a foreign city. Not sure that will get me through the process of creating a successful business.

The fact is staring me in the face, however: I may have to choose between unemployment and starting up my own business.

 But I made friends. Not with any of the gorgeous, single men. With a middle-aged woman and a very young, very gay man.

a fish in the wind

"This is a home of tiny details - unexpected ones, you have to look closely."

Said a friend about my flat. She is not really a friend anymore, after she took off with the man I liked. But she was right.

I am not a fan of knick-knacks and I actively pursue a minimalist style. But I seem to have tiny boho-style angels, stars, beads and candleholders glittering here and there. Even the occasional  fishy windchime.

I really feel that no home is complete without at least one proper stained-glass window. Alas, I'm not there yet.

white dwarf

The sun returned today. Not the watered-down version we have glimpsed occasionally this winter, if we were lucky, but a full-force burning star, blasting us with brilliance and even a bit of warmth even if it was still very far away, low in the sky at noon. It lit up the white desert of the ice-locked, snow-covered sea and made birds sing.

Weak, vulnerable, sad, I sat in the sun. Wrapped in wool, more for comfort than for warmth. Staring at the blinding whiteness through my sun-glasses, gripping my tea mug tightly. Life was over-whelming so I lost myself in a science fiction novel.

Later, I fell asleep on the sofa, exhausted and comforted by the promise of spring.

chocolate vanilla thoughts

While kites are spreading blotches of wild colour across a winter-grey bay, I drink chocolate-vanilla tea, stave off employers and dream  - of cobbled alleys named after ancient astronomers, university libraries, speaking French fluently, love and intelligence.

I pull legwarmers down over freezing feet and wonder what is more poetic, science or poetry itself.

the circumference of love

The word circumference contains the sound of laughter.

I remember standing on a tiny balcony, precariously perched seven stories above a heavily trafficked street. Noise, the smell of fumes. Sunshine, the glorious feeling of being in love. And a tall Englishman, different from all other men I knew, laughing - no, giggling hysterically - at my mispronunciation of the word circumference. I protested, tried to look offended, but love was forcing a broad grin onto my face.

Later - close to dawn, after a night of talking of dreams and drifting around a summer-warm city - I stood on the same balcony and watched him leave on his mountain bike. He turned and waved at me.

boho minimalistic rustic freedom-loving home decor

Essentials:

* A balcony with a view.
* Small reading lamps (preferably adjustable ones), strings of fairy lights, coloured mood lighting. Absolutely no overhead lighting. (I am a creature of the dark.) To save energy, only have one or two lit at the same time. Alter them to create the illusion of change.
* Hardwood or stone floors.
* A laptop.
* A big bed. There is no overwhelming need to make it - a messy bed looks cosy and inviting.
* A good table.
* Windows from which you can see people (who can't see you).
* Comfy chairs and/or sofas with plenty of blankets or throws.
* Candles.
* Somewhere to keep all the books.
* A mug of steaming coffee or a glass of wine on the nearest available surface.
* A small, unobtrusive TV screen.
* A bath tub or tiny sauna.
* A fireplace.
* A back door leading out to a lush garden or enclosed Moroccan courtyard with turquoise mosaics and a private pool.
* If curtains are absolutely necessary, something white and gauzy.
* A dog.


General guidelines:

1. Keep it simple.
2. Don't spend money on anything (this might change if at some point I actually have money).
3. Colour scheme: White with grey, or white with some other rustic pale colour like tan or olive.
4. Exception to the colour scheme: something like the bedroom or reading nook will probably succumb to my guilty love of gypsy colour madness (fiery shades of red, orange, yellow).
5. Keep it tidy and clutterfree, but don't worry too much about the dust bunnies.

looking over your kingdom

"winter looks: wearing a blanket over your shoulders like an aging king and looking over your kingdom with weary malaise"

(princething, Tumblr)

lady gaga, meet bette midler

Would love to arrange my Spotify playlists into tidy, themed collections.

But they are a jumble of rock classics, electronic dance music, indie, lesser-known Broadway musical numbers, cheesy 80s ballads, Christian worship music, even Sunday school songs next to hiphop hits with "explicit" warnings on them. In at least five different languages. Sorted alphabetically to ensure that my listening experience skips freely from one genre to another. In my main list there are over 170 songs at present - everyone a favourite, all with a special meaning to me.

It's not that I couldn't sort them into something neater. It's just that the neatness would bore me. I love the wild mix.

It's for the same reason that my wardrobe, bookcase and Pinterest boards are a jungle. No pretty colour coordination or thematic categories in sight. I may try to keep it tidy but I can't bring myself to categorize.

I need to have it all there, side by side. All the extremes of my weird life in one glorious mess.

critical moments in closed captioning

My job right now:

* I sink into it, and surface every hour with aching back and dizzy eyes.
* It worries me - my laptop might break down right before a deadline, I might have to work through the night.
* I kind of enjoy it.
* It's ever-changing and yet so monotonous - how long can I keep it up?

I guess I also should be asking myself: Will it pay the bills and can I do it at a café table in New York City?

pigeons in twilight

This is what Finland looks like these days. At least in the countryside.

The normal, mid-day twilight. An old bridge, new snow, pigeons.

recurring dream #4

Trying to pack my bag and I'm in a hurry. But my things are everywhere and I never get anywhere. Stressful and frustrating.

slow is the new black

The dark fragrance of coffee in a ceramic mug.
Snow like cotton on the balcony railing, melting under a yellow sun - and the sound of dripping.
The warmth of a blanket after a night of deep sleep, a slow awakening.

It's a morning of slow thoughts, soft dreams, amazing grace.

waiting for the right kind of pilot

It's so predictable it's ridiculous.

My days off are always the same, at least in the winter. I sleep in, have a lazy brunch, then read or hang out online for a while, and life is wonderful.

In the afternoon I go out. Doesn't matter if I drift around town, go for a drive or just walk around the block, makes no difference what the weather is like - when I come home I'm mentally exhausted and severely depressed. When evening comes, I'm usually back on track again.

Too much time with my own thoughts apparently does this to me. At least I have a good reason to go back to work the next day.

What a sad little life.

angry and unusual and free

Angry and unusual women  of the world, unite.

Let's not have children, believe what we're told, have a pretty home, smile, cook healthy meals, post our creative achievements on Facebook, get involved in our community, be a picture of health and rosy-cheeked success, talk about all the hours we put in at the gym today, do things out of duty, show righteous indignation over things we know nothing about, be fake.

Let's show our anger and pain, sleep in, do what we love, do the unexpected, eat tuna out of a tin or strawberries with champagne, dress like teenagers or little old ladies even when we're in between, be honest, act out of character, say no, go to parties, party on our own, say "none of your business", cry.

Be free.

awake at 3:00 am

"The only ones awake at 3:00 am
are the lonely and the loved."

(alive-and-shattered, Tumblr)

orange juice and companies

Drinking wine to stay up late and maybe go on antibiotics in the morning
Dragging out a spare mattress and buying orange juice for a friend
Preparing to start a company I have no interest in
I just want to feel this moment (but I just worry instead)

woodsmoke and silence

The sunshine, slanting in across white, flat fields. The landscape, wide and open and dotted with the pretty red cottages and grey barns that are so common here. A sweet smell of woodsmoke in the frigid air.

This country is so beautiful. I had forgotten, again. I spend all my time wandering around my little town and forget that there is all this world outside of it.

Driving in temperatures of  minus 12 degrees Celsius feels slightly dangerous but my little car doesn't let me down this time. It even manages to keep the temperature inside acceptably warm. I leave the highway for a smaller road that is treacherously icy but forget to be nervous because the sun is setting and there are picturesque villages along this road and it's all so quaint that it's ridiculous.

After a while, you forget the frustrations of winter driving: icy roads, blizzards with zero visibility, mysterious engine failures because of the cold, and the endless, endless drudgery of scraping ice and snow off your car before you can get going.

I know I will freeze half to death the moment I step out of the car but who can resist sampling the deep, peaceful silence of this world?


(Image from pinsta.me)

10 word story

"Take me on long walks and to warm coffee shops."

(Ming D. Liu)

at least my thigh looks good

New jeans, basically for free.

Something to make me happy in the midst of worrying about health, work, relationships and the meaning of life. You know, the small things.

dusk hides the body

“Never are voices so beautiful as on a winter’s evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day.”

(Virginia Woolf: Night and Day)

not all those who wander are lost

I didn't get up early this morning to sharpen my elbows and practise my smile. 

That's what people do, these days. They figure out what they want and they go and get it. 

You can have everything, they say. (You must have everything, they mean.) We celebrate diversity, they say; everyone has the right to their own way of life. (As long as your way of life is not that of a drifter or aimless dreamer, they mean.) Everyone's values must be respected, they say. (As long as those values are not too different from our own, they mean.)

I can't figure out what I really want or am good at (perhaps because it's many things?) so they put me down. My world is too vast and unspecified so they make me feel I'm wrong.

I will not shrink myself to fit their world. I cannot focus on a goal because there is so much in the universe to explore. I cannot join the race for gold because someone has to slow down to think, to create, to love, to shape the future.

(Title from J.R.R. Tolkien: "All that is gold does not glitter")

buy flowers

if you want to be beautiful
buy flowers and take
them to the cemetery

if you want to be free
write a letter to the person
you hate most then realize
you do not hate them
at all

if you want to be wild
wake up at 6 AM, drink
hot coffee and watch the
sunrise

if you want to be happy
smile at every person
you see even if they aren’t
looking 


(via irynka, Tumblr)

today's the day Camus and Väinö Linna meet

I am an anxious soul so here's today's reminder of what I actually have:

Spiced coffee. A cosily messy flat, lit by tiny warm lamps in every corner. A friend who calls to say we have a hall booked for indoors beachvolley tonight.

I get to feel sand between my toes again! "In the midst of winter, I found there was, in the tiny Finnish hamlet of Karkkimala, an invincible summer."

And I'm working on subtitles for a TV show with famous quotes from the classic movie The Unknown Soldier. Tulta munil!


... With apologies to Albert Camus for the mangled quote above. To continue in his own, mostly unmangled - though translated - words; "And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger - something better, pushing right back".)

commanding attention

Today, my primary job task consisted of writing a command into my computer.

It took 1.5 hours, a Skype conversation in a foreign language and allowing a stranger 300 miles away to poke around my hard drive.

all

I stretched out on my friend's sofa and yawned.

"What's another word for 'mayhem'?" she said.

As I craned my neck to see the crossword she was holding, I realised that this is all I need from today, from friendship, from life.

2014: the year of subtitles and smoothies

* New Year with friends in the countryside, fireworks and green tea. I also heard the snarl of  Cerberus  in the dark behind me.
* Cocktails and an anomaly: a volleyball game on the TV screen in the pub, to the joy of me and a handful of hardcore fans.
* Lost my dearest neighbour,the best widow in the house, the one who first saw me in pyjamas and who could tell me what the view out of the window looked like in the Sixties.
* Endured a few months in a gym with coldhearted people, stuffy changing rooms and excellent dance classes.
* Stocktake: counting ten thousand pieces of clothing plus a few reindeer hides.
* Composed a 10-page quality plan without knowing what a quality plan is. (Brought back memories of every essay I ever wrote at university.) For a company that was went bust a couple of weeks later. (Irony not lost on anyone.)
* Weeks and weeks of compiling business statistics for lack of anything better to do. Never thought I would look at spreadsheets as a source of entertainment.
* Second-hand shopping in Suicide City with an unusual man and a GPS navigator that favoured cow paths. I learned that Toyota apparently does sewing machines too, bright orange ones.
* Lived in  suburbia  for three weeks during the most desperately depressing phase of winter. Cheered myself up with dog walks, good espresso and lounging in front of a real fire.
* Abrupt end to my new career in the clothing industry when I came back from my lunch break one day and was told to pack my stuff as company was bankrupt.
* Abrupt start of my new career as audiovisual translator when I was headhunted by a tattoo-heavy rock'n'roll biker dude. Visit to a strange little television company where I was crammed with new software skills.

*  Return to the Little Shop of Harmony (the job I left a year earlier) for a few days of work among books and people.
* Went to a concert to hear a Nineties pop star (Jenny from Ace of Base). She can still sing.
* Debut as fanfiction writer.
* Visit to Helsinki, star-struck by the city lights. Everything was a delight - the four-hour train ride, the hostel that had birdsong in the bathrooms, the mozzarella sticks, watching football over a beer with the locals and the Japanese tourists - but most of all the urban air. Must have walked five hundred miles just to take it all in.
* Hen party with Finns and Russians - shabam-core-stretching, film discussion in a sauna, too much thai food, a club that wouldn't let us in and one that did. The dancing went on for a very long time.
* Another visit to the nation's capital, this time in a hostel with less birdsong but more exotic people. A glorious evening walk in an odd part of the city and the dubious pleasure of sleeping in a 20-person dorm - rocked to sleep by Russian whispering.
* A three-day wine picnic by the rivers of Germany with a woman who cuts dead people for a living. Highlights included a bowl of carrot soup in a twilit garden, and a bomb scare.
* A wedding. I cried, charmed a whole table of introverted bachelors, tied a ribbon into a stranger's beard and endured forced labour afterwards with the cleaning-up. Will never go to a wedding again.
* Guided tour in a garbage truck factory and a preacher museum. Just another day in the life of a translator.
* Scary and unsafe and yet the best job I've ever had: subtitling TV shows while sitting in the sun on a balcony overlooking the sea, sipping coffee.

* Six cocktails on one summer's evening, served by an unlikely cocktail master who was also an expert on child-rearing and on going naked for extended periods of time.

* Day on a deserted island with a laptop, an excavator and a man.
* Watched the icehockey world championship final with friends. Someone bit me in the knee when Finland lost.
* A summer lunch in the cemetery (with the thought "Maybe I'm sitting on my future grave?") and a National Ballet show in the market square.
* Summer cider evenings with a seaview and a friend, and this year's only cigarette.
* Coldest midsummer ever with gang of friends, almost-midnight-sun and a concert with an American artist who arrived by helicopter.
* Watched the traditional old-school boat race on the Island with friends, my mother, my friends' mothers, my mother's friends...
* Summer of my dreams: five weeks on the beach far from everything with family, books, beachvolley, water games and a hot, hot sun. And no worries about returning to work. Enchanting additions to this summer included shrews, squirrel babies, and locals who let me refill water canisters free of charge.
* Camembert and cannoli at the European food market where vendors greet you with "bonjour" or "buongiorno". Melts a cold Finnish heart every time.
* Became a half-hearted fan of junior football, either roasting or freezing in the bleachers.
* Sampled the best of a summer in the city: giggling among the beautiful people on a summer's evening with crazy friends, watching beachvolley championships barefoot in the bleachers with icecream.

* The Night of Arts, this town's annual carnival day. Personal highlights included an  Orthodox church crypt  (not at all what you would expect), Shetland ponies, an enchanting tango show in a back room, "Whiskey In The Jar" and overdosing on tea in an artist's studio. The best thing about this annual chaos is always ending up in the weirdest parts of the city.
* An August of electrical storms - like the one that went of for an entire afternoon and almost slaughtered the city while I was trying to keep four kids and one dog calm, or the completely silent ones that brightened the midnight sky.
* The end of summer: cousins and Norwegians, bonfires, country roads in harvest time, the silence of a million stars, bittersweetness.
* Emergency-babysitting two kids, an experience not unlike that of trying to contain a bunch of wasps after giving their nest a good shake.
* Peaceful last coffee break ever in my old workplace, the Little Shop of Harmony, which now closed its doors for good. Nostalgia but a sense of grace.
* Free tickets to the theatre: Edith the crazy poet, me, my intellectual friends, silver shoes.
* A few boisterous Saturday nights in a bilingual Irish pub packed to the rafters with all kinds of humanity. In the company of the girl who reads Camus in French and drinks me under the table, and the stone-sober girl who only reads Fifty Shades of Grey. Or the scruffy guy of rough hands and a kind heart. A good time was had by all and we got through the list of selected beers.
* My first senior citizens' trip, at least 25 years too early, across the pond to Sweden: sunny landscapes, great seafood, a sing-along, hilarious elderly gentlemen.
* Autumn days wrapped in wool, warmed by the laptop on my lap or the fireplace at my side.
* Harvest feast with an abundance of melted chocolate.
* A world-class gospel concert with my teenage crush, a boy I knew in third grade, and a one-time card-game partner - all of them now professional musicians - and familiar faces all around. Suddenly it was 1992 again.
* Lunches in my ex-workplace just to confuse the boss who fired me.
* There is a first time for everything - like editing web pages, digging out ancient Finnish poems, job interviews on Skype.
* Walked like  Quasimodo  for a few days.
* Work that brought freedom but also hours upon hours of installing software, reading instructions, learning how to use strange databases and convert files. And wondering what would explode first, my laptop or my brain.
* A really weird party in a fancy villa, stone sober, with wasted women, bemused bachelors and a privately guided art tour.
* An international night with input from Honduras, Nigeria and the U.S.A. and the reminder that a dark, dangerous winter lies ahead. The night ended around a bottle of wine with friends as a storm howled outside and the reminder that I have survived Finnish winters before.
* Trendy Saturday brunch on  raw food and liquorice balls.
* Computer courses - the same ones I've taken before and forgot all about.
* Weekend in Tampere with the girls: mad laughter, Spanish tapas, Beaujolais Noveau, cozying up in bed watching Bones and Magic Mike, spilling scented candles all over the IKEA parking lot.

* Back to the night shift: debate, exhaustion, bucketloads of vanilla chai.
* Barely made it past Christmas Eve with family before crashing down with the flu. Thank God I have friends with the good sense to give me DVD box sets for Christmas.
* Singles party on New Year's Eve. Singles party! This is SO not me. Fell head over heels in love with life.

social studies, interrupted

A string of blue fairylights throw their light over the bay - they may be too bright and glaring for my neighbours' liking but this dark winter needs all the light it can get - and a storm is brewing.

I pull a blanket over me and wonder what to do about my broken TV.

It's not that I'm at a loss what to do without it. I still have my laptop and I never actually watched much TV anyway.

But so much of  what's going on in a nation  is condensed into that TV. You turn it on for a few minutes in the evening and have a quick look at what's on - and you have a basic overview of what people are talking about right now, or indirectly thinking about.

I have lived in foreign countries, and in my own country as a foreigner, and I always found that I never really got the hang of society until I got myself a TV - no matter how much I read the papers and hung out with people, I always felt like an outsider.

So I acquired a TV, used it for anthropological and social studies a few minutes every evening, and then went back to my books and favourite DVDs feeling much more at home.

The anti-consumerist in me wonders why I should fork out precious money on a new TV. The minimalist in me says the livingroom looks much better without a large screen in a prominent spot (and the bedroom is definitely no place for it). The ultra-minimalist vagabond in me suggests using the laptop for TV as well as everything else (and getting rid of the flat and living a bohemian life in a camper, but the Finnish winters don't encourage it).

The curious, social creature in me craves a TV.

breaking in the new year

Fireworks exploding over my head, glass of bubbly in one hand, a sparkler in the other. Laughter with cool new friends.

2015 arrived with a very pleasant cliché indeed.

My heart always skips with joy when I admire fireworks, but this time it wasn't just my heart. Every nerve was shivering with excitement. What a long time it is, I suddenly realised, since I was unreservedly happy like this!

It didn't even take much. Just the rare courage of going to a party where I didn't know anybody, smiling and bravely being me among interesting strangers. The knowledge that I am somewhere unexpected, doing something unexpected, among strangers. And a few glasses of wine.

New Year's Eve was a complete, unexpected success then. New Year's Day, on the other hand, was spent in a haze of tiredness that deteriorated into angry sobs as my car broke down. Spectacularly and yes, also very unexpectedly.

What might this mean for the year to come?

throwing caution

With blue fairylights and a broken TV I'm saying goodbye to 2014.

My New Year's Eve celebrations have usually included good food, tea-drinking friends, profound wisdom. This year, I was invited to a singles party of the "bring your own bottle" kind where I know exactly one person. Throwing caution and introversion to the wind, I thought "what the hell" and accepted the invitation.

I will get slightly drunk, watch other people get very drunk, answer weird questions, and if there is dancing I will dance.

disease-ridden notes

Sick, day five.

Can't venture out to the grocery shop because rough winds do shake this sickly body of mine and it ain't no fun.

So I survive on chocolate and flu meds, and study the wintry landscape through my window.

* Note to ornithologists: the thrushes have not yet migrated south for the winter. I hope they are good with minus 10 degrees Celsius.
* Note to meteorologists: the wind has turned from winter's usual northwest to southwest, and the sun has been shining more than usual although it barely rises above the horizon.
* Note to the rescue services: too many fools are venturing out on the thin ice on the bay.
* Note to self: get a dog.

my life had the goodness of blue waters

A look back at 2014... because looking  back is what I do well. Please note that I am completely ignoring all the boring stuff that happened between these carefully edited highlights.


Most useful thing learned? It took me one day to learn how to download and use subtitling software - and suddenly I had a new vocation, job title and dream.


Proudest achievement? It was a nightmare, it wasn't voluntary, but I'm kind of proud I did it - changing jobs, again.

This year's mode of transport? The thrice-cursed little French car, surprisingly cooperative most of the year. Except in cold weather and when it decided it was time to disconnect all the lights.

Journeys taken? A whirlwind trip to amazing Helsinki. A few spring days in Frankfurt, Germany, with a friend, wine and easy living. A summery day in Sweden after chugging across the pond on an ancient ferry. A November weekend in Tampere, Finland, with more laughter than should be physically possible.

This year's inspiration? Pinterest and White Collar, all the free spirits out there living in freedom and cool clothes.

Best thing that happened? Could have been the scary-looking biker dude who said, "Want a job?" or the friend who said, "Let's buy a flight ticket out of here". Or the long, hot, lazy summer on the beach.

Most significant insight?

chaos, leave me never.

keep me wild

and keep me free

so that my brokenness will be,

the only beauty

the world will see.

(r.m. drake)

Best study achievement? I finally realized that Excel can be used in practice, not theory. Learned a lot of Finnish. And took a course in InDesign, already forgotten.

Favourite item of clothing? The black boots. Or the cheap grey fleece sweater. Or the little black skirt I wore with absolutely everything.

Favourite icecream? Do you have to ask? Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough.

Favourite quote? 

I want raging nights

dark and wild

Lit only by the city,

bonfires, and cigarettes

I want sun-kissed mornings

breezy and free

interrupted only by the voices 

of lovers and friends

(unknown) 

New interests? My Viking heritage, smoothies and subtitles.

Most unexpected thing seen from the window? A shark (of the inflatable toy kind) sailing past the beach in the middle of a thunderstorm, fighter aircraft in formation, fire swingers, a snowstorm with thunder and lightning.

Favourite song? Ed Sheeran: I See Fire or John Legend: All Of Me or Jenni Vartiainen: Suru on kunniavieras or the Script: Superheroes or...

Who would you like to thank? Everyone who loves me despite my moody silences and false cheerfulness. God for everything else.


(Title from Gary Barlow's song Open Road)

fluff

What you really need when you're dying of the flu (at Christmas!) is an adorable poodle with fluffy fur to randomly hug for comfort.

My sister was kind enough to lend me hers. She will get it back with lots of flu germs in that lovely fur.

meet Robinson and Friday

Another random picture from the ancient archives:

We made landfall on a deserted island one autumn afternoon, my friend and I. At least we thought it was deserted. Two sheep showed up and tried to force themselves aboard as we were setting out again.

Some Islanders take herds of sheep out to small islets over the summer to let them roam free. These two had apparently been left behind when the rest were collected in the autumn and were feeling rather put out. We informed the sheepfarmer about this. So I can kind of take the credit for saving two lives that grey afternoon.

I'm not happy yet no sorrow shakes me

My job today consists of listening to a well-known Finnish singer, Vesa-Matti Loiri, croon old songs at me from a 1970s recording while I'm adding subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing.

Apparently even the deaf enjoy Loiri's singing.

He's singing songs by the poet Eino Leino. This is serious business: longing, nostalgia, despair. It never would have crossed my mind to listen to this type of music but I'm glad I did. There is a dark beauty in the Finnish folk soul.

For a hefty dose of melancholia, the mood most often associated with the Finns, look no further.

English translation by Aina Swan Cutler:

I hear the evening cornbird calling.

Moonlight floods the fields of tasseled grain.

Wood smoke, drifting veils the distant valleys.

Summer evening's joy is here for me.

I'm not happy yet no sorrow shakes me,

but the dark woods stillness I would welcome.

Rosy clouds through which the day is falling,

sleepy breezes from the blue gray mountains,

shodows on the water, meadow flowers...

out of these my heart's own song I'll make!

I will sing it, summer hay-sweet maiden,

sing to you my deep serenity,

my own faith that sounds a swelling music,

oak-leaf garland ever fresh and green.

I'll no longer chase the will-o-wisp.

Happiness is here in my own keeping.

Day by day, life's circle narrows, closes.

Time stands still now ... weather cocks all sleeping.

Here before me lies a shadowy way

leading to a strange, an unknown place.

what cannot wait

I crave:

a caress,
the sun,
olive meatballs and garlic mushrooms,
another season of White Collar,
divine peace,
a dog,
an apartment in Manhattan.

And it's urgent.

seeing the light

Winter game: Pick a random picture from years ago and explain it:

In the back seat of a car, waiting to drive aboard the ferry to Sweden. Having a bout of despair because my parents were in the front seat and I suddenly felt stuck in childhood. Saved from insanity by my niece who sat next to me and invented a hilarious game that involved taking random pictures like this one.

what friends said this week

"I handed in four rifles to the police."
"I'll be working part-time as a circus manager."
"You need to assess the marathon man."
"My therapist said I should go to trauma counselling. I dream of classrooms at night."
"I forgot that I was once a devil."
"I send emails to myself and intentionally add spelling errors."
"I'm in breach of contract."
"I never look at the price tag."
"Have you ever considered a push-up bra?"
"Cow."

My interesting friends keep adding spice to conversations.

socializing in the dark

The weekend:

Gingerbread cookie baking,  darkness,  candles in the windows, vegetarian food, indoor beachvolley, sleep, the president's ball on TV, tea for two,  an interpretation gig,  a victory and a defeat, cake with Mum, shopping for someone else, not enough solitude.

teenagers, bacon and drills

Perils of living in an apartment building:

* You wake up before dawn because the neighbours' teenager is having a screaming fit and slamming doors.

* A seductive smell of fried bacon spreads throughout the building just as you're planning to get some more work done before stopping for lunch.

* Another neighbour decided to do a bit of DIY, involving drilling, just as your head hits the pillow.

dawn will break - next March

Finland is shrouded in eternal darkness.

We crawl into our hide-outs, light fires and candles.
Eat hot food and mulled wine. Amuse ourselves with stories.
Party a little too hard to show we are not afraid.
Sleep and dream of summer and eternal sunshine.

Manchester of Finland

If you dream of living in one of those old industrial buildings that have been converted into fabulous lofts, full of exposed brick, light and air, and overlooking the water, you should probably go to Tampere, Finland.

Its raw charm is irresistible. This is not a town for sissies. It's where Lenin and Stalin met for the first time - in a building which is now one of the few surviving Lenin museums in the world.

Tampere also has an Ikea store and a fabulous Spanish restaurant. What more do you need?

freedom's midnight hour

If the most glorious moment of freelance work came that June morning when I sat on the balcony, summer breeze in my hair and sun on my rosy cheeks, barefoot and happy, gloating over all the poor bastards who have to work in offices and factories and shops...

...then the hour of the wolf arrived a pitch-black night in November when I struggled through an endless project at four in the morning, aching with cold and lack of sleep, anxiously doubting myself and knowing that anxiety would still be there in the morning, as it had for weeks.

that funky Jesus music

I was going through my old CDs to decide which ones to keep. Found an old gospel one that I probably hadn't played since the 1990s so I put it on, just to confirm my suspicions that it was good for the 'reject' pile.

To my surprise, I enjoyed it enough to decide to keep it. I was especially moved by a Whitney Houston song, "I Love The Lord" (and Whitney Houston songs have failed to move me since I ran out of teenage hormones).

What's more, it made me long for a good, old gospel concert of the kind I used to go to in the 1990s. The kind I haven't felt any need for since the 1990s. As it happened, such a concert was being arranged in my town that same week (and they are usually very few and far between) so on an impulse I asked a friend to go with me. When the day arrived, I nearly changed my mind - there is a reason you should not revisit your teenage years - but my friend convinced me to go anyway.

The concert was packed with old acquaintances - on the stage as well as in the audience - and was really good. World-class good. All my doubts and fears vanished and I let myself be carried away by the wonderful music.

And then they played "I Love The Lord". If that wasn't a sign, I don't know what is.

chased by the Pac-Man monster

How to grow up before the internet:

Eighties, in primary school: first encounter ever with a computer when we were offered computer classes. Which meant learning simple programming, like If-Then-Else. Never got much further than that. Pac-Man was fun, though.

A boy in school had a computer at home. A Commodore 64. He was considered the nerdiest of the nerds because of this.

Nineties, starting university: we were offered our own email accounts on the university server. This was something we had never heard about. You weren't supposed to apply for one unless you needed it for your studies but we all applied anyway, out of curiosity. Email became wildly popular for writing silly messages to your friends. Nobody owned a computer yet but you could log in on any of the terminals scattered throughout campus.

Then everything started to happen. Windows came, meaning that using a computer was actually easy and not only something for programming geeks. No longer did we have to know commands by heart or get stuck in WordPerfect when we forgot which function key to use. The mouse was invented and now it was all point-and-click. The internet and the romantically named World Wide Web arrived - there wasn't much on it at first, but information about anything and everything soon started to flood it. We took the few basic computer classes available and learned the rest from friends and through trial and error. More computer labs opened on campus and we were encouraged to use them instead of writing our essays with the help of a pencil or a typewriter.

I was given someone's old computer, then somebody else's slightly newer one and used them to write my essays, but they were slow and prone to crashing and there were always compatibility problems when I saved my work on a floppy disk and brought it to campus to use the printer there. Being online at home wasn't really something to consider - modems were excruciatingly slow and you were billed by the minute. But you could always play Solitaire, Tetris or maybe even Need For Speed.

The 21st century, once we survived the dreaded Y2K bug: by the time we left university we had got ourselves hotmail addresses that we could access anywhere, not just on the campus computers, and knew the basics of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The internet was by now stuffed with both useful and entertaining information. Most businesses were getting computerized and the really cool people had their own laptop or Nokia Communicator.

The rest of us used computer rooms in the public library, or the internet cafés that started popping up everywhere. I could spend hours in them on my days off - emailing, reading fanfiction, looking for jobs. There was great coffee to be had, lots of other cool people around and the wonderful feeling of having the entire world at your fingertips.

Now, with a laptop and a smartphone, I never really get over that feeling of having conquered a world nobody expected me to manage. Neither the slight insecurity nor the triumph. I was on Facebook just a couple of months after it opened to the general public and signed onto a number of other social media - just because I have to prove to myself that I'm still on top of this computer thing.

nation of sorrow and strength

I'm studying the language, culture and mindset of my own country.

It's not easy growing up in a language minority with its own culture and way of thinking, its own tight-knit community. The longer I live in this country, the more I realise that I hardly know it. The language has always been a struggle to me, the culture has run a closely parallel and only vaguely known course to my own, and my neighbours think a bit differently than I do.

No matter how much I dream of foreign shores - before I go anywhere, I will know this people and understand how they think. No matter how much work it takes to delve into the complicated grammar of this Finnish language, read up on popular culture that should already be familiar to me, and try to understand the mind of a people that is not my own. And yet somehow is.

One of the most beautiful Finnish songs of all time:


- Itkuja varten on ihmisen silmät, vieriköön kyyneleet. 
Tuleehan tuolta se toinen päivä, kun on kepeät askeleet. -

November, the bad boy I always fall for

Even when there is no fog, November in Finland feels like fog.

We trundle along in grey dampness, sometimes on dry streets, sometimes with wet slush under our feet. Always cold. Now we pay the price for our glorious, paradisiacal midnight-sun summers.

November is darkness that infinitesimally brightens to a doubtful twilight in the hours around noon.

The darkness brings a gloom even in the mood of the people. A constant tiredness, sometimes a severe depression.

The miracle occurs when the temperature drops below zero. Although there is the added irritation of icy roads, snow that blocks the way and frozen fingers, the cold often brings out the sun, not seen for weeks, and suddenly people are involuntarily smiling again.

December is technically colder and darker than November. But December usually means snow that stays on the ground, reflecting light and brightening the daylight. And, of course, Christmas decorations and parties, reflecting hope and brightening moods.

On the darkest days of November I have to take up arms against the weariness, the sugar cravings, the urge to stay in bed and dwell on dark matters. I drag myself out on a walk along cold streets in the evening. I look at the lights in all windows. Candles, fairy-lights, the flicker of a flat-screen television, the warm glow of a kitchen lamp.

People are cooking pasta for their kids, walking over-enthusiastic dogs, packing their gym bags. The shop assistant in the grocery store on the corner still has the energy to smile at me. In the pub, someone is pouring a comforting pint. Someone else has lit a fire in the fireplace - I can smell wood smoke.

And the sea and the sky, despite the oppressive grey fog, take on a shade of breathtaking beauty that I never saw in summer.

A glass of wine never tastes as good as when you're dry and warm and happy - in horrible November.

raw food and a dog tail

The icy clarity of a day with sub-zero temperatures that always, after the choking grey dampness of slightly warmer but more hopeless days, brings relief and almost euphoria.

A raw food café in the trendy part of town, a Chinese friend, and the delicious feeling of whiling away hours on a Saturday over good food.

A stranger's dog that wagged his tail at me as if I was a long-lost friend.

A long walk, slow thoughts.

And when darkness descends, candlelight.

walking wounded

A terrible need for someone else to take charge for a while. I will survive, as I always do. But what to do with this gaping wound inside?